Hasidism, Suffering, and Renewal

Don Seeman is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. He is the author of One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism. Daniel Reiser is Chair of the Department of Jewish Thought at Herzog College, Israel. His books include Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism. Ariel Evan Mayse is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He is the author of Speaking Infinities: God and Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritsh.

"…a welcome contribution to the ongoing appreciation of a remarkably creative minor tzaddik who remains a major hasidic innovator of spiritual life within and beyond unprecedented times whose critical analysis in the study of religion has only begun." — Religious Studies Review"Hasidism, Suffering, and Renewal offers an unprecedented lens into multiple different interpretations of one remarkable man's confrontation with unspeakable evil while also exploring his broader context." — The Lehrhaus

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Hasidism and Renewal 1. The Place of Piety: Piaseczno in the Landscape of Polish HasidismMarcin Wodziński2. The Rebbe of Piaseczno: Between Two Trends in HasidismMoshe Idel3. The Devotional Talmud: Study as a Sacred QuestAriel Evan Mayse4. Mystical Fraternities: Jerusalem, Tiberius, and Warsaw: A Comparative Study of Goals, Structures, and MethodsZvi Leshem5. Self-Creation through Texts: Kalonymus Kalman Shapira's Incarnational TheologyDavid Maayan6. Hasidism in Dialogue with Modernity: Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira's Derekh ha-MelekhOra WiskindPart II: Text, Theodicy, and Suffering 7. A New Reading of the Rebbe of Piaseczno's Holocaust-Era Sermons: A Review of Daniel Reiser's Critical EditionMoria Herman8. Creative Writing in the Shadow of Death: Psychological and Phenomenological Aspects of Rabbi Shapira's Manuscript "Sermons from the Years of Rage"Daniel Reiser9. Miriam, Moses, and the Divinity of Children: Human Individuation at the Cusp of Persistence and PerishabilityNehemia Polen10. Raging against Reason: Overcoming Sekhel in R. Shapira's ThoughtJames A. Diamond11. At the Edge of Explanation: Rethinking "Afflictions of Love" in Sermons from the Years of RageErin Leib Smokler12. "Living with the Times": Historical Context in the Wartime Writings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman ShapiraHenry Abramson13. Covenantal Rupture and Broken Faith in Esh KodeshShaul Magid14. Pain and Words: On Suffering, Hasidic Modernism, and the Phenomenological TurnDon SeemanContributorsIndex