A person’s soul craves stories, desires to travel to faraway places. Grab hold of a story and within seconds you are transported to other worlds, you travel a thousand years into the past, you jump from country to country. You revel in the enchanted world of great men, are astounded by their stature and remarkable deeds. That is the essence of the tale, enchanting young and old alike.

So writes the author of this book -- indeed a very enchanting book, which does everything a great story book should.

Yair Weinstock is best known as a popular novelist and journalist, but he is much more. A Torah scholar of note, scion of a distinguished Jerusalem family, student and disciple of great men, and a man who lapped up insatiably the stories of elders and sages, who infused him with the memories and traditions that he brings to vivid life in this book.

He learned to tell a story from two masters of the art: his rebbe, the revered tzaddik Reb Moshe Mordechai Biderman of Lelov, and from his teacher the gaon Rabbi David HaLevi Soloveitchik. From them he learned the importance of accuracy and how a story “could take a part of history and bring it to life.” He learned that, properly told, a story has “layers concealed within words,” and “brings healing and salvation.”

Few of these stories are well known; some appear in print for the first time. Most of the stories are saturated with the soul of chassidus. Others are honed with the incisiveness of Brisk. All are told with charm and color and love. To read this book is to be transported to a world of the past, a world of the spirit, where every day is an opportunity to gain the riches of a better, truer, eternal world.

Read it and glow with the richness of a heritage miraculously captured between the covers of this beautiful book.