The boss above all

Extract from the introduction to the French edition The lightning success that All For The Boss obtained, both during its publication in English, in 1984, and on its publication in Hebrew translation, two years later (under the name Hakol La-Adone Hakol) has encouraged us to promote its French language translation. The importance of the Jewish community of France, in fact, at the same time as the incontestable renewal of Judaism which manifests itself, suggest that the boss above all will find a favorable echo and will bring, in France also, what he has brought elsewhere. Book steeped in Judaism, not only because his hero is Jewish but because he is an exemplary Jew, it is not a teaching book. A story of the life of an elite being, it differs from the classic biographies of the Rabbanim, first perhaps because Yaacov-Yossef Herman was not rabbi, but also because she is a woman- his daughter - who is the author. Biography, therefore, of autobiographical, and almost chronic family, the boss above all is a whole new genre in "Judaic literature". Rather than an emphatic presentation, it is a dive in daily Jewish life. Far from being a static document, a table frozen of an already accomplished character, already at the height of grandeur and already Saint, the biography of Yaacov-Yossef Herman follows a progression which corresponds well to life. The one that the Jews of Jerusalem welcomed in 1939, by blowing in the ear that it was the "Hafetz-‘hayim" of America, was far from being predestined at Portece, when he had to defend himself against the lodgmers who wanted to exploit it, at the age when other children are only starting to learn about the life recovered allThe values ​​of the Yechiva and its constant progression has only one secret: this simple truth that our wise men say, according to which "a Mitzva leads to another Mitzva". All his life comes down to this: a simple Jew who surmounts difficulty, test after test, who does not expect anyone other than himself to change the face of the world, can reveal himself, in his country, the figurehead of Judaism of his time. And this is, for sure, one of the essential messages contained in the book: each Jew, when reading him, feels arrested ...