Quotes from Rabbi Soloveitchik's HALAKHIC MAN

The most important book in my spiritual journey at this time is Halakhic Man by Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. Today, I will begin to share a series of quotes from this master work of religious Orthodoxy. I hope these quotes will encourage you to buy this powerful book.

Halakhic man reflects two opposing selves; two disparate images are embodied within his soul and spirit. On the one hand he is as far removed from homo religiosus as east is from west and is identical, in many respects, to prosaic, cognitive man; on the other hand is a man of God, possessor of an ontological approach that is devoted to God and of a world view saturated with the radiance of the Divine Presence. p3

Halakhic man is not some illegitimate, unstable hybrid. On the contrary, out of the contradictions and antinomies there emerges a radiant, holy personality whose soul has been purified in the furnace of struggle and opposition and redeemed in the fires of the torments of spiritual disharmony to a degree unmatched by the universal homo religiosus. p4