Book excerpt: Sharon Flatto's comprehensive study offers the first systematic overview of the eighteenth-century Jewish community of Prague and the first critical account of the life and thought of its pre-eminent rabbinic authority, Ezekiel Landau. Her detailed analysis, firmly rooted in the historical and cultural context of the period, challenges the conventional portrayal of Landau as a staunch opponent of esoteric practices and reveals the centrality of kabbalistic thought in this key central European city.