A New Hasidism: Branches 9780827613072, 9780827617971, 9780827617957

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1
1. The Thirteen Aspirations of Faith
2. A Neo-Hasidic Credo
3. Touches of Intimacy
4. The Anxiety of Ethics and the Presence of God
5. Hasidism and the Religious Other
6. Building the Body of the Shekhinah
Part 2
7. Neo-Hasidism and Halakhah
8. Training the Heart and Mind toward Expansive Awareness
9. Neo-Hasidic Meditation
10. Neo-Hasidism for Today’s Jewish Seeker
11. Sacred Narrative Therapy
Part 3
12. Does a New Hasidism Need Rebbes?
13. Shlomo Carlebach
14. A Rebbe for Our Age?
15. Spiritual Awakenings
16. The Turn to Hasidism in the Religious-Zionist Israeli Yeshiva
17. A Closing Conversation with the Editors
Contributors

Citation preview

“For more than a hundred years, people in search of religious renewal who are not Hasidic have found inspiration in Hasidism. Now, Arthur Green and Ariel Mayse, both scholars of Hasidism and committed spiritual seekers, have assembled critical texts for the fashioning of neo-­Hasidism in the twenty-­first century. The result is a landmark contribution to Jewish spirituality.” —­D avid Biale, Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis, and editor-­in-­ chief of Hasidism: A New History

“A New Hasidism is a treasure for the heart and mind. With this superb two-­volume anthology in hand, contemporary seekers and scholars have a broad spectrum of spiritual wisdom with which to contemplate the history and contemporary character of neo-­ Hasidism. The first volume provides the ‘Roots’ of the modern reinterpretation of Hasidism in Europe and America; the second displays the ‘Branches’ spreading over Jewish life in the United States and Israel in our times. Together they mark a major moment of our Jewish religious renaissance.” —­M ichael Fishbane, Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Chicago

“In two sequential volumes, the diamonds of Hasidic spiritual teaching have been skillfully recut and set to offer seekers of all backgrounds entry into a challenging and soul-­expanding opportunity. You are invited to enter a multigenerational conversation, deeply engage with the most inspiring teachings of Hasidic and contemporary teachers, build upon these insights, and carry them forward.” —­R abbi Marcia Prager, director and dean of the aleph Ordination Program and author of Path of Blessing: Experiencing the Abundance of the Divine

“The impact of neo-­Hasidism on contemporary Jewish life cannot be overstated; its influence has penetrated farther and wider than is usually acknowledged. Yet what is neo-­Hasidism really—­what are its main teachings, and where do those ideas stem from? Here, brought together for the first time, are the essential texts of neo-­ Hasidism, from forebears like Hillel Zeitlin and Abraham Joshua Heschel, and from recent and contemporary thinkers like Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi and Arthur Green. Whatever their own relationship to neo-­Hasidism, students of Jewish thought and contemporary religious life cannot afford to miss these volumes. They are a veritable feast for seeker and scholar alike.” —­R abbi Shai Held, president and dean of the Hadar Institute and author of The Heart of Torah: Essays on the Weekly Torah Portion

“Over the past century, a number of creative spirits have reimagined Hasidism—­infusing it with new energy, liberating it from its insularity and dynastic power structure, and translating its radical wisdom into a modern idiom. Now, for the first time, one of those creative spirits, together with his brilliant disciple, have chronicled that transformation and assembled its foundational documents (or ‘roots’) along with many of its recent literary ‘branches.’ Dip into these volumes to experience the renewal of Jewish spirituality.”

—­D aniel Matt, author of The Essential Kabbalah and the annotated translation, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition

“Just when we are in such dire need of old/new tools for truth telling and loving kindness (chesed ve’emet), we receive these wise, passionate, intellectually compelling essays that continue the unfolding of the Neo-­Hasidic revolution in our own times. These volumes will open minds, hearts, and even souls.” —­R abbi Lisa Goldstein, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality

“Green and Mayse have masterfully crafted a living tree of neo-­ Hasidic worldview and practice spanning the sources of neo-­ Hasidic thought and their manifestations in contemporary neo-­Hasidism. These two wonderfully innovative volumes reveal a creatively alive Judaism informed by a deep legacy.”

—­M elila Hellner-­Eshed, senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar

“Arthur Green and Ariel Mayse invite us to sit more, read more, think more, and garment more of our blessings. Roots and Branches are two walking sticks with which we can walk this Creation with wonder and humility. Your mind and heart will coil and uncoil as you enter these crevices of love, faith, devotion, and challenge on a journey to the depths of your being.” —­R abbi Reb Mimi Feigelson, Mashpiah Ruchanit (spiritual mentor) and senior lecturer of Talmud and Chassidic Thought at the Schechter Institutes, Jerusalem

A New Hasidism Branches

University of Nebraska Press Lincoln

A New Hasidism Branches

Edited by Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse

The Jewish Publication Society Philadelphia

© 2019 by Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse All rights reserved. Published by the University of Nebraska Press as a Jewish Publication Society book. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Green, Arthur, editor. | Mayse, Ariel Evan, editor. Title: A new Hasidism: branches / edited by Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse. Description: Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: lccn 2019005756 isbn 9780827613072 (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn 9780827617957 (epub) isbn 9780827617964 (mobi) isbn 9780827617971 (pdf ) Subjects: lcsh: Hasidism—­Philosophy. | Hasidism—­21st century. Classification: lcc bm198.2 .n495 2019 | ddc 296.8/332—­dc23 lc record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2019005756 Set in Merope by E. Cuddy.

For our teachers and for our students. The present work is offered as a testament to the power of spiritual friendship

and the loving connection between masters and disciples.

