Avraham Yaakov Finkel, Aronson, 1995
This unusual study is billed as ‘a treasury of rabbinical insights about the human anatomy,’ it is based on the mystical concept that every human is an ‘olam katan’ – world in microcosm. This profound concept, which appears in Avot D’Rebbi Natan and in Kabbalistic works, informs the approach of the entire work. In the first part, ‘Man is a small world’, a general approach to the subject is provided, including a foray into Kabbalah and a comparison of man as a refection of the ten esoteric sefirot. The second section contains a detailed look at every party of the body from the head downwards. The final part of the book provides a wealth of fascinating material on such related subjects as ‘man and wife’, ‘sleep’, ‘cleanliness’ and ‘old age’. Each section of the book comprises numerous Torah sources, all in English, with short paragraphs linking them together. Finkel quotes from an eclectic range: Talmudic, Chassidic, Sefardic, mystical and Midrashic. As the author notes in the introduction, he hopes to make sources available for the first time to a wider audience, as many of them have never been translated before.
