âParadise Cove: They Escaped the Cuckooâs Nestâ is the rediscovered memoir of George T. Nagel, a California man in his 80s who volunteered at a mental health facility, and recorded his experiences in 108 letters to his psychology professor. But Nagel wasn't who he seemed to be. His real name was Yechezkel Taub, and he was born the heir to a great Hasidic dynasty and sect in Poland. In the 1920s, as the celebrated "Yabloner Rebbe," he led hundreds of his followers to pre-state Israel and created an agricultural village in the biblical Jezreel Valley, near Haifa. After the project turned sour, he fled to America, abandoned his role and his faith, and changed his name. He emerged decades letter as the oldest undergraduate in California, studying psychology CSUN. In his mid-80s, Nagel returned to Israel, and was unexpectedly welcomed back by his followers. He became the Yabloner Rebbe again, and died aged 90 in the village he had founded 60 years earlier. His 108 letters, published for the first time with Pini Dunnerâs expert introduction and notes, blend history, psychology, and confession. This unprecedented spiritual odyssey is a tour-de-force of personal reflection and deep meaning.
âParadise Cove: They Escaped the Cuckooâs Nestâ is the rediscovered memoir of George T. Nagel, a California man in his 80s who volunteered at a mental health facility, and recorded his experiences in 108 letters to his psychology professor. But Nagel wasn't who he seemed to be. His real name was Yechezkel Taub, and he was born the heir to a great Hasidic dynasty and sect in Poland. In the 1920s, as the celebrated "Yabloner Rebbe," he led hundreds of his followers to pre-state Israel and created an agricultural village in the biblical Jezreel Valley, near Haifa. After the project turned sour, he fled to America, abandoned his role and his faith, and changed his name. He emerged decades letter as the oldest undergraduate in California, studying psychology CSUN. In his mid-80s, Nagel returned to Israel, and was unexpectedly welcomed back by his followers. He became the Yabloner Rebbe again, and died aged 90 in the village he had founded 60 years earlier. His 108 letters, published for the first time with Pini Dunnerâs expert introduction and notes, blend history, psychology, and confession. This unprecedented spiritual odyssey is a tour-de-force of personal reflection and deep meaning.
I want to share how I came across this unpublished manuscript by George T. Nagel, and the remarkable story behind its journey to publication.
Nagelâs life was a whirlwindâfull of dramatic shifts, unexpected detours, and bold reinventions. In the opening chapter of this book, he calls it âa stormy past of high crests and deep troughs,â and thatâs putting it mildly. But the reason Paradise Cove is finally seeing the light of day is less about Nagelâs twists and turns and more about mine.
I have an incurable fascination with oddities, especially Jewish ones: forgotten books, obscure pamphlets, broadsides, handwritten letters, you name it. Iâm particularly drawn to anything controversial or considered too hot to handle. Itâs a strange hobby, Iâll admitâbut if I hadnât been on a relentless quest to uncover Nagelâs forgotten storyâlong before I even knew the name George T. Nagelâthis remarkable manuscript might have stayed in a dusty box forever.
Dealers in rare books and ephemera have a knack for sniffing out collectors like me, and about 20 years ago, one of themâsomeone Iâd known for yearsâcalled to say he had something Iâd definitely want to see.
âWhat is it?â I asked.
âJust come by,â he said. âYou wonât be disappointed.â
I did, and he handed me an unremarkable-looking brown envelope. Inside was a worn Hebrew pamphlet, published in 1926. Its title immediately jumped out at me: Hasidim Alu El HaAretzââHasidim Immigrate to the Land.â
On the cover was a photograph that stopped me in my tracks: a Hasidic Rebbe, beard, sidelocks, massive yarmulke, standing among a group of Hasidic pioneers with farm tools on a farm in pre-state Israel. According to the text, the young Hasidic leader was someone called the Yabloner Rebbe, and the location was a village called Kfar Hasidim.
