Essential Essays of Rav Shagar The Thought of Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg

Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, better known as Rav Shagar, is the first modern native-born Israeli religious thinker, whose importance has grown exponentially since his premature death in 2007. This volume is the first to offer a broad selection of his religious writings to the English-speaking world, focusing on Hasidic thought, mitzvot, faith, repentance, Torah and secular studies, the Jewish holidays, and post-Zionism. Rav Shagar was ardently religiously Orthodox, yet he lived with an existential chaos. His ideas and approach create a new Religious Zionist Hasidism, opening up new vistas of religious Jewish thought. Shagar argued that the Zionism had entered a new era that necessitates a transition from state building to personal growth and the growth of democracy—a transformative spiritual teaching of redemption.

Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (1949 - 2007) was a trailblazing Torah scholar who founded Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak. Rabbi Prof. Alan Brill is the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Chair for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University and the author of various works, including Thinking God. Levi Morrow received smicha from the Shehebar Sephardic Center. He wrote his Master's thesis on Rav Shagar at Tel Aviv University, and is working on his doctorate.