Nicolae Steinhardt, "The Journal of Joy" (SVS Press, 2025)

Oct 9, 2025

Join Fr. Bogdan Bucur, a scholar of patristics, and Dr. Răzvan Porumb, director at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, as they delve into Nicolae Steinhardt's life. They discuss his transformation from a dissident persecuted by communism to a beacon of joy found in Christianity. Steinhardt’s 'Journal of Joy' emphasizes faith, freedom, and moral courage over legalism. The conversation highlights his experiences in prison, including a clandestine baptism, and critiques of modernity that resonate today. Ultimately, they explore how joy can be a powerful resistance.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

From Jewish Bourgeois To Orthodox Monk

Nicu Steinhardt was born Jewish in 1912 and died an Orthodox monk in 1989 after a dramatic life change.
He served as a political prisoner (1960–1964) where his conversion and the Journal of Joy originated.

INSIGHT

Baptism As The Journal's Center

Prison baptism was the transformational core that refracted Steinhardt's whole journal.
That mystical encounter produced recurring 'attacks of joy' and ethical prescriptions throughout his writing.

ANECDOTE

Securitate Targeting Over Manuscript Circulation

After prison Steinhardt attracted surveillance for sending banned literature and corresponding with émigré writers.
The Securitate labeled him a hostile influence and intensified microphones, informants, and surveillance through the 1980s.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

A conversation with Fr. Bogdan Bucur and Dr. Razvan Porumb

This publication represents the officially authorized translation of T he Journal of Joy (SVS Press, 2025), carefully rendered to uphold the integrity of the original text in Romanian.

The ethos Steinhardt recommends to Christians is that of an aristocrat minus the stiff upper lip and aloofness, a style molded by kindness, calm, good manners, respect for the dignity of others, and thus for one's own dignity. Christ Himself, he emphasizes, always possessed ‘knightly’ traits: He is discreet, respectful; He knocks on the door and waits, never discouraged by a refusal; He is not suspicious but trusts, not greedy but gives abundantly; He forgives easily and completely; He is attentive and polite (‘Friend,’ He says to Judas, whose betrayal He knows well). In Him, there is no moralism or legalism, but rather the ability to discern in every person, beyond sin, the person that God calls and enables to love. Beyond totalitarianism, which is the fascination with power and death, and beyond market society, which holds up profit as its only god … If the journal of this resistance opens up for the future, it does so precisely because it is a Journal of Joy.

Olivier Clément, from the Preface to the French edition of the Journal of Joy

This is the Journal of Joy, a joy founded on the Resurrection, unconquerable by the manifest powers of death. Now at last available in English, its joy can help transform the petty anxieties that beset us.

Archpriest Andrew Louth, Professor Emeritus, Durham University

Translation by Paul Boboc, revised by Peter Andronache, with further revisions and explanatory notes by Peter Andronache, Bogdan G. Bucur, Nicolae Drăgușin, Brenda Mikitish, and Răzvan Porumb. Foreword by Răzvan Porumb.

About the Author:

Nicu Steinhardt, known in his later monastic years as Father Nicolae de la Rohia, was born in 1912 near Bucharest to Jewish parents. A refined scholar who had established himself as one of the most erudite voices of his generation, he was imprisoned by the repressive communist regime in 1960. Steinhardt asked to be baptized in his cell—“illicitly”—and eventually found profound joy amid the suffering and despair of the prison. After an extraordinary experience of Christ, the intense happiness accompanying him perpetually transfigured the cruel and gloomy surroundings into a luminous world permeated by God’s love and grace—which is why writing the Journal in the early 1970s was essential, even in the knowledge it would be banned by the communists. Nicolae Steinhardt, then a monk at Rohia, passed away in March 1989, nine months before the 1989 December Revolution toppled the communist dictatorship.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network