About this book
Hillel Zeitlin’s The Thirst, first published in Hebrew in 1910, is a mystical work of poetic prose, tracing a spiritual odyssey from existential despair and desolation to a renewed sense of the wonder and mystery of being.
Across six chapters, Zeitlin seeks, questions, despairs, and persists, writing from the tension between God-finding and God-losing, divine presence and divine absence.
Drawing together the thought of Nietzsche and Rebbe Naḥman of Bratslav, Zeitlin created a foundational work of modern Neo-Hasidism. His prose is lyrical, richly biblical, and charged with yearning for the nameless One.
Zeitlin (1871–1942) stood at the center of Jewish cultural, intellectual, and spiritual life in prewar Warsaw. A scholar, mystic, journalist, and poet, he wrote widely in Hebrew and Yiddish and helped introduce modern readers to Hasidic thought.
Nathan Wolski translates, annotates, and introduces the work, bringing to it his deep knowledge of Jewish mysticism and the Zohar. This bilingual volume also features artwork by Melbourne artist Tunni Kraus, whose images respond to Zeitlin’s highly visual language.
Advance Praise
“Hillel Zeitlin is the greatest God seeker among modern Jewish writers, a spiritual reincarnation of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and Rabbi Shim’on of the Zohar. The Thirst is the most dramatic expression of his endless quest. Nathan Wolski’s decision to render it in poetic line enhances it beautifully and his fine annotated translation makes it accessible to the contemporary reader. This is a major contribution to the library of modern Jewish religious thought.”
—Rabbi Dr. Arthur Green, author, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition; editor and translator, Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin
“Fusing scholarship with a mystical-poetic soul, Wolski is the perfect guide through Zeitlin’s Thirst. Kraus’s visual midrash is a wonderful adornment.”
—Melila Hellner-Eshed, author of A River Flows From Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, and Seekers of the Face: From the Secrets of the Idra Rabba in the Zohar.
“The mystical sage Hillel Zeitlin transmuted his yearning and wisdom into The Thirst. Now Nathan Wolski has turned Zeitlin’s Hebrew prose into English poetry, inviting a new generation of readers to experience wonder and astonishment.”
—Dr. Daniel Matt, translator of the Zohar (The Zohar: Pritzker Edition), author of The Essential Kabbalah and Becoming Elijah.
“In this heartbreakingly beautiful translation, Nathan Wolski manages to convey the mournful ecstasy that saturates the inner world of this modern prophet. Tunni Kraus’s evocative illustrations bring the reader in contact with the hidden territories of the heart, breaking it open just enough for a true thought of return to enter in.”
—Rabbi Joey Rosenfeld, teacher of Jewish mysticism
About the Author, Translator, and Illustrator
Hillel Zeitlin (1871-1942) stood at the very centre of Jewish cultural, intellectual and spiritual life in pre-war Warsaw. Scholar, mystic, journalist, and poet, Zeitlin wrote books about Nietzsche, Spinoza, the Zohar, Hasidism, countless articles on diverse aspects of Jewish thought, and stirring poetry in Hebrew and Yiddish. One of the great spiritual figures of 20th-century Jewish letters and thought, his oeuvre lies at the heart of Neo-Hasidism.
Nathan Wolski is the Liberman Family Lecturer in Jewish Studies with the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University, Australia. He is the author of A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance (SUNY, 2010); the translator of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume 10 (Stanford, 2016); with Joel Hecker, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume 12 (Stanford, 2017); and more recently, Kabbalistic Yiddish: Aaron Zeitlin’s Mystical-Messianic Poetics (Cherub, 2020). Together with artist Tunni Kraus, he produced a bilingual, illustrated edition of Der Nister’s short story, “Der Kadmen” (The Primordium, Panui Press, 2024).
Tunni Kraus is a Melbourne-based multidisciplinary artist. Since completing his Masters in Public Art at RMIT in 2010, Kraus has continued study in the form of apprenticeships and training with master scribes of varied traditions in Australia, Asia and the Middle East, most recently focusing on the sacred, scribal practices associated with Hebrew. He has exhibited extensively in Australia and abroad, including MONA FOMA—Tasmania (2013), McClelland Sculpture Gallery—Victoria (2014), Oi!—Hong Kong (2017) and Musrara Mix—Jerusalem (2020).
Nathan Wolski and Tunni Kraus, together with Husky Gawenda, Gideon Preiss, Evie Gawenda, and Anita Lester, form Di Farborgene Khalyastre, a small collective of musicians, scholars and artists dedicated to creative fusions of Yiddish poetry, music and art.
