The Lonely Man of Faith.

Joseph B. Soloveitchik has been the spiritual and intellectual leader of modern Jewish Orthodoxy since his arrival in this country in the mid-1930s. Descendant of a long line of outstanding Lithuanian Talmudists, Soloveitchik broke new ground - traditionally, Talmudists did not acquire a secular education - by studying philosophy at the University of Berlin in the late twenties and obtaining a Ph.D. with a dissertation on Hermann Cohen, the founder of neo-Kantianism. He quickly found his audience at Yeshiva University, the institution of American Orthodoxy that combines traditional rabbinic scholarship with respect for the achievements of the modern world. Advanced in age (he was born in 1903) and ailing, Soloveitchik's impact on American Judaism and Orthodoxy in particular is immeasurable.

But this impact has not been mainly by means of the written word. Soloveitchik was first and foremost a teacher and master lecturer whose message could not be separated from his presence. Over the years, he has published a small number of essays and transcripts of some of his lectures have also appeared. The Lonely Man of Faith first appeared in 1965 as an article in the journal Tradition and is the most substantial piece of writing Soloveitchik has published. Doubleday deserves the gratitude of the whole religious community for publishing it in book form.

Soloveitchik distinguishes two human types, Adam I (Gen. I) and Adam II (Gen. II). Adam I wants to know how the cosmos functions. His goal is mastery over the world which he achieves by means of scientific knowledge. The mathematical physicist is the most characteristic representative of this approach. Adam I is carrying out the command to "fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen. 1:28). In so doing, he is not rebelling against God but acting in accordance with his nature which was created and willed by God. Adam I is an aspect of all human beings as they exercise their rational and esthetic faculties.

While Adam II is also intrigued by the cosmos, the questions he asks are of a more metaphysical nature. Instead of being concerned primarily with how the cosmos functions, Adam II wants to know the purpose of creation. He does not mathematize the world but takes it seriously as it appears. "He looks for the image of God," writes Soloveitchik, "...in every beam of light, in every bud and blossom, in the morning breeze and the stillness of a starlit evening." While the power Adam I achieves bestows on him the dignity that results from mastery over nature, Adam II seeks redemption, which Soloveitchik understands in less social and more ontological terms. "Dignity," he writes, "is acquired by man whenever he triumphs over nature. Man finds redemption whenever he is overpowered by the Creator of nature." Adam II is inherently religious while Adam I, though carrying out a divine mandate, is deeply secular, uninterested in ultimate questions that cannot be asked or answered in scientific categories.

Curiously enough, Soloveitchik emphasizes the theme of loneliness throughout the book. It is a topic clearly of more than academic interest to him. He tells his readers that he is lonely, in spite of all the friends he has. It is almost as if his religious identity is tied up with his loneliness. And this is also true of Adam II whose loneliness is rooted in his very being. Adam I, Soloveitchik points out, was created together with Eve while Adam II must first be diagnosed by God as being lonely before he is given the gift of Eve. Community is therefore natural to Adam I while loneliness is Adam II's point of departure. Adam II is a deeper person than Adam I. Soloveitchik clearly identifies with Adam II.

But Soloveitchik is not hostile to Adam I. Here and there he intimates that the drive to gain mastery over nature can go too far and there is a danger that Adam I will develop a demonic dimension. When this happens, we are in the presence of a good thing going too far rather than the unfolding of a disposition wrong from its inception. While clearly partial to the "man of faith," a synonym for Adam II, Soloveitchik refuses to condemn the human drive to gain mastery over nature because it is divinely ordained. So he is faced with the task of harmonizing the secular and religious impulses, never entertaining the possibility that this may be a more difficult task than he seems willing to concede. The urge to "fill the earth and subdue it" blends without too much difficulty into the project of subduing one's fellow human being or one's fellow nation. The habit of subduing is not a good one to get into.

This is the work of a deeply religious personality educated in rabbinic thinking and modern philosophy. For a Talmudist, Soloveitchik is remarkably biblical, even if his interpretation of the Adam I and II should be read more as a midrash than as exegesis in the modern sense. Either way, this is a work that deserves careful study.