The Soloveitchik Who Loved Jesus: A Yale president’s forebear was an enigmatic and pro-Christian member of the famed rabbinic dynasty.
Peter Salovey’s recent appointment to the presidency of Yale University, founded by Congregationalist ministers, was cause for celebration for those who admire the Soloveitchik dynasty, an illustrious family of rabbis from Lithuania that includes Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik of Brisk (1853-1918), one of the most creative and important Jewish sages of modern times, and Rabbi Joseph Dov Ber Soloveitchik (1903-1993), known simply as “the Rav,” the leader of Modern Orthodoxy in America. In a breathless column, a writer for the Yale Daily News reported on the new president’s rabbinic lineage—under which Salovey himself commented, proudly affirming his place in the family tree as he had come to understand it.
But what went unmentioned in the celebratory genealogy is that Salovey’s forgotten forebear, R. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, was forgotten for a reason: his love of Jesus Christ. Indeed, Rabbi Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik (aka Elias Soloweyczyk, 1805-1881), the grandson of R. Hayyim of Volozhin, was an enigmatic traditional rabbi who in the middle decades of the 19th century wrote a commentary to parts of the New Testament (Mark and Matthew) and a book, Kol Kore, which argues for the symmetry between Judaism and Christianity and claims that there is nothing in Christianity that is alien to Judaism. To read the entire article go to Table Magazine: A New Read on Jewish Life. To do so, click HERE.
About the author: Shaul Magid is the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Professor of Modern Judaism at Indiana University in Bloomington. His new book American Post-Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society is due out in March from Indiana University Press.
The Seforim Blog has an interesting article interacting with the above. Click HERE.
A man before his time. It’s amazing to me that 130 years later, people like myself, are searching for the original truth as taught by the 1st century apostles and followers of Yeshua the Messiah. Although the idea of being able to understand Jewish text from Jewish teachers has been around for thousands of years; I.E. Phillip teaching the Ethiopian