An approachable and admiring introduction appropriate for readers interested in modern Jewish thought.
A biography of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), whose influence on Judaism and the Jewish people is still coming into focus.
One of America’s leading rabbis, Telushkin (Hillel: If Not Now, When?, 2010, etc.) is well-qualified to write about his subject: While he is not a Lubavitcher, he has been an affectionate observer of the movement for his entire life, and his father served as Schneerson’s personal accountant. Less a traditional biography and more a compendium of mostly lighthearted anecdotes, the book progresses thematically, highlighting Schneerson’s thoughts and quips on a wide variety of subjects. Telushkin draws on Schneerson’s public statements as well as his voluminous correspondence and his thousands of private audiences, with his followers and others, both Jewish and non-Jewish, memorably held in the middle of the night. Broadly educated, Schneerson spent eight years studying engineering at prestigious universities before seeking rabbinic ordination, and each morning he read the newspapers in four languages. His far-reaching secular interests were evident in his humanistic mindset and lateral thought processes; he praised the astronauts after the moon landing, saying that he “discerned in [their] disciplined lifestyle…lessons with which Jews—particularly the sort who would not instinctively accept the demands of the Torah—could inspire themselves to be more observant.” Schneerson had no heirs (“Never spoken of in public, we can only imagine what a great tragedy and disappointment this was”), and his death was so keenly felt that his followers found the idea of appointing a successor unthinkable. Many clung to the hope that he was the Messiah, creating a deep rift in the Orthodox world. Telushkin concludes that those who believe this “do not mean what people think they mean…the Messiah issue is, in the final analysis, a non-issue.”
An approachable and admiring introduction appropriate for readers interested in modern Jewish thought.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-231898-5
Page Count: 624
Publisher: Harper Wave
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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