Author Description

Taking inspiration from the Hasidic master, Reb Nachman of Breslov's classic Tale of the Seven Beggars, poet, Josh Goldberg has created a new work of beauty and profundity. He writes in his preface: "Any encounter with Reb Nachman makes us apocryphal and beggarly.... He pulls us out from our settled comfortability.... Why eight beggars? Because Nachman's seventh beggar never arrives? Perhaps. But as each beggar represents ("in the negative") no eyes, no ears, no mouth, no neck, no back, no hands, and no feet, it is crucial to notice what indeed has been omitted. The nose, the major universal stereotype of the Jew, is missing. The physiognomy of exclusion and exile. The Nosed One.... Of all the beggars, he alone enfolds our broken hearts as he prepares the dark future. His pain purifies the torn night. His storm-compassion addresses our unborn descendants. He gives us pause to understand who we are and who we are not." "Josh Goldberg's Eight Beggars is not yet another version of Reb Nachman's story. It is a twenty-first century North-American Jewish answer to Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's early nineteenth century Eastern European Jewish question-about the mystery of God and the world, and the place and task of humanity within that mystery. - Steven Joseph, Jungian Analyst