הרב סולובייצ'יק ופרופ'ליבוביץ כתיאורטיקנים של ההלכה

Both Soloveitchik and Leibovitch see the halakha as a medium that expresses the full range of Jewish religious existence. This is a revolutionary move in the tradition of Jewish thought, which had previously considered theology and metaphysics to be its central concerns. This joint point of departure lends itself to an interesting comparison between these two modern thinkers. Such a comparison reveals three commonly shared components in both philosophers' perception of the halakhah: they see it as a human endeavor; as a closed, a-historical system; and as an ideal system. In this article, I analyze in detail how each thinker understands each of these three components. On the basis of this analysis, I compare their positions and, showing that neither of them offers an adequate theory of the halakhah, I attempt to account for this failure.