In the late fifties and sixties, Greenwich Village was the quirkiest, most charming, jazzy, eccentric, and urban of environments, the center of all that was both quaint and cool: brownstones and beatniks, coffeehouses and college students, folksingers and freethinkers, poets and prophets. Into this fascinating mix of cultural archetypes came a young rabbi, Harvey M. Tattelbaum, who became known as the Village Rabbi of the Village Temple. The spirit of Sholom Aleichem infuses his "Tales of the Village Rabbi," a touching and laugh out loud-funny memoir of his tenure at a small synagogue in the heart of Greenwich Village. Though his years in this magical place were productive and soul filling, rabbinical training had not exactly prepared him for the bikers, thieves, ex cons, eccentric old ladies, drug users, cleavage baring brides, and other Village denizens he encountered while serving the congregants of his spirited little temple. Rabbi Tattelbaum shares his insider's tales both downtown and uptown of wayward weddings (and funerals), contentious Temple boards, irreverent interfaith shenanigans, heartaches, and triumphs. But the "Tales" also reveal a deep personal struggle with some of the most profound philosophical problems of ancient and modern religion, and are filled with a warm, humane, and rational approach to spirituality and religious meaning."