Malkah Shapiro grew up in Poland, the daughter of a noted Hasidic master. The Rebbe's Daughter tells her story: a rare glimpse of the world of the Hasidic Jew in pre-World War I Eastern Europe. This is a learned text, filled with biblical, talmudic, kabbalistic, and hasidic allusions and direct quotations, demonstrating that, in constrast to the stereotype of traditional Jewish girls' education at the turn of the century, the author was blessed with a thorough education in Judiac classics. Shapiro's tale, translated and presented in Rabbi Polen's capable hands, is poetic and sensitive,...