The Jewish theologian/philosopher Joseph Baer Soloveitchik (1903-1993) was able to use his extensive knowledge of rabbinical tradition and of secular and non-Jewish thought to illuminate both the contemporary Jewish situation and the circumstances of modern man in general. During his lifetime, he ordained over 2000 rabbis.

Joseph Baer Soloveitchik was born in 1903 in Pruzhan, Poland, into one of the most distinguished rabbinical families in Eastern Europe. His grandfather Rav Chaim Soloveitchik had pioneered a new method of talmudic study and had thereby created one of the main religious and intellectual streams within modern Orthodox Jewry. After receiving an excellent traditional Jewish education at home under the tutelage of his father, Rav Moses Soloveitchik, the young Soloveitchik at the age of 20 took the dramatic action, given his family background, of going to Germany to study at the University of Berlin. And it was here, after nearly a decade of...