“If Hasidism begins in the life-enhancing spirituality of the Baal Shem Tov, it concludes in the tortuous, elitist and utterly fascinating career of Nahman of Bratslav (1722–1810) whose biography and teaching Arthur Green has set forth in his comprehensive, moving, and subtle study, Tormented Master. “Arthur Green has managed to lead us through the thickets of the Bratslaver discourse with a grace and facility thus far unequaled in the English language literature on Hasidism. Tormented Master is a model of clarity and percipience, balancing awed respect and honor for its subject with a ruthless pursuit of documented truth. . . . Tormented Master is sufficiently open to the agonies of religion in general and the issues of modern religion in particular to make Nahman a thinker utterly relevant to our time. “Nahman of Bratslav is unique in the history of Judaism, Green emphasizes, for having made the individual’s quest for intimacy with God the center of the religious way. He was a Kierkegaard before his time, believing in the utter abandon of the life of faith and the risk of paradoxicality. . . . He was, more than all others, the predecessor of Kafka, whose tales, like Nahman’s, have no explicit key and rankle, flush and irritate the spirit, compelling us—even in our failure to understand—to acknowledge their potency and challenge.” —New York Times

“A major contribution to the understanding of Hasidic Wisdom and thought; it brings the reader closer to Hasidism’s greatest teller of tales.” —Elie Wiesel The search for spiritual meaning drives great leaders in all religions. This classic work explores the personality and religious quest of Nahman of Bratslav (1772–1810), one of Hasidism’s major figures. It unlocks the great themes of spiritual searching that make him a figure of universal religious importance. In this major biography, Dr. Arthur Green—teacher, scholar, and spiritual seeker—explores the great personal conflicts and inner torments that lay at the source of Nahman’s teachings. He reveals Nahman to have been marked at an early age by an exaggerated sense of sin and morbidity that later characterized his life and thought. While subject to rapid mood swings and even paranoia, Nahman is a model of spiritual and personal struggle who speaks to all generations. Green’s analysis of this troubled personality provides an important key to Nahman’s famous tales, making his teachings accessible for people of all faiths, all backgrounds. “If there is any single feature about Nahman’s tales, and indeed about Nahman’s life as well, that makes them unique in the history of Judaism, it is just this: their essential motif is one of quest. Nahman, both as teller and as hero of these tales, is Nahman the seeker. He has already told us, outside the tales, of his refusal ever to stand on any one rung, of his call for constant growth, of his need to open himself up to ever-new and more demanding challenges to his faith. The tales now affirm this endless quest...” —from Excursus II. The Tales

"A major contribution to the understanding of Hasidic Wisdom and thought; it brings the reader closer to Hasidism's greatest teller of tales." --Elie Wiesel The search for spiritual meaning drives great leaders in all religions. This classic work explores the personality and religious quest of Nahman of Bratslav (1772-1810), one of Hasidism's major figures. It unlocks the great themes of spiritual searching that make him a figure of universal religious importance. In this major biography, Dr. Arthur Green--teacher, scholar, and spiritual seeker--explores the great personal conflicts and inner torments that lay at the source of Nahman's teachings. He reveals Nahman to have been marked at an early age by an exaggerated sense of sin and morbidity that later characterized his life and thought. While subject to rapid mood swings and even paranoia, Nahman is a model of spiritual and personal struggle who speaks to all generations. Green's analysis of this troubled personality provides an important key to Nahman's famous tales, making his teachings accessible for people of all faiths, all backgrounds. "If there is any single feature about Nahman's tales, and indeed about Nahman's life as well, that makes them unique in the history of Judaism, it is just this: their essential motif is one of quest. Nahman, both as teller and as hero of these tales, is Nahman the seeker. He has already told us, outside the tales, of his refusal ever to stand on any one rung, of his call for constant growth, of his need to open himself up to ever-new and more demanding challenges to his faith. The tales now affirm this endless quest..." --from Excursus II. The Tales

Wulfson of Trevelyn, trusted knight of William the Conqueror, has never met a man he could not master. But in the tempestuous young widow Tarian of Trent, known as the Lady Warrior, Wulf may finally have met his match. Ordered by the king to curb an armed dispute between Tarian and her dead husband's uncle, Wulf captures the lady but falls captive himself to her seductive dark beauty. To Lady Tarian's dismay, however, neither her fighting spirit nor her wiles are sufficient to bend Wulfson to her will. She vows she will not be the loser in their passionate battle, but her own desire for this overpowering stranger threatens her body, her life, and her very heart.

Shoham presents existentialist and object-relationship personality theory using mythology as a projection of human behavior. Through the myth of Don Juan as well as the personality of Casanova, he highlights the biological parameter of the personality and the thought of Kierkegaard and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. He concludes by relating the dynamics of personality to the predisposition of crime and madness.

Metaphor and identity. The discursive personality -- Stuck in the middle with you -- A double edged sword -- Anxiety and discourse. Theology and duality -- Mediated deliverance -- Faith. Wheel within a wheel -- Faith as core and structure -- Silence fraught with meaning.

Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah. In The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by listening to the voices of those who participated in the process and by deciphering its cultural codes and meanings. On the one hand, a great majority of observant Jews still accepted the authority of the Talmud and the leadership of the rabbis; on the other, there was a gradually more conspicuous minority of "Epicureans" and "freethinkers." As the ground shifted, each individual was marked according to his or her place on the path between faith and heresy, between devoutness and permissiveness or indifference. Building on his award-winning Jewish Enlightenment, Feiner unfolds the story of critics of religion, mostly Ashkenazic Jews, who did not take active part in the secular intellectual revival known as the Haskalah. In open or concealed rebellion, Feiner's subjects lived primarily in the cities of western and central Europe—Altona-Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Breslau, and Prague. They participated as "fashionable" Jews adopting the habits and clothing of the surrounding Gentile society. Several also adopted the deist worldview of Enlightenment Europe, rejecting faith in revelation, the authority of Scripture, and the obligation to observe the commandments. Peering into the synagogue, observing individuals in the coffeehouse or strolling the boulevards, and peeking into the bedroom, Feiner recovers forgotten critics of religion from both the margins and the center of Jewish discourse. His is a pioneering work on the origins of one of the most significant transformations of modern Jewish history.