ha-Levi) became a famous rabbinic scholar.
25 This is somewhat ironic, as the Soloveitchik dynasty was known for not publishing much of their work in their lifetimes—in most cases, one book of teachings, usually after the death of the author.
26 Two examples among many from Soloveitchik’s generation who converted and published on Christianity were Alfred Edersheim (1825–1889), who converted to Christianity and wrote The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1988); and Moshe Margoliouth (d. 1881), who wrote numerous anti-Talmud missionary tracts. There is also Nehemiah Solomon, who likely produced the first Yiddish translation of the New Testament; and Stanislaus Hoga, the convert who translated Alexander McCaul’s missionary tract The Old Paths. Below, I will discuss Solomon and, more extensively, Hoga. Another example would be Augustus Neander (1798–1850), born David Mendel, a German Jewish convert who became perhaps the most prominent Church historian of his generation. Soloveitchik may have also been aware of Luigi Chiarini, who published a scathing attack against the Talmud, Theorie du Judaïsme, in 1830. Chiarini was part of a Christian committee established in Warsaw in 1825 to encourage Polish Jews to assimilate. Leopold Zunz knew of his work. See Ismar Schorsch, Leopold Zunz: Creativity Is Adversity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 66. There were, of course, many Jewish converts to Christianity who wrote works on the New Testament, some in Hebrew. One striking example is Immanuel Frommann, who converted to Christianity and wrote a Hebrew kabbalistic commentary to Luke. See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Immanuel Frommann’s Commentary on Luke and the Christianizing of Kabbalah,” in Holy Dissent: Jewish and Christian Mystics in Eastern Europe, ed. G. Dynner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011), 171–222.
27 See, e.g., in Matthew Hoffman, From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); and George Berlin, Defending the Faith: Nineteenth-Century American Jewish Writings on Christianity and Jesus (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989). Cf. Eliyahu Stern, “Catholic Judaism: The Political Theology of the Nineteenth-Century Russian Jewish Enlightenment,” Harvard Theological Review 109, no. 4 (2016): 483–511. An exception to this rule might be Moses Mendelssohn, who lived in an earlier generation but exhibited a sympathy toward Jesus, at any rate, that coheres with Soloveitchik. See, e.g., the lengthy discussion in Jonathan M. Hess, “Mendelssohn’s Jesus: The Frustrations of Jewish Resistance,” in idem, Germans, Jews, and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 92–135. Hess argues that Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, more than a defense of Judaism, is a critique of Christianity—in particular, a critique of Christianity’s distortion of Jesus, who Mendelssohn held was a gentle Jewish reformer and one who argued in favor of the law. Hess argues that Jesus was, for Mendelssohn, “as both a critic of Christian imperialism and a polemicist for Jewish emancipation” (96).
28 See Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Graetz was especially critical of the “Jewish-Christianity” of works like Pseudo-Clementine’s Homilies, which, quite similar to Soloveitchik (who likely did not know this text), argued for the symmetry between Judaism and Christianity. On this, see Annette Yoshiko Reed, “The Modern Jewish Rediscovery of ‘Jewish Christianity,’” in idem, Jewish Christianity and the History of Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 320–324.
29 See, e.g., Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich 1870–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 160–222.
30 Soloveitchik, Qol Qore (Hebrew ed., 1879), 15; and Hyman, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, 132.
31 See Hyman, Eliah Zvi Soloveitchik, 11.
32 Another interesting figure of that time who may have known Soloveitchik was Michael Levi Rodkinson. Rodkinson (also known as Frumkin) is a fascinating character, publisher of Hasidic hagiography, editor of numerous journals, translator of the Talmud into English, ex-Hasid and moderate reformer. Rodkinson lived in London at the same time as Soloveitchik and may have traveled in the same circles, although I have not found any evidence of their acquaintance. They shared an aristocratic pedigree: Soloveitchik was the grandson of R. Hayyim of Volozhin; and Rodkinson was the grandson of R. Aaron of Starosselje, the celebrated disciple for R. Shneur Zalman of Liady, who ended up rejecting the dynastic succession of Chabad and began a small branch of Chabad after R. Shneur Zalman’s death. R. Aaron’s Sha’ar ha-Yihud ve-Emunah is considered one of the great Hasidic texts in the Chabad tradition. While as far as we know, Soloveitchik remained an ultra-Orthodox Jew, Rodkinson eventually moved toward the Haskalah. Yet he remained a defender of tradition and produced a “new” Talmud in English translation that removed all the superstitious elements. Rodkinson also worked against anti-Semitism, believing that if Christians knew the Talmud without its irrational components, they would not be against it. Rodkinson was much more in the thick of the Jewish world of his time than Soloveitchik and suffered immense resistance for his work and his personal life. And Rodkinson didn’t seem to have an interest in Christianity, even as he was often accused of collaborating with missionaries. On Rodkinson, see Jonathan Meir, Literary Hasidism: The Life and Work of Michael Levi Rodkinson (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2016).
33 Hyman, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, 40.
34 See Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas, 63, 64.
35 Ibid., 43.
36 Yad Hazakah, or “strong hand,” is the traditional euphemism to describe Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Code of Law).
37 Hyman, Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik, 134.
38 Qol Qore: A Voice Crying (London: Elliot Stock, 1868), 3.
39 Qol Qore: The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament (London: Rabbi Elias Soloweyczyk, 1868).
40 See Alexander McCaul, The Old Paths, or the Talmud Tested by Scripture, Being a Comparison of the Principle and Doctrines of Modern Judaism with the Religion of Moses and the Prophets (London: London Society’s House, 1880). Even if Soloveitchik never read The Old Paths, McCaul was part of a much wider circle of missionaries who were attempting to convert Jews at that time. Soloveitchik surely was aware of the larger phenomenon even if he may not have been aware of McCaul.
41 See Qol Qore or The Talmud and the New Testament (Paris: Polyglotte de Charles Blot, 1870), 50–56.
42 Branicki was a wealthy Polish nobleman who accompanied Napoleon during the Crimean War. He was known for becoming owner of the Montrésor Château in 1849 and was a politician and a financier, involved in the creation of the Banc Crédit Commercial de France in 1858. See the blog “Social History in the Touraine: Central France,” https://jimmcneill.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/montresor-sure-%e2%80%98tis-a-little-bit-of-poland-in-the-touraine.
43 Wogue was a respected rabbi who was educated in France. In 1851, Salomon Munk and Adolph Franck established a chair of Jewish history at the Ecole Centrale Rabbinique at Metz; Wogue held that chair until his retirement in 1894. He was prolific and known for his French commentary to the Pentateuch with annotations from rabbinic sources (1860–1869). We do not know anything about his relationship to Soloveitchik but can assume that if he did the translation, he had some regard for the author and his work. His edition of Qol Qore is listed in the bibliography of the entry on him in The Jewish Encyclopedia. For a short, largely positive, review of Wogue’s 1870 translation, see “Bulletin Bibliographique,” in Archives Israélites: Revue Politique, Religieuse et Litteraire (April 15, 1870). I want to thank Eliyahu Stern for this reference.
44 A second
