A Heartless Chicken

Winner of the Goldstein-Goren Book Award of The Goldstein-Goren International Center for Jewish Thought for 2022!

A Heartless Chicken tells the story and struggle of religion and science in the Early Modern Age; the story of rich worlds, meeting, conflicting, and colliding. This book reviews a hundred years of rabbinic literature, Halacha and Kabballa (Jewish Law and mysticism), beginning with a strange chicken without a heart in 18th century Germany, ending with the enchanted writings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav. 

The stormy days of Jewish society in Europe at the dawn of modernity are described through wonder, ingenuity, and everyday life.