Authors: Nehemiah Polen
ISBN-13: 9780876688427, ISBN-10: 0876688423
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Aronson, Jason Inc.
Date Published: January 1997
Edition: (Non-applicable)
The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto is a journey into the mind and spirit of a sublime hasidic master in his moments of joy and tranquillity, and later, in his time of personal and communal catastrophe. The reader takes a voyage into the rich and variegated world of twentieth-century Hasidism in Poland, a world destroyed by the Holocaust. This is a volume inspired by a deeply sensitive and poetic individual of faith who is grappling with an unfolding disaster. While the Holocaust has engendered a voluminous body of religious and philosophical writings attempting to probe the issues this unfathomable period raises in all their enormity, virtually all were written after the war, when a modicum of distance and reflection is possible. Contemporaneous diaries and chronicles written as the events were happening concentrate on the descriptive accounts of the horrors. The Holy Fire, however, engages a sustained theological reflection and stands alone as an extended religious response from within the heart of darkness itself while the catastrophe takes place, and is, for this reason, an extraordinary document and an astonishing personal achievement.
Preface | ||
A Note to the Reader | ||
Introduction | ||
1 | Rabbi Shapira's Origins, Life, and Work | 1 |
The War's Outbreak | 6 | |
Activities During the War | 12 | |
2 | General Characteristics of Esh Kodesh | 15 |
Absence of Politico-Historical References | 17 | |
Teaching as Defiance: Noncontextual Derashot | 20 | |
Interpretive Approach | 21 | |
3 | Writing in the Darkness | 23 |
Derashot on the Creative Process | 24 | |
4 | The Transformation of Suffering | 36 |
Transforming Fear into Awe | 37 | |
Psychic Disintegration | 38 | |
Encouragement to Service | 42 | |
The Greatness of Israel | 44 | |
Mutuality and Relationship | 49 | |
Maintaining Joy | 53 | |
Overcoming Survivor's Guilt | 58 | |
Balancing Humility and Pride | 59 | |
Self-Control in the Face of Din | 61 | |
Suffering as Sacrificial Offering | 62 | |
Preparing for Martyrdom: The World of Pure Thought | 67 | |
5 | Faith Secure, Faith Transfigured | 70 |
Faith in Deliverance | 71 | |
Protest within Faith | 94 | |
6 | The Mystical Vision of Divine Weeping | 106 |
Sin and Chastisement | 106 | |
Divine Suffering | 115 | |
7 | Transmuting Evil | 122 |
Jacob and the Struggle with Esau's Angel | 124 | |
Amalek | 126 | |
The Serpent | 127 | |
Sublimating Evil into Good | 130 | |
Confronting and Transcending the Enemy | 133 | |
8 | Conclusions | 136 |
The Triumph of the Good | 139 | |
The Mutual Compassion of God and Israel | 141 | |
Epilogue | 147 | |
The Last Months | 152 | |
Notes | 157 | |
Bibliography | 189 | |
Index of Esh Kodesh Passages | 199 | |
General Index | 203 |