THE TALE OF A NIGGUN

Schocken Books, 2020. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. New/No Jacket Issued. Mark Podwal color illustrations. CONDITION: NEW 2020 Schocken Books small hardcover (pictorial boards), NO DJ issued, first edition, first printing. Haunting color illustrations by Mark Podwal. Introduction by Elisha Wiesel. NOTE: Although I don't think so, this edition may have had a dust jacket originally, but this release did not have one. CONTENT: Elie Wiesel's heartbreaking narrative poem about history, immortality, and the power of song, accompanied by magnificent full-color illustrations by award-winning artist Mark Podwal. Based on an actual event that occurred during World War II in Poland. It is the evening before the holiday of Purim, and the Nazis have given the ghetto's leaders twenty-four hours to turn over ten Jews to be hanged to "avenge" the deaths of the ten sons of Haman, the villain of the Purim story, which celebrates the triumph of the Jews of Persia over potential genocide some 2,400 years ago. If the leaders refuse, the entire ghetto will be liquidated. Terrified, they go to the ghetto's rabbi for advice; he tells them to return the next morning. Over the course of the night the rabbi calls up the spirits of legendary rabbis from centuries past for advice on what to do, but no one can give him a satisfactory answer. The eighteenth-century mystic and founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, tries to intercede with God by singing a niggun-a wordless, joyful melody with the power to break the chains of evil. The next evening, when no volunteers step forward, the ghetto's residents are informed that in an hour they will all be killed. As the minutes tick by, the ghetto's rabbi teaches his assembled community the song that the Baal Shem Tov had sung the night before. And then the voices of these men, women, and children soar to the heavens. "A short narrative poem with devastating impact, beautifully illustrated and accompanied by a helpful glossary contextualizing references to historic rabbis, cities, and concepts, including that of the niggun, a mystical song that one rabbi called ?'the pen of the soul.'