How the Rav Stayed With Me

I was in the shiur of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, whom we all called the Rav, for five years ending in 1947. In 1949, I began graduate work in philosophy at Columbia University and found to my astonishment that none of the lights in contemporary philosophy had his intellectual stature and power. This made things more difficult for me, since it was usual for students of philosophy to become disciples of some major figure or to become closely identified with some school of philosophy. The Rav, who never himself preached or encouraged discipleship, had effectively spoiled me for all discipleships and "schools." The Rav always expected his students to criticize his assertions and I was no in a mood to be anyone's "chasid." In any case, after having studied with the Rav, there was no one around who could command from me the kind of respect I'd had for him as my mentor.

I had learned from the Rav - more by his example than by any explicit teaching of method - to treat each Sugya with an independence of mind that was literally "unorthodox." I had come to Yeshiva College from Yeshivat Chaim Berlin where I had studied with Rabbi Isaac Hutner. Rav Hutner was keen but his method was standard. We learned the text with Rashi, Tosephot and other major commentaries, after which we might raise questions about the various positions and interpretations that had already thoroughly "cooked" the Sugya for us in various ways. At no point were we encouraged to look with our own eyes on the peshat of the Gemara, unfiltered by the major authorities.

By sharp contrast, the Rav would approach a Sugya in a notably objective, unencumbered way, without relying on the authoritative traditional interpretations. He did not explicitly tell us to approach the gemara texts in this way but those of us who were alert saw that this is what he did; even to those of us who were not methodologically self-conscious, the Rav's exemplary independence of mind was inspiring, if not contagious. Shiur after exhilarating shiur, we watched the Rav coolly, objectively and incisively reason to achieve an interpretation of the Talmudic texts that was intellectually elegant and as consistent as possible with other texts. He did turn to the Rishonim and Achronim as the Shiur unfolded, but only after we all had a clear understanding of the issues and were in a position to see what was going on and why the various controversies among the meforshim had arisen. He gave us the means to understand why the differing authorities said what they said, why they differed and we also had the means to judge which one was more likely to be right. We were never encouraged to rely on the authorities as a substitute for thinking on our own. The Rav thus exemplified an intellectually independent approach and he respected this approach in any of his students who dared to take it. Indeed he encouraged and expected it from us.

Please do not misunderstand me. When it comes to philosophy itself I am no disciple of the Rav. The Rav, who had studied philosophy in Berlin, was much too respectful of continental philosophy in the first half of the 20th century; I never went along with him in his admiration for the existentialists or for philosophers of religion like Rudolph Otto. Where I remain forever in his debt was in his approach to the Gemara and Halakha. There he taught me what it means to be incisive, unafraid, and thoroughly honest. He taught me to be intellectually on my own, never to defer to authority in the face of reason, never to approach a text or a problem with a cooked "official" point of view. "Lo Ba-Shamayim Hee" and, also not in the Meforshim. He taught his students always to look at the problems without prejudgment and never to turn to authorities without having tried our best to fathom the issues on our own. That approach works wonders in any intellectual endeavor and it was to give me my way in philosophy.

It may sound odd that a teacher of Talmud should be more intellectually independent in his approach than the great secular teachers of philosophy in institutions like Columbia, Harvard and Oxford where intellectuals take special pride in being open minded, objective and uncommitted to anything but reasonable and rational thinking. But the Rav's virtues were not to be found in these academies and as I say, I was not prepared for this. I'm now over eighty years old and I've known only one other person who was the Rav's equal in incisiveness, intellectual honesty and effortless brilliance. He was not a philosopher but the scientist Francis Crick (recently deceased) whose name will ever be remembered as the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix.

The Rav himself had no pretensions; he had no axe to grind; he never gave the impression that he had a personal stake in getting you to agree with him. He was passionately and dispassionately interested in the subject matter at hand. That subject might well be tradition bound and we who studied it were committed to it as a practical ethos of faith. But given that constraint, the Rav's treatment of the subject was a brilliant paradigm of the unprejudiced and unfettered use of reason. He was also never less than professional; the Rav was masterful and we learned from him what it meant to be a master of a subject.

