Fifty-four charming and evocative tales, especially translated from Hebrew for this volume, recapture a rich yet virtually forgotten chapter in the history of Jewish narrative. They form the important transistional link between the esoteric mystical teachings of the sixteen-century kabbalists and the populists tales of the eighteenth-century Eastern European Hasidim. The author's running commentary further enhances the reader's appreciation of this capitivating material.

The teachers of Hasidism gave new life to the literary tradition of parable, a story that teaches a spiritual or moral truth. In The Hasidic Parable, acclaimed author Aryeh Wineman takes readers through the great works of the hasidic storytellers. Telling parables, explains Rabbi Wineman, was a strategy that the hasidic masters used to foster a radical shift in thinking about God, the world, and the values and norms of religious life. Although these parables date back 200 years or more, they deal with moral and religious themes and issues still relevant today. Each is accompanied by...

Letters of Light is a translation of over ninety passages from a well-known Hasidic text, Maor va-shemesh, consisting of homilies of Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Krakow, together with a running commentary and analysis by Aryeh Wineman. With remarkable creativity, the Krakow preacher recast biblical episodes and texts through the prism both of the pietistic values of Hasidism, with its accent on the inner life and the Divine innerness of all existence, and of his ongoing wrestling with questions of the primacy of the individual vis-a-vis that of the community. The commentary traces the route...