“R. Soloveitchik and Interreligious Dialogue: New Insights into The Lonely Man of Faith (1965)”

This article aims to reconstruct Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik’s contribution to the issue of Jewish-Christian dialogue before and after the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions Nostra Aetate (1965). By aligning the Rav’s concept of interreli- gious dialogue in The Lonely Man of Faith with his unpublished discourse, לבן ותכלת, Lavan and Techlet, of the end of 1970, it provides the ground for an analysis of R. Soloveitchik’s passion for mathematics in terms of its connection to interreligious dialogue. This approach challenges the traditional interpretation that sees the Confrontation as R. Soloveitchik’s sole contribution to interreligious dialogue. Contrarily, it is apparent that the Rav began forming his thoughts on interreligious dialogue well before the Confrontation, and kept discussing the subject after its 1967 Addendum. Furthermore, it points out Rav’s decision to use the espousal metaphor – drawing on the biblical passages of Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:21–23 – to discuss the significance of Jewish-Christian dialogue. The article offers evidence for R. Soloveitchik’s mathematical explanation of the existential condition of loneliness that paradoxically illustrates the essence of the religious human’s openness toward other religious beings. To conclude, the power of interreligious dialogue in addressing the modern world’s complexities is demonstrated.