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The work of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, the Neziv, ranks amongst the most often read rabbinic literature of the nineteenth century. His breadth of learning, unabashed creativity, and penchant for walking against the stream of the rabbinic commentarial establishment has made his commentaries a favorite amongst rabbinic scholars and scholars of rabbinics alike. Yet, to date, there has been no comprehensive and systematic attempt to place his intellectual oeuvre into its historical context-until now. In the Pillar of Volozhin, Gil Perl traces the influences which helped mold and shape the Neziv's thinking while also opening new doors into the world of early nineteenth-century Lithuanian Torah scholarship, an area heretofore almost completely untouched by academic research.
About the author
Gil Perl (PhD Harvard University) is the Dean of the Margolin Hebrew Academy/Feinstone Yeshiva of the South, a Prek-12 private school serving the Jewish community of Memphis. He has earned rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University and sits on the editorial board of Ha-Yedion, RAVSAK¿s journal of Jewish education, as well as the advisory council of the Institute for University-School Partnership at Yeshiva University.
Summary
The work of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, the Neziv, ranks amongst the most often read rabbinic literature of the nineteenth century. His breadth of learning, unabashed creativity, and penchant for walking against the stream of the rabbinic commentarial establishment has made his commentaries a favorite amongst rabbinic scholars and scholars of rabbinics alike. Yet, to date, there has been no comprehensive and systematic attempt to place his intellectual oeuvre into its historical context—until now. In the Pillar of Volozhin, Gil Perl traces the influences which helped mold and shape the Neziv’s thinking while also opening new doors into the world of early nineteenth-century Lithuanian Torah scholarship, an area heretofore almost completely untouched by academic research.
Additional text
“No serious biography of Netziv exists; but Gil S. Perl’s The Pillar of Volozhin, a revision of the author’s Harvard doctoral dissertation, not only sheds light on the rabbi’s intellectual development but also identifies a key historical watershed for the Litvish intellectual elite.…Much of the contemporary yeshiva leadership believes it is following Jewish tradition by focusing narrowly on talmudic learning to the exclusion of other fields of knowledge and diverse points of view. In this perceptive book, Gil Perl reveals just how recently this assumption emerged."
