Leaves of Faith

This volume deals, primarily, with various aspects of traditional Torah learning. The opening chapter focuses upon the rationale and religious significance of the study of gemara in particular, with an eye to the place which presumably obtuse texts have remarkably held in many strata of the traditional Jewish community. This is followed by two essays which analyze the character and methodology of serious talmud Torah. Subsequently, the focus shifts to the interaction between Torah study, narrowly defined, and related areas--whether general culture or national service--which impinge upon the personal and institutional context of Torah study. In a similar vein, two chapters then treat the world of halakhic decision, with reference to both the qualities requisite for the decisor--posek--and the factors which legitimately affect the process. The volume concludes with appreciative portraits of two masters greatly admired by the author, each of whom, in very different ways, exerted a major impact upon him: Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach.