The Rabbi Who Writes Too Much

Useless. Egocentric. Negligible. These are the words David Assaf, a professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, used to describe a condition called “grapho-mania,” or excessive writing. The subject was at the center of a talk delivered March 28 called “Hasidic Grapho-Mania: The Strange Case of Rabbi Eliezer Shlomo Schick of Brooklyn-Yavne’el.” The program was part of a series of spring events hosted by the Institute for Israel & Jewish Studies at Columbia University.

“Rabbi Schick’s goal is to promote himself and his teachings,” said Assaf, speaking in a seminar room in Morningside Heights, about a religious figure who could best be described as a one-man publishing house. Assaf wagered that no other person in the history of Hasidism has ever published so much.