Letters of Light: Passages from Ma'or Va-Shemesh

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Letters of Light is a translation of over ninety passages from a well-known Hasidic text, Ma'or 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 leading from the Torah-text itself through various later sources to the Krakow preacher’s own reading of the biblical text, one that often transforms the very tenor of the text he was expounding. Though composed almost two centuries ago, Ma'or va-Shemesh comprises an impressive spiritual statement, many parts of which can speak to our own time and its spiritual strivings.