This volume gathers together a number of papers written over a period of some fifteen years on philosophical themes. The process of reading through these and other writings led me to reflect on the progress of Orthodox thought since emancipation. I decided to set out these reflections in a new presentation which forms the first section of the book, “Responses to Modernity.” These chapters have not appeared in print before.
Because these essays are coextensive with my involvement with Jews’ College, a number of thanks are in place. Rabbi Dr. Irving Jacobs and Rabbi Dr. Sidney Leperer have been friends and colleagues over the whole of that period and have created a lively atmosphere of academic debate. Frank Levine and more recently Simon Caplan and Simon Goulden have steered the College administratively with great distinction. Adele Lew and Marilyn Redstone have helped this and other projects in countless ways, but in particular through their work on L’Eylah, the journal we publish in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Rabbi. Editing L’Eylah has been one of my great pleasures over the past few years, not least because of the way we have worked together as a team. Ezra Kahn, senior librarian of the College, has supplied my voracious appetite for books needed for research.
My thanks, too, go to Rabbi Norman Lamm and Rabbi Maurice Unterman for encouraging me in the first instance to write; to Rabbi Ivan Binstock, Rabbi Fyvish Vogel and Mr. Bobby Hill for their helpful criticism over the years; and especially to the Chief Rabbi, Lord Jakobovits, President of Jews’ College and Mr. Stanley Kalms, its Chairman, for their friendship, advice and help. Above all I am indebted to my predecessor and teacher, Rabbi Dr. Nachum Rabinovitch, currently head of Yeshivat Birkat Mosheh in Ma’aleh Adumim, who inspired all those who had the privilege of studying with him by his vast and courageous vision of the power and relevance of Torah.
The following chapters have appeared in print before. “The Holocaust in Jewish Theology” was published as part of a booklet, The Holocaust in History and Today, by the Yad Vashem Charitable Trust, 1988. “Jewish-Christian Dialogue: The Ethical Dimension” appeared in L’Eylah 26 (Autumn 1988), 13–20. “Wealth and Poverty: A Jewish Analysis” was published as a pamphlet by the Social Affairs Unit, London, 1985. “The Word ‘Now’: Reflections on the Psychology of Teshuvah” appeared in L’Eylah 20 (Autumn 1985), 4–9. “Alienation and Faith” was published in Tradition 13:4/14:1 (Spring-Summer 1973), 137–162. “Buber’s Jewishness and Buber’s Judaism” was published in European Judaism 12:2 (Winter 1978), 14–19. “The Path of Return” appeared in European Judaism 8:1 (Winter 1973), 3–7 and was reprinted in European Judaism 20:2 (Winter 1986), 18–22. “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Halakhic Man” appeared in L’Eylah 19 (Spring 1985), 36–41. “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Early Epistemology” was published in Tradition 23:3 (Spring 1988), 75–87. My thanks to those who have given their permission for these papers to be reprinted.