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VIDEO: Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik speaks about Passover

Soloveitchik, called The Rav by his students, is considered one of the most influential leaders of Modern Orthodoxy in 20th century America.

Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (center) with two other renowned rabbis, R. Moshe Feinstein and R. Aharon Kotler Photo by Wikimedia Commons

By Forverts Staff March 31, 2023

A new video recording of the late renowned figure Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik speaking about Passover has been uploaded onto YouTube. He gave the sermon some time in the 1950s.

The video, “Writing a Story Upon a People”, is in Yiddish with English subtitles and was posted by Ohr Publishing.

Rabbi Soloveitchik, called “The Rav” by his students, is considered one of the most influential leaders of Modern Orthodoxy in 20th century America. Born into an illustrious rabbinical family in 1903 in Pruzhan, Poland, he immigrated to the United States in 1932, later to become Chief Rabbi of the Orthodox community of Boston, where he established the Maimonides School, the first Jewish day school in New England and one of the first institutions in which girls studied Talmud.

Although Soloveitchik spoke English, he preferred giving his sermons in Yiddish.

Among the points that the Rabbi makes are the following:

0:00– 6:32: The etymology of the word sipur

6:33 – 9:55: The Sefer Yetzirah and the creation of writing

9:56 – 21:15: Closing the generation gap

21:15 – 26:29: The burden of the prophet

26:30 – 28:34: The burden of the parent

28:35 – 33:47: The theme of the seder in B’nei Brak

Rukhl Schaechter and Zach Golden are the staff of the Forverts, the Yiddish Forward.

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