Description: A unique depiction - part ethnography, part memoir, part novel - of the Polish Hasidic world on the eve of the First World War.
Brief description: Elissa Bemporad is Professor of History and Chair in East European Jewish History and the Holocaust at Queens College and the Graduate Center - CUNY. She is a three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Bemporad is the author of three monographs, including Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life (NYU Press, 2025). She is the co-editor of several volumes, including, most recently, Pogroms: A Documentary History (Oxford University Press, 2021). Her work has appeared in different languages, including French, Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, and Russian.
Review Quotes:
"Boyarin's translation-zesty, entertaining, and eloquent in equal measures-introduces
English readers to a remarkable tale by the noted author Yechiel Hofer. This text, a
must-read for anyone interested in the religious cultures of Jewish Eastern Europe, invites
us to step out of the present and into the thriving, complicated worlds of early twentieth-
century Hasidism." --Ariel Evan Mayse, author of Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (2024)
Boyarin brings to us a captivating example of Yiddish literature in his masterful English
translation and a rich historical source on a little-known aspect of the religious life of
Eastern European Jews. Beware! Once you start reading, you might not be able to put it
down!" --Marcin Wodzinski, author of Hasidism: Key Questions (2018)