Israel Matzav

The Republican National Convention's Rabbi

I apologize once again for a much longer than anticipated break. I had trouble getting online in Boston, could not get online at all in London (where I planned to do several posts) and got online for only a few minutes at the next stop. I came home exhausted and went to sleep, and I have a couple of meetings today but will try to post a few things now and more later.

And now the 'compose' mode on Blogger isn't working....

Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik was invited to deliver the invocation at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday. Anyone who has read his writings cannot be too surprised (Hat Tip: Debbie R).

If the name Soloveichik sounds familiar, that’s no surprise: The 35-year-old rabbi—who graduated summa cum laude from Yeshiva University, then went on to Yale Divinity School, and received his PhD in religion from Princeton in 2010—is a scion of one of Orthodoxy’s most celebrated rabbinic dynasties. And like many of his family members who manage to keep one foot firmly in the Beit Midrash and the other in the public square, Meir Soloveichik certainly gets around.

In June, he engaged in public dialogue about religion and politics at Yeshiva University with Newark’s Democratic Mayor Cory Booker, whom he called a “national hero.” In July, he interviewed for the position of Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and has since emerged as a frontrunner to replace retiring Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, despite his youth. Now, to cap this already remarkable summer, Soloveichik—whose day jobs include serving as associate rabbi at the prominent Modern Orthodox Manhattan synagogue Congregation Kehillath Jeshurun, teaching at the Ramaz School, and running the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University—will open the GOP’s most important event of the year.

While Soloveichik’s advent upon one of politics’ most prestigious stages may seem sudden from afar, the rabbi’s appearance at the RNC is actually a culmination of many years of conservative advocacy—and no small amount of controversy. Though his last name evokes a rabbinic pedigree, it also denotes a tradition of political engagement. Soloveichik’s great-uncle and the father of Modern Orthodoxy in America, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik—the surname is spelled differently by different branches of the family—was a strident critic of communism, having experienced its oppression firsthand before immigrating to the United States. Soloveichik’s grandfather, Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik, was a formidable civil-rights advocate and a vehement opponent of the death penalty and the Vietnam war.

Their descendants have followed in their footsteps, if not always their personal politics. Meir’s younger sister, Nachama, serves as the press secretary for Republican Sen. Pat Toomey and co-authors his policy books.

Read it all.

Labels: Campaign 2012, Mitt Romney, Republican party

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:23 AM