¹ See Edward K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940—1972 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), for more on this encounter. Heschel, however, did not enter into this meeting for the purpose of theological dialogue but to save Jewish lives; the “teaching of contempt,” he believed, had fueled centuries of anti-Semitism, and he wanted to use this meeting as an opportunity to change this state of affairs. (I am grateful to Alan Mittleman for this important observation.) On Heschel's interfaith theology, see Edward K. Kaplan, Holiness in Words: Abraham Joshua Heschel's Poetics of Piety (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996) 153-55.

² “The Self-Appointed Spokesman,” National Council of Young Israel (1964), in Zev Eleff, Modern Orthodox Judaism: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2016) 219.

³ The council ended in December 1965. Twenty years later, the University of Notre Dame sponsored a Catholic-Jewish conference to commemorate the original publication of Nostra Aetate. The papers delivered at this conference, which showcase the considerable progress made in Jewish-Christian relations since the Second Vatican Council, have been published in Unanswered Questions: Theological Views of Jewish-Catholic Relations (ed. Roger Brooks; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).

⁴ Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” in Confrontation and Other Essays (New Milford, CT: Maggid, 2015) 102.

⁵ Ibid., 104.

⁶ Ibid., 107.

⁷ Ibid., 108.

⁸ Minutes of the Jewish Community Council Meeting, 6 April 1967, I-123, box 7, folder 1, American Jewish Historical Society, New England Archives, Boston; cited in Eleff, Modern Orthodox Judaism, 227.

⁹ Ibid., 472 n. 23.

¹⁰ Published in A Treasury of “Tradition” (ed. Norman Lamm and Walter S. Wurzburger; New York: Hebrew Publishing Co., 1967) 78-80, and republished in Soloveitchik, Confrontation and Other Essays.

¹¹ Ibid., 118, emphasis in original.

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Ibid., 119.

¹⁴ Steve Lipman, “Modern Orthodox Leaders Bless Interfaith Dialogue,” New York Jewish Week, 8 Dec. 2015, http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/modern-orthodox-leaders-bless-interfaith-dialogue/.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2004) 13.

¹⁷ Randi Rashkover, “Jewish Responses to Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Look Ahead to the Twenty-First Century,” CrossCurrents 50 (2000) 211-20, at 214, citing David Novak, Jewish-Christian Dialogue: A Jewish Justification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) 23.

¹⁸ Greenberg: For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 13-14.

¹⁹ Irving Greenberg, personal communication to author, 13 Dec. 2018.

²⁰ See, e.g., Rashkover, “Jewish Responses to Jewish-Christian Dialogue”; Reuven Kimelman, “Rabbis Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Abraham Joshua Heschel on Jewish-Christian Relations,” Modern Judaism 24 (2004) 251-71; Yigal Sklarin, “'Rushing in Where Angels Fear to Tread': Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the Rabbinical Council of America, Modern Orthodox Jewry and the Second Vatican Council,” Modern Judaism 29 (2009) 351-85; Yoel Finkelman, “Religion and Public Life in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” Jewish Political Studies Review 13.3-4 (2001) 41-71; John T. Pawlikowski, “The Evolution of Christian-Jewish Dialogue,” Shofar 2.2 (1985) 44-51; and Eugene Korn, “The Man of Faith and Religious Dialogue: Revisiting 'Confrontation,'”Modern Judaism 25 (2005) 290-315.

²¹ Angela West, “Soloveitchik's 'No’ to Interfaith Dialogue,” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 47.2 (2014) 95-106, asserts that Soloveitchik rebuffed opportunities for dialogue with Christians as a result of what he (West conjectures) believed was Christianity's failure to repent adequately for their historic oppression of Jews. This assertion, in light of the fact that Soloveitchik was well aware of Greenberg's endeavors in Jewish-Christian dialogue—and thus aware of the many Catholic Church leaders and Protestant theologians who were reaching out to Jewish leaders such as Greenberg precisely in order to perform such teshuvah—appears untenable.

²² Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, “'Confrontation,' Religious Freedom, and Theological Dialogue” (paper presented at the Revisiting “Confrontation” After Forty Years conference, Boston, 23 Nov. 2003, https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/center/conferences/soloveitchik/ sol_ehrenkranz.htm) implies that Soloveitchik considered Christianity to be avodah zarah (idolatry), a claim that is not only unprovable but that is belied by the fact that Soloveitchik favorably refers to the work of Protestant theologians in his writings—references which would be unimaginable if Soloveitchik believed that such theologians were idolatrous. Similarly unimaginable, if Soloveitchik indeed maintained such a view, would be how Soloveitchik would have been able to halakhically justify his presentation of The Lonely Man of Faith to a Christian audience at St. John's Catholic Seminary in Brighton, MA. Soloveitchik, moreover, was surely well aware of the medieval Jewish scholar ha-Meiri's position that Judaism's fellow monotheistic faiths are not idolatrous.

²³ David Hartman, Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Joseph B. Soloveitchik (vol. 1; Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2001) ch. 5.

²⁴ David Singer and Moshe Sokol, “Joseph Soloveitchik: Lonely Man of Faith,” Modern Judaism 2 (1982) 227-72, at 255, assert that Soloveitchik's psychological struggles with his Lithuanian conservatism caused him to become concerned “over what they would say in 'Brisk.'”

²⁵ Daniel Rynhold, “The Philosophical Foundations of Soloveitchik's Critique of Interfaith Dialogue,” HTR 96 (2003) 101-20, argues compellingly that Soloveitchik's opposition to interfaith dialogue should be understood as an outgrowth of his neo-Kantianism, particularly as articulated in The Halakhic Mind.

²⁶ Mary C. Boys speculates that Soloveitchik's and Greenberg's attitudes toward Christianity may have been influenced by the amount of contact they each had with Christians. Soloveitchik had relatively little contact with Christians and thus may have been more swayed by the general rabbinic and medieval bias against Christianity, whereas Greenberg—like Rosenzweig before him—had close relationships with Christian thinkers, which may have led him to form his more favorable impressions of Christianity (Mary Boys, written communication to author, 4 May 2018).

²⁷ Reinier Munk has reportedly been working on a translation.

²⁸ See, e.g., Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (trans. Lawrence Kaplan; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983) 153 n. 80.

²⁹ Oral communication.

³⁰ Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” 90. Soloveitchik insists that, while striving for conquest and victory, man must come to terms with retreat and defeat—with “the simple tragic fact that he is finite and mortal”—an inescapable dimension of human existence (Joseph Soloveitchik, “Majesty and Humility,” Tradition 17:2 [1978] 29). On the sense of tragedy in The Lonely Man of Faith, see Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” 2 and 101-2. R. Jonathan Sacks has also commented upon the tragic sensibility resonant in Soloveitchik's thought, particularly as is manifest in The Lonely Man of Faith (Sacks, Traditional in an Untraditional Age: Essays on Modern Jewish Thought [London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1990] 299).

³¹ See, e.g., Moshe Sokol, “Transcending Time: Elements of Romanticism in the Thought of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Modern Judaism 30 (2010) 233-46, at 241.

³² See Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992) 95, 97.

³³ Ibid., 98. On existentialist and Kierkegaardian elements of Soloveitchik's thought, see Michael Oppenheim, “Kierkegaard and Soloveitchik,” Judaism 37:1 (1988) 29-40, and David D. Possen, “J.B. Soloveitchik: Between Neo-Kantianism and Kierkegaardian Existentialism,” in Kierkegaard's Influence on Theology; Tome III: Catholic and Jewish Theology (ed. Jon Stewart; Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources 10; Farnham: Ashgate, 2012) 189-210.

³⁴ See, e.g., Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, 87: “Man … is commanded to move on before he manages to strike roots … and so the ontological loneliness of man persists. Verily, 'A straying Aramean was my father.'”

