A friend who is interested in such things nudges me to write about a book devoted to the Belzer shtibl in Borough Park. The book arrives, and I’m impressed. It’s a boxed set containing two massive volumes. The second is clearly devoted to brief portraits of a number of individual Belzer Hasidim. The first is much more diverse. Indeed, how am I to describe it? For it is like and unlike the yizker-bikher, almost all written and produced by “secular” Yiddish speakers, that I studied decades ago. In the end, I decide that you and I should have a look at this strange book together. Certainly, we won’t get all the way through: There is always more to read and to say. But let’s spend enough time together to get a sense of what’s there, for it is a remarkable production indeed.
Continue reading, here.