Contents Preface

Acknowledgments Introduction

xi

xiii

xv

Part 1. Ahavat ha-­Shem, the Love of God: Theology and Faith 1. The Thirteen Aspirations of Faith

3

2. A Neo-­Hasidic Credo

11

3. Touches of Intimacy: Leviticus, Sacred Space, Torah’s Center

41

4. The Anxiety of Ethics and the Presence of God

73

Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi Arthur Green

Nehemia Polen Don Seeman

5. Hasidism and the Religious Other: A Textual Exploration and Theological Response

105

6. Building the Body of the Shekhinah: Reenchantment and Redemption of the Natural World in Hasidic Thought

129

Or N. Rose

David Mevorach Seidenberg

Part 2. Ahavat Torah, the Love of Torah: Practice and Devotion 7. Neo-­Hasidism and Halakhah: The Duties of Intimacy and the Law of the Heart

155

8. Training the Heart and Mind toward Expansive Awareness: A Neo-­Hasidic Journey

223

9. Neo-­Hasidic Meditation: Mindfulness as a Neo-­Hasidic Practice

251

10. Neo-­Hasidism for Today’s Jewish Seeker: A Personal Reflection

271

11. Sacred Narrative Therapy: Hasidism, Storytelling, and Healing

295

Ariel Evan Mayse

Nancy Flam

James Jacobson-­M aisels

Jonathan P. Slater

Estelle Frankel

Part 3. Ahavat Yisra’el, the Love of Israel: Leaders and Communities 12. Does a New Hasidism Need Rebbes?

317

13. Shlomo Carlebach: A Transnational Jew in Search of Himself

339

Ebn Leader

Shaul Magid

14. A Rebbe for Our Age?: Bratslav and Neo-­Bratslav in Israel Today

357

15. Spiritual Awakenings: An Interview with Haviva Pedaya

377

16. The Turn to Hasidism in the Religious-­Zionist Israeli Yeshiva

403

17. A Closing Conversation with the Editors

425

Arthur Green

Naama Zifroni, Bambi Sheleg, Arthur Green, and Ariel Horowitz

Elhanan Nir

Conducted by Jordan Schuster Contributors

451

Preface The book before you is a collaboration between two people who began as teacher and student and have become dear friends and literary collaborators. We are grateful to the Master of the Universe for the gift of this friendship, which has taken shape around our shared love for the teachings—­and teachers—­found here, and for the ability to bring it to completion. We offer this project as a testament to that friendship and to the ideal of spiritual friendship, a value for which our world thirsts so deeply. This volume and its companion, A New Hasidism: Roots, are intended primarily for the personal religious seeker, one who is looking for an old-­new approach to the eternal questions of life, presented through a Jewish lens. The editors of this volume are themselves such seekers. Each of us, representing two different generations, would say that our discovery of Hasidism opened the door to Judaism, and to a deeper personal spiritual life. We welcome you to walk through that doorway as well. Both volumes are also addressed to rabbis and other already committed Jews, as well as scholars and students of Judaism and contemporary religious thought. We hope that they, too, may discover here another sort of Jewish self-­definition, viewing Judaism from a different perspective than those usually presented. We also hope that the publication of these volumes will stir discussion of a Neo-­Hasidic approach to Jewish life and inspire a new generation of leaders, thinkers, and teachers to continue to develop such a path.

xi

Acknowledgments We are grateful to a number of people who have helped bring this project to fruition. First and foremost, we want to thank the many contributors whose voices are included in this volume. Though each is very different, all of the essays are impressively insightful, creative, and courageous. The devotion of these scholars and teachers and their wide range of approaches testify to the contemporary diverse flourishings of Neo-­Hasidism. Eve Ilsen and Netanel Miles-­Yepez have generously allowed us to publish material from the estate of Reb Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi. Our thanks to Wipf and Stock Publishers for their permission to use an extended quote from Ruth H. Sohn’s article “Facing Pain, Facing My Fears,” published in Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives. We are also grateful to Naama Cifrony for allowing us to translate, reprint, and expand upon the interview with Haviva Pedaya published in the April 2009 edition of Eretz Acheret magazine. From the moment he learned of this project, Rabbi Barry Schwartz of The Jewish Publication Society has offered support and encouragement. Joy Weinberg’s editorial hand has been judicious and wise, and her generous attentions have improved the manuscript significantly. The editors are also grateful to the University of Nebraska Press for publishing the work. Rabbi David Maayan has worked tirelessly—­and insightfully—­on all aspects of preparing the manuscript for publication and has served as a very thoughtful first reader. And, finally, we would like to thank Ruth Feldman (RuthFeldmanArt​ .com), an artist and award-­winning Jewish educator, for providing the xiii

Acknowledgments

painting Reaching Beyond that appears on the cover of this book. The image of the forest has played a major role in Hasidic thought ever since the movement’s founder, Israel Ba‘al Shem Tov, was known to choose it as a place of prayer. This cover represents the delicate new shoot that we are trying to present for the first time, a new growth and blossoming of creativity, coming out of the old forest. Our thanks to them all.

xiv

Introduction Sometime in the mid-­1920s, the neo-­Hasidic writer Hillel Zeitlin (1871-­ 1942) penned the following lines describing Yavneh, a new Jewish movement he was seeking to create: 1 Yavneh wants to be for Jewry what Hasidism was a hundred and fifty years ago. This was Hasidism in its origin, that of the Besht.2 This does not mean that Yavneh wants to be that original Hasidism. It rather wants to bring into contemporary Jewish life the freshness, vitality, and joyful attachment to God, in accord with the style, concepts, mood, and meaning of the modern Jew, just as the Besht did—­in his time—­according to the style, concepts, mood, and meaning of Jews of that time.3 Nearly a century later, and in a world that neither Zeitlin nor the Ba‘al Shem Tov could have quite imagined, the editors of the present volume seek to do the same. Hasidism, the great popular mystical revival of Judaism that began in Eastern Europe 250 years ago, has proven itself a hardy tree in the great orchard or pardes of Jewish wisdom that has flourished through the ages. Its original teachers called for a Judaism of inwardness and enthusiasm, a spiritual life marked by the great joy of standing in God’s presence and the privilege of serving at the inner altar. They created communities of masters and disciples devoted to the three great loves that the Ba‘al Shem Tov, revered as the movement’s founder, was said to have proclaimed as the reasons his soul had come into the world: the love of God, the love of Torah, and the xv

