"I have been reading more of your work, and there are many points of convergence with my own reading" - Prof. Eliot Wolfson

I got this via email too:

"i have been reading your thesis with great attention...i think it's a very important and revolutionary work... but at the same time as one who writes in a similar style (though not as eloquently) and who has been criticised often by his tutors, i must say that the thesis doesn't always conform to traditional academic style. what i mean by that is (and as i said, i'm equally guilty of this) that at times you write things which are intutivley obvious to you and to the above average intelligent and intuitive reader, but is not obvious to the random reader who needs everything to be laid out for him. so for example, when you write "although those in the anti-messianic camp naturally claim that this opposition continued well into 1992"(93), you need to clarify what it is 'naturally' obvious that they would claim this. to me what you write is absloutly brilliant but for the opaque professor who had no mystical experiences or doesn't know chabad from within- it's not. mystics tend to write from and to the heart- as you do- but dry academic writing requires a certain detachment, which i personally find annoying and can't really accustom myself to. in any case, there are many other examples for this, like when you write that all printed books should be treated with some suspicion- i love your humor and wholly agree- but to the dry academic it appears as if you are engaging in conspiracy theories and straying from academic thinking...

your description of atsmus in 141-142 is simply stunning in its beauty.

i've read many hindu, buddhist and sufi teachings- but the thing that is simply blowing me away about your disertation is the fact that the rebbe takes people through the traditional and accustomed teachings of torah and mitsvot and jewish history and suffering etc etc- (and also one finds it easy to identify with these teachings because if we suffered all these years we have to find a reason for it- thus one is engaged in a tortutred love-hate relationship with god and the world- along with a real sense of emptiness, fear, sadness and abandonment by god) to the experience of the totality of god- in which one realizes that the traiditon, jewish history, suffering etc., were all intended so that one can finally realize that they were seen in the wrong way until then and were in fact all godliness but at the same time not the godliness one would expect- not the love-hate-relationship with god, where one is not even certain that he exists but acceptance and love for all being...

- Josh"

I got this via email:

“Thank you for letting me purchase this invaluable resource you’ve produced for next to nothing. May Heaven bless you, and may your great work come to fruition.

- Moishe "