“Halachic Worldviews”: Another Step in the Torah of Rav Soloveitchik
When my brother’s sefer initially came out, I knew it could fill a major need. It was intelligent without being overly intellectual, aspirational without being too fluffy and potentially most importantly, well-written. I also know him to be a very passionate and intriguing person, given the discussions we’ve had together throughout the years. Therefore, I feel very lucky to present my interview to the wider YU audience.
Tuvia Goldstein: Tell me a little about your background
Rabbi Tzvi Goldstein (YC ‘18, RIETS ‘22): I grew up in Chicago and spent three years in Yeshivat Hakotel followed by four years in YU. I learned mainly by Rav Twersky and Rav Willig, majored in Psychology and even completed my thesis for the Honors program. At the same time, I spent a lot of time with Upstate NCSY, where I met my wife; we both started as advisors and became Albany chapter coordinators and youth directors for the shul there. After graduating, my wife and I returned to Israel, where I learned in Gruss and taught in Hakotel. Now I edit sefarim in English, although I hope to return to teaching in the coming year.
TG: What motivated you to write this sefer?
RG: The short answer: People are searching for the relevance of Torah and Judaism to their lives. I wrote this sefer to share the approach to learning that quenched that thirst for me.
The long answer: Since my time as a student in Yeshivat Hakotel, I’ve been curious about two related questions: what’s the big-picture goal of Judaism, and why is learning Torah so massively important. I heard the classic answers to both questions, but they didn’t initially resonate with me. My first year in YU, I came across an idea from Rav Samson Rephael Hirsch (his piece on kiddush ha’chodesh in Parashas Bo) that seemed to imply an answer to the second question; my excitement led me to pick up his “19 Letters” in the library, which directly answered the first. A couple of months later, I had a similar experience listening to a shiur on Friday night of Parashas Emor from Rav Rosensweig, leading me to the Rav. I was amazed to discover that for both Rav Hirsch and Rav Soloveitchik, my two questions were linked.
To put it into my own words, our purpose is to act as Hashem’s partners (shutfin b’tachtonim) to build an ideal society in this world (a dirah b’tachtonim), and Torah is the guidebook to the values, ideals and practices we need to internalize and implement to accomplish that (Torah mi’lashon hora’ah, guidance). Rather than an intellectual exercise that generates unimaginable reward in the World to Come or an (ultimately futile) attempt to “know the mind of God,” Torah is the eminently intelligible record of the values Hashem wants us to learn, reflect on and express in our attitudes and daily lives. This perspective was supremely inspiring for me, and I received similar feedback when I shared it both with teenagers in NCSY and with talmidim in Hakotel. I wrote this sefer to bring this approach to a larger audience.
TG: This sounds fascinating and something that can really resonate with a lot of students here in YU. Can you summarize the approach you’re describing?
RG: The best one-line summary is Rav Soloveitchik’s last line of his book “The Halakhic Mind”: “Out of the sources of halakhah, a new world view awaits formulation” (hence the title of my sefer, Halachic Worldviews). He was answering the question, is there anything that can be called an authentically Jewish outlook on life, as opposed to adapted secular philosophies? And his answer was the halachic system is meant to serve exactly that purpose: by concretizing and systematizing certain behaviors and forbidding specific practices, Hashem was conveying an entire system of both actions and values that we were meant to intuit and then internalize. This idea is not in fact unique to halacha; every legal system is actually built on a specific system of values. Sanctity of life translates into speed limits and seat belt laws; seeing the Divine in every human translates into systems of welfare and social justice. What’s different about ours is its origin; Halacha is Divine, as opposed to the best efforts of a group of humans.
This approach to learning says that each sugya should shed light on the definition, nuances or practical application of whichever value is under discussion. So a sugya about melachah on motzei Shabbos can really be a question of the respective values of creative labor to develop the world and the mei’ein Olam Haba of kedushas Shabbos. A chakirah within the laws of hired laborers reveals two complementary perspectives that a person involved in the working world should try to balance.
TG: Why does it seem like your sefer is one of the few that work to actualize the synthesis between halacha and hashkafah advocated by the Rav? Why aren't there more sefarim that try to do what you do?
