Yehudah Mirsky’s book wins Choice Award, $25,000 prize

Brandeis professor Yehudah Mirsky won the 2016 Choice Award and a $25,000 prize from the Jewish Book Council for “Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution.”

The book, (Yale University Press, 2014) depicts this seminal figure of 20th-century Judaism as a product of the zeitgeist in which he lived, full of revolution, the search for personal meaning, and serious attempts to improve and redeem mankind, according to the Jewish Book Council.

“Rav Kook was perhaps the greatest Jewish mystic of the 20th century,” said Mirsky, associate professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. “Indispensable though he is to understanding present-day Israel and modern Jewish thought, he’s little known and less understood in the English-speaking world. I’ve tried to change that at least a little, with this brief volume aimed at general and scholarly readers alike.

“This award is a sign of the interest his life and works have sparked thus far, and I hope others will be moved to study and write on him even more.”

Mirsky will be honored on May 18, 2016 at 7 p.m. at a public program sponsored by the Jewish Book Council at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.