“A major contribution to the
understanding of Hasidic Wisdom and thought; it brings the
reader closer to Hasidism’s greatest teller of
tales.”
—Elie
Wiesel
The search for spiritual meaning drives
great leaders in all religions. This classic work explores the
personality and religious quest of Nachman of Bratslav
(1772–1810), one of Hasidism’s major figures. It
unlocks the great themes of spiritual searching that make him a
figure of universal religious importance.
In this major biography, Dr. Arthur
Green—teacher, scholar, and spiritual
seeker—explores the great personal conflicts and inner
torments that lay at the source of Nachman’s teachings. He
reveals Nachman to have been marked at an early age by an
exaggerated sense of sin and morbidity that later characterized
his life and thought. While subject to rapid mood swings and
even paranoia, Nachman is a model of spiritual and personal
struggle who speaks to all generations. Green’s analysis
of this troubled personality provides an important key to
Nachman’s famous tales, making his teachings accessible
for people of all faiths, all backgrounds.
“If there is any single feature
about Nachman’s tales, and indeed about Nachman’s
life as well, that makes them unique in the history of Judaism,
it is just this: their essential motif is one of quest. Nachman,
both as teller and as hero of these tales, is Nachman the
seeker. He has already told us, outside the tales, of his
refusal ever to stand on any one rung, of his call for constant
growth, of his need to open himself up to ever-new and more
demanding challenges to his faith. The tales now affirm this
endless quest…”
—from
Excursus II. The Tales
“A model of clarity and
percipience, Tormented Master is sufficiently open to the agonies of
religion in general and the issues of modern religion in
particular to make Nachman a thinker utterly relevant to our
time.”
—New
York Times Book Review
