Joseph Soloveitchik

Joseph Soloveitchik , 1903-93, Jewish Talmudist and philosopher. Born into a rabbinic family in Poland, he was educated according to his grandfather's analytical method of Talmud study and also earned a Ph.D. at the Univ. of Berlin in 1931. In 1932 he came to the United States where he became rabbi in Boston. In 1941 he succeeded his father as professor of Talmud at Yeshiva Univ., New York. In essays and especially in oral discourse, Soloveitchik stressed the need for halakah as a means of gaining mastery over one's own nature, as well as for drawing closer to God. As a teacher, and as chairman of the Halakah Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America, he exerted a large influence over mainstream Orthodox Jewry in America.

Bibliography: See his Halakhic Man (1944, tr. 1983) and The Halakhic Mind (1984).

Solovei(t)chik, Joseph (1903–93). Jewish Orthodox rabbi and Talmudic expert. He emigrated from Poland to the USA in 1932, and became Orthodox rabbi in Boston. He established an institute for advanced Talmudic studies, meeting the needs of the flow of refugees from Europe; but he became widely known and revered when he began to teach at Yeshiva University in New York. His commitment to teaching was in line with his view on the importance of halakhah and its oral transmission, and in consequence he did not put his interpretations into published form.