Yosl Rakover Talks To God

Literature & Fiction

Kolitz, Zvi

Contemporary

JONATHAN CAPE.

A dying Jew's last words to God -- a text that is regarded as the greatest piece of writing to have emerged from the Holocaust -- the story of how it came to be written, and the afterlife of both the author and his creation. As the German tanks destroy the Warsaw Ghetto, one of the few remaining fighters, Yosl Rakover, writes out his last words to God, seals the text in a glass bottle, and thrusts it into the rubble before preparing to die. The text surfaces in Europe in the 1950s, is passed from hand to hand, is broadcast on Radio Berlin -- where it is acclaimed by Thomas Mann as a religious masterpiece -- is anthologized and translated into many languages. But what is hailed as the most important testament of the Holocaust is in fact a short story, written in 1946 for a Yiddish newspaper by a remarkable young Jew, Zvi Kolitz, in Buenos Aires, where he had gone to raise money for the Jewish underground in the struggle to establish the State of Israel. The Borgesian story of what happened to the text and to Kolitz in the fifty years since, and the detective work of German journalist Paul Badde that resulted in their eventual rejoining, form the second part of this fascinating book. And in an afterword, the great French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas's meditation on the text is answered in a commentary by Leon Wieseltier. Already an acclaimed bestseller in Europe,Yosl Rakover Talks to Godrestores a blazing artifact of twentieth-century writing to its true setting.

Yosl Rakover Talks to God

Janeway, Carol Brown

Genre Fiction

Pantheon Books

There are two stories here. One is the now legendary tale of a defiant Jew's refusal to abandon God, even in the face of the greatest suffering the world has known, a testament of faith that has taken on an unpredictable and fascinating life of its own and has often been thought to be a direct testament from the Holocaust. The parallel story is that of Zvi Kolitz, the true author, whose connection to Yosl Rakover has been obscured over the fifty years since its original appearance. German journalist Paul Badde tells how a young man came to write this classic response to evil, and then was nearly written out of its history. With brief commentaries by French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and Leon Wieseltier, author of Kaddish, this edition presents a religious classic and the very human story behind it.

Literary

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

The teacher: An existential approach to the Bible

Crossroad

Confrontation: The Existential Thought of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik

Religion & Spirituality

Judaism

KTAV Publishing House

Though the story at the heart of this volume was originally published as fiction in an Argentinian Yiddish daily in 1946, it rang so true that it was mistakenly reprinted in Israel as an authentic document retrieved from the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. In the following years Yossel Rakover appeared in French, German, English, and many other languages. It became the subject of intense discussion among both Jewish and Christian thinkers who were attempting to confront the enormity of the Holocaust without abandoning religious faith. But Kolitz, who went on to become a film producer, writer and teacher, was unaware of these developments; indeed, when he finally set about establishing his authorship, he was met with incredulity. Although he eventually managed to prove his claim, the myth took on a life of its own, and many readers still feel that original authenticity which obliterated its fictional origins. This volume includes the complete text of Yossel Rakover and a related Holocaust story by Kolitz, together with a series of essays about the story and its religious significance. Among the contributors are Emmanuel Levinas, the leading Franco-Jewish philosopher, Catholic theologian Frans Jozef Van Beeck of Loyola University, Prof. Klaus Berger of Heidelberg University, and Dr. Marvin Fox of Brandeis University.

Yossel Rakover Speaks to God: Holocaust Challenges to Religious Faith

History

World

Ktav Pub & Distributors Inc

To find more information on Rowman &amp; Littlefield titles, please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

The Teacher: An Existential Approach to the Bible

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Jason Aronson, Inc.

Yossel Rakover s'adresse à Dieu

CALMANN-LEVY

Yosl Rakover Talks to God (German Edition)

Ullstein-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Zweigniederlassung de

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