³⁵ On the impact of Cohen's philosophy upon Soloveitchik's thought, see Lawrence Kaplan, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Philosophy of Halakhah,” The Jewish Law Annual 7 (1988) 139-97; idem, “Hermann Cohen and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on Repentance,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 13 (2004) 213-58; and idem, “Hermann Cohen in Disguise—Review: Dov Schwartz, The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Modern Judaism 33 (2013) 75-97. Dov Schwartz reads Halakhic Man in a Cohenian manner in Religion or Halakhah: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (trans. Batya Stein; vol. 1; Leiden: Brill, 2007) ch. 8. More recently, Daniel Rynhold and Michael J. Harris have read Soloveitchik not through the more frequently applied neo-Kantian and existentialist lenses but through a Nietzschean lens; Daniel Rynhold and Michael J. Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Though Rynhold and Harris argue that Soloveitchik may be aptly read and understood through the lens of Nietzschean perspectivism, they also note that even Nietzschean perspectivism itself “can be seen to have Kantian roots” (ibid., 32 n. 14, citing R. Lanier Anderson, “Truth and Objectivity in Perspectivism,” Synthese 115 [1998] 1-32, esp. 21-25). See also Rynhold and Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy, 49 (discussing the obvious limitations of a Nietzsche-Soloveitchik comparison). Rynhold and Harris also note the Cohenian vectors in Soloveitchik's thought, such as “the notion of the ideal as an ever-existent eschatological 'ought’ but a never-actually-existent 'is.' For Soloveitchik, human beings 'can never find complete self-realization and fulfillment'” (ibid., quoting Joseph Soloveitchik, Family Redeemed: Essays on Family Relationships [ed. David Shatz and Joel B. Wolowelsky; Jersey City: Ktav, 2000] 22).

³⁶ Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” 90.

³⁷ Ibid., 93.

³⁸ Cohen, as Alan Mittleman has observed, “postulated a profound affinity” between Judaism and (German) Protestantism. Cohen believed that both cultures “mirror one another in complex ways and can recognize each other in the other's eyes” (Alan Mittleman, “'The Jew in Christian Culture’ by Hermann Cohen: An Introduction and Translation,” Modern Judaism 23 [2003] 51-73, at 53). Cohen also believed German Protestantism to be in accord with Judaism on account of the former's “prophetism” as well as its “inwardness of faith” and its esteem of individuality (ibid., 56). Cohen believed that Judaism and “Germanism” (“Deutschtum”) were separate but complementary, similar to his view of the relationship between Platonism and Prophetism. On Cohen's belief that Judaism and “Germanism” (“Deutschtum”) not only shared many affinities but carried with them the potential to act as the elixirs for humanity more generally, see Hermann Cohen, Deutschtum und Judentum. Mit grundlegenden Betrachtungen über Staat und Internationalismus, in idem, Jüdische Schriften (ed. Bruno Strauss, with an introduction by Franz Rosenzweig; 3 vols.; Berlin: Schwetschke, 1924) 2:237-301.

³⁹ Hermann Cohen, “German Humanism and Messianism,” in Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (ed. and trans. Eva Jospe; Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1993) 178.

⁴⁰ This is a particularly Cohenian reading of Maimonides that most scholars would likely reject. Cohen has indeed been accused of skewing Maimonides to fit his idealistic, ethics-based Jewish philosophical agenda (see, e.g., Eliezer Berkovits, Major Themes in Modern Philosophies of Judaism [New York: Ktav, 1974] 21-23, and Shlomo Pines, Guide of the Perplexed [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963] translator's introduction, cxxii). But, as George Kohler has observed, Steven Schwarzschild has been able for the most part to defend Cohen from his critics on this front (George Y. Kohler, introduction to Steven S. Schwarzschild, The Tragedy of Optimism: Writings on Hermann Cohen [ed. George Y. Kohler; Albany: State University of New York Press, 2018] xxi-xxii).

⁴¹ Soloveitchik, “Confrontation,” 106-7.

⁴² Ibid., 110-11.

⁴³ Ibid., 111.

⁴⁴ Lawrence Kaplan, translator's preface to Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, vii.

⁴⁵ See, e.g., Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 142 (polemicizing against conceiving of religion through characteristically Christian terms—“Religion is not … a refuge of grace and mercy”); and ibid., more explicitly: “The popular ideology [which Soloveitchik strongly opposes] contends that the religious experience is tranquil and neatly ordered, an enchanted stream for embittered souls … this ideology is embedded in the most ancient strata of Christianity….” Soloveitchik reaffirmed his negative views of Christianity in a 1972 lecture that has only recently been published: “Christians … developed the theory of contempt for this world … Judaism did not …” (Halakhic Morality: Essays on Ethics and Masorah [ed. Joel B. Wolowelsky and Reuven Ziegler; New Milford, CT: Toras HoRav Foundation/Maggid Books, 2017] 204). Indeed, much of Halakhic Man's critique of the homo religiosus can be viewed as a veiled polemic against Christianity (or at least against what Soloveitchik perceived to be Christianity's otherworldliness).

