Hillel Halkin – författare

A deeply personal look at death, mourning, and the afterlife in Jewish traditionAfter One-Hundred-and-Twenty provides a richly nuanced and deeply personal look at Jewish attitudes and practices regarding death, mourning, and the afterlife as they have existed and evolved from biblical times to today. Taking its title from the Hebrew and Yiddish blessing to live to a ripe old age—Moses is said to have been 120 years old when he died—the book explores how the Bible''s original reticence about an afterlife gave way to views about personal judgment and reward after death, the resurrection of the body, and even reincarnation. It examines Talmudic perspectives on grief, burial, and the afterlife, shows how Jewish approaches to death changed in the Middle Ages with thinkers like Maimonides and in the mystical writings of the Zohar, and delves into such things as the origins of the custom of reciting Kaddish for the deceased and beliefs about encountering the dead in visions and dreams.After One-Hundred-and-Twenty is also Hillel Halkin''s eloquent and disarmingly candid reflection on his own mortality, the deaths of those he has known and loved, and the comfort he has and has not derived from Jewish tradition.

Hans Kahn spent his life looking towards the sea. And it was no easy task as he escaped from the Nazis through the least-used route from Amsterdam through Belgium, France and across the Pyrenees to Spain, Portugal and England. There he volunteered and spent the rest of the war with the Navy of the Dutch Government-in-exile.

Shmuel Hanagid, poet, rabbi, Talmudic scholar, statesman, general and bon vivant was born in Cordoba, Spain, in 993 C.E. Settling in the city-state of Granada, he rose through its court life to become Grand Vizier and chief military commander. For years he led Granada's army into the field against its foes. Hanagid was the first major medieval Hebrew poet and the first to write on secular as well as religious themes. Often autobiographical, his poems are about such subjects as God, nature, friendship, love (of both sexes), wine, war, death, and the pains of growing old. Across a thousand years, subtle but passionately bold, they retain the capacity to startle and delight. In this bilingual collection, Hillel Halkin, a leading contemporary translator, has chosen approximately 70 of Hanagid's best poems that tell the story of his life. Grand Things To Write A Poem On is a unique self-portrait in verse of a remarkable Jewish personality.

THE B'NEI MENASHE are certifiably one of the newest, possibly remnants of one of the oldest, and certainly one of the most unusual Jewish communities in the world today. Hailing from a Tibeto-Burman ethnic group known as the Kuki- Mizo that inhabits the remote Himalayan foothills of northeast India, they are equally divided today between India and Israel. Lives of the Children of Manasia is composed of twelve comprehensive oral history interviews with elderly members of the community in Israel.Conducted in the Mizo and Kuki languages by Isaac Thangjom, the interviews were translated by him into English and edited by Hillel Halkin. Many of the men and women interviewed here were among the founders of the Judaizing movement that led to the formation of the B’nei Menashe community in the early 1970’s. Their individual life stories, remarkable in their own right, narrate a collective drama that until now has been shrouded in myth and misconceptions.This book reveals how an initially small group of people descended from jungle warriors, illiterate rice farmers, and practitioners of a traditional tribal religion courageously found their way to Judaism; what about the latter attracted them, though they had never before met a real Jew in their lives; and how their fierce attachment to their new faith eventually brought them and many others to Israel, where some five thousand of them live today as full citizens.