The Dream Assembly: Tales of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi,
Collected & Retold by Howard Schwartz, is a clever, modern take on the
classic Hasidic tale.
Schachter-Shalomi is the father of the Jewish Renewal Movement,
and these stories reflect that very post-modern sensibility (although the stories take place in nineteenth
century Poland).
The Reb Zalman of the
stories leads a group of Chasidim who experience all manner of mystical understandings.
This includes richly layered dreams,
visions, classic coincidences in the world which show that the seemingly random
events which clutter the human space are really part of God’s plan.
Interesting, the Reb Zalman of the stories is painted in
Messianic colors. Is Rabbi Zalman
Schachter-Shalomi trying to broadly hint at his own role in the contemporary
Jewish world?
It is hard to know; what
we can know is that these sharply written, beautiful stories convey a very
Jewish and worldly sensibility while transporting the reader to a Judaism and
world that exists, perhaps, only in dreams.
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