Meir Soloveichik on Rembrandt, Tolkien, and the Jews
The Tikvah Podcast
Tikvah
4.6 • 620 Ratings
🗓️ 29 September 2016
⏱️ 53 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In this podcast Eric Cohen and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik speak about two artistic geniuses whose works highlight Jews’ humanity, on the one hand, and other-worldliness, on the other. These two sides of the Jewish people—at once part of the human race and God’s chosen people—comprise Jews’ inherently dialectical nature, Soloveichik argues.
Framed by Soloveichik’s recent essay, “Rembrandt’s Great Jewish Painting” (Mosaic, June 2016), the discussion begins with an exploration of the great Dutch painter’s beautiful efforts to depict the humanity of Jews and the Jewishness of biblical scenes. Particular attention is given to Rembrandt’s great painting of Moses receiving the Luchot, which answers and corrects Michaelangelo’s Moses.
In contrast, it is the miraculous nature of the Jewish people, rather than their humanity, that J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings brings out, as Soloveichik argues in “The Secret Jews of the Hobbit” (Commentary, August 2016). Secular and American Jews are uncomfortable with this side of their identity and Soloveichik thinks they can learn something important from the Catholic author’s presentation of the Jewish people as a miraculous people—a trait that remains true today.
The discussion culminates in an exploration of the unique role art can play in understanding and presenting the divine.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tikva podcast on great Jewish essays and ideas. |
| 0:11.9 | I'm your host, Eric Cohen. |
| 0:13.5 | I'm very pleased to be joined today by my friend Rabbi Mayer Soloveitchik, |
| 0:17.4 | a senior rabbi of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in New York, |
| 0:21.8 | and the director of the Strauss Center on Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva. |
| 0:24.5 | Rabbi, thanks for being here. |
| 0:25.7 | Great to be here. |
| 0:26.9 | So our subjects today are two essays you've written recently on two very different works of art. |
| 0:32.6 | One is Rembrandt's famous painting of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. |
| 0:37.6 | The other is Tolkien's famous fantasy novel, The Hobbit. |
| 0:40.8 | These are both works of creative genius, both that tell remarkable stories, |
| 0:46.2 | and both that address in different ways profoundly Jewish themes that were brought to life by non-Jews. |
| 0:51.7 | So I thought it would be interesting to think about these two essays |
| 0:54.6 | in themselves and then think about them a little bit together. So why don't we start with Rembrandt? |
| 1:00.0 | Before we get to the painting and to the essay, can you tell us a little bit about the Dutch |
| 1:05.0 | society in which Rembrandt was painting and about the place of the Jews in Dutch society |
| 1:10.0 | at that time? What was the context for this art? |
| 1:12.5 | So both the place where Dutch society finds itself in the Age of Rembrandt and the Jewish community |
| 1:19.5 | in Amsterdam in the age of Rembrandt are both vital for understanding why a Jew might be |
| 1:25.8 | particularly interested in Rembrandt's place in the history of Western art. |
| 1:30.1 | Let's start with the Dutch. |
| 1:32.0 | The Dutch are now part of a Protestant country that has rebelled against the Catholic Empire |
... |
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