Schocken, Goethe’s Faust and Rabbi Nahman

Salman Schocken died alone in one of Switzerland’s

hotel rooms, clutching two outstanding books,

Reb Nahman’s stories, Goethe’s Faust, in his two hands,

as if kabbalah and Kultur, contrasting cooks

this literary broth for him prepared.

Goethe I can understand, but what

was it that Schocken found in Nahman, that he shared

his fatal final moments with a man a lot

of Jews who are assimilated........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)