Joseph Telushkin. Photo: JosephTelushkin.com.

Joseph Telushkin

Author

One of the literary highlights of 2014 was the publication of Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin’s magisterial biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. A major hit on the best seller lists of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly, Rebbe was warmly praised by leading reviewer Dara Horn for its insights into the Rebbe’s thinking on American politics, the Soviet Jewry movement, evolution, and baseball. As Telushkin, a noted author and scholar, explained in an interview with the Jewish Book Council, it was the Rebbe’s talents as a leader that fundamentally moved him: “In 1951, he took over a small movement and turned it into the most dynamic religious movement in modern Jewish history—and that is what intrigued me; how he did it.”