Chasidim Just Laugh
By Rabbi Menachem Froman
Introduction by Yossi Klein Halevi | Translated by Leah Hartman
The first work by one of Israel’s most unconventional thinkers and spiritual voices—the late Rabbi Menachem Froman—to appear in English translation.
Available now for pre-order!
$24.99
Not left. Not right. Up.
About Chasidim Just Laugh
Translated from the Hebrew original, Chasidim Just Laugh presents Rabbi (Rav) Menachem Froman in his own words, through teachings, aphorisms, and reflections, accompanied by commentary and stories about the rabbi. Culled from classes, interviews, and newspaper columns, these writings offer a highly accessible and thought-provoking window into Rav Froman’s essential ideas and worldview.
Rav Froman may be best known for his peace work, but Chasidim Just Laugh contains his thoughts on marriage and relationships, Israeli society, faith, doubt, joy, religion, ritual, and much else. It takes in the contradictions and complexities that fill our lives, embraces them, laughs them off, and sanctifies them. This is not a manifesto, nor a political treatise, nor even a theological statement—it is something more elusive, more vital: a living, breathing collection of Torahs.
In an age when algorithmic echo chambers have exaggerated our divisions, Chasidim Just Laugh comes as a palate-cleanser, a break from binary thinking, by introducing readers to a man who seemed to burst through binaries with his very being.
Book Details
Title: Chasidim Just Laugh
Author: Rabbi Menachem Froman
Introduction: Yossi Klein Halevi
Translator: Leah Hartman, with Levi Morrow and Ben Greenfield
Publisher: Deuteronomy Press
Format: Paperback
Pages: 250
Dimensions: 6” x 9”
Price: $24.99
ISBN: 978-1-959586-04-3
Features
- The first of R. Froman’s works to appear in English
- New introduction by celebrated Israeli writer and social critic Yossi Klein Halevi, with his recollection of an extraordinary personal experience with R. Froman while on a peace mission to Gaza, and his reflection on the the “Rebbe of Holy Paradox”
- Extensive endnotes providing important background information, cultural context, and sources for further study
- A glossary containing descriptions of key concepts and figures in R. Froman’s world.
- Expanded index for easy reference
About the Author
Hailed by the New York Times as an “Old Testament seer,” the chief rabbi of the Israeli settlement town of Tekoa was a lightning rod of controversy throughout his public life. Now, more than a decade after his passing, his teachings continue to unsettle and inspire.
Rabbi Menachem Froman (1945-2013) served as a paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces and fought in the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars. While studying literature and philosophy at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, he became a close student of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, and went on to receive ordination from Chief Rabbis Shlomo Goren and Avraham Shapiro. Together with his wife Hadassah, he built the West Bank town of Tekoa into a model integrated religious-secular community and worked tirelessly to foster dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. His Hebrew writings have been published in several books and numerous essays and articles.
With his white beard and chasidic garb, his enigmatic pronouncements, and above all his mischievous laughter, Rav Froman seemed a tangle of contradictions: a settler and a peace activist, a poet and a realist, a rabbi and a freethinker. But if human beings are meant to emulate God’s ways, then surely that includes embracing opposites.
From the Book
“As Maimonides says, truth is attained through contradictions: when I live one way, and its opposite, all at once. I am broad but also narrow. I must be concentrated and focused, but I wish to live in abundance. I am God fearing, but uninhibited.”
“As I always say about contradictions—the chasidim just laugh.”
Praise for Chasidim Just Laugh
“Everyone who knew Rav Menachem experienced a different facet of his being. Settlers and leftists, Orthodox and secular, poets and politicians: in some sense he belonged to them all. In an Israel that resorts to easy categories to manage its bewildering diversity, Menachem Froman was defiantly, joyfully, a category of one.”
—Yossi Klein Halevi
“This book provides the English Torah public with an intimate glance into the thoughts and emotions of one of the pioneers of Hasidut Eretz Yisrael, the unique approach to Hasidism, combined with the thought of Rav Kook, of blessed memory, which in recent decades has made great inroads in the Religious Zionist community in Israel and beyond. Read this book thoughtfully, but not too seriously. At the end of the day, if you don’t agree with something, just laugh it off as a good hasidic joke.”
—Rabbi Dr. Zvi Leshem, Director of the Gershom Scholem Collection at the National Library of Israel
“With spiritual and intellectual sensitivity, translator Leah Hartman and editor Levana Chajes have successfully captured not only Rabbi Menachem’s words but also his unique spirit.Thanks to Deuteronomy Press, this work is an important step towards making Rabbi Menachem’s teachings accessible beyond the Hebrew-speaking world. Readers will not only become acquainted with Rabbi Menachem’s pearls of wisdom but will also hear the hasidic laughter and participate in the theatrical yet serious play that characterized his religious and political existence.”
—Mordechai Miller, author of The Rebbe of Tekoah: The Story of Rav Menachem Froman (Hebrew)
