Great Chassidic Schools and Masters (3/3) — Intensity and Embrace: The Mystical Life in the Sfat Emet & the School of Ger with Rabbi Ariel Evan Mayse

This season of Turn it & Turn it is on the topic of: "Chassidut"  Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, better known by the title of his classic work Sfat Emet, was one of the greatest and most creative chassidic masters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At once highly traditional and strikingly modern, the Sfat Emet articulated a powerful mystical theology that speaks to the spiritual needs of the individual seeker situated within the community as a whole. His teachings reflect a careful synthesis between the mystical beckonings of the Infinite, on one hand, and the mandate that humankind perform their primary spiritual work here, in the realm of the mundane and corporeal. In addition to exploring these core ideas, we will touch upon some of the salient processes involved in the creation of chassidic books, such as the relationship between Hebrew and Yiddish and between oral and textual traditions as well as the transmission of ideas from teachers to students. We will see how the recent discovery of new manuscripts of Rabbi Alter’s teachings has changed the way we study chassidic texts. Click here to view the accompanying source sheet.  This audio was originally recorded on 06/22/2016.