About Rabbi Soloveichik

Full Biography

Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik in one of America’s most influential religious leaders and one of the world’s leading voices on Jewish ideas, religious freedom, Jewish political thought, and faith in the modern age.

He is the son of Rabbi Eliyahu Soloveichik of Lander College’s Beis Medrash L’Talmud, the grandson of the renowned Jewish scholar Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik, and the great nephew of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik—the leading sage and philosopher of 20^th-century American Modern Orthodoxy. Rabbi Soloveichik studied at Brisk Yeshiva high school in Chicago and Yeshiva College, and he received his rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He also studied philosophy of religion at Yale Divinity School and received his doctorate from Princeton University.

Since 2013, Rabbi Soloveichik has led Congregation Shearith Israel—America’s oldest Jewish congregation—as its 10^th minister since the American Revolution. His sermons, public events, and classes regularly draw enthusiastic crowds, and the congregation has grown and flourished under his leadership. He is also the founder of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center at Yeshiva University, which trains students to be Modern Orthodox intellectual leaders well versed in both Jewish texts and the Western canon. Rabbi Soloveichik is a longtime friend of and teacher for the Tikvah Fund, where he has taught popular online courses like “Sacred Time: A Journey Through the Jewish Holidays” and “Jewish Ideas and the American Founders.”

In 2012, Rabbi Soloveichik testified before Congress regarding the impact of the Obama Administration’s birth control mandate on religious liberty. In 2019, he was appointed by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the Commission on Unalienable Rights, which advised Secretary Pompeo on matters of human rights and the nation’s founding principles. The rabbi continues to remain one of the Jewish world’s leading advocates of religious freedom for all Americans, and has held public discussion on issues of faith and freedom with the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Professor Wilfred McClay, and others.

He was the 2018 recipient of the Becket Fund’s Canterbury Medal, religious liberty’s highest honor, and delivered the First Things Erasmus Lecture in 2020.

Rabbi Soloveichik is a prolific writer and essayist. He writes a monthly Jewish commentary column for Commentary, where he covers everything from theology and Western thought to American history and the Zionist story. In 2019, he was co-editor of Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land, a sourcebook on the Hebrew Bible and America. His writing has also appeared in the New York Times—where he offered a Jewish reaction to the nomination of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Wall Street Journal, First Things, Mosaic, the Jewish Review of Books, Azure, Tradition, and the Torah u-Madda Journal. Among his pieces are:

• “What the Bible Taught Lincoln about America,” Wall Street Journal
• “God Delivered the Pilgrims—and My People,” Wall Street Journal
• “Irving Kristol, Edmund Burke, and the Rabbis,” Jewish Review of Books
• “Menachem Begins Covenantal Zionism,” Mosaic
• “Rembrandt’s Jewish Vision,” Mosaic
• “God’s First Love: The Theology of Michael Wyschogrod,” First Things
• “The Virtue of Hate,” First Things
• “God’s Beloved: A Defense of Chosenness,” Azure

In the summer of 2021, Rabbi Soloveichik launched the Bible 365 Podcast with the aim of helping Jews, Christians, and all Americans recover the enduring wisdom of the Hebrew Bible. He is currently working on a larger venture that will launch in the fall of 2021 to bring his work and teachings to the broader public.