Burnt Books: Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and Franz Kafka (Jewish Encounters) [Hardcover]

Rodger Kamenetz (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 19, 2010 | Series: Jewish Encounters

Part of the Jewish Encounter series

Rodger Kamenetz, acclaimed author of The Jew in the Lotus, has long been fascinated by the mystical tales of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. And for many years he has taught a course in Prague on Franz Kafka. The more he thought about their lives and writings, the more aware he became of unexpected connections between them. Kafka was a secular artist fascinated by Jewish mysticism, and Rabbi Nachman was a religious mystic who used storytelling to reach out to secular Jews. Both men died close to age forty of tuberculosis. Both invented new forms of storytelling that explore the search for meaning in an illogical, unjust world. Both gained prominence with the posthumous publication of their writing. And both left strict instructions at the end of their lives that their unpublished books be burnt.
 
Kamenetz takes his ideas on the road, traveling to Kafka’s birthplace in Prague and participating in the pilgrimage to Uman, the burial site of Rabbi Nachman visited by thousands of Jews every Jewish new year. He discusses the hallucinatory intensity of their visions and offers a rich analysis of Nachman’s and Kafka’s major works, revealing uncanny similarities in the inner lives of these two troubled and beloved figures, whose creative and religious struggles have much to teach us about the significant role played by the imagination in the Jewish spiritual experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Whether he’s writing about Judaism and Buddhism or prayer and dreams, Kamenetz’s mission is to discern connections. In his most delving book, he traces the hidden links between a literary nineteenth-century Hasidic rabbi and a quintessential modern secular Jewish writer. Rabbi Nachman, a “Jewish shaman” and a contemporary of the Brothers Grimm, smuggled the kabbalah into fiction to extend the reach of his teachings. Kafka, concerned about the spiritual cost of modernity, “nourished himself with the tales of Hasidic rebbes.” Both men were ascetics; both died young of tuberculosis; both questioned “the seeming absence of divine justice”; and both asked trusted intimates to burn their work after their deaths. Kamenetz’s dramatic and revelatory double portrait is built on a solid foundation of elegantly explicated Jewish thought and deepened by the story of his journey to Ukraine to visit Rabbi Nachman’s grave. Here is a whole new slant on Kafka, a unique and affecting portrait of a creative holy man, and a radiant inquiry in celebration of how both sacred texts and great literature are open to “infinite interpretation.” --Donna Seaman

Review

Praise for Burnt Books

“The lives, works, and achievements of Franz Kafka of Prague and the far-less-well-known nineteenth-century Jewish mystic Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav would seem at first glance to have nothing in common. It is only the first of the many virtues of this engrossing and wonderful book by Rodger Kamenetz, a highly experienced and masterful writer on Jewish mysticism, that the truly eerie parallels between their lives, drives, and visions become clear.”
—The Washington Times  

“Kamenetz’s dramatic and revelatory double portrait is built on a solid foundation of elegantly explicated Jewish thought and deepened by  the story of his journey to Ukraine to visit Rabbi Nachman’s grate. Here is a whole new slant on Kafka, a unique and affecting portrait of a creative holy man, and a radiant inquiry in celebration of how both sacred texts and great literature are open to ‘infinite interpretation.’ ”
—Booklist

“Two yearning souls face each other and touch in this remarkable encounter, both deeply imagined and fastidiously researched. And when, forever questing, Rodger Kamenetz adds his own journey to the mix, what he gives us is so fascinating I read it hungrily.  Kamenetz makes a case for the kinship of these brother storytellers that is more than irresistible:  it feels inevitable.”
—Rosellen Brown, author of Civil Wars

Praise for The Jew in the Lotus

"A book for anyone who feels the narrowness of a wholly secular life or who wonders about the fate of esoteric spiritual traditions in a world that seems bent on destroying or vulgarzing them. It is a narrative about an extraordinary moment in history, of course, but it is also the chronicle of Rodger Kamenetz's discovery of what he says is a more nourishing Judaism."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Splendidly written from beginning to end, this is a book that might and should be read for the simple pleasure of watching an honest intellect confront its own image . . . A book that should be read and discussed by those interested in the marvelous complexity and resilience of the human soul."
—New Orleans Times-Picayune

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Schocken; First Edition edition (October 19, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805242570
• ISBN-13: 978-0805242577
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.3 x 7.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #371,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rodger Kamenetz lives in New Orleans where he works as a dream therapist. His journeys have taken him to Dharamsala, India where he witnessed an historic dialogue between rabbis and the Dalai Lama that he recounted in The Jew in the Lotus, and to rural Vermont where he met the dream teacher Marc Bregman of North of Eden, as told in his History of Last Night's Dream. His latest book, Burnt Books, is a dual biography of Franz Kafka and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and also recounts his journey to the grave of the rebbe in Uman in Ukraine along with tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims.

