Making of a Godol
In his book “Making of a Godol” Rabbi Nathan Kamenetsky depicts (“often in biographies for the Orthodox market“) the Lithuanian sages “wrestling with the lures of secular life.” This two-volume book was published privately by Rabbi Kamenetsky in a limited edition of only 1,000 copies. The $40 copies are now being auctioned off for hundreds of dollars.
For those of you dying to read it, the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary has acquired it. So has the library at Yeshiva University, though their copy is apparently sitting on a closed shelf.
“Jews should have learned long ago that there are dangers to us in suppressing books…when we start suppressing books, people will start suppressing our books.” (c/o nytimes.com)
Let me clarify my Protocols post, which you seem to have cited. By being on a “closed shelf,” the book is available to be read IN the library by anybody who would normally be allowed to take a book out of the library. Access to the book is given in 2 hour time blocks. The idea is to keep it in the library where it can be used for reference and generally be around as opposed to having someone take it out and everyone else never seeing it again. Your post gives the connotation of censorship. This is not the case at all.
thanks for the clarification…all apologies for the misrepresentation
the scandal around the making of a gadol is outrageous, and even I have been caught up in it. A major Jewish publishing house is going after me because I say they scrub books. they deny it. but they just scrubbed the songs of songs!
Do you guys have any idea of how many people who are part of the frum world really aren’t?
what do you mean–do we have figures? or are we aware how many people put on a yarlmulke and play the part but are anything but righteous under the kippa?
The book The Making of a Godol is being offered for sale by auction at http://www.pomeranzbooks.com. At the time of this posting the high bid was $240.00
I wonder how high its going to go for.
If only we could all just be open-minded about these type of things. I actually thought that this book was teaching all of us a good lesson for life. Gedolim aren’t born gedolim. They make mistakes because they are humans and there’s nothing wrong with that. If we would just read the biographies on them, and learn of all their greatness, we would just be discouraged, for all they talk about is their super-human ways.