Introduction

love of the People of Israel.4 Hasidism as originally taught saw the promulgation of these as its greatest task, and taught them both by word and by the example of the masters’ lives. It perceived its greatest enemy in this task to be the life of unthinking and routinized religious behavior. Such a regimen dulled the spirit instead of restoring it to its source in the One that underlies, flows through, and unites all that is. Born in the semirural Ukraine at the very dawn of the modern era, Hasidism survived the challenges of poverty and oppression, imperial absolutism under the czars and Hapsburgs, and the great transitions wrought by modernity, including industrialization, urbanization, and the emergence of various secular-­Jewish identities. After being the dominant force within Jewish life throughout much of Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century, it retreated to minority status in the early twentieth. Identifying with an emerging notion of ultra-­Orthodoxy, much of later Hasidism took a hostile and suspicious view of any change or innovation, even any alterations in outward habits of dress and style, from those passed down by prior generations.5 The Holocaust that destroyed the Jews of Eastern Europe dealt a particularly harsh blow to the Hasidic communities. The vast majority of Hasidim, who had eschewed emigration to the West as a threat to their way of life, fell victim to the slaughter-­pits and the gas chambers. After the war, the few remaining survivors first gathered in the displaced persons camps and then chose to leave the bloodied soil of Europe behind. Most emigrated either to America or to the new state of Israel. The greatest miracle of the movement’s history, indeed one of the modern world’s most important testaments to the renewing power of faith, is the way the Hasidic communities rebuilt themselves on those new shores. No one could have predicted that the small bedraggled groups of survivors, bewildered by their new and alien surroundings, would reconstitute themselves around charismatic leaders and, within xvi

Introduction

a generation, re-­create their institutions, produce large new families that mostly remained faithful to Hasidism, and widely extend their influence within world Jewry. Hasidism has again become a major force in contemporary Jewish life.

Understanding Neo-­Hasidism The insights of Hasidism are too important, though, to be left to the Hasidim alone. More than a hundred years ago, as the fierce struggle between Hasidism and Haskalah, or Western “Enlightenment,” started to wane, modern Jews began to seek out the inward truths and insights of Hasidic teaching. These Neo-­Hasidic Jews then sought to convey their accumulated wisdom to Jews and others whose chosen ways of life were far removed from traditional Hasidic practice. The teachings were presented in universalized fashion, and the Hasidic wisdom was shared selectively. Not communicated, for example, was the Hasidic disdain for all things modern, including its rejection of Western education. Traditional Hasidic attitudes toward the gentile world and toward women’s roles, in particular, were left aside as relics of an earlier era. The editors of this volume stand proudly within this Neo-­Hasidic tradition. Our intent here is to define that now hundred-­year-­old tradition called Neo-­Hasidism, to trace its history, and to cultivate its further growth. Neo-­Hasidism is a wide tent, encompassing Jews who are highly observant and learned within the tradition (some study and teach the Hasidic sources in the original Hebrew and Yiddish) as well as Jews—­and others—­who know little of such things. Drawing everyone together is a common quest for a Judaism of heart and soul, of hitlahavut or fiery spiritual devotion. As both seekers and editors of this volume, we sense that a new look at Hasidic teachings, updated and expanded for this postmodern era, will provide inspiration and direction for this quest. In an xvii

Introduction

age of great interest in the inner life, spirituality, and meditation, we also believe that an updated, universalized, and accessible version of Hasidic insights might also reach beyond the borders of Judaism and speak to the hearts of non-­Jewish seekers. We welcome these readers too. The Neo-­Hasidism that forms the subject of this volume is different from a broader usage of the term that applies it to the influence of Hasidism on modern Jewish culture as a whole, especially as reflected in works of twentieth-­century Hebrew and Yiddish literature. Beginning early in that century, various writers used the backdrop of Hasidism to tell their own tales. Well-­known authors such as I. L. Peretz, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, and Isaac Bashevis Singer, for example, set many of their fictional creations in the Hasidic world they had known in childhood.6 Often, though, they combined romantic reconstructions of the Hasidic shtetl (small town) with more and less subtle jibes at the old way of life. Many a modern reader becomes familiar with Hasidism more from their re-­creations of it, often filled with ambivalence, than from the Hasidic sources themselves.

The Teachings of Hasidism What, then, are those essential teachings of original Hasidism, especially as taught in its first few generations, that we cherish, seek to preserve, and believe to be so important for the wider world to know? What, too, are the sources of these key Hasidic teachings, and how were they preserved and transmitted? Early Hasidism was a semispontaneous outburst of popular religious enthusiasm. It crystallized around the image of the Ba‘al Shem Tov in the decades following his death in 1760. Most of its leading proponents were at first traveling preachers, wandering from town to town to spread their revivalist messages. The more successful among xviii