I knew Kfar Hasidim. My uncle had attended a yeshiva there in the 1960s, and if I was remembering right, there were distant cousins of my familyâreligious Zionistsâwho had settled there. But they werenât Hasidim. Not even close. And the yeshiva certainly wasnât eitherâit was a hardcore Lithuanian-style, non-Hasidic institution.
I was intriguedâand confused. Who was this Hasidic Rebbe featured so prominently on the cover of this pamphlet? I skimmed through it. Apparently, the Yabloner Rebbe had led a group of Hasidim from Poland to the Jezreel Valley in the 1920s to establish an agricultural village.
It was fascinating. Iâd never heard this story before. Hasidim werenât exactly known for their embrace of the Zionist movement, especially in its early years. Most Hasidim viewed Zionism with suspicionâif not outright hostility. The Zionist project was overwhelmingly secular, and often aggressively anti-religious. So who was this man? And why had no one ever told his story?
I made some initial attempts to get to the bottom of this remarkable episode, but there wasnât much to go on. The Kfar Hasidim project had made headlines in the 1920s, but then quietly slipped into the background. As for the Yabloner Rebbe himselfâhe seemed to have vanished without a trace. I asked around, but aside from a few scattered snippets, no one knew much. His fate was a mystery.
Then I stumbled across an Israeli newspaper report from the 1960s. According to this article, the Yabloner Rebbe had ended up in Los Angeles, where he was no longer a rabbi. Apparently, heâd left that world behindâalong with his name. He now went by the name George Nickel, and was a successful businessman.
At the time, I lived in London, and trying to access obscure information in Los Angeles was way out of my reach. And so, like many other items in my collection, Hasidim Alu El HaAretz lay on a pile of pieces that were set aside for further research at some future time.
I moved to Los Angeles in 2011 and soon afterward made a few cursory inquiries. But all I could gather was that the Yabloner Rebbe had never been involved with the Orthodox community in L.A.âand, shockingly, that he had abandoned religious observance altogether.
I asked around to see if anyone had a photo of him from his time in Los Angeles, but hit a dead end. I searched local records for the name George Nickel, but came up empty. Everything I tried was futile, and eventually, I gave up. Still, I would often look at that photo on the front of that pamphlet and think to myself: What happened to you, Yabloner Rebbe? Where did you disappear to?
Then, in early 2018, while preparing a lecture about the early Orthodox Jews of Los Angeles, I decided to dig deeper. I wanted to include a segment on this extraordinary man and his mysterious journey. I knew of a couple of families who had done business with him in the postwar years, but their memories were frustratingly vague.
What I did manage to discover was that the Yabloner Rebbe had eventually moved back to Israelâand, intriguingly, that he was buried in Kfar Hasidim. There was a photo of his grave online. The headstone referred to him as the Yabloner Rebbe, even though he had abandoned that role decades earlier. It seemed that the more I uncovered, the more puzzling the story became.
In June that year, I was on a plane to Israel when I had an epiphany. Every kibbutz and village in Israel seems to have an unofficial historianâsomeone who collects and preserves the history and guards the local archives like a sacred trust. Bingo! Kfar Hasidim had to have a historian. Surely, the historian would be able to help me. And since there was internet on the flight (and itâs a long flight from L.A. to Tel Aviv), I decided to do a little midair sleuthing.
One thing led to another, and I came across a woman named Shoshi Yonay. From what I could gather online, Shoshi ran a small heritage center in Kfar Hasidim and offered tours of the area that included stories about its founders. Perfect! I fired off an email from 38,000 feet: âThis might sound oddâbut do you know anything about the Yabloner Rebbe?â
She replied within minutes: âOf course I do. He was my uncle.â
I audibly gasped. âIâm on my way to Israel,â I wrote back. âWould it be possible to meet?â
A few minutes later: âSure.â
I didnât waste a second. âIâll see you Thursday at 1:30 p.m.â
I met Shoshi in Kfar Hasidim, and I had to contain my excitementâwhich wasnât easy. She still lived in the very house where the Yabloner Rebbe had spent his final years. His presence lingered in every corner. Shoshi had boxes of his old belongings, seemingly untouched since his passing in 1986.
