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).
