Letters of Light. Passages from Ma᾿or va-shemesh

Translated by Aryeh Wineman
Letters of Light is a translation of over ninety passages from a well-known Hasidic text, Ma'or va-shemesh, consisting of homilies of Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Kraków, together with a running commentary and analysis by Aryeh Wineman. With remarkable creativity, the Kraków preacher recast biblical episodes and texts through the prism both of the pietistic values of Hasidism, with its accent on the inner life and the Divine innerness of all existence, and of his ongoing wrestling with questions of the primacy of the individual vis-à-vis that of the community. The commentary traces the route leading from the Torah-text itself through various later sources to the Kraków preacher's own reading of the biblical text, one that often transforms the very tenor of the text he was expounding. Though composed almost two centuries ago, Ma'or va-shemesh comprises an impressive spiritual statement, many parts of which can speak to our own time and its spiritual strivings.