ABSTRACT
Contemporary culture is witnessing a remarkable juncture between certain elements of Judaic tradition and some of the most pressing and promising concerns of modern thought. David Hartman's writing can be placed within this remarkable conjunction. This chapter argues that this is especially striking in the case of two central contemporary commitments and their relationship to each other. The first involves interpretation not only in, but as a model of, Jewish life—"Judaism as an Interpretive Tradition". The second involves the locus of Jewish life in the ordinary: that is, in the immediate world, conditioned by time, space, history, and finitude, rather than in metaphysical worlds conceived as absolute, timeless, and beyond all conditions. The chapter then focuses Hartman's comments on Rabbi Dov Baer Soloveitchik's concept of Halakhic Man. Hartman closely identifies with the Soloveitchik vision of the halakhah as imminent praxis within the ordinary world, towards its sacralization.
