Joseph Perl's Revealer of Secrets: The First Hebrew Novel

In 1819, Joseph Perl anonymously published the Hebrew novel Megalle Temirin (Revealer of Secrets) as a salvo in the battle between adherents of Haskala (the Jewish Enlightenment) and the religious revivalism of Hasidism. An ardent supporter of Haskala, Perl's book was purported to be a collection of letters between numerous Hasidim but was in fact a satire of the sect's teachings. Now Westview is publishing the book with extensive scholarly apparatus provided by Rabbi Dov Taylor as Joseph Perl's Revealer of Secrets: The First Hebrew Novel.