Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity

A Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity

Lewis, Yitzhak

Hardcover

Literary CriticismJudaism

ISBN10: 1438477678
ISBN13: 9781438477671
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Mar 1 2020
Pages: 242
Weight: 1.15
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Situates a Hasidic master in the context of his time, demonstrating his formative influence on Jewish literary modernity.

The Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Braslav (1772-1810) has held a place in the Jewish popular imagination for more than two centuries. Some see him as the (self-proclaimed) Messiah, others as the forerunner of modern Jewish literature. Existing studies struggle between these dueling readings, largely ignoring questions of aesthetics and politics in his work. A Permanent Beginning lays out a new paradigm for understanding R. Nachman's thought and writing, and, with them, the beginnings of Jewish literary modernity. Yitzhak Lewis examines the connections between imperial modernization processes in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century and the emergence of modern literature in the storytelling of R. Nachman. Reading his tales and teachings alongside the social, legal, and intellectual history of the time, the book's guiding question is literary: How does R. Nachman represent this changing environment in his writing? Lewis paints a nuanced and fascinating portrait of a literary thinker and creative genius at the very moment his world was evolving unrecognizably. He argues compellingly that R. Nachman's narrative response to his changing world was a major point of departure for Jewish literary modernity.

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