Kalonymus Kalman Shapira

Abstract

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (b. 1889–d. 1943), otherwise known as the Piaseczner Rebbe, was a creative mystical thinker and an important Hasidic leader. The scion of a minor Hasidic dynasty, he went on to found one of the most important Hasidic educational institutions in interwar Poland. He is best known for his sermons in the Warsaw Ghetto, but his many writings, most of which were published posthumously, offer rich depictions of the inner life, the nature of spiritual fellowship, and the revitalization of religion in the wake of secularism. Study of Shapira’s writings mediate against any claim that later Polish Hasidism as a whole had stagnated, was uninterested in the project of spiritual self-renewal, or had essentially given up on the potential for ecstasy and mystical experience. Shapira’s works have engendered a significant and growing body of scholarly research on 20th-century Hasidism, and of course, the history of the Holocaust and religious responses thereto. Though few scholars have analyzed his writings and communal leadership from broader social or cultural perspectives, Shapira’s innovative teachings on pedagogy, spiritual instruction, and the master-disciple relationship are of interest to educational philosophers and practitioners.