Readings on Maramarosh [Hardcover]

Since World War II, the sub-Carpathian Mountain region once known as Maramarosh has remained Judenrein (free of Jews). Jewish Maramarosh lives on, however, through the contributions to scholarship and humanity of Maramarosh Holocaust survivors and their progeny, including Nobel laureate Elie Weisel and the Talmud scholar Professor David Halivni-Weiss. Maramarosh Shoah survivor and Talmud scholar Professor Elieser Slomovic here provides access to a collection of responsa literature, most of it out of print and previously available only or primarily in Yiddish. Through personal queries about how to live Torah-instructed lives and rabbinic responses, the reader is invited to enter the world of Jewish Maramarosh, where Hasidism flourished and rabbinic scholarship reflected human nobility manifested through the pragmatics of poverty and the dynamics of living closely with nature. Professor Slomovic, recognizing the fluidity and balance over time provided by Talmudic thought as exemplified through rabbinic teaching, invites the reader to join the discourse on the everyday life of everyday people.He [Dr. Slomovic] knew that a proper history of Maramarosh Jewry from its conception was an almost impossible task. . . . He brought to it his knowledge of responsa literature and his erudition in the historical literature connected with Maramarosh. . . He is a cautious observer, working painstakingly to draw out the truth. You could almost feel his personality intruding into his research, soft, careful, and meticulous. One gets the feeling that he is treading on holy ground, never forgetting whom his is describing. Writing this history was not for him a secular activity, competing with studying Torah, but a holy endeavor that deserved religious attention. He embodied a rare combination of awe and thoroughness, distance and closeness, pain and satisfaction. This is a scholarly and a religious book combined.Elieser Slomovic (PhD Jewish Theological Seminary) was a scholar of posl+