Ruth Brin

A great lady of Minneapolis and St. Paul has passed away. Ruth Brin was a scholar of Jewish literature, a poet, liturgist, book reviewer, and novelist. My acquaintance with her came from responding to an announcement in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in the early 1970's. A several-week class on Jewish mysticism was to begin at the Jewish Community Center--right up my alley (the topic, not the actual Center). I enrolled and was fascinated by Mrs. Brin's teachings of the Kabbalah, false messiahs, and Jewish literature and culture. Over the years I always read her book reviews in the Sunday paper.

Twenty years later I saw her shopping in Brochin's, the excellent Jewish bookstore on Excelsior Boulevard in St. Louis Park, and introduced myself and said that I had been in her class on Jewish mysticism. I was looking for a Jewish prayer book and told her that I preferred the one with the more vivid colors on the spine over one that she thought was superior. "You are a mystic!" she said.

A great light has left the Twin Cities, Ruth Brin, of Blessed Memory.