April 2, 2021
Podcast: Jacob J. Schacter on Joseph B. Soloveitchik and the State of Israel
By Tikvah Podcast at Mosaic, Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. SchacterThe noted scholar joins our podcast to analyze an important speech Soloveitchik gave on the eve of the Suez Crisis, deriving meaning for the circumstance from the Bible's Song of Songs.
This Week’s Guest: Jacob J. Schacter
This week marks the yahrzeit, the annual remembrance, of the passing of one of the outstanding sages of 20th-century Judaism, and perhaps the key intellectual figure of Modern Orthodoxy in America, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. This week’s podcast looks back on a speech he delivered before a rapt audience on Israel’s Independence Day in 1956, during the tense days leading up to the Suez Crisis. It was titled in Hebrew “Kol Dodi Dofek” or “Hark, My Beloved Knocks,” a line from the Song of Songs, which will be chanted in synagogues across the world this Shabbat.
A few years ago, the distinguished scholar and rabbi Jacob J. Schacter of Yeshiva University joined Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver for a discussion of Soloveitchik’s speech, which was later published as a short book entitled Fate and Destiny. In this discussion, Schacter describes the dramatic history behind Soloveitchik’s address and guides us through the “six knocks” that to him demonstrated God’s involvement in the creation of Israel. In the process, he also discusses Soloveitchik’s attitude toward suffering, messianism, and secular Zionism.