Context of the Rav Soloveitchik Transcription

https://www.jewishlinknj.com/letters/30336-context-of-the-rav-soloveitchik-transcription

This article is a powerful essay based on a speech delivered to the rabbinic alumni of Yeshiva University in 1975. But because you did not provide the context and purpose of that speech, the general reader may have been confused by the impassioned uncompromising tone of the piece.

This talk was delivered by the Rav as a response to proposals by Rabbi Emanuel Rackman to resolve the problems faced by women whose husbands refused to grant them a Jewish divorce. Rabbi Rackman was also in line at that time as a top candidate to become president of Yeshiva University.

Rav Soloveitchik’s strident remarks in the piece that you published characterized (without spelling this out) that the innovations that Rabbi Rackman wanted to make in divorce law were (1) heretical and (2) liable to “destroy yahadus (Judaism)” and (3) “methods of self-destruction and suicide.” Harsh words indeed.