Research Catalog

Title

The Rebbe : the life and afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson / Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman.

Author

Heilman, Samuel C.

Publication

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Friedman, Menachem.

Description

xix, 343 p., [16] p. of plates : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

""Brilliant, well-researched, and sure to be controversial, The Rebbe is the most important biography of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson ever to appear. Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman, two of the world's foremost sociologists of religion, have produced a landmark study of Chabad, religious messianism, and one of the greatest spiritual figures of the twentieth century."---Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History" ""The Rebbe is a must-read book for anyone concerned with contemporary Jewry as well as for historians of religion. Heilman and Friedman have done a masterful job of combining impeccable scholarship with a great sense of the drama unfolding before them. They dispel myths and restore the Rebbe to the real world of humanity, doing so with sensitivity and warmth."---Arthur Green, author of Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav" ""This book offers a deeply engaging and well-researched account of the rise to power of one of the most intriguing religious figures of the twentieth century, Jewish or otherwise. There are few subjects in the study of contemporary Judaism of greater interest or relevance than the messianic legacy of the Rebbe. This book will become the definitive study on the subject."---David N. Myers, author of Between Jew and Arab" ""This is a timely and important book. Authored by two highly reputable scholars, The Rebbe is likely to appeal to an eager and broad readership, academic and lay. It has few rivals."---Ada Rapoport-Albert, editor of Hasidism Reappraised" "From the 1950s until his death in 1994, Menachem Mendel Scheneerson---revered by his followers worldwide simply as the Rebbe---built the Lubavitcher movement from a relatively small sect within Hasidic Judaism into the Powerful force in Jewish life that it is today Swept away by his expectation that the Messiah was coming, he came to believe that he could deny death and change history." "Samuel Heilman and Menachem Fried Man Paint an unforgettable portrait of Schnerrson, showing how he reinvented himself from an aspiring French-traned electrical engineer into a charismatic leader who believed that he and his Lubavitcher Hasidic emissaries could transform the world. They reveal how his messianic Convictions ripened and how the attempted to bring the ancient idea of a day of redemption onto the modern world's agenda: Heiman and Friedman also trace what happened after the Rebbe's death by which time many of his followers had come to think of him as the Messiah himself." "The Rebbe tracks Schneerson's remarkable life from his birth in Russia, to his student days in Berlin and Paris, to his rise to global renown in New York, where he developed and preached his powerful spiritual message from the groups gothic mansion in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This compelling book demonstrates how Schneersons embrace of traditionalism and American style modernity made him uniquely suited to his messianic mission."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Hasidim > New York (State) > New York > Biography
• Schneerson, Menachem Mendel, 1902-1994
• Rabbis > New York (State) > New York > Biography
• Habad

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN

• 9780691138886 (hardcover : alk. paper)
• 0691138885 (hardcover : alk. paper)

LCCN

2009050871

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries