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Jerusalem Report Letter

Last week's Stupid Column of the Week awardee was Daniel Landes, for his piece claiming that Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's political views would be identical to Landes'.

The Jerusalem Report has published my letter on the topic, as follows:

Indeed, Rabbi Soloveitchik did, and would today, oppose racism and nationalist fanaticism from religious Jews, as Daniel Landes writes. But he was a staunch Zionist, and a supporter of settlement in Judea and Samaria. He would not support "religious settlers who take us to the brink of war for territory alone," but he would likely reject Landes's implication that settlers, and not Palestinian terror and rejectionism, have brought Israel to its current situation. Landes is applying his own political judgments to the current situation and using those values to claim that Rabbi Soloveitchik would do today exactly what Landes wants done. This is speculation at best, and possibly a distortion of the Rav's thinking and legacy.

Joseph Schick, New York

Hy Arbesfeld of Kew Gardens, New York - which happens to be next to my neighborhood - also wrote in on the topic:

The title of Rabbi Landes’s article on Rabbi Soloveitchik, "What the Master Would Have Done" (Viewpoint, Jan. 12), reveals its weakness. Since Rabbi Soloveitchik’s death, too many people have "hijacked" the Rav to support their political position or personal agenda. Some claim he said things he never said. Others, like Rabbi Landes, invoke the "he would have." I was a student of the Rav at Y.U., received smikhah there from the Rav, and later attended his shiurim at the Moriah Congregation for many years. I don’t pretend to know if "he would have feared religious settlers who take us to the brink of war" or "he would counsel... not to fear political compromise." Rabbi Landes’s claim to know the Rav’s mind is pretentious.
posted on 1/12/2004