Between Berlin and Slobodka: Jewish Transition Figures from Eastern Europe by Hillel Goldberg

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This penetrating collective biography traces the odyssey of six towering men of spirit and intellect who absorbed the best that East European Jewish culture could offer and then left to taste the fruits of Western civilization. The result was a unique intellectual accomplishment, which for most of them entailed emotional and intellectual conflict.

The six thinkers are Israel Salanter, founder of the pietistic Musar movement in 19th century Lithuania; Harry Wolfson, historian of Western philosophy at Harvard University; Isaac Hutner, dean of an institution he fashioned into a major American rabbinical school; Joseph B. Solovetichik, talmudist par excellence at Yeshiva University; Abraham J. Heschel, multifaceted scholar of Hasidism, Jewish mysticism, philosophy and theology, and American civil rights activist; and Joseph Z. Lipovitz, an independent Israeli thinker whose thought receives its first careful analysis in this book.

Year first published: 2021