Likkutei Dibburim
Likkutei Dibburim

Author: Joseph Isaac Schneersohn

Publisher: Kehot Publications Society

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9780826604484

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Likkutei Dibburim, a cherished treasure-chest of the Chabad Chasidic heritage, is a record of talks delivered by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe in Latvia, Poland, and the United States during the years 1929 to 1950. It is a unique work - by turns expository, philosophical, narrative and nostalgic. The talks embrace an overwhelming range of subjects, from the Rebbe's memories of childhood and family to his eloquent and sometimes impassioned passages of exhortation. They include glimpses of faces and sounds that conjure up the mystique of a vanished shtetl world, delicately-drawn vignettes, fascinating chronicles of the early history of the Chasidic movement, and creative and instructive expositions of Chasidic concepts. One theme links all of these subjects like a thread of gold: the intense spiritual and personal bond with all his fellow Jews, that is of the essence of the very concept of Rebbe.

Rescued from the Reich
Rescued from the Reich

Author: Bryan Mark Rigg

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0300129726

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When Hitler invaded Warsaw in the fall of 1939, hundreds of thousands of civilians—many of them Jewish—were trapped in the besieged city. The Rebbe Joseph Schneersohn, the leader of the ultra-orthodox Lubavitcher Jews, was among them. Followers throughout the world were filled with anguish, unable to confirm whether he was alive or dead. Working with officials in the United States government, a group of American Jews initiated what would ultimately become one of the strangest—and most miraculous—rescues of World War II. The escape of Rebbe Schneersohn from Warsaw has been the subject of speculation for decades. Historian Bryan Mark Rigg has now uncovered the true story of the rescue, which was propelled by a secret collaboration between American officials and leaders of German military intelligence. Amid the fog of war, a small group of dedicated German soldiers located the Rebbe and protected him from suspicious Nazis as they fled the city together. During the course of the mission, the Rebbe learned the shocking truth about the leader of the rescue operation, the decorated Wehrmacht soldier Ernst Bloch: he was himself half-Jewish, and a victim of the rising tide of German antisemitism. A harrowing story about identity and moral responsibility, Rescued from the Reich is also a riveting narrative history of one of the most extraordinary rescue missions of World War II.

Filling Words with Light
Filling Words with Light

Author: Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

Publisher: Turner Publishing Company

Published: 2011-03-02

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 1580235824

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Breathe New Life into Your Prayer with the Wisdom of Kabbalah and the Hasidic Masters Jewish mystics teach that every word a person utters in prayer should radiate light. Even the letters of the words of prayer carry sparks of the Divine that yearn to join together in holiness. In this inspiring spiritual companion, Reform rabbi Lawrence Kushner and Orthodox rabbi Nehemia Polen join together to provide a window into the liturgy for people of all backgrounds by offering fresh insights and meditations that bring the traditional prayerbook to life. Drawing from the Torah, Zohar, and ancient and contemporary Hasidic masters, Kushner and Polen reflect on the joy, gratitude, compassion, mystery, and awe embedded in traditional prayers and blessings, and show how you can imbue these familiar sacred words with your own sense of holiness. Insightful, fresh, and wise, Filling Words with Light will enrich your understanding of the prayer book and guide you on how to put more of yourself into the holy words of the Jewish tradition.

A Jewish Guide to the Mysterious
A Jewish Guide to the Mysterious

Author: Rabbi Pinchas Taylor

Publisher: Mosaica Press

Published: 2020-06-15

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 194635189X

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Modern science is the most accurate lens of reality that humanity has developed so far. Science is crucial to humanity’s health, safety, and development. Still, the lens of science only “sees” a thin slice of the totality of existence. Much of the human experience cannot be simply explained by standard quantifiable tests. Many people have become aware of the limits and shortcomings of scientific knowledge and have also realized that our perpetual hunger for spiritual understanding is real and undeniable. Many of us sense that there is something beyond. Throughout various periods of history and various cultures and societies, people have been interested in the mysterious and the paranormal. This yearning is rooted in the soul’s search for true spirituality. A Jewish Guide to the Mysterious, written by one of contemporary Judaism’s leading scholars and teachers, clearly explains classic Torah views on intriguing phenomena, such as dreams, astrology, time travel, alien life, reincarnation, ESP and auras, angels, demons, ghosts, and even such topics as the lost city of Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle. Read this fascinating book and be amazed.

Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters
Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters

Author: Robert M. Haralick

Publisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated

Published: 1995-09-01

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1461628946

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This book-length meditation on the Hebrew alphabet offers profound insights into many important ideas found in Jewish thought. From time immemorial, the Hebrew alphabet has been considered to be more than a collection of individual letters. Indeed, the essence of each letter of the Hebrew alphabet can be seen as a fundamental building block of the world. Jewish scholars throughout the ages have meditated on these letters, deriving spiritual inspiration in the process. In The Inner Meaning of the Hebrew Letters, Robert M. Haralick looks closely at each of the Hebrew characters, helping us to gain insight from this remarkable tradition. Drawing primarily upon traditional kabbalistic and chasidic thought, Haralick combines his own insights with those of great Jewish personalities such as Moshe Chayim Luzzatto and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, as well as drawing upon classical texts, including the Bahir, the Zohar, the Midrash, and the Talmud. One of Haralick's main sources of inspiration is the ancient Jewish art of gematria, where each letter has a numerical value as does each combination of letters. Through this traditional methodology, Haralick shows his readers the many, often dazzling, ways that the Hebrew alphabet has been examined.

The Rebbe
The Rebbe

Author: Samuel Heilman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2012-03-25

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0691154422

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A biography of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson that discusses his childhood in Russia, education in Germany and Paris, messianic conviction, religious leadership, legacy, and other related topics.

The Visual Culture of Chabad
The Visual Culture of Chabad

Author: Maya Balakirsky Katz

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-10-11

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0521191637

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This book is the first full-length study of a complex visual tradition associated with the Hasidic movement of Chabad.

The Path of the Baal Shem Tov
The Path of the Baal Shem Tov

Author: Dovid Sears

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 1568219725

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The original teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of chasidism, on more than fifty subjects.

Toward the Millennium
Toward the Millennium

Author: Peter Schäfer

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-09-24

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9004378995

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This collection of 16 articles represents a selection of the papers delivered in the course of a seminar (1995-1996) at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and its concluding joint symposium held at the Institute and Princeton University. Wide-ranging in scope, the volume covers messianic expectations from biblical times up to modern and contemporaneous adaptations, whereby the focus lies on the messianic concept within Judaism: diversity and variety of messianic expectations in antiquity; messianic movements at the time of the Crusades and around the fifth millennium (1240); the 'Pseudo'-Messiah Sabbatai Avi in the early modern period; the philosophers Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig and Walter Benjamin with respect to their thinking about messianism as well as the Lubavitch movement. Also included are investigations on pagan Graeco-Roman writings and messianic strands in the medieval and baroque Christian context. The section on the modern period contains contributions dealing with the Ahmaddiyya movement in India, messianic currents in the socio-political culture of the Weimar Republic as well as certain messianic aspects in the very recent so-called Branch Davidian community in Waco, Texas. The broad spectrum of stimulating analyses provides a fresh re-evaluation of an apparently timeless phenomenon.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Author: Ezra Glinter

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2024-10-29

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0300280378

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The life and thought of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the most influential—and controversial—rabbis in modern Judaism “Accessible, informed, and balanced. . . . The author manages to tread on fragile ground with aplomb. . . . An exceptional tool for understanding.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the world’s best-known Hasidic groups, is driven by the belief that we are on the verge of the messianic age. The man most recognized for the movement’s success is the seventh and last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah. While hope of redemption has sustained the Jewish people through exile and persecution, it has also upended Jewish society with its apocalyptic and anarchic tendencies. So it is not surprising that Schneerson’s messianic fervor made him one of the most controversial rabbinic leaders of the twentieth century. How did he go from being an ordinary rabbi’s son in the Russian Empire to achieving status as a mystical sage? How did he revitalize a centuries-old Hasidic movement, construct an outreach empire of unprecedented scope, and earn the admiration and condemnation of political, communal, and religious leaders in America and abroad? Ezra Glinter’s deeply researched account is the first biography of Schneerson to combine a nonpartisan view of his life, work, and impact with an insider’s understanding of the ideology that drove him and that continues to inspire the Chabad-Lubavitch movement today.