Author(s):

Edited from the manuscript with an introduction and notes by Jonatan Meir

In August 1928, the Bratslaver Hasid R. Shmuel Horowitz (1905–1972) set out on a tortuous, treacherous journey from Palestine to the remote and isolated city of Uman, in Soviet Ukraine. His travels lasted over three years. Following a meeting with Bratslaver Hasidim in Poland, he clandestinely crossed the border and reached Uman; he then wandered from place to place in an effort to return to Jerusalem; and was ultimately arrested in Moscow and imprisoned for four months, until he was released and sent back to Palestine on a ship departing from Odessa. The affair drew considerable media attention at the time, and the Jewish press was filled with reports about the Hasidic Jew who risked his life in order to prostrate himself upon the grave of R. Nahman of Bratslav. Horowitz committed his adventures to writing shortly after his return to Palestine, in a lengthy missive sent to “our people,” the Bratslaver Hasidim in Poland; this fascinating text is known as Kuntres Yemei Shemu’el (May–June 1933).

In 1936, Horowitz sold a copy of his letter to Salman Schocken, and then went on to expand the manuscript into a larger work known as Yemei Shemuel Mahadurah Tinyana Im Hosafa (“second, expanded edition”). The work was published many years later in three volumes (Yemei Shemu’el, vols. 1–2, Jerusalem 1992; vol. 3, Jerusalem 2005). Yet these editions were marred by so many errors, omissions, and additions not found in the manuscripts that they became practically unusable. Kuntres Yemei Shemuel, the original missive from which the larger work had developed, all but disappeared within the revised text.

The manuscript history of Kuntres Yemei Shemuel and its connection to the subsequent additions to the text provides a window into the dreams and tribulations of R. Shmuel Horowitz, and sheds light on the obscure ways of the contemporary Bratslaver communities in Poland, Uman, and Palestine. It also illuminates the remarkable relationship between Salman Schocken and the Bratslaver Hasidim.

A critical edition of Kuntres Yemei Shemu’el, based on the manuscript held in the Schocken Library in Jerusalem, is printed here for the first time in full. Alongside the original composition, this volume includes a comprehensive introduction to Bratslav Hasidut during this period, as well as to the history of the manuscript.