KABBALAH AND THE HOLOCAUST

Spring Valley, NY; Orot, 2001. Hardcover. Publishers cloth. 4to. 135 pages. 27 cm. First edition. "Rabbi Bezalel Naor, well known lecturer and author, has published a unique contribution to Holocaust studies. The book, entitled "Kabbalah and the Holocaust, " deals specifically with Kabbalistic responses to the Shoah. Based both on interviews with survivors and historic research, the author records how Kabbalists of various communities fell back on their respective mystic traditions to avert the evil decree. In this book, Rabbi Naor performs a twofold service, tracing the historic development of different schools within Kabbalah, and telling how representatives of those schools used the weapons within their spiritual armamentum to combat the enemy. Thus, the reader gains perspective on the Lithuanian Mitnagdic school of the Vilna Gaon, the Galician-Hungarian-Rumanian Hasidic dynasty of Nadborna, the Balkan (Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia) Sephardic school, the Polish Hasidic tradition of Pshyscha (Kotzk-Izbica-Lublin-Radzyn) , and the Yemenite approach. The book is essential to Holocaust studies for yet another reason. It corrects a certain ethnocentric distortion by showing that the conflagration affected Sephardic Jews and came close to engulfing Yemenite Jewry. Discussed are topics such as: meditation; reincarnation; Divine communication; free will vs. Predestination; good and evil and beyond; automatic speech; and Semitic and Japhetic civilizations. Rabbi Bezalel Naor has been a student of Kabbalah for many years, and has published numerous scholarly articles and books in the field, including recently the revised version of the Vilna Gaon's commentary to Sifra di-Zeni'uta from a manuscript in the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. Kabbalah and the Holocaust is a handsome folio volume, cloth hardcover with black endpapers. The dust jacket has white embossed lettering on a stark black background and is visually stunning. " (Review by Michael Skakun in the March 15th 2002 weekly "Jewish Press") . Subjects: Cabala - History. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) . Mysticism - Judaism. Rabbis - Anecdotes. Mystics - Anecdotes. Hasidim - Anecdotes. Vg+ in very good jacket. (HOLO2-97-2).