The Lonely Man of Faith

Talmudic scholar and Jewish philosopher Joseph Ber (Yosef Dov) Soloveitchik was born in Pruzhan, Poland, a descendant of a Lithuanian rabbinic dynasty. He received both a traditional and a secular education, earning a doctorate (having written his dissertation on the philosopher Hermann Cohen) in 1931 from the University of Berlin. Upon immigrating to the United States in 1932, Soloveitchik became chief rabbi of the Orthodox community of Boston; he also was a founder of that city’s Maimonides School. In 1941, Soloveitchik succeeded his father as head of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University (RIETS rabbinical school) in New York. Known widely as “The Rav,” Soloveitchik is regarded as one of the leading figures of Modern Orthodox Judaism.