The Hafetz Hayyim on the Siddur (Book of the Month, Nissan 5785)

The Hafetz Hayyim on the Siddur is not the only English-language book to explore the deeper meaning and functionality of Jewish prayer, but it was the first to delve into the subject from the viewpoint of one of the holiest and most learned rabbis of modern times, the Chafetz Chaim (Rabbi Israel Meir HaKohen Kagan). It is the product of considerable team effort: the text was gathered and arranged by Rabbi David Zaretsky, then translated from the Hebrew by Charles Wengrov and edited by Rabbi Isaiah Aryeh and Joshua Dvorkas. 

This work comprises a collection of thoughts, reflections and interpretations of Jewish prayers. Its highly detailed contents list reveal that the text embraces not merely daily prayers but also the period of compassion and penitence surrounding and including Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as the festive period that follows them. 

You can find this book, which is part of the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection, on the shelves of Beit Knesset Hanassi.

The Library of Everything, by Rabbi David Ebner (Book of the Month, Adar 5785)

The Library of Everything: Poems and Torah Commentaries is one of the most unusual books in Beit Knesset Hanassi’s collection. It consists of a set of creative and imaginative items, in prose and verse, by Rabbi Dr David Ebner—Rosh Yeshiva, Yeshivat Eretz HaTzvi, Jerusalem. According to the publishers, ATID:

This collection of original poetry on Jewish and religious themes will enlighten and stimulate readers to an array of issues-Jewish learning and teaching; textual understanding and interpretation; prayer, salvation and repentance; and the Holocaust.

Each of the twenty-one poems is accompanied by a short essay, notes, or an excursus, through which the author unfolds the genesis of the poem: how it was distilled from classical Jewish sources, or—moving in the opposite direction—drawing the reader's attention to implications and applications of the poem to contemporary religious life and experience.

Rabbi Ebner has taken an active interest in integration between Jewish studies and English literature. This is apparent to the reader of this slim (94 page) tome, from which the author’s warm and engaging personality can be instantly discerned.

Abraham Joshua Heschel and Elie Wiesel, You Are My Witnesses, by Maurice Friedman (Book of the Month, Shevat 5785)

One of the more unusual titles in the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection is Abraham Joshua Heschel and Elie Wiesel, You Are My Witnesses, by Maurice S. Friedman (1921-2012). Published in 1987, this is a personal tribute to two of the most distinguished figures in contemporary Judaism--Elie Wiesel and Dr Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Friedman himself was an interdisciplinary and interreligious philosopher of dialogue. His intellectual career, spanning fifty years of study, teaching, writing, translating, traveling, mentoring, and co-founding the Institute for Dialogical Psychotherapy, is claimed to have prompted a language of genuine dialogue.

In 1956, Friedman wrote a broad survey of Martin Buber’s work available at that time, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, which was the first introduction of Buber’s concepts in the English-speaking world. He became friends with Elie Wiesel, the celebrated Jewish author, and Abraham Joshua Heschel, a well-known Jewish religious philosopher.

In this book the author describes Heschel and Wiesel "as witnesses in our day for the God of the biblical covenant that Moses proclaimed". He adds that "they are also my witnesses, since I have stood in a unique personal relationship with them both".

Concepts of Judaism, by Isaac Breuer (Book of the Month, Tevet 5785)

 Rabbi Isaac Breuer (1883-1946) was a major figure in twentieth century Neo-Orthodoxy, following

n the footsteps of his maternal grandfather Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch. Though he both trained and practised as a lawyer, it is as a religious and political personality that he was best known, being the first President of Poalei Agudat Yisrael.

Rabbi Breuer was also a noted thinker and author, whose deep thought is well reflected in Concepts of Judaism, a selection of his writings selected and compiled by Jacob S; Levinger. Although the Neo-Orthodoxy movement had defined itself from the start largely as an opposition to the German Reform movement, Rabbi Breuer already regarded the Reform movement of his day as essentially the impotent and dying remnant of the Haskalah. For him, the real enemy of Orthodoxy was both political Zionism and Religious Zionism, which he considered especially dangerous because they possessed an authentic Jewish instinct and impulse. The goals of the Zionists paralleled the goals of his own Agudah organization in many areas ("reunification of land and nation"), but without the stress which Agudah laid on adherence to halachah and tradition. Indeed, he envisioned a Messianic Torah state in the land of Israel, and could not abide the idea of "reunification of land and nation" coming to pass through the agency of secular Zionist forces in the form of a secular state.

This work is part of the Marvin N. Hirschhorn library, which is housed in Beit Knesset Hanassi.

Dear Maimonides, by Andrew Sanders (Book of the Month, Kislev 5785)

Dear Maimonides: a discourse on religion and science is described by its author as “a major attempt to understand the ‘meaning of it all’”, using the viewpoint of someone far removed in space and time from our world. This might seem something out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—but it isn’t. It transports Yosef ben Yehudah ibn Shimon, the original addressee of Rambam’s Guide to the Perplexed, to 20^th century North America. By doing so, the author seeks to provide a new and empirical worldview that incorporates the teachings of both the ancient and the modern Jew.

