And From There You Shall Seek is the tenth posthu­mous vol­ume in the MeOtzar HoRav series. It is a trans­la­tion of Rab­bi Soloveitchik’s Hebrew essay, U‑Vikkashtem mi-Sham. Draft­ed in the 1940’s, this pow­er­ful and wide-rang­ing work was pub­lished in Hebrew only in 1978. This is not at all unusu­al since the Rov was always review­ing and refin­ing every­thing he wrote and said. Draw­ing its title from Deuteron­o­my 4:29 — ​“And from there you shall seek the Lord your God, and you shall find Him if you search for Him with all of your heart and all of your soul”— and framed by the sug­ges­tive metaphors of the Song of Songs, the essay charts the individual’s search for God, a quest which cul­mi­nates in the stage of devekut, cleav­ing to Him. Like much of Rab­bi Soloveitchik’s writ­ing, this essay sheds light on the Rov’s per­son­al strug­gle for com­mu­nion with God. 

The Rov felt, ulti­mate­ly, like a stranger. His genius was such that the lone­li­ness atten­dant upon it could not be avoid­ed, a fact which caused him no end of emo­tion­al anguish, yet gave us the gift of his phe­nom­e­nal, cre­ative orig­i­nal­i­ty. He was both des­tined and con­demned to great­ness and its con­se­quences. This sense of lone­li­ness, iso­la­tion, and dif­fer­ent­ness had a num­ber of dif­fer­ent sources, all of which rein­forced each oth­er. One of them was emo­tion­al and began quite ear­ly in his life. The Rov poignant­ly describes his ear­ly expe­ri­ences of fear of the world, of social detach­ment, his feel­ings of being mocked and reject­ed and friend­less. The only friend he had was Mai­monides and, as he grew old­er, all the oth­er giants of the Tal­mu­dic tra­di­tion whom he encoun­tered in his learn­ing. The Rov iden­ti­fies this as more than imag­i­na­tion and fan­ta­sy but as a pro­found experience.