Introduction

them then established “courts,” fixed locations that became places of pilgrimage, where disciples would flock to hear their teachings, receive their blessing, and bask in their glory. The teachings were originally oral, preached in Yiddish. Over the last quarter of the eighteenth century, they began to appear in Hebrew books, some with short aphoristic counsels on how to live the good life in God’s sight, others in the form of longer homilies around the cycle of Torah readings. We offer some of the most important teachings of Hasidism in brief form here: 1. All existence is radiant with Divine Presence. “The power of the Maker is within the made,” a common Hasidic watchword, teaches that all creation reflects the godly hand that in every moment creates it anew. Our ordinary view of existence, one that separates person from God, matter from spirit, subject from object, is essentially superficial. Everything that happens comes from the hand of God; there is no moment, place, or deed in which God is not present. Were our eyes truly open—­and the purpose of all religious life is to help in that opening—­we would see that there is no reality outside of Y-­H-­W-­H, the God of all being. The indwelling Divine Presence, while hidden from sight, is the ultimate truth of existence. 2. The Divine Presence is to be discovered and joyously celebrated through all of life. The service of God is not limited to the hours of prayer, study, and specific commandments. Even as these precise God-­given forms of worship are to be carried out with great devotion, the fulfillment of the specific commandments also serves a broader purpose that touches our every deed: inspiration and example for the sanctification of all the rest of life. God’s presence is everywhere, waiting to be revealed. The discovery and upliftxix

Introduction

ing of sparks of divine energy, even in the most unlikely places, is essential to the religious task. 3. Torah, traditional Jewish teaching in both the narrowest and broadest sense, is to guide every aspect of one’s life. It is the eternal will and teaching of God, but it is also a mysterious embodiment of God’s own self, as is the human soul. Torah is our guide to help us discover the divine message imprinted within our hearts. Constant engagement with Torah, seeking out the light hidden deep within it, inspires an ongoing creative quest for new and deeper meanings that in turn energizes our spiritual lives. 4. Our human task includes uplifting and transforming our emotional selves and our moral ways of acting as we seek to become ever more perfect vessels for God’s service. This inner process begins with the key devotional pair of love and fear. We need to purify both of these in our lives, coming to understand that all true love derives from and leads back to the love of God and that God alone is the proper subject of our fear or awe. Other loves, desires, needs, and fears are in a “fallen” state and need to be uplifted. All moral growth begins with this insight. Generosity, openheartedness, and compassion, toward ourselves as well as others, are essential religious values. Condescension, judging, and especially anger (even for the sake of righteousness) are to be avoided. 5. A person who fully embodies these teachings and personal qualities (middot) is to be considered a tsaddik or righteous one. The cultivation of such souls is the great goal of Hasidic teaching. Their presence is a source of blessing to those around them. They are also called upon to serve as models and teachers. The tsaddik or spiritual master stands at the center of a circle of Hasixx

Introduction

dim, disciples, who are devoted both to their teacher and to the community they create around him. The relationship between master and disciple is thus complemented by the intense fellowship fostered within the Hasidic community. These teachings were conveyed by a remarkable array of religious personalities who embodied the role of tsaddik across several generations. Many of them were influenced by the Besht and his principal successor, Dov Baer the Maggid (preacher) of Mezritch. Other well-­ known figures of the early movement include Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, Zusha of Anipolye, Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the founder of Chabad Hasidism), and Nahman of Bratslav.7 Tales about their lives and those of many other masters were told and later written down. The genre of storytelling became an important vehicle for conveying the Hasidic message, as its truths were inseparable from the lives of those who lived them.8

Contemporary Hasidism The transplanted Eastern European Hasidism that exists today in both Israel and the Diaspora embodies a somewhat pale reflection of these teachings. Contemporary Hasidism largely lives in a very frightened and suspicious relationship with the world around it. Since its alignment with ultra-­Orthodoxy early in the nineteenth century, and its fierce battle with emerging secularism as that century proceeded, it has dedicated most of its energies to preserving the old ways of Jewish life in every detail rather than seeking out new realms in which to proclaim God’s presence.9 The creative and spiritually expansive teachings of the first generations came to be replaced by an extreme conservatism. While sparks of the original vision can certainly be found in the surviving and reborn Hasidic communities, the outer xxi

Introduction

shell in which they are housed makes it extremely difficult for outsiders to access the wisdom there. Small-­town Eastern Europe of two hundred years ago, the cradle of Hasidism, was a place and time in which Jews suffered from poverty and oppression. For many, daily sustenance was a constant struggle. Modern medicine was as yet unknown, and the ravages of disease took a terrible toll on both young and old. The surrounding Christian culture was exclusivist in its view of salvation and particularly hostile toward Jews for their ongoing rejection of the Christian message. Ancient magical beliefs and practices were rampant in both Judaism and Christianity.

Hasidism and American Judaism The American Judaism that emerged in the nineteenth century was devoid of almost any awareness of Hasidism and its teachings. Built upon Central rather than Eastern European models, it presented Judaism in rational and liberal categories that had materialized from post-­ enlightenment circles, primarily in Germany. The denominational divisions that came to characterize American Jewry had everything to do with degrees of halakhic obligation, while having little to say about the inner self, awareness of Divine Presence, or a life of passionate devotion. These Westernized Jewries tended to look down upon Hasidism, depicting it as rather boorish and superstitious. In such “enlightened” circles the figure of the Hasidic tsaddik in particular was an object of derision; he was pictured as a “wonder-­rabbi,” usually a charlatan preying on the beliefs of unlettered Jews. This negative image of Hasidism prevailed across the denominational spectrum of American Jewry, from the modern Orthodox to the Reform, well into the latter half of the twentieth century. As a whole, modern Westernized Jews had largely swept the Jewish mysxxii

