The Light of Learning

The Light of Learning tells the story of an unexpected Hasidic revival in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. In the aftermath of World War I, the Jewish mystical movement appeared to be in shambles. Hasidic leaders had dispersed, Hasidic courts lay in ruins, and the youth seemed swept up in secularist trends as a result of mandatory public schooling and new Jewish movements like Zionism and Socialism. Author Glenn Dynner shows that in response to this, Hasidic leaders reinvented themselves as educators devoted to rescuing the youth by means of thriving networks of heders (primary schools), Bais Yaakov schools for girls and women, and world-renowned yeshivas.

During the ensuing pedagogical revolution, Hasidic yeshivas soon overshadowed courts, and Hasidic leaders became known more for scholarship than miracle-working. By mobilizing Torah study, Hasidic leaders were able to subvert the "civilizing" projects of the Polish state, successfully rival Zionists and Socialists, and create clandestine yeshiva bunkers in ghettos during the Holocaust. Torah study was thus not only a spiritual-intellectual endeavor but a political practice that fueled a formidable culture of resistance. The Light of Learning belies notions of late Hasidic decadence and decline and transforms our understanding of Polish Jewry during its final hour.

Glenn Dynner's book is an eye-opening account of Hasidic life in Poland
immediately before World War II. It expertly challenges regnant theories of Hasidic isolationism and exhibits the extent to which Hasidic circles and leaders were deeply engaged in educational reform, including women's education, as well as politics and the collapsing world around them. Drawing from published works, archival materials, and memoirs in numerous languages, Dynner changes the way we will look at Hasidic life in interwar Poland. A must-read for those interested in Eastern European Jewry's engagement with modernity.

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