⁴⁶ See, e.g., Hartman, Love and Terror in the God Encounter, ch. 5, esp. 134-36.

⁴⁷ Michah Brumlik, “1915: In Deutschtum und Judentum Hermann Cohen Applies Neo-Kantian Philosophy to the German Jewish Question,” in Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture 1096-1996 (ed. Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) 336-42, at 337.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid. The theoretical autonomy of Judaism was just as central for Soloveitchik (see, e.g., Halakhic Man, 79 [stressing the importance of creativity and human autonomy even within the seemingly heteronomous halakhic system]) as it was for Cohen, both of whom were loathe to surrender it. See also Halakhic Man, 135. On the importance for Soloveitchik of human autonomy within the divine halakhic system, see idem, “MahDodekh mi-Dod,” in DivreiHagut ve-Ha’arakhah (Jerusalem, 1982) 57-98, at 70-85; and on the centrality of autonomy in the religious realm in general for Soloveitchik, see idem, The Halakhic Mind (New York: Seth Press, 1986). See also Jonathan Sacks, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik's Early Epistemology: A Review of 'The Halakhic Mind,'” Tradition 23:3 (1988) 75-87, at 78, and Alex S. Ozar, “Yeridah Le-Zorekh Aliyyah: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on Autonomy and Submission,” The Torah U-Madda Journal 17 (2016) 150-73.

⁵⁰ See, for example, Daniel Ross Goodman, “The Orthodoxization of Non-Orthodox Thought” (paper presented at Georgetown University's Life, Legacy, and Work of Mordecai Kaplan conference, Washington, DC, 3 March 2014, http://kaplancenter.org/panel-kaplan-and-other-important-jewish-approaches-day-2-pt-4), exploring the ways in which Orthodox theologians have made use of concepts and motifs found in the work of non-Orthodox thinkers without crediting the latter's influence upon the former.

⁵¹ Cohen promulgated his theory of Jewish universalism, Michah Brumlik has observed, as a response to the influential German nationalist historian Heinrich von Treitschke's anti-Semitism. Brumlik also notes that Cohen's theory of Jewish universalism is not only rooted in neo-Kantianism but is a response to Hegel's questions concerning historical progress; Cohen “reformulates Hegel's questions as How is it possible for reason to become actualized in history? and How must we behave?” (Brumlik, “1915: In Deutschtum und Judentum,” 337; see also 340, noting that Cohen's philosophy of history hardly differed from Hegel's). Klaus Christian Köhnke, in attempting to shed light on certain aspects of neo-Kantianism that have been underplayed, has also remarked upon the ways in which the various schools of neo-Kantianism, despite arising during the post-Hegel mortuum era of the 19th-cent. German academy—the period during which most philosophies of history, especially Hegelian, were being rejected—nonetheless contain a nonnegligible amount of Hegel in them (Klaus Christian Köhnke, The Rise ofNeo-Kantianism: German Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivism [trans. R. J. Hollingdale; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991]). Indeed, Rosenzweig characterized his friend and mentor Cohen as a “new Hegel” and wrote of the “Hegelianism of this neo-Kantian” (Alexander Altmann, “Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy: An Introduction to Their 'Letters on Judaism and Christianity,'” JR 24.4 (1944) 258-70, at 265, quoting Rosenzweig's Kleine Schriften [Berlin, 1937] 305).

⁵² Alan Mittleman, “'The Jew in Christian Culture,' 56.

⁵³ Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, 1:76.

⁵⁴ Andrea Poma, “Herman Cohen: Judaism and Critical Idealism” (trans. John Denton), in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy (ed. Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 80-101, at 84. On the nonnegotiable importance of monotheism for Cohen, see also ibid., 89. Rosenzweig recorded some of the most striking statements made by Cohen during his lectures on the matter of what Cohen believed to be the most consequential fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity, that of the two respective faiths’ conception of monotheism: “God be what He be, but He must be One”; “On this point we cannot come to an understanding with Christianity; the unity of God, the most abstract idea, … 'for whose sake we are killed all the day'” (Ps. 44:22) (Rosenzweig, Kleine Schriften, as quoted in Altmann, “Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,” 266).