Introduction

tical tradition under the rug. Since it did not belong to what they defined as the “mainstream,” they deemed it unworthy of being taught or passed on. That attitude has changed radically over the course of the past three or four decades. Attempts to reintegrate once-­discarded mystical terms, practices, and understandings of the tradition are widespread throughout the Jewish community. Collections of Hasidic teachings are newly available in translation,10 Hasidic-­inspired musical compositions are performed in Reform synagogues, various retreats emphasize personal prayer and meditation, courses in mysticism are offered in rabbinical seminaries and universities, the distinctively mystical practices of all-­ night study tikkunim on Shavuot and Tu b’Shevat seders have become familiar in liberal Jewish circles, and much more. This growing phenomenon within Judaism must be seen in the broad context of the emergence of postmodern consciousness preceding and following the turn of the twenty-­first century. Two elements of this new way of thinking require brief mention here. One is a quest for ancient strands of wisdom, abandoned by Westerners in the move toward a science-­based modernity, that might help us recover a lost sense of humanity, perhaps even prevent us from a rush toward nuclear self-­annihilation or planetary destruction. Perhaps, it is thought, there is wisdom to be found among the Sufi saints, the Zen Buddhists, the monks of India—­or the kabbalists and Hasidic masters—­that will offer us some guidance in the very dangerous era we have entered. Second, and no less important, is that the postmodern student of religious traditions no longer requires the sources offering such wisdom to be literally true. Their insights must be translatable into terms and settings that work for the contemporary seeker. Questions of whether they are literally the word of God to Moses or concerning the original meaning of the ancient Scripture become secondary to the depths of wisdom and insight these texts have to offer.11 This is the moment for a neo-­Hasidic Judaism. xxiii

Introduction

A New Call This collection of essays by contemporary rabbis, seekers, and teachers is offered as a companion to A New Hasidism: Roots (Jewish Publication Society, 2019). In the other volume, published simultaneously, we have sought to trace our spiritual lineage back to Martin Buber and Hillel Zeitlin, who began writing in the Neo-­Hasidic spirit more than a century ago. We, the authors and editors whose work you are holding in your hands, walk in their footsteps and continue to learn and be nourished from their insights. But we also see ourselves as standing directly in the lineage of the Ba‘al Shem Tov and the generations who followed. Their teachings and their yearning for the Divine continue to speak to us and inspire us to seek the One, even as we feel the need to reinterpret, especially to universalize, their teachings. To extend the metaphor we chose in naming this project, one of which Jewish mystics have long been fond, here we seek to present the fruits of our own search for meaning, growing on branches that spring from the roots set forth by those who came before us. A gulf separated the authors in A New Hasidism: Roots from the Hasidic masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries whose works so inspired them. With the advent of modernity and its penetration into Jewish life, the discoveries of modern science and philosophy could not be ignored—­and Judaism needed to be recast into categories deeply alien to the thought-­world of the original Hasidic masters. Judaism was now seen as a religion among others, our people’s particular way of embracing the universal God, rather than the result of God’s only revelation to humanity. Its truth-­claims, like those of all religions, were viewed as subjective and existential rather than objective and absolute. Furthermore, modernization had also induced a turn away from religion altogether. A deep secularization of human consciousness had permeated the Western world. All the thinkers represented in A New Hasidism: Roots may be seen as struggling against that xxiv

Introduction

disenchantment of the human spirit, turning to the spiritual richness of Hasidism as a way to reignite the flickering human spirit, standing in defiance of the profane world around them. There is another span of decades between the authors in Roots and ourselves (although one of us editors himself bridges that gap). While all but one of them lived beyond the Holocaust, they all bore within themselves the crisis of faith represented by the fires of Auschwitz. Although Elie Wiesel’s writing was not included in that volume, his spirit is very much felt in it. The loss of Eastern European Hasidism hovers over the writings of Heschel, Carlebach, and Schachter-­Shalomi in the Roots volume. The generation of writers in this volume is one reared half a century later. As the collective trauma begins to heal, spiritual quest on a larger scale has again become a possibility within Jewish life. Many of this book’s writers are leaders of that new openness, seeking to cultivate a “Jewish spirituality” that was impossible for the immediate post-­ Holocaust generation. Both in North America and in Israel, voices are calling for a Jewish inward journey once again, echoing Hillel Zeitlin’s “New Call” in Warsaw of the 1920s, but now in entirely new garb. Still other changes have also contributed to a great transformation of Jewish life in the intervening years, among them our twenty-­first-­ century multicultural environment (including the benign awareness of other religious traditions), our relative security (our interactions with non-­Jews no longer being deeply colored by fear), and our community’s general educational sophistication (combined with widespread ignorance of Jewish teachings). Another sea change is the full inclusion of the female half of our Jewish community in the realms of Jewish learning and leadership, an ideal that is still very much in process (as witnessed, for example, by their inadequate representation here). On the Israeli side, but affecting all Jews, the rebirth of Jewish statehood has been an earthshaking event. The questions of messianism (or quasi-­or pseudoversions of it) are never far from the surface. Other xxv

Introduction

transformations include the tremendous influence of Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook (1865-­1935), a neomystical figure from outside Hasidism; the renewed Jewish presence on the stage of international affairs, which has led to a large-­scale politicization of Jewish commitment that threatens to overwhelm religious aspects of Jewish life. Large numbers of Jews have found their own tradition to be spiritually vacuous and have nourished their souls elsewhere, mainly in Eastern traditions or in new eclectic products of the Aquarian Age. A smaller number, sometimes in flight from the complexities of life in the modern and postmodern world, have turned toward old-­style Hasidism itself, seeking to uncritically re-­create the Judaism of an earlier era. As the prior generation saw Hasidism as a response to secularization, we see Neo-­Hasidism as a response to all of these developments. We envision a Judaism that embodies profound spiritual truths and a devotional way of life. These are betrayed when Jewish life is defined only by loyalties, either to the Jewish body politic or to a literalistic and exclusivist reading of our tradition. We love the early Hasidic masters precisely because of their spiritual daring, their willingness to innovate, and their placing of the quest for God, service, and spiritual growth at the very center of the Jewish enterprise. They understood that the tradition is a set of tools that needs to be used both devotedly and creatively to fashion the person and the human society that radiate with Divine Presence. This said, Neo-­Hasidism should not be seen only as a reaction to challenges or crises, an attempt to preserve religion amid the shifting sands of modernization and postmodernity. Neo-­Hasidism is a rethinking of Judaism in the context of some very positive new ideas and opportunities that have also come to the fore. A universalism unimagined in previous decades has become possible in the early twenty-­first century. A generation of open-­minded seekers is willing to learn from all the great traditions of human spirituality, embracing an entirely new era of cross-­fertilization between the spiritual insights of East and West. Full xxvi

