The death two months ago of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, one of the foremost modern Orthodox intellectuals, saddened his students both in North America and in Israel, where he was a leader of the “national religious” community. Will his legacy of faith, courage and intellectual rigour continue?
Born in Paris in 1933, Rabbi Lichtenstein grew up in the United States, where he received the ideal education for an American modern Orthodox leader, earning rabbinic ordination at Yeshiva University and a PhD in English Literature at Harvard University. He was a close disciple of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993), the acknowledged leader of American modern Orthodoxy at the time, and he married Rabbi Soloveitchik’s daughter, Tovah.
After teaching for some years at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Lichtenstein moved to Israel in 1971 to join Rabbi Yehudah Amital (1924-2010) in founding Yeshivat Har Etzion, a school that, under their joint leadership, became the elite institution of modern Orthodoxy in Israel. Like other “hesder yeshivot” that broke away from the haredi (or fervently Orthodox) yeshiva model, Har Etzion students combine their yeshiva studies with service in the Israel Defence Forces. Unlike most other yeshivot in Israel or the Diaspora, Har Etzion had from its very beginning a positive attitude to the pursuit of secular knowledge in universities. Har Etzion was also virtually unique in its emphasis on high-level study of Bible right in the yeshiva. In most yeshivot, the curriculum consists almost entirely of study of Talmud and commentaries. Several former Har Etzion students have gone on to make important contributions to biblical studies.
While many tributes have appeared in the short time since his death, perhaps the most moving and fitting one was published by Tradition magazine just a few months before Rabbi Lichtenstein’s death, a collection called Essays on the Thought and Scholarship of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein. (Currently, this volume is available for free online at http://www.traditiononline.org/)
In his years at Har Etzion, most of Rabbi Lichtenstein’s formidable intellectual energy was channelled to the study and teaching of Talmud. I attended his high-level Talmud classes in the early 1970s, and he had a strong influence on how I (and thousands of other students) have approached Talmud study ever since.
One of the 14 essays in the volume deals directly with Rabbi Lichtenstein as a Talmudist; it will be of interest only to those familiar with the Talmud and its schools of interpretation. The rest of the essays will be of interest to any intellectually curious Jew.
Rabbi Lichtenstein sometimes took unpopular stands on issues of public policy, differing with other rabbis from his community in Israel. In another essay in the book, rabbis Kalman Neuman and Yair Kahn explain how Rabbi Lichtenstein opposed the many rabbis who spoke against the disengagement from Gaza and who encouraged soldiers to resist what they saw as illegal or unethical orders. Rabbis Neuman and Kahn show that Rabbi Lichtenstein was following in the footsteps of his teacher and father-in-law, Rabbi Soloveitchik, who opposed the idea of rabbis setting national and military policy. The essay includes a letter that Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote to Prof. Ernst Simon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem months after the Six Day War, where Rabbi Soloveitchik asserted: “I personally have faith in the members of government and the heads of the IDF, that they will do whatever is necessary in the defence of the Yishuv in their fateful decisions. However, it is prohibited for rabbis or anyone else to declare in the name of the Torah that one may not return any part of the land.”
In another article, history professor Adam Ferziger shows how Rabbi Lichtenstein went beyond his teacher, Rabbi Soloveitchik, in adopting a more tolerant attitude to non-Orthodox Jewish denominations. Rabbi Lichtenstein wrote: “Non-Orthodox movements often provide a modicum of religious guidance, of access to Jewish knowledge and values, of spiritual direction and content. Moreover, they provide it for many beyond our own pale and reach. In such situations, the contribution to Jewish life is real and meaningful.”
Referring to those who claim that any help Orthodox Jews extend to non-Orthodox movements is forbidden, the essay says Rabbi Lichtenstein wrote: “I find this view wholly untenable, on moral, national, and, quite frequently, halachic grounds.”
When a student asked his opinion about a controversy in an American community concerning Orthodox participation in a Holocaust Remembrance Day event together with non-Orthodox movements, Rabbi Lichtenstein reported, “Shocked, I responded that, as far as I knew, the Nazis had not differentiated. Could we?”
Ferziger connects Rabbi Lichtenstein’s relative liberalism on this issue to his expertise in and love of secular literature, and his strong belief that truth and spiritual meaning can be found outside of halachic texts. Rabbi Lichtenstein understood that his position would “no doubt seem excessively liberal to some and terribly patronizing to others,” but, he concluded, “such responses should hardly faze us.”
For me, the most moving part of the volume was a four-page essay by Rabbi Lichtenstein himself, titled “The Source of Faith is Faith Itself,” followed by thoughtful comments by two leading Orthodox thinkers, rabbis Aaron Segal and Shalom Carmy. Taken together, the three essays show how central the traditional Jewish value of humility was to Rabbi Lichtenstein’s worldview. With all his erudition, he felt that mortals were incapable of understanding many of the secrets of the universe. This humility was central to his faith.
As the Talmud says, “Chaval al de’avdin vela mishtakchin” – “We mourn for those who are gone and are no longer with us.” (Sanhedrin 111a)