Interview with Yehuda Liebes
In Haaretz there is an interesting interview with Yehuda Liebes about many things. Also see this Hebrew site which has a number of his articles. Here is an interesting biographical note.
He is happiest when he’s at home in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, in the company of his books, sitting in front of his computer. Liebes stores some of his treasures in a beautiful wooden bookcase that originally belonged to his grandparents in Riga more than a hundred years ago. The Book of the Zohar (“one of the greatest creations of the human intellect that can be put on the shelf alongside the writings of Homer and Shakespeare”) and of course every scholarly book about the Zohar, including Liebes’ doctorate, “Chapters in the Dictionary of the Book of the Zohar,” which he completed under the tutelage of Prof. Gershom Scholem in 1976. Thirty-three years earlier, Scholem, who was a friend of Liebes’ father, was present at baby Yehuda’s circumcision, and declared, “He will be my student.” For the boy’s bar mitzvah, Scholem gave him Yeshayahu Tishbi’s book on the Zohar inscribed with the dedication – “as a fond memento.”
March 13th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Scholem’s ‘blessing’ reminds me of the story with R’ Yonasan Eyebschutz at a bris.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I can’t find a reference to it but supposedly R’ Y Emden blessed a child that he should grow up to be the opposite of R’ Eybeschutz and the latter responded Amen and the kid didn’t turn out so well or something.