Old Galizia. Rebbe's pipe. Painting

Today, one can hardly imagine such a scene: two young Jews wander through the streets of old Prague, one is called Franz Kafka, the other is Jiri Langer. They talk about the religious philosophy of Hasidism, about the secrets of Jewish mysticism, about the Talmud and Kabbalah, and, above all, about how the ancient commandments can be preserved unchanged in the face of great civilizational changes. Jiri Langer, the brother of the playwright Frantisek Langer, literally fell in love with Hasidism: he traveled to Austro-Hungarian Galicia and there, in practice, learned this teaching, which was then widespread not only in Galician, but also in Polish, Bukovinian and Bessarabian villages and towns. The events of the First World War ruined and dispersed this peculiar religious and philosophical territory, the Second World War put an end to it. The last war did not survive and Jiri Langer, who had to flee from Hitler to Eretz Israel, where he soon died. But the book "Nine Gates" written by him remained, which tells about the tzaddiks, about the rabbeim and their Hasidim, no less pious, but at the same time very secular.