Seymour Rossel, author of dozens of books for children and adults, editor and publisher of several hundred, has drawn together selected writings of his last fifty years in Alone and Wrestling to confront the meaning and milieu of our times. Fiction ranges from his controversial story of acculturation and assimilation “The Last Jew in America” to the wistful “Lament for the Kibbutz” to the revealing “Derekh: A Path Between the Worlds.” Articles that remain timely include “Isaac: God’s Special Child” (did a special needs baby become a patriarch and do Jews owe the existence of the tribes to Rebecca the matriarch?), “When Two and Two Make Three” (the function of superstition in social norms), “Our Dialogue with Buber” (a somewhat mystical encounter with a great mind), and “The Purity of Piety” (how a single book — the Sefer Yetzirah (“Book of Creation“) — continued to affect lives through hundreds of years). Also included are “Surviving Addiction,” “Lucy and the First Amendment,” “Janusz Korczak: The Dilemma of King Matt,” “The Educational Imperative,” and “Every Bush is Burning: Teaching Judaism as a Spiritual Religion.”

As Rabbi Gary M. Bretton-Granatoor says in the Foreword, “Rabbi Seymour Rossel’s life has been dedicated to learning and teaching. With this book, and the lives Seymour has touched through his writing, publishing, and teaching, I have no doubt that we will not be searching for the last Jew anytime soon.”