Understanding the Two Adams

...The volume contains no introduction and little in the way of biographical data about the author...

...as a nonfunctional, receptive, submissive human type, he yearns for a redeemed existence that he achieves by bringing all his actions under God's authority...

...for that one needs also to consult such works as Halakhic Man, The Halakhic Mind, "But From Thence Ye Will Seek," and "Hark, My Beloved Knocks...

...Even Yeshiva University, once the flagship institution of "modern Orthodoxy," has fallen prey to the times...

...Why should the pious person not try to cast out secular majes-tic man from his inner being...

...Soloveitchik explains: "Man of old who could not fight disease and succumbed in multitudes to yellow fever or any other plague with degrading helplessness could not lay claim to dignity...

...The starting point of Soloveitchik's analysis is the two versions of the creation story in Genesis (chapters 1 and 2), which are notably different in several ways...

...Simultaneously, He also requires of man to forget his functional and bold approach, to stand in humility and dread before the mysterium magnum surrounding him, to interpret the world in categories of purposive activity instead of those of mechanical facticity...

...Because, Soloveitchik boldly argues, Adam the first's secularity has the stamp of God's approval: Majestic man is created in the "image of God" and commanded to "fill the earth and subdue it...

...Still, the publication of The Lonely Man of Faith could not be more timely...

...In short, this is theological discourse at its finest...

...Despite significant institutional growth and successful acculturation, the Orthodox community in the United States is busy disengaging itself from the surrounding society...

...It was first published as an essay in the journal Tradition in 1965...

...What the Bible is offering us here, Soloveitchik maintains, are "two Adams, two men, two fathers of mankind, two types, two representatives of humanity...

...He also commanded man to advance from the covenantal center to the cosmic periphery and recapture the positions he gave up a while ago...

...are all but absent...

...Thus, "Adam the first" or "majestic man" is creative, functionally oriented and enamored of technology...

...He also told man to surrender and be totally committed...

...This is an era when more and more Orthodox Jews are opting against a college education, and when mainstream Orthodox groups are raising ever higher barriers between themselves and Conservative, Reform and secular Jews...

...By providing religious validation for participation in the secular realm Soloveitchik sets the stage for an authentic religious humanism...

...It does, however, make abundantly clear his general approach, an approach that is intellectually penetrating and spiritually profound at every turn...

...Rabbi Soloveitchik, now 89 years old and incapacitated, exerts relatively little influence on the present Orthodox scene...

...The book does not, of course, exhaust the full range of Soloveitchik's theological concerns...

...Soloveitchik's theological writings are very much "beauty-centered...

...his aim is to achieve a "dignified" existence by gaining mastery over nature...

...Instead there is mindlessness, fanaticism and isolationism, each in heavy measure...

...energized...

...He contends that the "longing for vastness, no matter how adventurous or fantastic, is legitimate...

...Reading The Lonely Man of Faith is a stirring experience, yet it also makes one keenly aware of the sorry state of contemporary Orthodoxy...

...Specifically, this involves man's "capability of dominating his environment and exercising control over it...

...Today things are very different...

...A central aspect of The Lonely Man of Faith is that majestic man and covenantal man remain permanently at war with each other...

...On the intellectual front, a narrow dogmatism reigns supreme...

...Thus, Soloveitchik arrives at a "tragic" view of the nature of religious life as entailing a "staggering dialectic": " [God] wants man to engage in the pursuit of majesty-dignity as well as redemp-tiveness...

...For someone like myself, who attended New York's Yeshiva University around 1960, when Rabbi Soloveitchik was the guiding light of Yeshiva's Talmud faculty, recent trends within Orthodoxy have been painful to witness...

...voices of a cultured Orthodoxy seeking to be part of the world...

...Reviewed by David Singer Editor, "American Jewish Yearbook'" Virtually out of the blue, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's The Lonely Man of Faith comes to us in book form...

...He was a brilliant Talmudist and a University of Berlin PhD in philosophy...

...And it was Rabbi Soloveitchik, in his life and his writings, who personified this...

...Certainly this factor helps to account for Soloveitchik's own involvement with imaginative literature in all of its forms, as well as the craftsmanship that is evident throughout his essays...

...Small wonder then that I, despite my Orthodox faith, feel so lonely...

...What a thrill, therefore, to come upon The Lonely Man of Faith...

...as such, it is unlikely to pique the curiosity of the general reader...

...Why is this so...

...Originally part of a lecture series before a mixed audience of Christians and Jews, it presents a universal religious message, embraces both Jewish tradition and currents of Western thought, and, most important, takes it for granted that Orthodox Judaism can and should address the world...

...of the beautiful...

...Majestic man glories in the assertion of human will, while covenantal man seeks its extinction...

...Adam the second" or "covenan-tal man," in contrast, eschews "power and control...

...So firm is Soloveitchik in his position that he flatly refuses to set limits to the Faustian spirit...

...In a period when fundamentalism seems to be ascendant in almost every religion and Orthodox Judaism is similarly in the grip of reactionary forces, its appearance serves as a reminder of another kind of Orthodoxy...

...Man, he tells us, must "rise to the heights of freedom of action and creativity of mind," so that he can "implement the mandate of dignified responsibility entrusted to him by his Maker...

...Only the man who builds hospitals, discovers therapeutic techniques, and saves lives is blessed with dignity...

...one that is intellectually open, socially tolerant, and, all in all, eager to engage the world...

...As if this were not enough, Soloveitchik brings an esthetic dimension into the picture...

...Back then, the Orthodox ideal was "synthesis," i.e., the creative blending of the best elements of Jewish tradition and Western culture...

...He authorized man to quest for 'sovereignty...

...He enabled man to interpret the world in functional, empirical "how" categories...

...Voices like Rabbi Soloveitchik's...

...there is no end to the conflict between them...

...It is a manifestation of obedience to rather than rebellion against God...

...He summoned man to retreat from peripheral, hard-won positions of vantage and power to the center of the faith experience...

...Soloveitchik was a man who evoked admiration, and the cultural concept that he projected nurtured both the mind and the spirit...

...on the social side, separatism is the objective...

...Man of the 17th and 18th centuries who needed several days to travel from Boston to New York was less dignified than modern man who...

...his theological essays drew upon the full range of classical Jewish sources as they grappled with issues brought to the fore by neo-Kant-ianism, existentialism and the philosophy of science...

...boards a plane at the New York airport at midnight and takes several hours later a leisurely walk along the streets of London...

...Adam the first, he tells us, is not only a "creative theoretician," but also a "creative esthete," his "conscience...

...by the idea...

...At the same time, Soloveitchik insists that both types exist simultaneously within each individual and, further, that God regards the situation as fit and proper...