Who is the man who dares to do this? Our author, Andrew Sanders, was born and raised in Hungary, where he lived through both the Holocaust and the subsequent Communist regime. Leaving Hungary at the age of 24, he was educated as a chemist, and worked in that capacity at the University of Toronto. Later, he learned computer applications, was an early practitioner of that field, became an executive of a major financial institution, eventually starting his own computer software company, which was highly successful. Thereafter he devoted his time and effort to researching and writing on Jewish subjects, from philosophy and theology to historical fiction. In 1989 he and his wife made aliyah.

This volume forms part of the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection, housed in Beit Knesset Hanassi. You are welcome to borrow it.

Rebels in the Holy Land, by Sam Finkel (Book of the Month, Mar Cheshvan 5785)

When a determined band of Russian orthodox Jewish farmers arrived in what was then known as Palestine in 1882, they knew the world would be watching: In one of Baron Edmond de Rothschild’s most daring experiments, their task was to build a Jewish agricultural colony to serve as a model for future refugees fleeing persecution. But Rebels in the Holy Land is no typical story of pioneering; it is a tale of monumental idealism in the face of duplicity and cynical betrayal.

The farmers’ simple wish to observe the laws of shemitta in the Sabbatical year of 1889-1890, despite their patron’s opposition. This ambition thrust them into the swirling epicenter of worldwide controversy. Reviled by the Baron’s administrators, vilified in the press, ridiculed and nearly abandoned even by some of their religious countrymen, they stood firm. Their fight for what later became Mazkeret Batya sheds dazzling historical light on some of the very issues facing Israel today.

Sam Finkel’s book, which is now available in Hebrew as well as English, is illustrated with maps and vintage photography. We have a copy here at Beit Knesset Hanassi which you are welcome to read. Sam, by the way, is a local resident who can sometimes be found at Hanassi.

Encyclopedia of Torah Thoughts, by Rabbi Charles Chavel (Book of the Month, Tishrei 5785)

Not many people today are familiar with the name of Rabbi Dr Charles Chavel. So who was he? Born in Ciechanow, Poland in 1906, he moved to the United States in 1920, receiving semicha in 1929 and a doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1928. 

A communal rabbi and later a dayan, R' Chavel was chief editor of the journal HaDarom from 1957 until his death in 1982. A recipient of the Rabbi Kook Jewish Book Prize, he moved to Jerusalem where he joined the Board of Directors of Mossad HaRav Kook.

The Encyclopedia of Torah Thoughts, published in 1980, is one of R’ Chavel’s most significant works. Its title is misleading, since it is not an encyclopedia at all. Rather, it is an annotated English translation of Rabbenu Bachya ben Asher’s monumental Kad HaKemach—a set of 60 discourses, arranged in alphabetical order, that sought to embrace every aspect of Jewish life as it was seen from the perspective of 13^th century Spain. As such, it complements his translations of the works of Rambam.

This remarkable book, part of the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection, can be found on the shelves of Beit Knesset Hanassi, where you are welcome to peruse it.

Exclusiveness and Tolerance, by Jacob Katz (Book of the Month, Elul 5784)

 Jacob Katz, born in 1904 in Magyargencs, Hungary, was an acclaimed Jewish historian and educator. He was also something of an innovator, bringing sociological methods into play in his study of Jewish communities, with special attention to changes in halachah and Orthodoxy. In his youth he pursued both religious and secular studies, receiving rabbinic ordination and a doctorate in social history. Awarded the prestigious Israel Prize in 1980l he died in Israel in 1998.

Published in 1959, Exclusiveness and Tolerance is a scholarly account of one of the most difficult and persistent issues faced by Jews in the diaspora: how to live as Jews in a non-Jewish world.

Subtitled ‘Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval & Modern Times’, this work is divided into three sections. The first sets out the author’s methodology and terms of reference. The second reviews the 10^th to 14^th centuries and the third spans the 16^th to 18^th centuries. In an even-handed approach, Katz examines both Jewish and Christian sources and materials.

You can find this book here in Beit Knesset Hanassi, in the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection.

The Teacher, by Zvi Kolitz (Book of the Month, Menachem Av 5784)

Beit Knesset Hanassi is home to many sefarim and English-language books, including the Marvin N. Hirschhorn collection. Professor Hirschhorn's library was given to Beit Knesset Hanassi after he died by his widow Myrna, and it contains many books of interest. We reproduce on the right the handsome ex libris plate that you will find inside the books that comprise this collection.

In this, the first in our new Book of the Month series, we feature a publication that features in this collection: The Teacher, by Tzvi Kolitz.

The author, Zvi Kolitz, was born into a prominent rabbinical family in Alytus, Lithuania. He studied at the nearby Yeshiva of Slobodka and then lived for several years in Italy, where he attended the University of Florence and the Naval Academy at Civitavecchia. Emigrating to Palestine in 1936, he led recruiting efforts for the Zionist Revisionist movement for which he was arrested by the British and jailed for his political activities. 

After Israel's independence in 1948, Kolitz became active in the state's literary and cultural life. In 2002, Kolitz died of natural causes in New York. He is best known for a classic of Holocaust literature, Yosl Rakover Talks to God.

Subtitled "An Existential Approach to the Bible", The Teacher is a challenging read that makes no allowances for the possibility that the reader may not be as well-read as the writer. Its 215 pages are packed with ideas and allusions, framed within the context of a narrative in which a gifted and unusual teacher, Ariel Halevi, gives a weekly class to a varied group of adults on the implications of the Torah for our lives today (i.e. the 1980s).