Introduction

acceptance of evolutionary approaches, both in the biosphere and the realm of religion and culture, challenges us to find a place for the voice of God within this dynamic and ever-­changing worldview. Even newer conceptualizations of science, including understandings of the human mind, continue to change the way we see the world. Interconnectivity, quite literally, has transformed the way we exchange knowledge and the way we imagine communities. We can see the impact of these, for both good and ill, across the world. There is a new opportunity at this point in history. The universalized values of Neo-­Hasidic Judaism, as we are presenting it, must stand at the crucible of all of these factors. Nostalgia is not enough. The theology of Neo-­Hasidism is ultimately one of the unity of Being. We affirm that everything in the cosmos is an expression of the Divine, radiant with Divine Presence. Our religious life is all about the cultivation of this awareness. While there is no set doctrine of God in the Neo-­Hasidic view (such an insistence would immediately raise our antidogmatic hackles), we often tend toward either monism or panentheism, picking up on views already found within the original Hasidic sources. Such theologies conform to our own quest for (and occasional glimpses of ) the Divine Presence throughout the created world. Furthermore, they also allow us a Jewish religious language that steers partly clear of a simplistic understanding of providence by a transcendent and all-­ powerful personified Deity, a view made difficult for us by our status as post-­Holocaust Jews. The reality of divine immanence—­“the whole earth is filled with His glory” (Isa. 6:3)—­is the center of our religious truth. Transcendence abides in the sense of divine mystery that ever eludes us, calling us to awesome silence. Still, we are unwilling to give up entirely on the personalist language of Judaism. God as parent, ruler, teacher, lover—­these metaphors retain a power for us, even though we recognize them to be projections of human experience onto the divine mystery. xxvii

Introduction

The focus on God—­however conceived—­must be constant and unflinching, standing up against the senseless but seemingly all-­ pervasive worlds of commercialization, consumerism, and “entertainment” that constantly threaten to seep the vital creativity from our veins. Our universalized Neo-­Hasidic stance is one that has us always asking: “What does it mean to be a religious human being in this situation, whatever it is? How do I find sparks of holiness in this seemingly secular place? How do I lift up this ordinary moment, even this deeply profaned one, and use it as a way back to God’s service?” Our response to these questions must be at once rooted in the worldview of the Hasidic sources and creative, appropriate to the hour in which we live. The theology implied here is not about cosmology or essentialist or exclusive claims of truth. We are not intent on proving that our view is superior to the truth-­claims of others; we are here to witness our truth by the way we speak of it and live it. Ours is a confessional theology, built from the rich symbolic language of Jewish mysticism, and grounded in and tested by the truth of the personal experience. This is a lesson learned from postmodernism, which has taken us back to the abyss and forced us to gaze into it. We have not come away with “answers,” but with a voice that calls upon us to turn back to the language of tradition, even if we have received it in fragmented form—­to put the broken tablets of our faith back together, and live out their meaning.

In This Volume To explore these themes, let us return to the three great loves of the Ba‘al Shem Tov: the love of God, Torah, and Israel. Already in 1920s Poland, Hillel Zeitlin felt a need to expand and redefine what he meant by each of these. But how do these appear a century later to American and Israeli Jews? What forms do these three loves take in our age? xxviii

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We may understand them to refer to theology, sacred study and praxis, and community. Neo-­Hasidism has something to contribute to our understanding of each of these realms, as well as to the ways in which they are deeply intertwined. Gesturing toward Zeitlin’s call, the essays included in this book have been divided into the following three major sections: Part 1: Ahavat ha-­Shem, the Love of God: Theology and Faith; Part 2: Ahavat Torah, the Love of Torah: Practice and Devotion; and Part 3: Ahavat Yisra’el, the Love of Israel: Leaders and Communities.

Part 1: Ahavat Ha-­Shem, the Love of God: Theology and Faith We open by reaching back into the A New Hasidism: Roots generation and introducing a brief theological meditation by Zalman Schachter-­ Shalomi, first published shortly before his passing in 2014. Reb Zalman was remarkable for the ways in which he continued to grow, learn, and change, even in his later years. From that vantage point, this particular piece by Zalman belongs in the current volume. It is followed by a credo by Arthur Green, one of the editors, written the form of text and commentary. This evolving text stands as his current articulation of what it means to live as a Neo-­Hasidic Jew. It is intended to serve as a rallying call to other Jews who see themselves in it, or perhaps as a starting point for a new religious movement, one that will cut across all the old and outdated denominational lines. Four further essays explore aspects of theology in the Neo-­Hasidic spirit. Nehemia Polen links a postcritical biblical theology to the insights and reading style of the early Hasidic masters (something many of us have felt called to do since the early days of Havurat Shaxxix

Introduction

lom, the spiritual community in Somerville, Massachusetts, founded by Art and Kathy Green, among others, in the late 1960s). Don Seeman expresses both the attractiveness of a Neo-­Hasidic approach and the anxieties it arouses in one deeply committed to Judaism as a moral teaching that cannot live without absolutes. Or N. Rose explores the question of how we continue to proclaim our unique religious truth in a world where we both respect and learn from a diverse array of religious and secular others. David Seidenberg carries the panentheist spirit of Neo-­Hasidism into a bold and creative approach to the most urgent spiritual, scientific, and political issue of our age: the growing threat to our collective survival on this much-­abused planet.

