In the advance yeshiva, adult males spend long periods of time-sometimes their entire lives-studying and interpreting traditional writings on Jewish law and theology, all but totally cut off from the mainstream of American life, and indeed, the lives of most American Jews. Why is this East European incarnation of an ancient Jewish tradition flourishing in present-day America? What does its successful transplantaion tell us about Orthodox Jewish life?
Compellingly and authoritatively written, this biography illuminates the dilemmas that Europe’s Jews have faced over the past century. The discussion of the inner struggles of one of twentieth-century Judaism’s most enigmatic religious leaders—a figure who became a central ideologue of modern Orthodoxy despite his traditional training in a Lithuanian yeshiva—elucidates many institutional and intellectual phenomena of the Jewish world, and especially in pre-war Europe, that have so far received little attention.
The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature argues that the institution of the yeshiva and its ideals of Jewish textual study played a seminal role in the resurgence of Hebrew literature in modern times. Departing from the conventional interpretation of the origins of Hebrew literature in secular culture, Marina Zilbergerts points to the practices and metaphysics of Talmud study as its essential animating forces. Focusing on the early works and personal histories of founding figures of Hebrew literature, from Moshe Leib Lilienblum to Chaim Nachman Bialik, The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature reveals the lasting engagement of modern Jewish letters with the hallowed tradition of rabbinic learning.
The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivas tells the story of the last chapter of Jewish rabbinical schools in Eastern Europe, from the eve of World War I to the outbreak of World War II. The Lithuanian yeshiva established a rigorous standard for religious education in the early 1800s that persisted for over a century and continues to this day. Although dramatically reduced and forced into exile in Russia and Ukraine during World War I, the yeshivas survived the war, with yeshiva heads and older students forming the nucleus of the institutions. These scholars rehabilitated the yeshivas in their original locations and quickly returned to their regular activities. Moreover, they soon began to expand into areas now empty of yeshivas in lands occupied by Hasidic populations in Poland and even into the lands that would soon become Israel. During the economic depression of the 1930s, students struggled for food and their leaders journeyed abroad in search for funding, but their determination and commitment to the yeshiva system continued. Despite the material difficulties that prevailed in the yeshivas, there was consistently a full occupancy of students, most of them in their twenties. Young men from all over the free world joined these yeshivas, which were considered the best training programs for the religious professions and rabbinical ordination. The outbreak of World War II and the Soviet occupation of first eastern Poland and then Lithuania marked the beginning of the end of the Yeshivas, however, and the Holocaust ensured the final destruction of the venerable institution. The Golden Age of the Lithuanian Yeshivas is the first book-length work on the modern history of the Lithuanian yeshivas published in English. Through exhaustive historical research of every yeshiva, Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky brings to light for the first time the stories, lives, and inner workings of this long-lost world.
The Yeshiva: Masters and Disciples is the second and concluding volume of Chaim Grade's masterwork. Continuing the moving story of Tsemakh Atlas, head of the Yeshiva, Grade re-creates the rich world of his native city Vilna in pre-World War II Lithuania. The now-vanished Eastern European Jewish community was inhabited by the pious and the heretical, the righteous and the sinful, the wise and the foolish. Religion was as crucial to living, and as much a part of Grade's people, as their daily bread. How they reacted to it - and, through it, to one another - formed the core of day-to-day life. Each problem, each experience was felt through the teachings of Tsemakh Atlas. Chaim Grade has brought his striking characters to full life, revealing them in all their glory and pain. The Yeshiva is a brilliant work that mourns, and finally locks into memory, a culture sadly lost in reality but eternal in spirit.
An intimate and moving portrait of daily life in New York's oldest institution of traditional rabbinic learning New York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway. Yeshiva Days is Jonathan Boyarin's uniquely personal account of the year he spent as both student and observer at Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem, and a poignant chronicle of a side of Jewish life that outsiders rarely see. Boyarin explores the yeshiva's relationship with the neighborhood, the city, and Jewish and American culture more broadly, and brings vividly to life its routines, rituals, and rhythms. He describes the compelling and often colorful personalities he encounters each day, and introduces readers to the Rosh Yeshiva, or Rebbi, the moral and intellectual head of the yeshiva. Boyarin reflects on the tantalizing meanings of "study for its own sake" in the intellectually vibrant world of traditional rabbinic learning, and records his fellow students' responses to his negotiation of the daily complexities of yeshiva life while he also conducts anthropological fieldwork. A richly mature work by a writer of uncommon insight, wit, and honesty, Yeshiva Days is the story of a place on the Lower East Side with its own distinctive heritage and character, a meditation on the enduring power of Jewish tradition and learning, and a record of a different way of engaging with time and otherness.
Osnat was born five hundred years ago – at a time when almost everyone believed in miracles. But very few believed that girls should learn to read. Yet Osnat's father was a great scholar whose house was filled with books. And she convinced him to teach her. Then she in turn grew up to teach others, becoming a wise scholar in her own right, the world's first female rabbi! Some say Osnat performed miracles – like healing a dove who had been shot by a hunter! Or saving a congregation from fire! But perhaps her greatest feat was to be a light of inspiration for other girls and boys; to show that any person who can learn might find a path that none have walked before.
The Yeshiva: Masters and Disciples is the second and concluding volume of Chaim Grade's masterwork. Continuing the moving story of Tsemakh Atlas, head of the Yeshiva, Grade re-creates the rich world of his native city Vilna in pre-World War II Lithuania. The now-vanished Eastern European Jewish community was inhabited by the pious and the heretical, the righteous and the sinful, the wise and the foolish. Religion was as crucial to living, and as much a part of Grade's people, as their daily bread. How they reacted to it - and, through it, to one another - formed the core of day-to-day life. Each problem, each experience was felt through the teachings of Tsemakh Atlas. Chaim Grade has brought his striking characters to full life, revealing them in all their glory and pain. The Yeshiva is a brilliant work that mourns, and finally locks into memory, a culture sadly lost in reality but eternal in spirit.
Peninnah’s World is the biography-in-stories of the iconic Jewish storyteller and folkloristPeninnah Schram. In vivid scenes, it dramatizes Schram’s trajectory from brilliant daughter of Orthodox immigrant parents in New London, Connecticut, to acclaimed performer, teacher, scholar and colleague of luminaries including Elie Wiesel, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Molly Picon.
An internationally recognized scholar and theologian shares a Jewish mysticism for our times Judaism, one of the world’s great spiritual traditions, is not addressed to Jews alone. In this masterful book, Arthur Green calls out to seekers of all sorts, offering a universal response to the eternal human questions of who we are, why we exist, where we are going, and how to live. Drawing on over half a century as a Jewish seeker and teacher, he shows us a Judaism that cultivates the life of the spirit, that inspires an inward journey leading precisely toward self-transcendence, to an awareness of the universal Self in whose presence we exist. As a neo-hasidic seeker, he is both devotional and boldly questioning in his understanding of God and tradition. Engaging with the mystical sources, he translates the insights of the Hasidic masters into a new religious language accessible to all those eager to build an inner life and a human society that treasures the divine spark in each person and throughout Creation.
