Four Hasidic Masters and Their Struggle Against Melancholy:
Riemer, Jack
remembering others," Lewes was not Comtean Positivism to an English audi- cance too rare. Hock Guan Tjoa has as-...
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...This is the theme of Hock lems of Life and Mind (1874-79), com- S. Haight gives to the pattern of George Guan Tjoa's book about him.Lewes was born to comfortable pleted by George Eliot, which attempts a Eliot's life in the Letters...
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...And then Wiesel explains the tale in RABBI JACK RIEMER is Scholar-in- words that are a succinct summary of Residence ofthe Congregation B'nai Amoona what Hasidism is all about: "What did in St...
...He STRUGSLE AGAINST NELANCROLY could use in teaching others, and not in was both an original thinker as well as a EJie Wiesei order to judge how he told his tales, but popularizer and earned the respect of his Univ...
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...theFormightly arti- orful intellectual enterprises, but inevitaWhen Turgenev writes to her on cles on Darwin (1868), which provided bly one wishes that the kaleidoscope had Lewes's death that "All your friends, all been g~ven the final missing satisfying learned Europe mourns with you," one an informed contemporary commentaryon the question of natural selection thatturn...
...Israel Baal Shem Tov would be coming SIDNEY CALLAHAN is assistant professor of to our town...
...When read with the mind and heart they are found to be a rich and deep look at the friendship that existed between these two extraordinarily creative men...
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...And yet, as Elie Wieseldemonstrated at Notre Dame,and as is becoming more and more clear to many sensitive people, to a society such as ours that is so fragmented, that needs so much to create a sense of community, to a society that has so much scientific knowledge andso little senseofpurpose, to a society that is able to set foot on the moon but does not know how to lift a head up from the ground, to such a society thestory ofHasidismand its efforts to give man dignity and joy and purposeon this planet speaks with power and with relevance...
...Father Hesburgh, the president Jew, the Jew was the devil to the priest...
...TERRY BROWN Bishop Patterson Theological Centre P.O...
...He turned around and saw awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to write me, and I was convinced that he was Microficlle her third book on Erasmus's theological seeing me, me and no one else--but so CAN BE OBTAINED FROM was everyone else in the room...
...The Life and Works of Goethe sembled some ofthe fascinating pieces of "'She is a Mediaeval Saint with a grand (1855), which was a benchmark literary George Henry Lewes's various and colgenius...
...As Hesburgh describes it, these very high as a philosopher, Huxley as a J a c k R i e m e r were people who were listening, not just physiologist...
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...Worlds that had existed side by pages give, for the most part, a duller set probably never heard of Naftali of Rop- side and nevertouched in Eastern Europe of summaries and excerpts from the spec- shitz or Pinchas ofKoretz orany of these came together in Indiana...
...Friendship" and "concern" are the begged for help...
...down of miracles which so many think is theirjoy and intheir distress and of being "Woe unto me," said the disciple, "I what Hasidism was all about...
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...hope--the greatest miracles of all...
...His books include Jewish Reflec- Pinhas of Koretz try to teach his young tions on Death (Schocken...
...One: not togive up...
...I open the Hasidism, and which are also miracles, ship, this relationship between Rebbe Talmud and contemplate it but aimlessly...
...he founded and edited literary journals and FOUR HASIDIC PIASTERS AND THEIR techniques of story-telling that they did a bit of stage-acting on the side...
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...On the platform Elie that linked them together with the Victorians, Lewes doesn't translate verywell as a "Mind" only--especially inWiesel, scion of Viznitz, who but for the speakerdespite all the many obvious cul138 pages of text, and more especially Holocaust would haveprobably lived out tural differences between them...
...H e is the was able to go on . . ." author of Paul Tillich's Theology of the Church ( W a y n e State...
...Then one day I learned that Rebbe at Stanford University in California...
...that came to hear what he had to say to contemporaries: John Morley "put him them...