⁵⁵ Hermann Cohen, “The Holy Spirit,” in Reason and Hope, 150-51.

⁵⁶ Poma, “Hermann Cohen: Judaism and Critical Idealism,” 91, citing H. Cohen, Innere Beziehungen der Kantischen Philosophie zum Judentum, in idem, Jüdische Schriften, 1:284-305. On Cohen's criticisms of Christianity, see Alan Mittleman, ” 'The Significance of Judaism for the Religious Progress of Humanity’ by Hermann Cohen: An Introduction and Translation,” Modern Judaism 24 (2004) 36-58, at 57 n. 4. Interestingly, in this article Mittleman, citing Jacob Fleishmann, The Problem of Christianity in Modern Jewish Thought (Jerusalem, 1964) 131-46 (Hebrew), observes that “although Cohen's criticisms of Christianity apply more fully to Catholicism than Protestantism, the latter, while less mythological, contains the same errors.”

⁵⁷ On the place of Kant in Soloveitchik's thought, see Zachary Braiterman, “Joseph Soloveitchik and Immanuel Kant's Mitzvah-Aesthetic,” AJSR 25 (2000) 1-24, finding Soloveitchik's Kantianism inhering not only in Soloveitchik's a priori conception of halakhah but fascinatingly in Soloveitchik's understanding of the aesthetic dimension of mitzvot as well. See also Almut Sh. Bruckstein, “Halakhic Epistemology in Neo-Kantian Garb: J. B. Soloveitchik's Philosophical Writings Revisited,” JSQ 5 (1998) 346-68 (analyzing Soloveitchik's “halakhic method” within the context of neo-Kantian epistemology and discussing how Soloveitchik applied neo-Kantian terminology to halakhic thinking), and Aviezer Ravitzky, “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik on Human Knowledge: Between Maimonidean and Neo-Kantian Philosophy,” Modern Judaism 6 (1986) 157-88.

⁵⁸ How Soloveitchik's traditionalist conception of revelation and his “singular and certain” approach to Jewish law (see William Kolbrener, The Last Rabbi: Joseph Soloveitchik and Talmudic Tradition [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016] 12) gels with his otherwise perspectivist views of truth and with the epistemological pluralism which he espouses in The Halakhic Mind (see, e.g., Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind, 13, 15-16, 22ff., 108, and passim) is a complex matter. The existence of God, for Soloveitchik, is clearly an absolute truth (Rynhold and Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy, 49), as is the truth of Judaism and the falsity of the Trinitarian conception of God (ibid., 58)—as it was for his dissertation subject Cohen. Soloveitchik hints that he is unsure whether his prayer experience has universal validity (see, e.g., Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Worship of the Heart [ed. Shalom Carmy; Hoboken, NJ: Ktav/Toras HoRav Foundation, 2003] 2), and he indicates in a 1950 letter that he believes that Judaism itself does not have universal validity: “religious tolerance asserts itself in the knowledge of the existence of a variety and plurality of God-experiences and in the recognition that each individual is entitled to evaluate his great unique performance as the most redeeming and uplifting one” (Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant and Commitment: Selected Letters [ed. Nathaniel Helfgot; Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 2005] 22, emphases added. I am grateful to Rynhold and Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy, 66, for alerting me to this letter). If Soloveitchik indeed believes, like his disciple Greenberg, in some form of theological pluralism, how such beliefs can be reconciled with the overtly negative views of Christianity he espouses in Halakhic Man and elsewhere is confounding and requires much greater analysis than the scope of this article permits.

⁵⁹ Moshe Sokol, “Is There a 'Halakhic’ Response to the Problem of Evil?,” HTR 92 (1999) 311-23, at 317.

⁶⁰ Rynhold and Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy, 250, referring to Cohen, Religion of Reason, ch. 15.

⁶¹ “Each community worships God in its singular way. Gleichschaltung distorts the very essence of the religious experience” (Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant and Commitment, 114).

⁶² Much has been written on the subject of Soloveitchik and interfaith dialogue; for a sampling of this literature, see, e.g., Sklarin, “'Rushing in Where Angels Fear to Tread,'” and the papers and deliberations from a 2003 conference on “Confrontation” at Boston College, which can be found at https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/center/conferences/soloveitchik.

