The Congregation of Israel and Gentile Wars

The writings of the rabbi and publicist Aharon Shmuel Tamares (1869-1931) continue to intrigue many writers, notwithstanding the fact that they are almost unavailable to the public. One absence is particularly striking: his most important monograph, Kneset Yisrael ve-Milhamot ha-Goyim. This is the lack that this volume comes to fill. Tamares’ prosaic life as the rabbi of a small town on the eastern border of Poland are the background for a radical set of ides which plunge into modern phenomena like religious fundamentalism and the nation state and illuminates them with an astounding clarity that remains relevant in the twenty-first century. With thought as sharp as a knife, with bitter sarcasm and prophetic fervor, Tamares attacks the manipulations of modern nationalism and analyzes how its spokesmen hide their lust for political power behind a rhetorical screen of lofty values.

The editors of the volume, Dr. Hayyim Rothman and Dr. Tsachi Slater, are both scholars of modern Jewish philosophy and radical religious thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.