Those interested in the interaction of religion and state have been captivated these last few weeks (in the way train wrecks draw our attention) by the byzantine delays in elections for the Israeli Chief Rabbinate—which for the first time in its history is doubly vacant with neither Ashkenazi nor Sefardi Chiefs. Jeffrey Saks examines a chapter in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s biography, and his flirtation with the position in the early 1960s, which reminds us just how far we are from the Rav’s vision of what a Chief Rabbi might be.