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“A Chabad Hasid in His Own Special Way”

JL;DR SUMMARY The new Hebrew biography by Zvi Yekutiel explores the multifaceted life of Zalman Shazar, Israel's third president, who lived as a unique blend of secular and religious identities. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Israeli PoliticsBiographyLubavitcher RebbeGershom ScholemJewish IntellectualismMapai PartyChabad HasidismZalman ShazarMarxist ZionismSecularism And Religion

Places mentioned

Berlin, Germany
"Gershom Scholem tells the story of how the twenty-seven-year-old Zalman Rubashov rescued him in 1917, after Scholems father threw him out of the house for anti-German activities."
Brooklyn, New York, United States
"Not long before his election to the presidency in 1963, Shazar had a private audience in Brooklyn with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson."
Jerusalem, Israel
"Scholem noted that fifty years afterwards the two men had become neighbors once again, living on the same street in Jerusalem."
New York, United States
"While on duty in New York in 1935 as an emissary of the labor movement, he took courses at Columbia with Salo Baron."
Tel Aviv District, Israel
"When Moshe Beilinson, the editor of the labor daily Davar diedsuddenly in 1936, he received a summons to return to Palestine to come back and take over."
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Cairo Item ID 73075
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Retrieved 2026-01-20 05:31:03 UTC
Curated 2026-01-20 08:31:09 UTC