No Masters but God: Portraits of Anarcho-Judaism

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Description

The forgotten legacy of religious Jewish anarchism, and the adventures and ideas of its key figures, finally comes to light in this book. Set in the decades surrounding both world wars, No masters but God identifies a loosely connected group of rabbis and traditionalist thinkers who explicitly appealed to anarchist ideas in articulating the meaning of the Torah, traditional practice, Jewish life and the mission of modern Jewry. Full of archival discoveries and first translations from Yiddish and Hebrew, it explores anarcho-Judaism in its variety through the works of Yaakov Meir Zalkind, Yitshak Nahman Steinberg, Yehuda Leyb Don-Yahiya, Avraham Yehudah Hen, Natan Hofshi, Shmuel Alexandrov, Yehudah Ashlag and Shmuel Tamaret. With this ground-breaking account, Hayyim Rothman traces a complicated story about the modern entanglement of religion and anarchism, pacifism and Zionism, prophetic anti-authoritarianism and mystical antinomianism.

Reviews

'The panoramic view of these thinkers over the course of the books ten chapters is an especially important contribution for the English reader since it fills a noticeable gap in scholarship by offering first-ever English translations of Hebrew and Yiddish texts and lays the foundation for future research.'
Lehrhaus

'A pioneering, thoroughly researched, and comprehensive portrait of [...] 8 advocates of religious Jewish anarchism.'
Lilian Trk, Religion, State and Society, Volume 50 (2022)

Author Bio

Hayyim Rothman is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow at Bar Ilan University, Israel