Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Abstract Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993), born 27 February in Pruzhan, Poland, was the scion of a great Orthodox rabbinic family connected with the teaching and tradition of R. Elijah of Vilna (the Vilna Gaon, 1720-1797). His grandfather Rav Chaim Soloveitchik had pioneered a new method of Talmud study and his father, Rav Moshe, was an eminent talmudist and communal rabbi. Until age nineteen, Soloveitchik’s education was mainly carried on under the tutelage of his father and consisted primarily of traditional talmudic studies, though in his late teens he also received the beginnings of a gymnasium-like secular education from a series of tutors. In 1925, in a bold act that remains the source of controversy and varying explanations, he left Eastern Europe and the world of the yeshiva to enroll at the University of Berlin to study philosophy. There he became a keen student of the Marburg neo-Kantian philosophy of Hermann Cohen and in 1931 received his doctorate for a thesis on Hermann Cohen’s interpretation of Kant. In 1931, after his marriage to Tonya Lewit, who held a doctorate in education, he migrated to the United States and settled in Boston, taking a post as a communal rabbi. However, his fame would derive from his position at Yeshiva University in New York City where he became professor of Talmud in the school’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. In this setting he trained generations of Orthodox rabbis and became known simply as “the Rav,” the rabbinic teacher par excellence.