Moshe Meiselman

Moshe Meiselman is a hareidi rabbi and the rosh yeshiva of the Yeshivas Toras Moshe, a small American yeshiva in Jerusalem, a former principal of Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles,^[1] and the author of Jewish Women in Jewish Law. A student of Dr. Donald Anderson, he received a doctorate in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967 for his thesis The Operation Ring for Connective K-Theory.^[2] He is a son-in-law of the previous Ziditshoiver Rebbe of Chicago (Rabbi Avrohom Eichenstein). His mother, Shulamit Soloveitchik Meiselman, was the author of "The Soloveitchik Heritage: A Daughter's Memoir".

Rabbi Meiselman and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

Rabbi Meiselman is a nephew of the Rav. According to Rabbi Meiselman, they formed a particularly close relationship during their daily studying sessions from the time he was 18 until he was 29 years old.^[3][4] Meiselman never attended Yeshiva University in New York, to which Rabbi Soleveitchik commuted from Boston and gave his lectures. Instead, Meiselman spent long hours of intensive private study with Rabbi Soloveitchik at Rabbi Soloveitchik's home while he attended Harvard University^[5] and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, until the completion of his Ph.D.

Following his career in Orthodox Jewish institutions in the United States, Rabbi Meiselman emigrated to Jerusalem, where he opened Yeshivas Toras Moshe ^[6] Rabbi Meiselman, along with other close students of Rabbi Soloveitchik, subsequently cast Rabbi Soloveitchik in the role of a traditional haredi rosh yeshiva.^[7] Meiselman professes that Rabbi Soloveitchik's Zionism and secular studies were solely for the purpose of outreach and as a response to the assimilation of American Jews.^[8] This professed belief has attracted him the ire of many Modern Orthodox and Mizrachi thinkers.^[9]

Rabbi Meiselman and Rabbi Slifkin

After a disagreement about being mentioned in the acknowledgments in Rabbi Natan Slifkin's book, The Camel, The Hare, and The Hyrax, Meiselman made comments in a private conversation with several students at Yeshivas Toras Moshe criticizing both Rabbi Slifkin and his work, specifically his suggestion that the Sages of the Talmud were mistaken in certain scientific matters. Rabbi Slifkin sent a letter to Rabbi Meiselman rebutting the critiques of his work, calling the lectures "factually incorrect and extremely defamatory." Rabbi Slifkin subsequently posted audio of the conversation, that someone had recorded, on his website, with a note that he did receive a request to remove it from his website on the grounds that 'they were only intended for his yeshivah.'"^[10] Rabbi Meiselman subsequently wrote^[11] that those were private "off-the-cuff" conversations, and that they do not accurately represent his complete opinions, although Meiselman's recorded conversation begins with an explanation of why he "decided to discuss this with the entire student body."

Rabbi Meiselman on the Holocaust

Following the opinion of some haredi thinkers, Rabbi Meiselman has argued that the Holocaust was the result of Jewish cultural assimilation in Western Europe in the early twentieth century. He writes, "the turning away from the status of an 'am ha-nivhar, a chosen people, and the frightening rush toward assimilation were, according to the rules that govern Jewish destiny, the real causes for the Holocaust."^[12]

Published work

Meiselman, Moshe (1978). Jewish Women in Jewish Law. Ktav Publishing House. ISBN 0-87068-329-2. 

Meiselman, Moshe (2013). Torah, Chazal and Science. Israel Bookshop Publications. ISBN 978-1-60091-243-6. 

External links

Moshe Meiselman at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Review and Synopsis of Torah, Chazal, Science by Rabbi Moshe Meiselman

References