⁶³ It suffices to see the paragraphs on the logos in the introduction to Religion of Reason to get a glimpse of the genuine odium Cohen harbored for the dominant faith of 19th-cent. German; see, e.g., Cohen, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen de Judentums (Wiesbaden: Dreieich, 1978).

⁶⁴ See Paul Mendes-Flohr, “Franz Rosenzweig Writes the Essay 'Atheistic Theology,' Which Creates the Theology of His Day,” in Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 322-26, at 323.

⁶⁵ On the mentor-disciple relationship between Cohen and Rosenzweig, see, e.g., Altmann, “Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,” 265. Though Rosenzweig highly admired Cohen for, among other things, striving to establish the first chair of Jewish philosophy at a German university, Rosenzweig was frustrated by Cohen's uncompromising animus toward Christianity (ibid., 266).

⁶⁶ See Leora Batnitzky, “Dialogue as Judgment, Not Mutual Affirmation: A New Look at Franz Rosenzweig's Dialogical Philosophy,” JR 79 (1999) 523-44, at 524.

⁶⁷ Emil L. Fackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations of Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982) 279.

⁶⁸ See Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 211-12. Any religion which respects and nurtures the tselem Elokim (Godliness) of each and every human being is a legitimate religion in Rabbi Greenberg's view. When a religion systematically denies the dignity of tselem Elokim (viz., compromises human dignity), it loses its legitimacy as a religion. Thus, a religion like scientology, which manipulates and exploits people and, instead of nurturing their human dignity, tries to convince them that they are flawed and must be reconditioned—a systematic abuse of tselem Elokim that deprives people of their inherent self-respect and self-value—would not be considered a legitimate religion (idem, Personal communication to author, 19 Dec. 2019).

⁶⁹ Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1988) 332. In a 1913 letter, Rosenzweig reaffirms his view that the Jewish people “must deny itself active and full participation in the life of this world” (quoted in Gregory Kaplan, “In the End Christians Become Jews and Jews, Christians? On Franz Rosenzweig's Apocalyptic Eschatology,” CrossCurrents 53 [2004] 511-29, at 518). For Rosenzweig, the cyclical, transhistorical nature of Judaism most strongly manifests itself in the Jewish liturgical cycle; see Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (trans. William H. Hallo; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985) 298-335, and his letters to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. On the importance of the liturgical cycle and repetition in Rosenzweig's conception of Judaism, see Zachary Braiterman, “Cyclical Motions and the Force of Repetition in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig,” in Beginning/Again: Toward a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts (ed. Aryeh Cohen and Shaul Magid; New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002) 215-38; and Randi Rashkover, “Rosenzweig's Return to Biblical Theology: An Encounter between the Star of Redemption and Jon Levenson's Sinai and Zion,” in Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 11.1 (2002) 75-89.

⁷⁰ Emmanuel Levinas, “The Spinoza Case,” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism (trans. Sean Hand; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990) 109. On Levinas's discussion of Rosenzweig's views of Christianity, see also ibid., 187 and 194. On the various conceptual parallels between Rosenzweig and Levinas, and for a comparative reading of the two thinkers, see Richard. A. Cohen, Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Levinas (Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).

⁷¹ Poma, “Hermann Cohen: Judaism and Critical Idealism,” 87.

⁷² Ibid., 99 n. 27, citing Hermann Cohen, Manhung des Alters an die Jugend, in Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, 2:1758; reprinted in idem, Werke, vol. 17, cit., 5778.

⁷³ Levinas, “Judaism and the Present,” in Difficult Freedom, 212.

⁷⁴ On the complementarity of Judaism and Christianity, see Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 404, 420. See also Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (ed. Nahum M. Glatzer; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998) 341-48.

⁷⁵ Franz Rosenzweig, (ed. Glatzer) 341-46.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 342.

⁷⁷ Rosenzweig, “On the Significance of the Bible,” in ibid., 273.