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...A disci- own, others have gone through the same r a r e . ple once came to Pinchas of Koretz and sorrow and endured the same anguish...
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...who never heard of Goethe or Voltaire, who were neverheard ofby Beethoven or Kant, who dressed in special clothes in order to stress their differentness from the world outside, who spoke no language but their own Jewish one, who read in no cultures and who spoke to no society but their own...
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...Smyth was quite critical of the (pro-Vatican I1) Roman Catholic Church for its politics and theology, it seems possible that he may havehad contact with individual Roman Catholics on the political left...
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...Correspondence (Continued from page 290) I must confessthat we allow our children to read orwrite during Sunday Mass should the sermon or service become too long, provided: of course they are sufficiently discreet about it...
...And so Rebbe away at his spirit as much as or more than Pinhas of Koretz invited the student to come closer, and then said with a smile:"Know, my young friend, that what is he uplifted theirs...
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...and disciple, a relationship in which each I remain riveted to the same page, to the At the onelevel what could seem more affected the other...
...For him there is nothing, there is nothing there, set him aside.., stopthe train and let him o f f . . . the guys who do not go all the way to the real poem betterstop the train and get off, and they already have, they were never on the train in the first place...
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...are not formal factual discourses, alBaedeker to point out such highlights of And it was right because by then though they are obviously the product of the touras the popularBiographical His- Wiesel had somehow succeeded in form- much learning and offirst-hand acquainttory...
...I tried study, prayer, meditation--in vain...
...visitor...
...No sening to be French peasants discussing has a sense in reading the present study tence could more acutely describe the apocryphal wines...
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...But in the midst of all their joking and carrying on (the various pseudonyms they use to sign these letters are punch lines all by themselves...
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...Mass, I looked over my six-year-old's shoulder as he wrote the following verse: "The Unknown face of G o d . . . is love, joy, life, and death...
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...Old Mansfield Road You s e e , " said Rebbe Pinchas of Koretz, Wooster, Ohio 44691 RONALD MODRAS is currently a Visiting "the questions remained questions, but I Scholar at Harvard DivinitySchool...
...As of Notre Dame, captures something of Now in Indiana the priest was the stua result the very engaging Lewes comes the drama ofthe scenein his very moving dent, the companion-in-search, who lisacross less happily than one would ex- introduction to this book...
...I R E V I E W E R S tried penitence, solitude, silence--in JOHN AHERN isassistantprofessor ofItalian vain...
...Twice I read Michael True's review [Mar...
...unedited) Not bad, not bland...
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...must not think that one is alone and that friendship andconcern for eachother, for The story with which this book begins one's inner tragedy is exclusively one's their disciples, and for the world that is sets the tone for all that follows...
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...we find out about subjects that were of interest to Mortonand Laxand others, namely: solitude, ecumenism, race, peace and the condition of poetry.What need for Brother Patrick Hart to "shore up" these letters...
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...Curiosity led me to the ON psychology at Fairfield University Graduate place where he was receiving his followSchool of Education...
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...Hock Guan Tjoa has asfanciful, it seems, when he said of her, ence...
...Priests and count ofhis varied careerand the last 108 the audience priests and nuns who had Rebbes...
...They are metaphysical bias, which introduced group that came not in order to learn essentially the retelling ofa saga and the Commonweal: 316 recreation of a special moment in Jewish the only ones without a Rebbe to lean on, questions are without answers, to go on history, a moment in which a corps of and so their lives were often dark and asking them just the same...
...It is I like that last sentence for its gentle itude...
...To the Editors: Since November I have read A Catch ofAnti-Letters by Thomas Morton n and Robert l a x five times...
...Indeed, Morton speaks to something much like this when talking about Lax's poetry: "Let us for the moment set aside the reader ofyourbook who will not play all or nothing and will notattend to every bit of black and white, etc...
...The disciple confessed Three: one must know where to look and key motifs of this book...
Vol. 106 • May 1979 • No. 10