When Covenant Meets Eroticism: The Ideas of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Meet Esther Perel

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

What if Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Esther Perel had engaged in an intellectual salon?

I don’t think they would quibble over facts. It would be a battle of worldviews—clashing visions of love, desire, and human connection.

Both thinkers are preoccupied with intimacy, longing, and commitment.

But their fundamental premises are irreconcilable.

Soloveitchik, the architect of covenantal philosophy, sees love as existential devotion—a sacred bond that transforms loneliness into shared responsibility.

Perel, an advocate of mystery and erotic desire, insists that love thrives on tension, autonomy, and the intoxicating pull of the unknown.

So, which is it?

Does desire require distance, as Perel maintains, or does it find its true expression in radical devotion, as Soloveitchik suggests?

This debate gets to the heart of modern relationships and would undoubtedly leave Perel grappling with the implications of her own ideas.

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: The Lonely Man of Faith and Desire

Born in 1903 in the shifting borders of the Russian Empire, Soloveitchik inherited a legacy of Talmudic brilliance.

His family line boasted generations of rabbinic scholars, men who could dissect an argument with the precision of a master watchmaker.

It was a given that he would follow suit. But he took an unusual detour through the University of Berlin, earning a doctorate in philosophy. For him, secular thought wasn’t a threat to faith—it was another lens through which to seek truth.

Arriving in America in 1932, he encountered a Jewish community torn between tradition and modernity. Some clung fiercely to the old ways; others embraced assimilation at the cost of their roots. Soloveitchik carved out a third path: Modern Orthodoxy.

As the leader of Yeshiva University’s rabbinical Seminary, he championed rigorous religious observance alongside deep engagement with the modern world.

His intellectual legacy wasn’t confined to Jewish law.

In works like The Lonely Man of Faith, Halakhic Man, and The Halakhic Mind, he explored the tension between human ambition and spiritual surrender.

He proposed that Jewish law is not just a legal framework but a philosophy—a system as rigorous as any secular ideology, offering a structured path to meaning.

His core premise? Love is not about fleeting passion. It is about the covenant—an unbreakable commitment that reshapes the self.

Perel’s Eroticism vs. Soloveitchik’s Covenant

Perel argues that long-term relationships are the graveyard of desire. In her view, as partners grow more familiar, erotic energy wanes. “We crave what we do not have,” she insists. “Desire thrives in absence, not presence.”

Her solution? Couples must cultivate mystery, autonomy, and unpredictability to sustain attraction.

Soloveitchik would dismantle this premise entirely.

For him, desire isn’t snuffed out by commitment—it is transformed by it. In The Lonely Man of Faith, he describes human existence as split between two archetypes:

• Adam I (Majestic Man): The builder, the innovator, the seeker of mastery and control.

• Adam II (Covenantal Man): The relational being who finds meaning through obligation, surrender, and devotion.

Perel’s framework to seems align with Adam I—autonomous, individualistic, constantly in pursuit. But Soloveitchik would argue that true love belongs to Adam II, the one who understands that passion isn’t about maintaining distance—it’s about stepping fully into radical intimacy.

This contradicts Perel’s claim that long-term commitment kills attraction. If love is a covenant, then eroticism isn’t about longing for what’s absent—it’s about embracing the terrifying vulnerability of being fully known.

Perel’s Blind Spot: The Crisis of Modern Love

I suspect that Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik would argue that Perel’s insights are psychologically astute, but spiritually unmoored.

Esther correctly identifies the immense pressures placed on modern relationships—expecting them to provide emotional safety, deep friendship, passionate romance, and personal fulfillment all at once.

Her prescription? A careful balancing act: couples should “nurture distance” to sustain desire. Soloveitchik would expose the flaw in this thinking:

• Why assume passion requires separation?

• Why frame relationships around self-fulfillment rather than existential surrender?

• What if the real erotic charge isn’t in novelty, but in shouldering the unbearable weight of another’s existence?

Perel assumes that people fear losing themselves in intimacy.

But what if love is precisely the art of losing oneself? What if the crisis of modern love isn’t boredom but the absence of transcendence?

Perel offers approaches to reignite desire—Soloveitchik would say the real problem isn’t technique. It’s philosophy. Passion doesn’t die because of too much commitment. It dies because modern relationships are too shallow to sustain it.

Perel might counter that today’s couples won’t tolerate emotional suffocation. But Soloveitchik would remind her:

What if suffering together is what makes love meaningful?

The Ultimate Intellectual Trap: Sacred Love vs. Consumer Love

If Soloveitchik wanted to truly unsettle Perel, he would force her into a theological reckoning.

She treats love as something to be cultivated and optimized—an experience that can be fine-tuned for optimal fulfillment.

But Soloveitchik doesn’t see love as an experience. He sees it as a metaphysical event.

Love, in Jewish thought, is not a feeling. It is a transformation of the self.

• Your suffering is no longer just your own.

• Your loneliness is now shared.

• Your very existence is changed by the presence of another.

This is covenantal love—not based on pleasure or personal growth, but on the acceptance of a shared fate. It is not designed to make people feel good. It is designed to make them feel felt.

Perel’s vision, by contrast, is rooted in consumer love—the idea that relationships should maximize pleasure and minimize suffering.

She assumes that love should expand the self rather than demand its sacrifice. But Soloveitchik would ask: How can love be real if it is structured around self-fulfillment rather than radical devotion?

Perel might respond that desire still requires space, that couples need playfulness, not just duty. But Soloveitchik would deliver his final argument:

Desire does not require separation. It requires the unbearable weight of choosing each other—again and again.

Why This Debate Matters

In the final analysis, Esther Perel has offered the modern world a compelling framework for understanding desire—but not for understanding love as existential devotion.

Soloveitchik, by contrast, offers a vision of love that is erotic, sacred, and tragic all at once. Rabbi Soloveitchik left this world in 1993.

He believed that true passion is not about chasing the unknown. It is instead forged in the fire of shared suffering.

And that forces a deeper reckoning with what it means to be human. What would happen if American chose radical devotion again and again?

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.

REFERENCES:

Soloveitchik, J. B. (1965). The Lonely Man of Faith. Doubleday.

Soloveitchik, J. B. (1983). Halakhic Man. Jewish Publication Society.

Soloveitchik, J. B. (1986). The Halakhic Mind: An Essay on Jewish Tradition and Modern Thought. Seth Press.

Perel, E. (2006). Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. HarperCollins.

Perel, E. (2017). The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. HarperCollins.