Halakhic Man

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: This awesome collection of short essays was first published in Hebrew in 1944, and was finally made available to the English public in 1983. It is divided into two main sections. "Halakhic Man: His World View and His Life" makes up 15 paragraphs, and "Halakhic Man: His Creative Capacity" makes up the last 6 of them. The reading can be both soul-sparing and awe-inspiring: it cuts like a knife in expurging the orlah of mysticism, is strong as flint in breaking the slumber of irrational and out-worldly superstitions. A vibrant pamphlet against religious ignorance, a mitnagedic manifesto against spiritual forgeries, a sophisticated denunciation of the confused aberrations of "homo religiosus," a rational stand for an objective view of Halakha, with both feet solidly planted in the ground.

Rav Joseph Soloveitchik, "The Rav" as he is commonly known, did only commit a few books to writing, among which the one above and an another collection of essays entitled "The Lonely Man of Faith." Both works can shine like beacons of faith for the perplexed, the puzzled, and the stumbled.

Rating:
Summary: a warning
Review: This book (basically a comparison of mainstream Talmudic scholarship and mysticism, and an endorsement of the former) struck me as the kind of book I might get more out of in a few years, when I know a lot more and have read a lot more -- and maybe when I am a grownup I will reread it. But it is not a book for people just beginning to learn about Judaism (unless they happen to have a Ph.D in philosophy). The allusions (to other thinkers), the concepts, and even the vocabulary were often over my head and are probably over the head of most people who do not have an enormous background in philosophical matters. I learned something from it, but not as much as a more learned person would.

Rating:
Summary: An awesome work.
Review: This book is one of the most ambitious works of Jewish theology written in the past few hundred years. It is in many ways a rewrite of "Nefesh HaChayim" which has never been translated into English. The Halakhic Man is a complete coherent vision of Judaism and the world.

Rating:
Summary: The central statement of a giant of Jewish thought
Review: This is from the book- jacket."A profound excursion into religious psychology and phenomenology; a pioneering attempt at a philosophy of Halkhah ; a stringent critique of mysticism and romantic religion-allheld together by the force of the author's highly personal vision. Exuding intellectual sophistication and touching upon issues fundamental to religious life, Rabbi Soloveitchik's exploration, in sum, seeks to explain the inner world of the Talmudist-or as he is referred to typologically,halakhic man in terms drawn from Western culture"
This is as I understand it Rabbi Soloveitchik's defense of the ideal Jew, the Jewish way of life, the kind of Jewish life his family and he himself stood for for generations. I myself reading the work found it quite difficult to understand and its philosophical complexity often beyond me.
But it is the central statement of one of the greatest of all modern Jewish thinkers. And I believe all those interested in the deepest Jewish thought should know this work.