Sunday, August 03, 2008

Better Than Eli Weisel

"Souls on Fire" and a followup volume are Eli Weislel's contribution of presenting, in a literary fashion, Chassidic tales.

Nine Gates by Jiri Langer is better.



Published originally in Czech in 1937, it first appeared in English in 1961. Seems it was published at least twice more in English editions in 1987 and 1996 and in paperback in 1976. Luckily, I found an original 1961 edition for 60 NIS here in Jerusalem.

It is a fascinating collection of tales dealing with other Admorim than Weisel. And best of all are the introductions, by the author but first by his brother.

Jiri, of Prague,



packed his belongings and took off in 1913 for Belz. A "chozer b'tshuva", he spent all of WW I with the Belzer Rebbe in Hungary and he remained basically Chassidic for almost a decade while joining up with Kafka and Freud. He managed to escape to then Palestine in 1939, probably on the Sakariya, but succumbed to a kidney disease and died in 1943 in Tel Aviv.

I highly recommend the book.

3 comments:

Jack Steiner said...

This is in reference to Haveil Havalim. If you want to be notified each week send me an email at talktoajacknow-at-sbcglobal-dot-net and I'll add you to the list.

If I am not mistaken Batya is currently on there, but we'll be happy to include you too.

YMedad said...

But I most certainly did get previously informed. So, what went wrong?

YMedad said...

And now this:

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