Word: soloveitchik
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Twersky's father-in-law, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, founded the school, which Rosenberg called the "oldest and largest Jewish day school in New England...
...life as well as his thought, Soloveitchik bridges the ancient ghettos and modern urban culture. The scion of an eminent line of East European rabbis, he was trained at home in Russia by his father and received no formal schooling until he entered the University of Berlin. There he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy, becoming as conversant with Kant as with Moses. In 1932 he moved to Boston as chief Orthodox rabbi and founder of a pioneering day school. He later began commuting to teach in New York. A widower, he has two daughters...
...When Soloveitchik arrived on the American scene, the Orthodox Jews were isolated from mainstream society and seemed doomed to extinction in the U.S. Soloveitchik helped foster the growth of the movement by insisting that a Jew could remain both an observer of tradition and a full participant in Western culture. For him it has never been a pragmatic calculation but a belief that this was the very will...
...Faith." The essay contrasts the first Adam of the Creation, depicted in Genesis 1, and the second Adam, depicted in Genesis 2. The first Adam boldly subdues the earth, while the second Adam humbly quests for God. Both Adams exist within each person and are mandated by God, Soloveitchik holds, but in modern times the first Adam threatens to overwhelm the second, and has even become "demonic." When the second Adam begins to speak the language of faith, writes the Rav, he "finds himself lonely, forsaken, misunderstood, at times even ridiculed by Adam the first, by himself...
...also says much about Soloveitchik's own demons: for all of his confidence in the intellectual and psychological validity of his tradition, there seems little doubt that he worries about, and perhaps even fears, the cultural forces that relentlessly threaten to subvert it. -ByRichard N. Ostling...