For more information about Rodger Kamenetz, visit his website at http://kamenetz.com, or meet him on Facebook, or follow him on twitter at
www.twitter.com/Jewinthelotus

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A personal reading of Rodger Kamenetz' "Burned Books" January 22, 2012

By Miha Ahronovitz

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Rodger Kamenetz book is about my life too. And I did not write this book. But his observation that Kafka used a Talmudic thinking to write is documented brilliantly. His observation that Kafka lived an eternal Yom Kippur, being obsessed whether he is judged by every word he said, stemming from a perfectionism impossible to achieve, it's about me and others like me. Kafka never crossed the door of the Law, he never reached the Castle, he does not know the reason why K dies in the Trial. Yet these questions are part of his life, much beyond the oversimplification of Kafka as a scribe about an absurd world, where each time we have an argument with a boss, a teacher and a parent we feel identified.

Kafka has no answers, but an "unending analysis", same as Talmudic, Midrashic, and Mishnaic commentaries. Kafka's "The Trial", for example, embodies the particular techniques of rabbinic hermeneutics. These are dry words.At a personal level, the three levels of soul perceived by the humans, Nefesh (the animal soul), Ruach, the wind towards Nesahama, the spiritual soul, must be visible. Most people relate the word "soul" with Nefesh. If you listen to soul jazz music, you feel the Neshama

I never understood the Kafka's Metamorphosis, until my mother had a stroke trying to get a bottle of milk from the fridge. She became an insect-like and many people started treating her as an insect. "There must a treatment" she said to me. "I can not stay like this, for the rest of my days" It is this treatment that I was unable to find for her than haunts me even today.

Joseph Roth wrote, when in stress, we do not seek the knower, we seek the believer. My mother had a good medical care, but she had no hope, something that those miracle- rabbis . not the doctors, can give us. Hope, Believe, because there is something above us that we have no the capacity to understand. But Rabbi Nachman knows more secrets, he knows more than he is allowed to reveal. If he does reveal, he pays a dear price: his son, his wife and even his own life, were at stake.

I see how #1 on Amazon is the memoir of an ex president. #1 in Sales should be Roger Kamenetz book. But he writes for a special group of people that have experienced Kabbalah, not only read about it or attend the fad of it. Reading the book is easy, as I read a thriller. I am not the only one, but we are hardly as many as the the ex President readers or bass Rolling Stone player readers, speaking through the pen of professional ghost writers who beautify their lives beyond what they really are.

Rodger is also a ghost writer, but not for a human flesh person like George Bush or Keith Richard. He gives us the voice that come from somewhere, perhaps ultimately from the the Divine that both Rabbi Nachman faith and Kafka secularism accepted as real. Mr. Kamenetz has Ruach Neshama

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding survey any Jewish studies collection should have! January 16, 2011

By Midwest Book Review

Format:Hardcover

Rodger Kamanetz's BURNT BOOKS: RABBI NACHMAN OF BRATSLAV AND FRANZ KAFKA comes from a teacher who for many years taught a course in Prague on Franz Kafka. His consideration of the unexpected connections between Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman and Kafka - which includes spiritual connections and even their co-invention of new forms of storytelling that explore the search for meaning in an unjust world - makes for an outstanding survey any Jewish studies collection should have!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stories within stories December 5, 2010

By Dr. E. M. Cohen

Format:Hardcover

A brilliantly researched and sensitively executed exploration of how the lives of these two great men intertwined across space and time. Kabbalah (the Jewish Mystical tradition) tells of letters within letters, words within words, and worlds within worlds. Kamenetz allows himself to be guided by these two masters ever deeper into the tangled orchard of Jewish identity.