Rabbi Mystic Or Impostor

The diaries of the eighteenth-century miracle-working Jew Samuel Falk and his assistant, here thoroughly annotated and with a scholarly introduction and informative appendixes, offer an intriguing glimpse of eighteenth-century London and its burgeoning Jewish community on the threshold of the modern era.

The enigmatic kabbalist Samuel Falk, known as the Ba’al Shem of London, has piqued the curiosity of scholars for generations. Eighteenth-century London was fascinated by Jews, and as a miracle-worker and adventurer, well connected and well read, Falk had much to offer. Interest in the man was further aroused by rumours of his dealings with European aristocrats and other famous characters, as well as with scholars, Freemasons, and Shabbateans, but evidence was scanty. Michal Oron has now brought together all the known source material on the man, and her detailed annotations of his diary and that of his assistant give us rich insights into his activities over several years. We learn of his meetings and his travels; his finances; his disputes, his dreams, and his remedies; and lists of his books. We see London’s social life and commerce, its landed gentry and its prisons, and what people ate, wore, and possessed. The burgeoning Jewish community of London and its religious practices, as well as its communal divisiveness, is depicted especially colourfully. The scholarly introductions by Oron and by Todd Endelman and the informative appendices help contextualize the diaries and offer an intriguing glimpse of Jewish involvement in little-known aspects of London life at the threshold of the modern era.

The first complete and annotated English translation of Maimon's influential and delightfully entertaining memoir. Solomon Maimon's autobiography has delighted readers for more than two hundred years, from Goethe, Schiller, and George Eliot to Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. The American poet and critic Adam Kirsch has named it one of the most crucial Jewish books of modern times. Here is the first complete and annotated English edition of this enduring and lively work. Born into a down-on-its-luck provincial Jewish family in 1753, Maimon quickly distinguished himself as a prodigy in learning. Even as a young child, he chafed at the constraints of his Talmudic education and rabbinical training. He recounts how he sought stimulation in the Hasidic community and among students of the Kabbalah--and offers rare and often wickedly funny accounts of both. After a series of picaresque misadventures, Maimon reached Berlin, where he became part of the city's famed Jewish Enlightenment and achieved the philosophical education he so desperately wanted, winning acclaim for being the "sharpest" of Kant's critics, as Kant himself described him. This new edition restores text cut from the abridged 1888 translation by J. Clark Murray, which has long been the only available English edition. Paul Reitter's translation is brilliantly sensitive to the subtleties of Maimon's prose while providing a fluid rendering that contemporary readers will enjoy, and is accompanied by an introduction and notes by Yitzhak Melamed and Abraham Socher that give invaluable insights into Maimon and his extraordinary life. The book also features an afterword by Gideon Freudenthal that provides an authoritative overview of Maimon's contribution to modern philosophy.

Shows the roots of the dedication and sacrifice that nurture the current Lubavitch movement. Rich with details, it provides perspective, inspiration, courage and insight into the towering personality of Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, Rabbi of Yekatrinoslav, Ukraine, father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. He defied Communists, informers, other radical social elements, stood in the breach at the risk of his life to preserve Judaism in the USSR.With details found only after glasnost, the story heartbreakingly portrays the final years, with his torture & exile to the remote and inclement village of Chi'ili, Kazakhstan, for "counterrevolutionary" activities.Beset with hunger, sickness and little hope of release, he lived each moment by the dictates of his soul and his faith in G-d and wrote his Torah innovations with ink his brave wife made from grasses. Exiles refugees, and locals flocked to him for strength & advice given with the wisdom of his noble soul

This includes the evolution of the Hebrew religion as a projective response to the inner conflicts produced by the human family; the sociopsychological development of the Israelite kingdoms in Canaan; the fascinating duality of Jewish life in the "Diaspora"; and the emotional ties of the Jews to their idealized motherland from the Babylonian exile to modern political Zionism.

The biographical novel Mount Qaf is based on histories of medieval Andalus. Muḥyiddin ibn Al-Arabiwas a contemporary of Avempace and Averrhoes, and was a pupil of the latter. He witnessed a number of battles between Andalusian Arabs and Spanish Christian kingdoms. From early childhood, this son of an army general in Murcia studied philosophy and religions. He developed his own course of mysticism, and wrote several books in the field. The inside story about daily life in Andalus brings that historical period alive for modern readers.