The effect on me of the Rav's example was decisive. It "doomed" me to do independent solitary work on hard and controversial subjects and to work things out very much on my own. I had no desire whatsoever to join any "school" or to commit myself to any particular approach or method, however popular. Independence. The Rav's example had left me with no option; if I was going to do philosophy as he did Talmud, I must be focused on the subject matter and not on the potential reader. Being a student of the Rav also gave me a taste for the most fundamental classical areas in philosophy; in the 20th century this meant logic, the philosophy of language and ontology. My own interests veered to logic and the theory of predication and eventually I succeeded to make some original discoveries in these areas. Early in 2005, MIT University Press will be publishing a book of essays in a "Festschrift" volume honoring my work.

Certainly the Rav could be caustic and uncomplimentary in criticizing you. He wanted us to know the truth of the matter and when we got it wrong, he did not bother to be diplomatic or sparing of our feelings. Always his reprimand was objective, it was never his purpose to put anyone down; he sharply criticized your argument, never your person. We understood that and took no offense. On the other hand if you said something apt and right to the point, he would look at you with great love, appreciation and gratitude. He would smile with delight. That was personal. I treasure the moments that brought him to that kind of reaction, even though it was not his custom to say more than a decisive and thundering "Gerecht!" Once - some two decades later - when I had solved a particularly vexing problem (it happened when I was in Israel on the first day of the Six Day War in June 1967) I too accorded myself the compliment of saying "Gerecht!"

The Rav's example inspired me to do careful systematic work. If I had to put the Rav's influence on me in a few phrases and sentences that express the ideals I strove to emulate, they would be something like the following:

1. Independence of mind and method. 2. Be incisive, be bold but also be meticulous, systematic and careful. 3. The problem you choose may be hard but it must allow for a systematic analytic approach. Don't tackle a problem if you do not have a systematic strategy for solving it. (This meant to me, that I must avoid some deep, clearly important and fascinating problems in philosophy. Some of these were fashionable and popular but if I could see no way to approach them with any prospect of solving them or even to getting close to a solution, I would not work on them. I later realized that not all important problems were ripe for a fruitful approach to solving them. (Sometimes we just need to have more scientific knowledge.) The Rav instinctively understood these limitations and he was always selective in his choices of Sugyot to be tackled. 4. Keeping (3) in mind, make an effort to make some progress on some fundamental problem. 5. Don't be seduced by metaphors. Keep to a common sense interpretation and a sensible, reasonable line of approach. (The Rav, who loved Agadita, never let it intrude in his formal analysis of Halakhic subject-matter.)

Some of you who read this will be doing intellectual and scientific work in fields outside Judaica. If so you will be applying some of the powerful approaches you are now practicing in your study of the Talmud, especially if you study it in the inspiring and effective way the Rav taught us. The above rules would have been phrased far more elegantly by the Rav himself. But, they are roughly his rules as I learned them from listening to and absorbing him over many years. He was the teacher that influenced me most deeply. What cannot be put into words is the inspiration I got from constantly watching a pure, honest and effortlessly brilliant Gaon, always unfailingly clearheaded, never ceasing in his joyful intellectual labors, day after day, week after week, an inspiring example of unpretentious genius who loved learning, loved argument, loved Torah and was the embodiment of the maxim that a true scholar is never envious of his students. He took joy in us and long after we left his presence, we, his students, never ceased taking joy in him.

Fred Sommers, YC '44, RIETS '46, now professor emeritus, was Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University. He is one of the great contemporary American philosophers, known for several original contributions in logic and ontology. A Festschrift (a book honoring a respected academic) on Dr. Sommers, called The Old New Logic: Essays on the Philosophy of Fred Sommers, published by MIT Press, is due out early in 2005.