A Permanent Beginning, livre ebook

The Hasidic leader R. Nachman of Braslav (1772–1810) has held a place in the Jewish popular imagination for more than two centuries. Some see him as the (self-proclaimed) Messiah, others as the forerunner of modern Jewish literature. Existing studies struggle between these dueling readings, largely ignoring questions of aesthetics and politics in his work. A Permanent Beginning lays out a new paradigm for understanding R. Nachman's thought and writing, and, with them, the beginnings of Jewish literary modernity. Yitzhak Lewis examines the connections between imperial modernization processes in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century and the emergence of "modern literature" in the storytelling of R. Nachman. Reading his tales and teachings alongside the social, legal, and intellectual history of the time, the book's guiding question is literary: How does R. Nachman represent this changing environment in his writing? Lewis paints a nuanced and fascinating portrait of a literary thinker and creative genius at the very moment his world was evolving unrecognizably. He argues compellingly that R. Nachman's narrative response to his changing world was a major point of departure for Jewish literary modernity.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: What Is Jewish Literary Modernity?
Part I: Political-Aesthetic Questions
1. Positioning R. Nachman
2. Representing Difference
3. The Secret of Our Wisdom
Part II: Questions of Social and Intellectual History
4. Was R. Nachman an Innovation Such as the World Had Never Seen?
5. Was R. Nachman a "Jewish Intellectual"?
Part III: Literary Questions
6. Was R. Nachman the Messiah?
7. Poetics of Intransitivity
Conclusion: Reading outside Modernity
Notes
Bibliography
Index