Touches in the Language of the Heart

In recent years a new view has dawned on me, the very reverse of the one I held
in my youth, about the continuity of biography, about the fabric of a person’s life.
This fabric is not linear.
A person has no knowledge at all of his own life, or of life in general.
Only God will decide how to combine the sum of the moments a person has lived.
“Touches in the Language of the Heart” is a gift to Rabbi Shagar –
more precisely, to Shimon, the friend of my youth…
(from the book)

Touches in the Language of the Heart is the author’s attempt to stand in wonder before the riddle of his existence and the events of his life, in the course of which he met – unexpectedly and wondrously – the person who became the shaper of his character, his friend and his partner for forty years.

Only some six years after Rabbi Shagar’s passing did Rabbi Yair Dreyfus find the inner strength to put into writing the process of his own growth at his side, the mourning and emptiness after his passing, the painful process of separation from him, and his own growth anew.
This book does not close circles – on the contrary, it opens a new page in the dialogue between them. From the depths of this relationship emerge unique insights into the relationship between rabbi and student, into loneliness and a shining countenance, into trauma and rebirth.

Rabbi Yair Dreyfus, born in Jerusalem (1949), heads Yeshivat Siach Yitzchak. In his person he creates a dialogue between the Jewish and the human, between rationality and spirituality. His writing moves between languages that speak to one another – an expression of our being citizens of many worlds.
Rabbi Dreyfus has published many articles in a variety of forums.
His previous books:
Beloved Friends: Wedding Sermons (together with Rabbi Shagar), Yedioth Books (2008, 2011).
A Wedding of the Lost: A New Reading of the Tale of the Seven Beggars by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Yeshivat Siach Yitzchak (2011).