Faith Shattered and Restored

The trailblazing spiritual and educational approach of Rabbi Shagar is an audacious fusion of traditional Jewish scholarship with cutting-edge secular sources. His philosophy has shaped a generation of Orthodox Israelis who yearn to encounter the divine in a world progressively at odds with the religious experience, and nurture their faith in a cultural climate often laden with corrosive skepticism. Possessing the rare ability to stare into the abyss of doubt with an unflinching gaze, Rabbi Shagar offers profound and often acutely personal insights that marry existentialist philosophy and Hasidism, Talmud and postmodernism. Thereby he sets out a new path for cultivating Jewish spirituality in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Rather than wane, in the years since Rabbi Shagar’s death in 2007, his influence on the Orthodox conversation in Israel has only grown, propagating via a rapidly growing body of Hebrew books. This volume, a selection of newly translated essays spanning a diverse range of subjects, represents a first authoritative attempt to introduce the English-speaking public to those groundbreaking works.