Part 2: Ahavat Torah, the Love of Torah: Practice and Devotion Jewish mystical theology, and that of the Hasidic masters in particular, is embodied in the text that lies at the core of our tradition and in the deeds that its voice calls forth from us. These are fundamental in both the ritual and the interpersonal realms: Torah and mitzvot. We mean these terms today in their specific as well as more general sense. Yes, we want to be nourished by this text, to put our love and devotion into these holy deeds. But we also want to live in quest of wisdom, to be learning from every person and every source, to inspire a life in which every deed is holy. We have learned that message from the Ba‘al Shem Tov and his early disciples, and want a Judaism that lives in its spirit. For some of us this takes place in a deeply traditionalist context, where halakhah is the path we walk on a daily basis. Others are less firm in their absolute commitment to the forms, but are nonetheless nourished by the Hasidic intent to seek God’s presence in all xxx

Introduction

they do and encounter. Our shared quest for the open heart and our love of Jewish learning are strong enough that we do not allow our varying styles or degrees of observance to drive a wedge between us. Together we cherish how deeply countercultural such a life of holiness is in our era. This second section begins with an essay by our other editor, Ariel Evan Mayse, on a Neo-­Hasidic theology of halakhah. While it is the result of years of learning and reflection, he is the first to admit that it will probably not stand as his final word on the subject. On the contrary, he offers it to our community of readers as a way of beginning a much-­needed conversation. The following three essays all emerge from authors associated with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, which for the past two decades has been trying to bring the practice of meditation, alongside the inspiration of Hasidic sources, to the current generation of Jewish clergy, educators, and lay leaders. Their collective efforts have had great impact on many individuals and communities, especially in bringing the inner life of prayer to a level of seriousness previously almost unknown in American Jewish life. Nancy Flam, reflecting on this process, explores the importance of Hasidic sources for the quest to live a life of devotion and to cultivate expansive awareness of the Divine. Her essay also touches on the important question of a female seeker’s access to the once all-­male bastion of Hasidic wisdom. James Jacobson-­Maisels enters directly into a discussion of Buddhist-­inspired mindfulness and Neo-­Hasidic Judaism, raising issues concerning how the two dwell together. Jonathan Slater considers how Neo-­Hasidic Judaism might be presented to a broader North American Jewish public. The final essay in this section, by Estelle Frankel, addresses a particular aspect of praxis: the place of Hasidic tales and values in the psychotherapeutic context. This is especially important for the development of a contemporary Neo-­Hasidism, since so much of contemporary spirituality is framed in the context of self-­help and psychic healing. xxxi

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Part 3: Ahavat Yisra’el, the Love of Israel: Leaders and Communities Neo-­Hasidism affirms the central place of human community in our spiritual journeys. Our inner quest takes place within the embrace of a devotional community, and together we are called to remake that community in each and every generation. This, in turn, compels us to understand and relate to community on all levels: the intimate havurah of fellow-­seekers amid whom we choose to live, share the quest, and raise our children; the broader Jewish community of which we are a part, even as we seek to reshape it and reorder its values; the Jewish people, both in the Diaspora and in Israel; the broader community of seekers, from whom we are constantly learning as well. To say that we love all these communities, without trivializing that most precious word, is a constant challenge to us. While we recognize the tendency to proclaim new sorts of communities and friendships through electronic means in our age, we continue to value real human interactions. Without playing the Luddite and simply denying all technology a role in the building of human relations, we remain cautious about it, aware that there is a growing sense of dissatisfaction with this depersonalizing and alienating world of ours. In the first essay in this section, Ebn Leader deals head-­on with one of the most vexing challenges to a contemporary Neo-­Hasidic approach to Judaism. What do we do with the tsaddik, arguably the most recognized institution in Hasidism, in an age deeply suspicious of both charisma and strong-­handed leadership? Can we allow ourselves to be rebbes of this teaching? Is there a community that would accept us as such, in a healthy and constructive way? Or can the community itself somehow take on the role of rebbe to guide us? Next, Shaul Magid offers his personal, ambivalent recollections of Shlomo Carlebach as a rebbe to many in his generation. We then turn xxxii

Introduction

to Israel, examining aspects of the Neo-­Hasidic developments occurring there, perhaps on a larger scale than they are in North America. This book concludes with a dialogue between the editors, conducted by our friend and student Jordan Schuster, that looks back over the project and just begins to peer forward, asking what the next steps should be in creating A New Hasidism for an age so much in search of it. Readers are encouraged to learn more about the writers of these essays by reading their contributors biographies at the back of this book.

