National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for the Nahum N. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship, 2018. Hasidism, a movement of religious awakening and social reform, originated in the mid-eighteenth century. After two and a half centuries of crisis, upheaval, and renewal, it remains a vibrant way of life and a compelling aspect of Jewish experience. This book explores the profound intellectual and religious issues that the hasidic masters raised in their Torah commentary, and brings to the fore the living qualities of their sermons (derashot). Ora Wiskind-Elper addresses a spectrum of topics: creation, revelation, and redemption; hermeneutics, epistemology, psychology, Romanticism, poetry and poetics, art history, Hebrew fiction, cultural history, and tropes of Jewish suffering and hope. Fully engaged in the texts and their spirituality, she brings them to bear on postmodernist challenges to traditional spiritual and religious sensibilities. This is a comprehensive study, unique in pedagogy, clarity, and originality. It uses the full range of critical scholarship on hasidism as a social and ideological movement. At the same time, it maintains a strong focus on hasidic Torah commentary as a conveyor of theology and value. Each of its chapters presents a fundamentally new approach. Wiskind-Elper's translations are in themselves an innovative moment in the tradition and spiritual history of the passages she offers.

In this fascinating book, Ora Wiskind-Elper introduces us to a figure who was ahead of his time: the Hasidic leader Rabbi Ya'akov Leiner of Izbica-Radzyn. Her translations and interpretation of his writings present the Rabbi's central ideas in a compelling form to modern readers. Though Rabbi Ya'akov lived a full century and a half ago, his teaching weaves midrash, medieval commentary, Kabbalah, and Hasidic thought together to create an innovative perspective on long-established Jewish concepts. His works, known as the Beit Ya'akov fill four large volumes of commentary on the weekly Torah portions and the cycle of Jewish festivals--the traditional genre known as derashot. In exploring the diversity of the sources Rabbi Ya'akov used for his reflections on Jewish life and spirituality, the author suggests he devoted uncommon attention to emotion, human, relationships, and gender issues. Thus, in many ways, Rabbi Ya'akov's thought was extraordinary for its time and even for ours. Wiskind-Elper's insights touch readers on many different levels--intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically.

Argues that the 13 stories of Reb Nahman (1772-1810), the founder of the Bratslav Hasidic movement, are at once deeply rooted in the moral traditions of Judaism and excellent examples of modern fantasy writing. Applying critical literary analysis to the tales, the author examines such issues as: myt