Shmuel Alexandrov

Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov of Bobruisk was a prominent student of the Volozhin Yeshiva, who became close to the tradition of Chabad Hasidism. Rabbi Alexandrov was a Jewish Orthodox mystical thinker, philosopher and individualist anarchist, whose religious thought, an original blending of Kabbalah, Orthodox Judaism, contemporary philosophy and secular literature, are marked by universalism and some degree of antinomianism. [Luz, Ehud 1981 "Spiritualism and religious anarchism in the teaching of Shmuel Alexandrov" (Hebrew). Daat, no. 7 (summer): 121-138.] [cite web
url=http://www.jcrelations.net/en/?item=1913
title=Universalist Trends in Jewish Religious Thought: Some Russian Perspectives
publisher=Jewish-Christian Relations
accessdate=2008-03-02
last=Argusky
first=Mikhail] His works include "פך השמן" ("the Oil Jug"), a commentary on Haggadah, and a large collection of essays, "מכתבי מחקר וביקורת" ("Letters of Research and Investigation"). Alexandrov was influenced by the anarchistic implications of the work of Rav Kook (the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine), from which he sought to derive practical instruction.cite book |last=Ish |first=Shalom |title=Rav Avraham Itzhak Hacohen Kook |publisher=State University of New York Press |location=Albany |year=1993 |isbn=0791413691 ] Another influence on Alexandrov was Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyev. [Konstantin Burmistrov (Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia) "On the History of Russian-Jewish Intellectual Relations: Vladimir Solovyev and Rabbi Shmuel Alexandrov"] Alexandrov lived all his life in Bobruisk and perished in the Holocaust.cite book
chapterurl=http://www.bgu.ac.il/~baryosef/Eng/research/jewish_vladimir_reception.htm
chapter=The Jewish Reception of Vladimir Solovyov
accessdate=2008-03-02
title=Vladimir Solovyov: Reconciler and Polemicist
coauthors=Ewert von Zweerde ed.
last=Bar-Yosef
first=Hamutal]

See also

*Anarchism and Orthodox Judaism
*Jewish anarchism

Further reading

*“Shmuel Alksandrov”, "Sefer Bobruisk" (Bobruoisk book), ed. Yehuda Slutski Tel-Aviv, 1967, vol. 1, p. 322
*Mikhail Agursky, “Universalist Trends in Jewish Religious Thought”, "Immanuel" 18 (Fall 1984), pp. 49-51
*A. Greenboim, "Rabanei Brit-ha-Moetsot bein milkhamot ha-olam" (Rabbis in the Soviet Union between the World Wars), Jerusalem: The Istitute for Research and Documentation of East-European Jewry , 1994, p. 10.

References