“Providence and Power”: Rabbi Soloveichik’s Insightful History of Jewish Leadership

Near the Old City of Jerusalem there is a street named Rehov Shlomtsion Hamalkah, honoring Queen Shlomtsion, who ruled in the Second Temple era. It’s unlikely that the patrons who frequent the street’s trendy restaurants and bars know anything about this remarkable woman for whom the street is named. Who was she, and why did she rate to be included in Meir Y. Soloveichik’s new book, “Providence and Power: Ten Portraits in Jewish Statesmanship”? 

Rabbi Soloveichik is one of the Jewish world’s leading lights, a prolific and engaging writer, speaker, and theologian. He is Director of Yeshiva University’s Strauss Center for Torah and Western Thought and Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York — the oldest synagogue in the United States. His dizzying intellectual output also includes the podcasts “Bible 365” and “Jerusalem 365.” 

“Providence and Power,” just published by Encounter Books, presents insightful profiles of the most colorful and consequential Jewish political leaders over the past 3,000 years, from King David and Queen Esther through the 20th century’s Benjamin Disraeli, Louis B. Brandeis, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Books about political statecraft in general and biographies of individual political leaders are legion. Few focus on Jewish political leaders per se, and how their understanding of statecraft served — and often saved — the Jewish people. 

Soloveichik writes that without national independence or national power for close to 2,000 years, “it was often precisely the challenges of life in dispersion and subjugation that gave rise to some of the most compelling embodiments of Jewish statesmanship on the part of figures who refused to give up on the Jews as a people and who acted in the political realm to safeguard their posterity.”   

Queen Esther, Judaism’s most famous and beloved Jewish queen, is revealed here beyond her renown as a woman of piety, courage, and bravery to one who understood the political moment of her time. She did not follow Mordechai’s advice on how to approach King Achashverosh to save the Jews from a decree of annihilation but seized on a cunning strategy of her own. Playing to the king’s deep insecurities, Esther’s inclusion of Haman at two otherwise intimate parties with the king plants the idea that Haman isn’t only after the crown, but after Esther herself. 

The only other female Jewish leader discussed is Shlomtzion, who ascended the throne in Judea in 76 B.C.E., during the Second Temple period. She was twice widowed from two Hasmonean brothers, each a cruel and murderous tyrant. Judea was under Jewish control at the time but was “a religious tinderbox on the brink of explosion,” with violent conflicts raging over religious and political leadership.    

What little is known about Shlomtzion attests to her greatness. She opposed her husbands’ brutality not only privately but publicly, earning the love and support of an oppressed citizenry. As queen, she fired everyone in government whose actions were contrary to Jewish law. “In an age ruled by brutal men, she alone was truly royal,” Soloveichik writes. She ruled during the last nine years of Jewish independence before the Romans seized power, eventually destroying Jerusalem all over again. 

She also seemingly worked with the leader of the religious court (Sanhedrin), which introduced two revolutionary advancements. One was the ketubah, civilization’s first prenuptial agreement. The second was the establishment of a network of schools for children. Anticipating ongoing wars, she bulked up the armed forces by nearly 50%. While she could not prevent looming disaster, the Roman empire is long gone but Shlomtzion’s most significant achievements remain.  

In the 15th century, Don Isaac Abravanel became an extraordinary Torah scholar as well as “a leader of his people, one who would be tasked, at a terror-ridden juncture in Jewish history, with sustaining his people’s faith.” Abravanel’s grandfather had converted to Christianity in Spain, amassing a great fortune and forging close connections in the king’s financial service. Much of the family assimilated into Christian Spain, but Don Isaac’s father, Judah, moved to Portugal and served the monarchy there. 

Don Isaac was an influential and wealthy man who not only advised kings and dukes but could liaise between the court and the Jewish community. Yet Abravanel’s closeness with Portugal’s royals actually intensified his danger when a new king, John II, took the throne in 1483, ushering in new cruelties against the Jews. Abravanel fled to Spain, leaving everything behind. “I had not a speck remaining,” he wrote.    

He considered his fall a punishment from God for having failed to teach the Torah he knew so well, and began writing brilliant commentaries from a political perspective. He rebuilt his wealth and status, serving Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, seemingly ignoring the gathering political storm. The royal edict expelling the Jews from Spain, announced in March 1492, caught him unawares. The king and queen offered Abravanel continued protection and riches if he stayed and converted. He adamantly refused, referencing the Book of Esther. The Jews were an eternal people, he chastised them, and anyone who tried to destroy them would “invite upon themselves divine punishment and disaster.”   

Other significant leaders, including Benjamin Disraeli (a baptized Christian), Theodor Herzl, and Louis D. Brandeis (both completely secular) each became motivated to publicly defend the rights of Jews to practice openly in the nations where they lived. More famously, they campaigned for the rights of Jews to a national homeland. Brandeis had been so thoroughly assimilated that he disdained the idea of any “hyphenated” ethnic or religious status in the United States as disloyal. Yet he was heavily influenced by his mother’s brother, Lewis Dembitz, a Shabbat-observant attorney, even changing his middle name from David to Dembitz. Some years after his uncle’s passing, Brandeis, then a US Supreme Court Justice, engaged in soul searching that led him to work behind the scenes, earning President Wilson’s support on behalf of the Balfour Declaration. 

Jewish leaders, at their best, manage to balance majesty and humility, rising in greatness even from the depths of exile.

In these portraits, Soloveitchik masterfully connects interwoven themes of true Jewish leadership: “Jewish leaders, at their best, draw on the spirit of the people they lead, the generations whose legacy they inherit and inhabit.” Jewish leaders, at their best, manage to balance majesty and humility, rising in greatness even from the depths of exile. They help keep the dream alive of a restored Jewish nation state while “eloquently expressing pride in the resonant teachings of the Jewish faith.” 

Brilliant leadership sometimes emerges from unexpected corners. This outstanding book by one of today’s most important Jewish thinkers will delight students of Jewish history and of the art of leadership.

Judy Gruen’s most recent book is “The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love With Faith.” Her forthcoming memoir, “Bylines and Blessings,” will be published in February 2024.