Kazania rabina Kalonimusa Kalmana Szapiry z lat 1939-1942

This volume contains the fi rst translation from Hebrew into Polish of all sermons written and delivered by Rabbi Szapiro in occupied Warsaw and in the Warsaw Ghetto. The redaction is based on Daniel Reiser’s two-volume publication of 2017 which includes the introduction and critical edition of texts, the facsimile of documents and their transcription. His sermons from the time of the German occupation are inarguably the highest achievement in the preaching career of the Piaseczno tsaddik. As very few documents of rabbinical refl ection from the time of the Second World War are preserved, the presented texts constitute a unique collection. When they were fi rst published in 1960 under the title Esh Kodesh (Holy Fire), they immediately found their place among the canonical works of Orthodox Jewish thought, perhaps as the most important of its kind from the time of the Holocaust. These sermons were delivered by the tsaddik during Shabbat services and recorded afterwards, in his diffi cult handwriting. They were written in the Rabbinic Hebrew, however, we might assume that they were spoken in Yiddish. In the written sermons’ texts, there are no direct references to current political or historical events. Not once did the tsaddik directly refer to the Germans, he never recalled any important ghetto fi gures nor mentioned any concrete occurrences. At the same time, there are frequent mentions of evil-doers, of suff ering and pain, of physical and mental tortures, of grieving the loss of loved ones and of crisis of religion and faith. Therefore, the author focused mainly on the phenomenon of suff ering and its spiritual meaning. The sermons were meant to fi ll the faithful with hope and dignity, to show them the religious way and to convince them that achieving spiritual goals and preserving human dignity was still possible, despite the Nazi attempts to crush them. The tsaddik’s request for the texts to be published, written in his letter to his future publisher, is an indication that he did not consider his sermons to serve only as moral support for his contemporaries, suff ering from their fate. He saw them as a work of timeless value, destined for future generations. The Polish edition includes 88 sermons and an extensive introduction written by Daniel Reiser especially for this volume. There are two kinds of footnotes in the volume: those provided by Reiser include mainly references to the Hebrew Bible and rabbinical sources used by Rabbi Szapiro, i.e. Mishna, Talmud, midrashim, Rashi comments, Sefer Zohar, prayer books, ancient and medieval poems; the translator’s footnotes, mainly for the Polish reader, concern diffi cult, often ambiguous Hebrew terms and include explanations from the domains of Jewish religion, kabbalah and Hasidism. Almost every sermon starts with a Biblical verse, followed by Shapiro’s comment. As in Reiser’s edition, Biblical verses, quotes from Rabbinic, Kabbalistic and Hasidic literature are in quotation marks. Contrary to previous translations (e.g. into English), the original structure of the text has been preserved here, without division into shorter paragraphs. In terms of diff erences with the Hebrew edition, at the beginning of the Polish volume there is a letter, mentioned above, with the request directed to the fi nder of these writings, and in the Appendix at the volume’s end, three sermons, transcribed by Reiser but not edited by him, following Rabbi Shapiro’s cancellation. Because of the profusion of Judaic and Kabbalistic terms, and many references to other theological terms, an appropriate glossary has been compiled. Also provided are lists of abbreviations of Biblical chapters, Mishnaic and Talmudic treatises, weekly Torah readings, letters of the Hebrew alphabet and their numerical value, Jewish and Gregorian calendars and Jewish holidays in the years 1939–1942 (according to the latter) and a bibliography of works used for redaction of this volume.