For the first time, the writings of one of the 20th century's most important Hasidic thinkers are made available to a non-Hasidic English audience. Rabbi Ahron "Ahrele" Roth (1894-1944) was born into the ultra-Orthodox world and wrote exclusively for a very small community of Hasidim that he founded and which continues to this day. His work is little known outside of this insular community of Yiddish-speaking followers in Israel and New York. Reb Ahrele has a great deal to say to sincere spiritual seekers far beyond his own community. This volume includes an intense, representative selection of the large body of work Reb Ahrele produced in his relatively short life. Reb Ahrele taught his followers how they could reconnect with their true, simple, spiritual selves by providing them with clear, practical instructions in the realm of spiritual consciousness, discipline and practice. He worked persistently to communicate specific steps in order to arouse his followers' deepest spiritual intentions. "A fierce work still connected to the cloister of Meah Shearim" -The Forward

With an Introduction by Anthony D. Pellegrini, this work is one of the most extensive studies of early language and literacy undertaken to date. This volume describes the four interdisciplinary facets of a three-year longitudinal investigation of the early literate and linguistic experience and knowledge of a cohort of sixty 3- and 4-year-olds. Coverage includes: an extensive survey of home literate environment and development across a broad range of earliest literate and meta-literate knowledge over the three-year span of the study; links early literate experience and knowledge to differential strategies of speech act comprehension over time, showing that early literate experience heightens dependence upon linguistic as distinct from contextual information in comprehension; the employment of parent-child book reading as the matrix for a detailed analysis of lexical development, relating forms of parent-child interaction around text to variation in sophistication of reference; and finally, the examination of child-child interaction in a detailed, naturalistic framework, in relation to aspects of literate experience and knowledge.

With an Introduction by Anthony D. Pellegrini, this work is one of the most extensive studies of early language and literacy undertaken to date. This volume describes the four interdisciplinary facets of a three-year longitudinal investigation of the early literate and linguistic experience and knowledge of a cohort of sixty 3- and 4-year-olds. Coverage includes: an extensive survey of home literate environment and development across a broad range of earliest literate and meta-literate knowledge over the three-year span of the study; links early literate experience and knowledge to differential strategies of speech act comprehension over time, showing that early literate experience heightens dependence upon linguistic as distinct from contextual information in comprehension; the employment of parent-child book reading as the matrix for a detailed analysis of lexical development, relating forms of parent-child interaction around text to variation in sophistication of reference; and finally, the examination of child-child interaction in a detailed, naturalistic framework, in relation to aspects of literate experience and knowledge.