⁷⁸ Franz Rosenzweig, Der Mensch und sein Werk: Gesammelte Schriften (vol. 3; Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984) 697. On Rosenzweig's views of the Jewish people as above the considerations of place and time, see Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, 304. Gershom Scholem, in his 1959 essay “Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism,” famously took Rosenzweig to task for what he perceived to be Rosenzweig's too quietistic, otherworldly, nonpolitical conception of Judaism (Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality [New York: Schocken Books, 1971] 33-35). On the dispute between these two contemporary thinkers concerning the historical or ahistorical nature of the Jewish people, see Rivka Horwitz, “Franz Rosenzweig and Gershom Scholem on Zionism and the Jewish People,” Jewish History 6.1/2 (1992) 99-111. Gregory Kaplan has recently argued that Scholem misunderstands Rosenzweig on this account, failing to appreciate the importance of the underlying apocalyptic sensibility in Rosenzweig's thought and its implications for Rosenzweig's view of Judaism (see Kaplan, “In the End,” 511-29).

⁷⁹ Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity, and Modernity after the Holocaust,” in Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? (ed. Eva Fleischner; New York: Ktav, 1977) 7-55, at 7.

⁸⁰ R. Greenberg, personal communication to author, 13 Dec. 2018.

⁸¹ Ibid. It is noteworthy for the purposes of this article that Greenberg's mentor Soloveitchik, by contrast, as Daniel Rynhold and Michael Harris have observed, does not refer to Rosenzweig in his writings even once (Rynhold and Harris, Nietzsche, Soloveitchik, and Contemporary Jewish Philosophy, 60).

⁸² Ibid., at 8. Rabbi Greenberg elaborated upon his divergence from Rosenzweig's metahistorical conception of Judaism in written correspondence: “Coming at [interfaith theology and Jewish-Christian relations] through Holocaust and history—and being afarbrente Zionist—made Rosenzweig's views (they pilgrims/we out-of-history) unattractive and mistaken in my eyes although I continued to respect and appreciate Rosenzweig. I agreed with his idea that both were communities in contact with God” (R. Greenberg, personal communication, 13 Dec. 2018).

⁸³ Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 39.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 177.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 169.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 176.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 211.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 211-12.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 140.

⁹⁰ Ibid

⁹¹ Ibid., 153. Cf. Rosenzweig's remarks on the utility of a “false Messiah”—found in his comments on Judah Ha-Levi's poem “Good Tidings,” trans. Barbara E. Galli, in Franz Rosenzweig and Jehuda Halevi: Translating, Translations, and Translators (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995) 259—which intriguingly resonate with Greenberg's appraisal of the value of a “failed” Messiah.

⁹² Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 201.

⁹³ Greenberg, unlike Soloveitchik, does not view halakhah (the primary area in which Soloveitchik's neo-Kantianism manifests itself) as an ideal a priori realm of mathematical-like abstract purity (the realization of which, in this tumultuous terrestrial world, is an end in its own right and the apotheosis of Judaism; see, e.g., Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, esp. 19-24, 79), but rather as a means toward an end: a way of life comprised of covenantal remembrances and ethical behaviors that are designed to help us maximize the quality and quantity of each individual life, to help us better appreciate the fundamental anthropo-theological truth-claim of Judaism that every human being is created in the image of God (viz., that every single individual is—like God—unique, equal [to all other images of God], and infinitely valuable), and to help us advance the covenantal mission of Judaism (perfecting the world a bit more with each passing generation). (Another important area in which Soloveitchik's neo-Kantianism manifests itself is in the emphasis that he places on creativity; see, e.g., Lawrence Kaplan, “The Religious Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik,” Tradition 14.2 [1973] 43-64, at 44.) R. Greenberg begins to outline his pragmatic conception of halakhah in The Jewish Way, 94-96; a more detailed statement on the subject may be found in his forthcoming The Triumph of Life.

⁹⁴ Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 174.

⁹⁵ On the letters exchanged between Rosenzweig and Rosenstock—which were “unparalleled in the long history of Jewish-Christian relations”—see Altmann, “Franz Rosenzweig and Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,” 258-70, at 258.

⁹⁶ Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 39. Though advocates of Jewish-Christian dialogue have appropriated Rosenzweig in attempts to propound a view that Christianity and Judaism are mutually affirming, a closer reading of Rosenzweig, as Leora Batnitzky has demonstrated, reveals that the Jewish-Christian relationship is, in fact—in Rosenzweig's view—one that is full of tension, conflict, and even potential danger (see Batnitzky, “Dialogue as Judgment,” and eadem, Idolatry and Representation: The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig Reconsidered [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009] esp. 223-24). Thus, if Greenberg does in fact read Rosenzweig in a manner that for Batnitzky would constitute a misreading of Rosenzweig, it is a misreading that has a long legacy in Rosenzweig appropriation (see Peter Eli Gordon, “Rosenzweig Redux: The Reception of German-Jewish Thought,” Jewish Social Studies 8.1 [2001] 1-57) and whose imprint can be felt in Paul Van Buren's theology of Jewish-Christian relations (see, e.g., James H. Walls, Post-Holocaust Christianity: Paul van Buren's Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997]).

