In a Lost Lecture, a Modern Sage Explains Why Halakhah Is the Redemptive Antithesis of Ritual

One of the major questions that Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik addressed in his philosophical works is that of the role of law and regulation in Jewish thought and practice. In 1946 and 1947, Soloveitchik explored this theme in a course titled “Concepts in Halakhah as Elaborated Upon by the Aggadah and Kabbalah,” which he taught at Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School. The notes of one of the students in that class, published for the first time by the journal Tradition, contain—as Shlomo Zuckier puts in in his foreword—a “sustained argument for the preeminence of halakhah [law] within Jewish tradition, over and above the realms of aggadah [narrative and exegetical teachings] and Kabbalah [mysticism].” Moreover, Soloveitchik contends, halakhah is at its heart an intellectual form of religiosity rather than an ethical or ritual one.