Open Secrets

The fictional East European Hasidic Master Reb Yerachmeil writes to his hasid Herschel who has moved to America, in response to his student’s perennial questions about God, what it means to be Jewish, whether all religions are true, about death, the soul, good deeds, intermarriage and more. The rebbe writes, “My Judaism seeks only the heart of the teaching and the essence of the practice and leaves the details to others.” At the urging of his own rebbe, Shapiro, through these letters, creates a “. . . a Judaism for people who wish to learn from it as they do from Buddhism or Sufism, a Judaism for everyone.”