In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we speak with Rabbi Dr. Haym Soloveitchik—a pioneer and leader in the study of the history of Jewish law—about how halacha mediates our relationship to God in 2025.

We’ve already spoken with Dr. Soloveitchik in our Halacha series, but a closer reading of his essential work, "Rupture and Reconstruction," demands that we explore it more deeply. In this episode we discuss:

Why do Jews feel bound by the Talmud in a multicultural world?
What does it mean to live in a society that increasingly learns from books and online rather than from mimetic tradition?
Is a sense of security as a People a breeding ground for unnecessary social differences?

Tune in to hear a conversation about how we might ensure a more vibrant environment for Jewish life to thrive in a changing world.

Interview begins at 5:03.

Rabbi Dr. Haym Soloveitchik graduated from the Maimonides School which his father founded in Brookline, Massachusetts, and then received his B.A. degree from Harvard College in 1958 with a major in history. After two years of postgraduate study at Harvard, he moved to Israel and began his studies toward an M.A. and PhD at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, under the historian Professor Jacob Katz. He wrote his Master’s thesis on the halacha of gentile wine in medieval Germany. His doctorate, which he received in 1972, concentrated on laws of pawnbroking and usury. He is considered a pioneer and leader in the study of the history of Jewish law.

References:

Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Modern Orthodoxy by Haym Soloveitchik

Collected Essays: Volumes I, II, and III by Haym Soloveitchik

Jews and the Wine Trade in Medieval Europe: Principles and Pressures by Haym Soloveitchik

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Obituary in The Jewish Observer

Igros Hagrid Halevi by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Rationalism in Politics and other essays by Michael Oakeshott

The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People by Oscar Handlin

The Polish Peasant in Europe and America by William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki

“On the Third Yeshivah of Bavel” by by Haym Soloveitchik

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Igros Hagrid Halevi

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