Non­fic­tion

Mem­o­ries of a Giant: Reflec­tions on Rab­bi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, zt”l

Michael A. Bier­man, ed.; Jacob J. Schac­ter, fwd.
  • Review
By – February 28, 2014

Rab­bi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, zt”l, was the uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged leader of Mod­ern Ortho­doxy dur­ing the lat­ter half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when he served as Rosh Yeshi­va of Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty, head of the Halacha (Law) Com­mit­tee of the Rab­bini­cal Coun­cil of Amer­i­ca, and spir­i­tu­al men­tor for the Mizrachi reli­gious Zion­ist orga­ni­za­tion. His pass­ing on April 8th, 1993 left a pro­found void for those who looked specif­i­cal­ly to him for bril­liant and orig­i­nal Torah insights and method­ol­o­gy, guid­ance in halachic (legal) and hashkaf­ic (thought) mat­ters that have arisen due to the mod­ern expe­ri­ence, and as an exem­plar of excel­lence in Juda­ic and sec­u­lar stud­ies and their interaction.

This vol­ume is a unre­vised reis­sue of the out-of-print col­lec­tion of forty-two eulo­gies offered by fam­i­ly mem­bers, for­mer stu­dents, and admir­ers, which was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 2003. While the eulo­gies con­tain inspir­ing per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tions, words of Torah, and mov­ing anec­dotes, one won­ders what those who first eulo­gized the Rav over twen­ty years ago may have want­ed to add to their memori­als for this incred­i­bly great man after the pass­ing of two decades.

Yaakov (Jack) Biel­er was the found­ing Rab­bi of the Kemp Mill Syn­a­gogue in Sil­ver Spring, MD until his retire­ment in 2015. He has been asso­ci­at­ed with Jew­ish day school edu­ca­tion for over thir­ty years. R. Biel­er served as a men­tor for the Bar Ilan Uni­ver­si­ty Look­stein Cen­ter Prin­ci­pals’ Sem­i­nar and he has pub­lished and lec­tured exten­sive­ly on the phi­los­o­phy of Mod­ern Ortho­dox education.

Discussion Questions