RG: That’s a really good question, and I wish there were more resources available. I don’t know the answer, but here are a few thoughts. First, it’s important to note that the precursors to the approach definitely do exist, certainly in the Rishonim. In a certain sense, it’s an expansion of the ta’amei hamitzvos approach, which many Rishonim advocated for and practiced. Second, the approach itself is fairly young, considering the age of most of our sources. Rav Hirsch was in the 1800s and Rav Soloveitchik in the 1900s, so it’s not like we’ve had a few hundred years for the approach to be worked on, mature and develop into an independent genre of Talmud Torah. Third, it’s really hard to do this well; the ideas I worked on are really just small “corner pieces” of bigger ideas. It takes masters like our roshei yeshiva to really do this approach justice — for example, it’s all over Rav Rosensweig’s sefer that came out last year, “Mimini Michael” on teshuvah and Yom Kippur. In fact, a sefer was published posthumously from Rav Aharon Lichtenstein that’s also a magisterial demonstration of this approach — “Values in Halakhah”, which is very explicitly working with the same approach. There are also some people in Israel developing ideas along similar lines. So the approach is beginning to spread, but I wish there was more out there.
TG: Why did you choose to write in English as opposed to Hebrew?
RG: Rabbi Emanuel Feldman published an essay in Tradition called “Tefillin in a Brown Paper Bag,” in which he labels the use of sophisticated, nuanced language to convey Torah as a form of hiddur mitzvah. My English is not as pleasant to read as Rabbi Feldman’s is, but it’s certainly more precise and expressive than my Hebrew. I think it’s similar to Rav Hirsch giving his derashos and writing in High German, or the Rav’s exquisite Yiddish shiurim and sophisticated English writing. They used the language they felt was best suited to convey their ideas to their audiences; for me, that’s English.
TG: Who is your target audience? Who do you see gaining from the content the most?
RG: The dmus dyukno (vision) I had in mind while writing was post-high school students with at least a basic background in the analytical style of learning. That should be enough to follow the course of the ideas I try to develop; I included the sources in the sefer with translation so those are available if necessary. The sweet spot is someone who knows his way around a sugya, but always felt that there was something missing from the learning he’s done until now to really connect to the content.
Of course, this isn’t only for bnei yeshivah; I’ve gotten great feedback from adults who either don’t have a strong background in learning, or learned b’iyun when they were in yeshiva but haven’t had the opportunity to learn that way since then.
TG: Did you run into any challenges during the writing/editing/publishing process? How did you overcome them?
RG: Honestly, the biggest challenge was the experience of imposter syndrome — why am I publishing something as a thirty-year-old? I did take a modicum of chizzuk from the fact that Rav Hirsch published the “19 Letters” at 28, and he already had “Horeb” fully written at the time, but I’m clearly not him, and he was obviously an exception to the rule. Early in the process, I discussed it with some of my rebbeim, and based on the goal of bringing the approach, rather than the specific ideas in each sugya, to a broader audience, it made some sense, but there were still times throughout the process when I was wondering if I should just pull the plug on the whole thing.
TG: For the aspiring Torah writers out there, what suggestions do you have to elevate their writing?
RG: I’m not the best person to ask; there are many people who are much better writers than me. I can share a couple of thoughts that come to mind, from my experience:
Read widely, especially those writers whose styles resonate with you. Rav Hirsch, Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Lichtenstein and Rav Jonathan Sacks are great places to start, but read more broadly as well. As you read, pay attention to their literary craftsmanship in addition to their content — the way they choose words, structure sentences and bring ideas to life. High-level writing is not a question of “upgrading” to the largest, most complicated words possible; it’s about picking the perfect word to present the precise feeling you want to convey. It’s about pushing the buttons that call color, sound, texture and smell into the reader’s mind, conjuring an entire mental experience with the wave of a few words. The more you read masterful prose, the better equipped you’ll be to replicate it yourself.
I recently heard Rav Aharon Lopiansky mention that back in the day, yeshivos used to have a writing seder built into the weekly schedule. It was meant for bachurim to write down what they’d learned over the week, prodding them to clarify, organize and convey the material they had spent the week on. That’s a valuable exercise to do consistently: take a topic and outline it, trying to figure out a logical flow that incorporates each element that you want to include. Once you have it in writing, share it with a friend or use the outline to give over the material verbally, and see if it’s clear to the other person.
Find a niche in learning that you’re excited about, and allow that excitement to find its way into your writing. In a constrained way, I think — exclamation points and “Wow!”s all over the page don’t scream nuance and deep thinking — but a reader should be able to sense your investment in the topic, and part of that is finding the niche that speaks to you in that way.
TG: Anything else you would like to add?
RG: I often share with students that while my time learning in yeshiva gave me the fundamentals I needed to be able to learn long term, it was during my time in YU that I discovered this approach to learning that has already carried me for so many years. If someone hasn’t yet found an area of learning about which they feel passionate, they may just need to let themselves explore areas of Torah or try approaches that they haven’t yet seen.
Halachic Worldviews is available for purchase at RIETSPress.org.
Photo Caption: Halachic Worldviews
Photo Credit: Tuvia Goldstein
