REVIEW: Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs

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REVIEW: Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs

Instead of focusing solely on the usual cast of characters that Jewish historians often concern themselves with, Pini Dunner’s work of popular history, Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs: Episodes from the Margins of Jewish History (Maggid), presents interesting hodgepodge of, well, mavericks, mystics, and false messiahs. He claims to write about those who are seemingly total outsiders and attempts to demonstrate how these characters actually continue to have considerable influence over how Judaism is played out in modern times. As Dunner writes in his introduction: “I believe their influence on events as they unfolded, during the period in which they lived and on the future, was far stronger than may seem years later.”

Read a review from TRADITION (Spring 2020). David Fine concludes, “In each chapter of his book Dunner has done an excellent job of synthesizing extensive scholarship on each personality and topic, and writes about it in an eminently readable and enjoyable fashion.”

 

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