On the Road with Rabbi Steinsaltz: 25 Years of Pre-Dawn Car Trips, Mind-Blowing Encounters, and Inspiring Conversations with a Man of Wisdom »

Arthur Kurzweil is a writer and teacher, and serves as publisher at Parabola magazine. He is the editor of Best Jewish Writing 2003 and author of From Generation to Generation: How to Trace Your Jewish Genealogy and Family History and co-editor of The Hadassah Jewish Family Book of Health and Wellness.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is internationally regarded as one of the most brilliant and influential rabbis of our time. He has been lauded by Time magazine as a “once-in-a-millennium scholar” and by Ted Koppel of Night Line as “one of the very few wise men that I’ve ever met.”

Arthur Kurzweil—himself a Jewish scholar, author, teacher, and publisher—has been a disciple of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s for over 25 years, as well as the Rabbi’s designated chauffer in the United States. While stuck in countless traffic jams and attending the Rabbi’s lectures at universities, government agencies, synagogues and seminars, Arthur Kurzweil has had the rare opportunity of personally learning from his inspired teacher and has become intimately familiar with the Rabbi’s wisdom and teachings.

Publishers Weekly

In this book-length love letter from a disciple to his mentor, author and editor Kurzweil traces his discovery of a "Teacher with a capital T" in Jerusalem-based Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, probably best known for his commentary on the Talmud. Fascinated and enlightened by Steinsaltz's masterpiece of Jewish theology, The Thirteen-Petalled Rose-he knows it almost by heart-Kurzweil once called the rabbi's U.S. office, volunteering to pick him up at the airport and chauffeur him around during his lecture tours. Thus began a two-decades-long journey of conversations about reincarnation, suffering, Talmud, Kabbalah, marijuana, parenting and much more. Part spiritual memoir, Kurzweil's own story is interpolated with Steinsaltz's, from his secular upbringing, experimentation with Eastern religions, immersion in magic and ultimate rediscovery of Judaism. Kurzweil faithfully transcribes the rabbi's encounters with Ted Koppel and the Lubavitcher rebbe as well as his poignant conversations with Kurzweil's own daughters about role models, love and divorce. All these interactions show the rabbi's nonjudgmental depth and wisdom. Steinsaltz's gifts as a scientist, mathematician, skeptic and man of God results in a "wholeness of vision" that helps Kurzweil transform his life and motivates him to encourage readers to mine Steinsaltz's genius for themselves. (Sept. 17) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

INTRODUCTION: Becoming the Rabbi's Driver: Stepping Down to a Higher Position (1980–1985).

I "A Series of Small Turnings" (1986).

II "Let My People Know" (1989).

III "Kabbalah Is the Official Theology of the Jewish People" (1998).

IV "Make the Lives of Your Teachers as Miserable as Possible" (2001).

V "If You Think You've Arrived, You're Lost" (2005).

Notes.

The Author.

Index.