In 1975, Reb Zal­man Schachter-Shalo­mi, a Holo­caust sur­vivor and mem­ber of the Lubav­itch com­mu­ni­ty, authored Frag­ments of a Future Scroll. This ground­break­ing work weaves togeth­er the spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of Hasidism with a New Age sen­si­bil­i­ty. It was through these efforts that the Jew­ish Renew­al move­ment was born.

Fifty years lat­er, Ayin Press has released the fifti­eth-anniver­sary edi­tion of this impor­tant work, com­ple­ment­ed by essays by rab­bis Tirzah Fire­stone, Shaul Magid, Jeri­cho Vin­cent, and Arthur Kurzweil. This new edi­tion offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty not only to reex­plore Schachter-Shalomi’s inno­v­a­tive approach to Jew­ish life but also, through these addi­tion­al essays, to more ful­ly appre­ci­ate the impact that the author had on con­tem­po­rary Judaism and spir­i­tu­al prac­tice as a whole.

In her fore­word, Rab­bi Fire­stone iden­ti­fies Frag­ments of a Future Scroll as ​“a prophet­ic mish­mash of new, par­a­digm-shift­ing ideas and devo­tion­al­ly inspired trans­la­tions of sacred man­u­scripts.” Rab­bi Magid’s intro­duc­tion rec­og­nizes that ​“Frag­ments is a trans­la­tion­al project of epic pro­por­tions — texts and lan­guages, par­a­digms and prac­tices, maps and sym­bols, sto­ries and expe­ri­ences — all under­go­ing var­i­ous degrees of trans­for­ma­tion for the very Aquar­i­an pur­pose of expand­ing con­scious­ness and ele­vat­ing human life in tune with the par­a­dig­mat­ic shifts of the late twen­ti­eth century.”

Despite its age, these descrip­tions hold true today. Frag­ments, through its ​“mish­mash,” con­tin­ues to delight, enter­tain, and inspire read­ers to seek a deep­er rela­tion­ship with the divine as well as with the larg­er world. At the same time, it is also provoca­tive­ly self-dep­re­cat­ing. Frag­ments asks the read­er to absorb what Reb Zal­man is shar­ing, while at the same time cau­tion­ing that a book alone can­not con­nect us to a high­er lev­el of spir­i­tu­al attunement.

As the reli­gious seek­er of today is, fun­da­men­tal­ly, no dif­fer­ent from one fifty years ago, the author’s mes­sage will res­onate with today’s read­er as much as with a read­er from the 1970s. Just as Hasidism was a rev­o­lu­tion in its own age, its anti-estab­lish­ment ori­en­ta­tion can speak to those shaped by modernity’s inter­ests. Reb Zal­man is focused on the trans­for­ma­tion of con­scious­ness, the recov­ery of awe, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that spir­i­tu­al life can remain faith­ful to tra­di­tion while becom­ing new­ly expressive.

Frag­ments of a Future Scroll is strik­ing in its affir­ma­tion that tra­di­tion can be renewed by ancient wis­dom, not by seek­ing to throw away the past. Reb Zal­man does not aban­don inher­it­ed Judaism; rather, he col­lects its frag­ments to build a Judaism ready to take on the chal­lenges of the mod­ern age.