Primary Format: Paper | |
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ISBN: | 9781611683080 |
Published: | 02/14/2012 |
Pages: | 350 |
Size: | 6 x 9 in. |
Subject(s): | Jewish Studies Biography and Letters |
The Besht: Magician, Mystic, and Leader
Immanuel Etkes
Paper: $40.00E-book: $39.99
"Etkes' full control of the relevant historical and religious material makes this a major study that will influence all subsequent discussion."
Choice
Different understandings and portrayals of the Besht abound in the works of scholars . . . Etkes's book makes an important and valuable contribution to our understanding and in many ways goes beyond the efforts of previous scholars.
—Association of Jewish Studies
Etkes' book is less of a biography than an analysis, an attempt to understand who and what the Besht was within the context of his times . . . I was particularly intrigued and impressed by the section on the Besht as a mystic and a pioneer.
—Jewish Book World
Etkes' full control of the relevant historical and religious material makes this a major study that will influence all subsequent discussion.
—Choice
Immanuel Etkes has produced a major, highly erudite re-evaluation of the Besht that both clarifies and clearly contextualizes the work of many earlier scholars, and as well presents a well-documented and deeply learned portrait of the still-mysterious Israel Baal Shem Tov. This book is essential reading for those working in the field of East European Judaism, as well as for anyone interested in the origins and early history of Hasidism.
—The Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies
Etkes’ study adds a most important and original contribution to the ongoing study of Hasidism’s origins. He is a social historian with a keen grasp of the religious mind, a combination critical for understanding this movement. He has also written a highly readable and consistently interesting book.
—Arthur Green, Brandeis University
Critical scholarship in recent years has managed, perhaps for the first time, to locate the legendary Israel Besht within his proper social and historical context in mid-eighteenth-century Poland. However, this fresh contextualisation has had the effect of obliterating much of the individuality and stature that the Hasidic movement had traditionally ascribed to the man it construed as its unique founder. On the basis of skillful selection and analysis of admittedly problematic hagiographical and other Hasidic literary sources, Etkes succeeds in reconstrcuting the reality of the historical personality and impact of the Besht, presenting him afresh as an extraordinary figure and an original spiritual master.
—Ada Rapoport-Albert, University College, London
IMMANUEL ETKES is the Bella and Israel Unterberg Professor of History of the Jewish People and Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. A prolific author, Etkes has published in Hebrew several works on major religious movements in the modern period including Hasidism and the Musar movement. He has published critically acclaimed monographs on the lives of major Jewish religious figures, including the The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image (2002).