געגועים ליופי: שלוש מסות

The writings of the Warsaw journalist and mystic Hillel Zeitlin (1871-1942) are a reflection of the various stages of his life. The essays collected in this volume were authored in 1908-1909, critical years in which Zeitlin emerged as an exceptional religious thinker rooted at once in the depths of heresy. This standpoint was spurred, in part, by the pessimism of the Russian-Jewish philosopher Lev Shestov, whom Zeitlin later styled “the most original Jew I have ever encountered.” The three essays collected in this volume share this dynamic of profound heresy and faith. The first two essays, “Shekhinah: Contemplation” and “Transcendent Beauty: Lyric Compositions Drawn from the Aggadah and Kabbalah,” both published in 1908, are composed of textual fragments taken from rabbinic and kabbalistic literature. Here Zeitlin sought to clarify and shed light on the Jewish mythos and its resplendent imagery. “Shekhinah,” in particular, made a great impression on the young Gershom Scholem, who penned a German translation of the piece for Martin Buber’s Der Jude, although it was ultimately shelved. The third essay in this volume, “The Thirst: A Vision of the Heart,” published in 1909, is a response to David Frischman’s Hebrew translation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which appeared that same year in the journal Reshafim. Here Zeitlin gave expression to the unceasing search for a new God prompted by the Nietzschean death of God, a quest whose only terminus is the voice of God calling to be searched. “Shekhinah” and “Transcendent Beauty” were reissued by Aaron Zeitlin in 1960 in the volume Al Gvul Shnei Olamot, yet that edition was marred by censorship, omissions, and textual revisions to the extent that what was published were entirely different works. “Shekhinah,” “Transcendent Beauty,” and “The Thirst” are here presented in their original form, profound literary expressions of the religious truth found in the depths of heresy.