Community, Covenant and Commitment

Community, Covenant and Commitment includes more than seventy private and public letters written by the Rav, where he reveals his private opinions on contemporary issues such as religious Zionism, women studying Torah, interfaith issues, and topics close to his heart in areas of communal, theological, philosophical and personal concerns, as well as a number of detailed interviews conducted with him over the span of some forty years. These correspondences, epistles, and addresses, give us a glimpse into the Rav's thought. The topics addressed in this volume reflect the entire panoply of concerns that confronted the Orthodox and general Jewish community as its matured and grew in the hospitable setting of the American scene. Together with that, the rise of the modern State of Israel and the challenges that this posed became a focal point of the American Jewish community as well as of the thinking of the Rav. Topics include communal policy for Jewish adoption agencies, interfaith discussions with the Catholic Church, religious and theological attitudes to the State of Israel, interdenominational activities within the Jewish community, advanced Jewish education for young women, the training of learned and professional rabbis, as well as personal issues such as why Rabbi Soloveitchik never settled in Israel. Each letter or communication is prefaced by a short introduction giving its historical context. The entire volume is preceded by a lengthy introduction that discusses many of the background issues addressed in the letters.