Volume one
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, a Holocaust victim and the Grand Rebbe of Piaseczno, used to deliver priceless sermons in the Warsaw Ghetto during the war. For years, the printed editions of the sermons’ manuscripts have provided only partial versions of the text, which had been perpetually changed, rephrased and revised by its original author.
The first volume of this book provides a critical and annotated edition of these manuscripts, published following a long editing and deciphering process based on the original manuscript, located in Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute Archives. The book paints a new picture of this important, universal and historical document and unveils the personal story of its fascinating author.
Prof. Daniel Reiser heads the Department of Jewish Thought at Hertzog College. He specializes in Hasidic philosophy, modern mysticism, and theology in the Shoah. Reiser was a Matanel and a Warburg Post-Doc Fellow at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was an adjunct lecturer in the department of Jewish Thought there. He was a Yad-Vashem Post-Doc Fellow in Jerusalem and a Claims Conference Saul Kagan Post-Doc Fellow in Advanced Shoah Studies, New York. His latest books are Language of Truth in the Mother Tongue: The Yiddish Sermons of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2020); Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism (De Gruyter, 2018), and Sermons from the Years of Rage (Herzog College, The World Union of Jewish Studies and Yad Vashem, 2017).
Late Hasidism was perceived and presented in research as a movement of institutionalization and entrenchment that lost the initial Hasidic renaissance, and even degenerated. Recently there have been changes in research and more complex methods and approaches have been introduced that find characteristics unique to late Hasidim.
