Guest Post: Revisionism and the Rav Revisited

In 1999, Professor Lawrence Kaplan published an article entitled Revisionism and the Rav: The Struggle for the Soul of Modern Orthodoxy, in which he discussed the misrepresentation of Rav Soloveitchik's views by figures on both the right and left, but especially by Rabbi Moshe Meiselman. A few months ago, I wrote a post in which I pointed to a further instance in which Rabbi Meiselman distorted the Rav's views, this time with regard to the development of the universe.

Recently, Rabbi Meiselman claimed that all this is "absurd." While not offering any counterargument to my own demonstration of his distortion of the Rav's views, he claimed that Professor Kaplan's case has been refuted by the publication of Rabbi David Holzer's book The Rav: Thinking Aloud. I asked Professor Kaplan if he would write a formal response to be published on this website, and he kindly consented. It is a little too lengthy to put into a blog post, so it is available for download as a Word document at this link.