Etkes Immanuel - Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady : the origins of Chabad Hasidism

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Hebrew original of this book was published by the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History in 2012. The writing of the book and the research that underlies it extended over several years. Twice during those years I was privileged to be a guest of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. I am grateful to Jay Harris and Shaye Cohen, who were then the heads of the center, for their generous hospitality and their collegial relationship, which helped me move the research forward. I spent the last three years of my tenure as a full professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a fellow in the research group on religion and education, which met under the aegis of Scholion, the Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities and Jewish Studies. My colleagues in the group, Tamar Elor, the late Michael Heyd, and Baruch Schwarz, enriched and taught me, both during the joint seminars and in our many conversations. Yisrael Yuval, the academic head of the center, and the staff of the center, spared no effort to place everything we needed at our disposal for productive and enjoyable work. I am deeply grateful to them all.

I also wish to thank Michael Heyd, Yisrael Yuval, Uriel Gellman, and Ilia Lurie, who read chapters of the manuscript and offered intelligent comments; David Assaf and Yehoshua Mondshein, who never refused to offer me advice and insight when I asked them questions; and Chava Turniansky, who helped me translate concepts from Yiddish to Hebrew. I owe special thanks to Ada Rapoport-Albert, who read most of the chapters of the book and commented on them. Ada also showed great generosity and patience in agreeing to discuss certain questions yet again, when they arose in the course of the research. Her wise and well-chosen words were extremely helpful.

Sylvia Fuks Fried, the executive director of Brandeis Universitys Tauber Institute, assisted in preparing the English version of the book from the start and contributed generously with her experience and good judgment. The assistance and support of Phyllis Deutsch, the editor in chief of University Press of New England, was invaluable in transforming the book from its Hebrew original to the well-produced English version now in your hands. Jeanne Ferris edited the translation meticulously and thoroughly. I am grateful to them all. Finally, special thanks are in order to Dr. Jeffrey M. Green, for his intelligent and readable translation.