Then came the breakthrough that had eluded me for all these years: she told me that during his years in L.A., the Rebbe hadnât gone by the name George Nickelâit was George Nagel. No wonder Iâd come up empty in the records!
Shoshi let me scan old photos and documents, and she shared stories and details I couldnât have dreamed of uncovering just days earlier. Then, as we spoke, she casually pulled out an old folder. âYou might find this interesting,â she said. Inside was a spiral-bound typescriptâyellowed, delicate, and titled Paradise Cove. âItâs his unpublished masterâs thesis,â she explained. I snapped a photo of the title page on my phone, stunned. As far as she knew, this was the only copy in existence.
Shoshi explained that in the early 1970s, after some business failures and a near-death medical crisis, Nagel had enrolled at San Fernando Valley State College, now called California State University Northridge (CSUN), becoming the oldest student on campus. He even lived in the dorms and became something of a campus personality. She showed me photos from his graduation in 1975âthere he was, beaming proudly, wearing his cap and gown.
After earning his bachelorâs degree in psychology, Nagel stayed on at CSUN to pursue a masterâs. But instead of taking classes and exams, he proposed something unusual: to volunteer at a local halfway house called Paradise Cove and submit detailed field notesâday-to-day accounts of the psychiatric residents, their behavior, and interactions. His advisor, Dr. Helen Giedt (1920â2023), a Kansas-born psychology professor known for her sharp intellect, love of bridge, and affection for cats, agreed to the plan.
Dr. Giedt held a special place in Georgeâs lifeâas a teacher, a sounding board, and as the recipient of his deepest reflections. Over a period of about two years, Nagel wrote 108 letters to Dr. Giedtâraw, observant, and compassionateâcapturing the lives and struggles of those at Paradise Cove.
The result was this book: Paradise Cove: They Escaped the Cuckooâs Nest. The subtitle, a nod to the 1975 Oscar-winning film One Flew Over the Cuckooâs Nest, was clearly intentional. In that movie, a group of patients are trapped in a mental institution ruled by fear and control. But in Nagelâs version, his subjects are not confined by others, only by internal woundsâand he gently guides them back into society with empathy, patience, and deep respect for their humanity.
The book was typeset in 1978 and prepared for publicationâbut never published. Life intervened. Around that time, George returned to Israel, to Kfar Hasidimâthe village he had founded in the 1920s and left in the 1930s, after falling out with many of the families he had brought from Poland.
Remarkably, on his return there, he wasnât met with bitterness. Instead, he was embraced. So, George Nagel disappeared, and Yechezkel Taub, the Yabloner Rebbe, reemergedâwelcomed back as the patriarch of Kfar Hasidim. Consequently, his book and academic work faded quietly into the background, as he resumed the role he had walked away from decades earlier.
But despite his change of focus, when Nagel moved back to Israel, he brought the Paradise Cove manuscript with himâthe same spiral-bound copy Shoshi showed me in 2018.
âWe need to publish this,â I told her.
She smiled. âMaybe someday.â
I didnât have time to scan the whole thing, but we agreed Iâd do it on my next visit. But despite various subsequent visits, I never got around to doing it.
Back in L.A., I got in touch with Joseph Chudy, a nephew by marriage of Nagelâs niece, Arella Mezrich. Shoshi had given me his contact details. The Chudys had treated Nagel like family, he told me, never suspecting his Hasidic past or colorful background. Even now, Joseph could barely get his head around Nagelâs remarkable origin story.
