Twenty-Six Questions on the Path to Wisdom
Published on 11. May 2026
236 pages
979-8-3852-1968-1 (ISBN)
Description
What is the purpose of creation? How do I break free of this solitude? What is there to love? Why should I care? These are a few of the twenty-six questions on the path to wisdom, with twenty-six corresponding to the numerical value of the Holy Name of Four Letters, yud-hey-vav-hey. We live in a time that seems void of meaning, because we live in a time that is empty of wisdom. Undertaking a quest for wisdom, this book turns to the millennial teachings and traditions of Judaism, as well as other traditions. The path to wisdom lies in these teachings-in these questions-that humanity has inherited from its sages. These are the questions that shape a life by enabling us to live a meaningful life. They are not so much the questions that we have but the questions that "have" us, that take hold of us, often in spite of ourselves. For each question, the author offers a response, a reflection, but not a final answer. Indeed, the responses to these twenty-six questions are themselves subject to questioning, as they must be.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
David Patterson
Twenty-Six Questions on the Path to Wisdom
Book
05/2026
Cascade Books
€28.50
Shipment within 10-20 days
David Patterson
Twenty-Six Questions on the Path to Wisdom
Book
05/2026
Cascade Books
€42.30
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
David Patterson holds the Hillel A. Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, University of Texas at Dallas and is a Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). He has lectured at universities on six continents and throughout the United States. A winner of the National Jewish Book Award, the Koret Jewish Book Award, the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award, and the Holocaust Scholars' Conference Eternal Flame Award, he has published 45 books and more than 250 articles, essays, and book chapters on antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Jewish studies. His most recent books are Twenty-Six Questions along the Path to Wisdom (Wipf & Stock, 2026), Redemptive Antisemitism after Ten/Seven (Academic Studies Press, 2026), Eighteen Words to Sustain a Life (Wipf & Stock, 2023), Judaism, Antisemitism, Holocaust: Making the Connections (Cambridge, 2022), Shoah and Torah (Routledge, 2022), Portraits: Elie Wiesel's Hasidic Legacy (SUNY, 2021), The Holocaust and the Non-Representable (SUNY, 2018), Anti-Semitism and Its Metaphysical Origins (Cambridge, 2015), and A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad (Cambridge, 2010).
