In the following pages, I will address the relationship between Jewish thought and aesthetics by bringing Joseph Soloveitchik into conversation with Immanuel Kant, whose Critique of Judgment remains an imposing monument in the history of philosophical aesthetics. While Buber and Rosenzweig may have been more accomplished aesthetes, Soloveitchik's aesthetic proves closer to Kant's own. In particular, I draw upon the latter's distinction between the beautiful and the sublime and the notion of a form of indeterminate purposiveness without determinate purpose. I will relate these three figures to Soloveitcchik's understanding of halakhah and to the ideal of performing commandments for their own sake (li-shemah). The model of mitzvah advanced by this comparison is quintessentially modern: an autonomous, self-contained, formal system that does not (immediately) point to extraneous goods, such as spiritual enlightenment, personal morality, or social ethics. The good presupposed by this system proves first and foremost “aesthetic.” That is, immanent to the system. Supererogatory goods enter into the picture only afterward as second-order effects.

Not least among the bittersweet gifts of modernity to the Jews is the complication of dealing with the Bible both as sacred scripture and as a document subject to the same canons of inquiry as any other historical, or putatively historical, record. The problem goes far beyond the familiar one posed by narratives that ancient historians find doubtful or quite impossible. For historical critical research into the Tanakh (as into all other scriptures) also uncovers the processes of development of the worldviews within the literature and thus puts a painful question to those who wish to affirm Judaism as a contemporary reality. How can a literature so variegated and contradictory speak with a normative voice today? It is no wonder that so many biblical scholars avoid the normative theological questions altogether and content themselves with historical and philological description (which, of course, presupposes norms of its own). It is also no wonder that so many religious practitioners neglect the historical issues and treat their scriptures as representing a static, uniform, and unvarying worldview—not surprisingly, the worldview of their own, postbiblical affirmation.

The late Professor Jacob Katz was wont to observe that the student seeking to properly study and evaluate rabbinic responsa must read his sources twice. First, he must examine the text from the point of view of the halakhist, and evaluate it as an integral part of halakhic literature and tradition, respecting the general assumption of the halakhist that Jewish law is a closed system, which operates according to its own rules. After this, he must don the spectacles of the historian and evaluate, as best he can, the degree to which contemporary circumstances had an impact (if any) upon or are reflected in the decisor's ruling. This dual challenge is quite daunting in so highly nuanced and idiomatically opaque a literature as the halakhah. Caution and sensitivity must be the hallmark of all efforts to achieve both of the aims posited by Katz, especially the latter. As a result of the sagacity of Katz's admonition, halakhic historiography in recent years has made heavy use of the medium of case studies (carried out within specific periods and geographical areas). Recourse to these has proven fruitful in advancing the historian's goal of carefully and responsibly reconstructing the history of halakhah per se and the annals of the societies and cultures within which halakhic traditions were developed and which, in turn, left their impact thereupon.