Concepts of Scripture in Mordechai Breuer 271“intention” in most other contexts, such as prayer, or that what seems to be
one law, upon analysis, displays diff erent features that must be accurately
and sharply distinguished. Th e goal of this work is not primarily resolving
apparent contradictions between texts but rather uncovering the complex
conceptual structure underlying the legal system. Th is Talmudic meth-
odology predisposes its practitioner to fi nd conceptual multiplicity and
distinctiveness where the uninitiated would perceive a vague and uneasy
congeries of details beleaguered by problems and inconcinnities calling for
local patchwork resolution.
Th e premier exponent of the Brisker method of study (or “Brisker To-
rah”) in the United States was R. Hayyim’s grandson, R. Joseph Dov So-
loveitchik (1903 – 93). It may not be accidental that his philosophical and
theological work is characterized by the phenomenology of diff erent reli-
gious and cognitive types, usually juxtaposed rather than harmonized. In
eff ect, this imposed the Brisker “two dinim” on living human experience.
One of R. Soloveitchik’s most infl uential essays, Lonely Man of Faith,2 opens
with an analysis of Genesis 1 and 2, contrasting the images of humanity in
the two accounts of creation and using the biblical text as scaff olding for
a theological anthropology revolving around two diff erent aspects of hu-
man experience. R. Soloveitchik’s interest is primarily philosophical and
secondarily literary. R. Breuer, by contrast, is preoccupied with the literary
issues. Yet the points of overlap are unmistakable.
In 1971, R. Aharon Lichtenstein, R. Soloveitchik’s son-in-law and leading
disciple, joined R. Amital as head of one of Israel’s premier modern Ortho-
dox institutions, Yeshivat Har-Etzion, thus transforming it into the major
home of Brisker learning in the Religious Zionist community. For the next
three decades, the Herzog Institute affi liated with this yeshivah was the
most important arena of Breuer’s teaching and infl uence. It is possible that
students who found his early references to mystical doctrine obscure and
confusing were better able to appropriate Breuer’s ideas when grasped as a
parallel to the powerful approach to Talmud that had conquered the classic
world of Lithuanian-style yeshivot.
Last but not least, there is the long history of the peshat/derash distinc-
tion in Jewish biblical exegesis. From Rashi, Rashbam, and Ibn Ezra3 down
to the great eastern European traditional commentators of the 18th, 19th,
and 20th centuries, such as the Gaon of Vilna, R. Naft ali Zvi Berlin of
Volozhin, R. Meir Simha of Dvinsk, it is affi rmed that rabbinic legal exege-
sis (derash) is normative and, at the same time, that determining the “plain
meaning” ( peshat) is a legitimate pursuit, even when the two diverge.