The Earth Is the Lord's: The Inner World of the Jew in Eastern Europe (A Jewish Lights Classic Reprint)

Delightfully light reading! Can a history book be called such? Yes! It's as if one were sitting with an elderly Rabbi and letting him guide you through a short yet informative personal history of the Jew in Eastern Europe. It is tender and spiritual. If you want to sit with a Rabbi and have him give you a delightful walk through history, this is the book for you. It is not long and drawn out and you can muse over the woodcarving illustrations at each chapter. It's a pleasant peek into the past which is still relevant today. Any person who loves Jewish History would do a disservice to themselves if they don't read this book.

Loved reading this book for a clearer understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe

Much like the first book I recommended on Amazon.com (Reb Arthur Green's, "Your Word is Fire," in my Listmania List on Neo-Hasidism), this is an inspirational work from the late great Reb Heschel. While not written in a way that is directly related to prayer or pray-ing, this work may inspire your head and your heart to such a means. Beautiful expressions of the "golden era" of hasidism's past.

I have intimately read a number of Rabbi Heschel's work and each one has its own identity, message and vision. This wonderful writing places the reader into the mind and soul of people from a bygone era. We simply do not know of such a divinely connected way of life. Heschel's deep feeling of love and loss relevant to way of living jumps from every page. Combining history, awareness and a fabulous tales throughout makes this reading a most joyful, insightful and at the end, emotional experience. No matter what your affiliation, read it! Actually, that would be appropriate to say on any of this Master's work.

All satisfactory

This is the first book published by Rabbi Heschel after he escaped from Europe, "a brand plucked from the fire" in his words. It is a beautiful evocation of Ashkenazi spirituality before the Holocaust and a good introduction to R' Heschel's "depth theology" as well.

My son needed this book for a college course.

This small but brilliant volume condenses and crystallizes Jewish thought and Talmudic methods, but one can read it in three hours.Central to Judaism are Torah and Talmud--which offer democratic learning systems open to all willing to avail themselves. Heschel uses the great Yiddish writer Mendele Moher Sefarim's description of a typical Eastern European Jewish town--"where Torah was studied from time immemorial; where practically all the inhabitants are scholars, where the Synagogue or the House of Study is full of people of all classes busily engaged in studies, townfolk as well as young men from afar...where at dusk, between twilight and evening prayers, artisans and other simple folk gather around the tables to listen to a discourse on the great books of Torah, to interpretations of Scripture, to readings from theological, homiletical or ethical writings...., where on the Sabbath and the holidays, near the Holy Ark, at the reading stand, sermons are spoken that kindle the hearts of the Jewish people for the Divine Presence, sermons seasoned with parables and aphorisms of the sages, in a voice and a tone that heartens one's soul, that melts all limbs, that penetrates the whole being." Study included all: Indeed, a book preserved at New York's Yivo Institute bears the stamp of the Berditshev Society of Wood Choppers for the Study of Mishnah, the earliest part of Talmud.A Christian scholar who visited Warsaw during World War I saw many parked coaches with no drivers in sight. In his country, he wrote, "I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtible of Jewish drivers. It consisted of two rooms: one filled with Talmud volumes, the other a room for prayer. All the drivers were involved in fervent study and religious discussion.... It was then that I... became convinced that all the professions, the bakers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtible in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from work is given to the study of Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other, 'Sog mir a shtickle Torah--Tell me a little Torah."European Jews studied in their own language--Yiddish--born of what Heschel calls "a will to make intelligible, to explain and simplify the tremendous complexities of the sacred literature. Thus there arose, as though spontaneously, a mother tongue, a direct expression of feeling, a mode of speech without ceremony or artifice, a language that speaks itself without taking devious paths, a tongue that has maternal intimacy and warmth. In this language, you say 'beauty' and mean 'spirituality;' you say 'kindness' and mean 'holiness.' Few languages can be spoken so simply and directly; there are but few languages which lend themselves with such difficulty to falseness. No wonder Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav would sometimes choose Yiddish to pour out his heart to God."Heschel's words could easily define the Jewish faith itself. The world he describes was lost in the Holocaust, but the faith was not. This book rekindles it.--- Alyssa A. Lappen

What a beautiful book!I'm never disappointed by Heschel's work: I find it illuminating, poetic, inspirational, deep but clear, thoroughly enjoyable. This particular work is actually an essay in "sacred history". It makes no claim to be objective, complete, or disinterested -- it claims simply to be true. It is an elegy, sometimes a rhapsody, over what the author believes to have been "the golden period of Jewish history". It is sentimental throughout and will probably offend some readers who have seen their sentiments too often, too casually, and too unscrupulously assaulted; this is unfortunate, for Dr Heschel does not aim to manipulate the reader, but is sentimental because under the circumstances this is a not inappropriate mood.The book opens with a contrast between the "aristocratic," cerebral, and Arabic-influenced Sephardic Judaism and the "folk" Judaism of the Ashkenazim of East Europe; it goes on to discuss Jewish piety and Jewish learning, Cabalism and Hasidism, Jewish wit and Jewish melancholy, pilpul (cf.  Talmud Concepts and Terminology Talmud Concepts and Terminology: Get, Nafka Minnah, Pilpul, Chazal, Tafasta Meruba Lo Tafastaget, Nafka Minnah, Pilpul ) and saintliness. It is more evocative than informative, though there are few who will not learn something from it.I must recommend some of Heschel's opus, since I'm sure you'll be hooked on it after reading the above:  God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism , Man Is Not Alone , The Prophets (Modern Classics) , and the one I'm reading now (a true feast for the Talmud student):  Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations . I could go on forever, but you just continue from here... Talmud Concepts and Terminology Talmud Concepts and Terminology: Get, Nafka Minnah, Pilpul, Chazal, Tafasta Meruba Lo Tafastaget, Nafka Minnah, PilpulGod in Search of Man: A Philosophy of JudaismMan Is Not AloneThe Prophets (Modern Classics)Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations

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