Joseph thought he had a copy of the Paradise Cove manuscript tooâNagel had gifted it to the Chudys before he left for Israel. I asked him to look for the manuscriptâI was desperate to read itâbut he couldnât find it anywhere. âIf it ever turns up,â I told Joseph, âPlease let me know. Iâd love to read itâand maybe even publish it.â
In late 2024, Joseph called me, clearly excitedâheâd found the manuscript in a storage unit. Amazing. A few weeks later, during a visit to L.A., he stopped by and handed it to me. I scanned it in full and printed out a copy to read properlyâand, just as Iâd always suspected, it was a gem: insightful, moving, and quietly brilliant. I knew right then that Paradise Cove had to be published. Shoshi agreed.
Maybe thereâs another copy in the CSUN archives. Maybe he gave copies to some other friends, and they were lost. But itâs clear that George NagelâYechezkel Taub, the Yabloner Rebbeâintended this work to see the light of day. For whatever reasonâfinances, publisher disinterest, or the pull of a changed lifeâit didnât happen.
Until now.
In preparing this edition, Iâve worked to preserve Nagelâs voice and intent. Aside from correcting grammar and typos, Iâve lightly updated the language for clarity and readability. My edits are minimalâwhat any publisher would do before bringing a manuscript to print. My goal was simply to help Nagelâs words shine, just as he wrote them.
One short housekeeping note. Chapter Four â Nagelâs fourth letter to Dr. Helen âappears by name on the original contents page of the manuscript, titled âTune Always.â But the actual text of the chapter is absent from both surviving copies. Whether the omission was the result of an editing error, an oversight, or a lost draft, we will never know. Perhaps one day the missing chapter will surface. In the meantime, I did not want its absence to delay or prevent the publication of this extraordinary work.
Publishing this book nowâalmost five decades after it was writtenâis more than an act of preservation. Itâs a tribute to a remarkable man who defies easy categorization: a Hasidic rebbe turned intrepid pioneer, a successful businessman turned college student, a spiritual leader who quietly reinvented himself in exile and then returned home to reclaim his legacy.
Paradise Cove reveals a side of Yechezkel Taub that few ever saw, or knew existedâa man of empathy, introspection, and deep humanity. My hope is that, in finally sharing his words with the world, we not only restore a forgotten manuscript, but a forgotten chapter in the life of someone who never stopped searching for meaning, even when the world around him had changed beyond recognition.
Pini Dunner
Beverly Hills, July 2025
On starting Pini Dunner's book, I was grateful for the thorough history that is provided at the start. This gives a much-needed context in order to enjoy the subsequent letters contained therein. The letters belong to George Nagel, an octagenarian pursuing a psychology degree which in itself would be remarkable; however, it is soon clear that this is just one remarkable thing in a life full of them.
The recipient is Dr. Helen, Nagel's psychology professor and the letters themselves chart Nagel's time volunteering with mental health patients. They are a record of encounters that George had and his impressions of the people who he meets as well as a progress report of sorts on how they are recovering and assimilating back into the world outside the facility.
I had never heard of the "Yabloner Rebbe" but it seems that he was a figure of some renown, although not with a wholly applauded past. Dunner points out that George Nagel of the letters is the same "Yabloner Rebbe" and with the detailed discussion that Dunner provides, it is hard not to make comparisons between the man who we learn was once an influential and controversial figure and the now humble volunteer who listens to those with mental health issues.
I think what I got from reading these letters is two things: a picture of George the volunteer, citing the variety of problems that he explores through his discussion of the people he meets and philosophising as a result; and then there is the man, George who comes out of the text through the way that he chooses to write. He is an observer of people but there is an instinct in him that shows he wants to help; he uses humour to convey his impressions, with a dryness to his style. He shows surprise and delight at the progress that people make and the fact that he may have been instrumental in making a difference.
As a lay-reader, these letters were entertaining to read, offering a view into a world that many of us would hope never to experience. For someone wanting to gain an insight into the "Yabloner Rebbe", then these letters would be like uncovering buried treasure or coming as close as possible to having a conversation with the man himself.