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The essay originated in 1956 as an address in Yiddish by Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik to the Religious Zionists of America to mark the eighth anniversary of Israel’s independence; after re-writing it in Hebrew, he published it in 1961. David Z. Gordon translated it into English and annotated it, Professor Jeffrey R. Woolf of Bar Ilan edited the translation. Their new version conveys the complexity, depth and poetry of Rav Soloveitchik’s expression in clear, readable prose.

Rav Soloveitchik grapples with the enormity of the Shoah and the miracle of the founding of the State of Israel and what our responses should be to both. He contrasts a life of fate, where one is an object, with the life of destiny, where one is the subject and acts. “We ask not about the reason for evil and its purpose, but rather about its rectification and uplifting. How should a person react in a time of distress? What should a person do so as not to rot in his affliction?” We can not try to explain the irrational hatred that prevailed in the world between 1935 and 1945, nor should we assign blame within. We must focus instead on what we can learn from that fearsome time. Rav Soloveitchik does not concentrate on theodicy but rather on going forward. He shows that the Covenant of Fate during our suffering in Egypt is completed in the Covenant of Destiny at Sinai. “Destiny joined fate” to form a unit. “A Jew who participates in the suffering of his nation and its fate, but does not join in its destiny, which is expressed in a life of Torah and mitzvot, destroys the essence of Judaism and injures his own uniqueness. By the same token, a Jew who is observant but does not feel the hurt of the nation, and who attempts to distance himself from Jewish fate, desecrates his Jewishness” (p.73).

He uses the language of the Song of Songs, Shir HaShirim, to describe the relationship between the Jewish people and our “Beloved,” Hashem.