Sweet Figs

From old cardboard boxes, Shlomo Shock brought out and edited recorded lectures by Rabbi Shagar “from years gone by”.
Rabbi Shagar’s deep lectures gain a new clarity and literary quality. The combination of depth and a beautiful vessel makes the reading a pleasure, in the spiritual sense of the word.
And just as in the surprising and unpredictable fabric of life, so too the Hasidut lectures published here keep changing – for the main purpose of Hasidut lectures is to give us understanding of the heart, the ability and flexibility to cope with life’s upheavals and, with God’s help, to gather as much as we can the sweet figs from the Tree of Life, until the whole fabric of our lives turns to the taste of the entire tree, so that the taste of the tree will be like the taste of its fruit.

Rabbi Shagar:
Head of Yeshivat Siach together with Rabbi Yair Dreyfus.
For many years he taught Gemara, Jewish thought and Hasidut in many unique settings throughout the country.
He earned a special reputation for his ability to teach almost… the unteachable.
Rabbi Shagar tirelessly searched for the most direct and possible way of saying things. As Rabbi Shagar writes: “My aim has always been not to be satisfied with an intellectual understanding of what is learned, but to turn it into a real driving force in the lives of the learners, and so to connect these students to the Torah in a truly existential way.”
Some of his many lectures have been transcribed and printed as books published by Yeshivat Siach.

Shlomo Shock:
Meets with students to learn Hasidut and Jewish thought with them, and leads creative writing workshops.
Of his books of poetry, “On the Line of the Night That Ended” and “At the End of the World’s Sidewalks”, it was written: “The author is not afraid to touch opposing elements and try to combine them: love and loneliness, faith and heresy, writing and absence – these come together in his poetry and create a unique and moving poetry.”