⁹⁷ Jon D. Levenson, “Dual-Covenant Theology vs. Dual Truth Theory: An Exchange on Catholic-Jewish Dialogue,” Commonweal, 10 Feb. 2014, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ dual-covenant-theology-vs-dual-truth-theory. See also Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 201, 220. Cf. Emil Fackenheim's discussion of Rosenzweig's “double-covenant” theory, as he terms it, in Fackenheim, To Mend the World, 80; and for Fackenheim's discussion of Rosenzweig's conception of Jewish-Christian relations, see ibid., 79ff. See also Maurice G. Bowler, “Rosenzweig on Judaism and Christianity—The Two Covenant Theory,” Judaism 22 (1973) 475-81; Steven Schwarzschild, Franz Rosenzweig: Guide to Reversioners (London, 1960) 31-36; and Novak, Jewish-Christian Dialogue, 93-113.

⁹⁸ Franz Rosenzweig, Judaism Despite Christianity: The 1945 Wartime Correspondence between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig, as quoted by Edith Wyschogrod, “Judaism Despite Christianity,” CrossCurrents 20 (1970) 105-11, at 107.

⁹⁹ See Kaplan, “In the End,” 511-29, at 512-13, citing Judaism Despite Christianity: The “Letters on Christianity and Judaism” between Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and Franz Rosenzweig (ed. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy; Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1969) 112. Kaplan, accordingly, offers a reading of Rosenzweig's interfaith theology in which the view of Rosenzweig as offering a harmonious, conflict-free view of the Jewish-Christian partnership along the lines of Greenberg gives way to a view of Rosenzweig proffering a more agonistic, confrontational dual covenant theology grounded in Rosenzweig's latent “apocalyptic sensibility” (see Kaplan, “In the End,” 515ff.).

¹⁰⁰ Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth, 10.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 4.

¹⁰² Ibid., 185.

¹⁰³ Ibid., 10.

¹⁰⁴ Hilary Putnam, Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig, Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008) 35.

¹⁰⁵ Robert G. Goldy classifies American theologians precisely in this manner (Goldy, The Emergence of Jewish Theology in America [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990] 115 n. 17) and tells the story of Jewish theology in America predominantly through a denominational lens (see 5, 18, 22, 26-28, 30-32, and 48-50). Though Michael Morgan, in his Beyond Auschwitz: Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), classifies American theologians by denomination (46-47), he tells the story of Jewish theology in America primarily through a theodical lens—that is, grouping together theologians based on whether and how they addressed the Holocaust (4).

¹⁰⁶ Ze’ev Levy, “The Nature of Modern Jewish Philosophy,” in History of Jewish Philosophy (ed. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman; New York: Routledge, 1997) 516-24, at 517.

¹⁰⁷ See Brumlik, “1915: In Deutschtum und Judentum,” 336-42, esp. 338.

¹⁰⁸ Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, 1:88.

¹⁰⁹ David Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 77.

¹¹⁰ See, e.g., Mendes-Flohr, “Franz Rosenzweig Writes the Essay 'Atheistic Theology,'” 322-26.

¹¹¹ See, e.g., Ira Bedzow, “Rabbi Irving [Yitz] Greenberg and his Theology of Covenant,” in Symposium on Open Orthodoxy III, Aug. 2015; http://www.academia.edu/15032033/Rabbi_Irving_ Yitz_Greenberg_and_His_Theology_of_Covenant.

¹¹² After all, halakhah (Jewish law), as David Novak (in Jewish-Christian Dialogue) has noted correctly, does not determine whether or not Jewish-Christian dialogue is permitted. Furthermore, Soloveitchik, as aforementioned, conceded to Greenberg that his reasons for saying “no” to interfaith theological dialogue were non-halakhic; thus, other, non-halakhic—and, according to the argument of this article, philosophical—considerations were, and are, at play when it comes to Orthodox Jewish positions on interfaith dialogue.