The dawning of the nineteenth century found the Jews of Eastern Europe torn between the forces of progress and reaction as they took their first tentative steps toward the modern world. In a war of words and of books, Haskala—the Jewish Enlightenment—did battle with the religious revival movement known as Hasidism. Perl, an ardent advocate of Enlightenment, unleashed the opening salvo with the publication in 1819 of Revealer of Secrets. The novel tried to pass itself off as a hasidic holy book when it was, in fact, a broadside against Hasidism—a parody of its teachings and of the language of its holy books. The outraged hasidim responded by buying up and burning as many copies as they could.Dov Taylor's careful translation and commentary make this classic of Hebrew literature available and accessible to the contemporary English-speaking reader while preserving the integrity and bite of Perl's original. With Hasidism presently enjoying a remarkable rebirth, the issues in Revealer of Secrets are all the more relevant to those seeking to balance reason and faith. As the first Hebrew novel, the work will also be of great interest to students of modern Hebrew literature and modern Jewish history.
In 1819, Joseph Perl anonymously published the Hebrew novel Megalle Temirin (Revealer of Secrets) as a salvo in the battle between adherents of Haskala (the Jewish Enlightenment) and the religious revivalism of Hasidism. An ardent supporter of Haskala, Perl's book was purported to be a collection of letters between numerous Hasidim but was in fact a satire of the sect's teachings. Now Westview is publishing the book with extensive scholarly apparatus provided by Rabbi Dov Taylor as Joseph Perl's Revealer of Secrets: The First Hebrew Novel.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Taylor's translation of Perl's epistolary novel of 19th-century Jewish life in Eastern Europe gives the English-speaking reader an opportunity to savor a Hebrew classic. The modern world was dawning, and the Haskala?"the Jewish Enlightenment"?was engaged in a battle with the religious revival movement known as Hasidism. Perl, an ardent advocate of enlightenment, wrote this work in 1819 to parody Hasidism. It stands as the prototype as well as the pinnacle of the novel genre in Hebrew. As an historical novel, it is also a rich contemporary source of Jewish life in Galicia and the Pale. Recommended for scholarly and Jewish studies collections.?Molly Abramowitz, Silver Spring, Md.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
