VIDEO: What Rabbi Soloveitchik said about Jewish concern for Israel
The renowned Talmudist and philosopher gave the sermon ten years after Israel’s founding
Jews praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, April 1936 Photo by Photo by -/INTRAN/AFP via Getty Images
By Rukhl Schaechter July 24, 2025
A video of the Talmudist and philosopher Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, speaking about the anxiety that Jews feel about the State of Israel, has recently been uploaded to YouTube.
The sermon, which he gives in Yiddish, is accompanied by English subtitles. Although Soloveitchik spoke English well, he preferred giving his sermons in Yiddish, as Eastern European rabbis had done for centuries.
The Rov, as he was lovingly called by his students and admirers, gave the sermon on Yom Haatzmaut in 1958, on the tenth anniversary of Israel’s founding.
Beginning with the question, “what makes something holy?” he replies that it’s “korbn, sacrifice.”
“Kedushe un korbn iz eyn bagrif…kedushe ken nor geshafn vern durkh yesurim (holiness and sacrifice are one concept…holiness can only be created through suffering),” he says.
Soloveitchik provides examples of this kind of suffering in the Torah, as experienced by Moses, King David and King Solomon, and then explores how this relates to the emotional state of the Jews during the first ten years of Israel’s existence.
As we see in the video, Soloveitchik is a compelling speaker, and for those people who understand the Yiddish, his litvish (Lithuanian) dialect is a pleasure to listen to.
Rabbi Soloveitchik is considered one of the most influential leaders of Modern Orthodoxy in 20th century America. Born into an illustrious rabbinical family in 1903 in Pruzhan, Poland, he immigrated to the United States in 1932, later to become Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox community of Boston, where he established the Maimonides School, the first Jewish day school in New England and one of the first institutions in which girls studied Talmud.
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