Future Growth This book’s publication represents a milestone in the history of Neo-­ Hasidism, a coming-­of-­age as new paths are blazed beyond those articulated by the nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century thinkers in A New Hasidism: Roots. We hope that the present collection of essays is an inspirational call to all those who feel drawn toward the inner realms, who long to stand in the presence of God. We as editors take great pride in the variety of voices and topics represented in this volume. We have tried to offer diverse visions of Neo-­ Hasidism and to deal openly with some of the difficult issues that arise as one tries to apply a Hasidism-­based piety in our own age. We wish we could have included even more voices—­including a greater representation of women’s voices—­and topics. But, noting our growth as well as the distance yet to travel, we stand together at a great moment in time: “Today, if you listen to His voice” (Ps. 95:7). We are asking you, the reader, to find yourself amid the pages of these books—­to search the essays for a gateway through which to walk. These books make their demands as well. Most of these texts are not light reading; the work calls for seriousness and commitment, values of great importance to us. In addition, you are invited to probe the latticework of associations and points of influence between the essays in xxxiii

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the present volume and the foundational chapters in our companion book, A New Hasidism: Roots. Furthermore, many of the essays in this volume should provide a rich background for conversation in a variety of venues, ranging from Shabbat dinner tables to college campuses to congregations. You may wish to join with others to contemplate, for example, the editors’ contributions: Arthur Green’s “Neo-­Hasidic Credo” (chap. 2) could well be compared with Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi’s opening piece in this volume, as well as with his earlier “Hasidism and Neo-­Hasidism” in the Roots volume. What are the differences and continuities? How do you see Neo-­Hasidism itself evolving? Ariel Evan Mayse’s perspectives on the place of halakhah in a contemporary Jewish spirituality (chap. 7) should make for a rich conversation, no matter what your practice is. If your own Judaism is “light” on the side of halakhic praxis, does his treatment of the subject call out to you to come closer? Why or why not? If you have experience with meditation, look especially at the essays by Nancy Flam and James Jacobson-­Maisels. How are they helpful in your own attempt to integrate Jewish practice and meditation? Ebn Leader’s piece on the question of leadership for Neo-­Hasidic communities is also bound to arouse discussion. How do you feel about charismatic leadership? Can there be a Hasidism without rebbes? Do the examples of Bratslav and Chabad, Hasidic communities that endure without a living charismatic leader, help with this? To guide these conversations, The Jewish Publication Society is offering a Discussion Guide for both volumes, available either at Arthur Green’s website, artgreen26​.com, or at jps​.org​/ books​/a​-­­new​-­­hasidism​ -­­roots and jps​.org​/ books​/a​-­­new​-­­hasidism​-­­branches. As you enter into the texts, we also ask that you leave skepticism and cynicism behind. Put aside those “shells” and open your heart and mind to the possibility of finding a place for yourself in the Judaism we are offering here. And if you are so moved, dear reader, please join us in this ongoing quest. xxxiv

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Comforted by our Sages’ assurance that “it is not yours to complete the task” (m. Avot 2:16), we look forward to further work in this spirit. As the earliest Hasidic masters knew so well, the reading of Torah has to grow and change with each generation and its distinctive voice. Will that next voice be yours? Notes

1. The first portion of this introduction also appears in this book’s companion volume, Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, eds., A New Hasidism: Roots (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2019). 2. An acronym for the Ba‘al Shem Tov, literally “master of the good name,” an appellation given to Israel ben Eliezer (1700-­1760), the imagined founder of Hasidism and ideal figure of the Hasidic master. 3. From an unpublished manuscript in possession of the editors. The full text is included in the companion volume, Green and Mayse, A New Hasidism. 4. See Butsina di-­Nehora, vol. 1 (Brooklyn: n.p., 2007), 185. 5. A full history of the Hasidic movement, long sorely lacking, is now available in David Biale et al., eds., Hasidism: A New History (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). Both editors of this volume have participated in that project. 6. On this phenomenon, see Nicham Ross, “Can Secular Spirituality be Religiously Inspired?: The Hasidic Legacy in the Eyes of the Skeptics,” ajs Review 37, no. 1 (2013): 93-­113, based on a Hebrew book by the same author. 7. On Rabbi Shneur Zalman, see Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady: The Origins of Chabad Hasidism (Waltham ma: Brandeis University Press, 2015). On Rabbi Nahman, see Arthur Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 1992). 8. The classic Neo-­Hasidic collection is Martin Buber’s two-­volume Tales of the Hasidim, first published in English in 1947-­48 and frequently reprinted. Especially charming, though a bit harder to find, is Jiri Langer’s Nine Gates to the Hasidic Mysteries, trans. Stephen Jolly (London: J. Clarke, 1961). Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi also edited several volumes of Hasidic stories, both old and new, and over the past decades increasingly more collections of Hasidic tales have been made available to English readers. xxxv

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9. The later history of Hasidism, and especially its ongoing struggles with the modern world, are well documented in Biale et al., Hasidism. 10. Two of these—­Arthur Green, ed., The Language of Truth: Teachings from the “Sefat Emet” (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998) and Arthur Green, Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table, with Ebn Leader, Ariel Evan Mayse, and Or Rose (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2013) —­represent efforts by the editors of this volume. 11. The efforts of critical scholars, largely in Israel, led by Gershom Scholem and generations of his students, have contributed tremendously to the recovery of Jewish mysticism.

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A New Hasidism Branches

Part 1

Ahavat ha-­Shem, the Love of God Theology and Faith

1 The Thirteen Aspirations of Faith Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi 1 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In Your Infinite Light, Issuing from the Source Beyond time and space, Who, longing for A dwelling-­place In the Worlds below, Compassionately contracts Her Radiant Glory In order to emanate, Create, form, and effect All that exists in The Universe. 2 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In Your Oneness 3

Schachter-Shalomi

With all of creation; A Oneness Without a second, A Oneness that says, All that exists In the Universe Is called into being According to Your Desire In every Moment. 3 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In your intent And purpose In Creation; That the Divine He May become Known to us Through Creation, The Divine She; That we expand This awareness Until the Worlds Are filled with the Consciousness of God, As the waters Cover the sea. 4

Thirteen Aspirations of Faith

4 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In Your unfolding plan, In which all of us May come to constitute One consciously Interconnected And organic whole; That every living being May know that You Are the One Who constantly causes Their existence. 5

My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In all the paths Through which the Holy Spirit manifests And reveals to us That all Your Manifestations are one, Though called By different names Through time And space. 5

Schachter-Shalomi

6 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In the mission Of each path As an organ of The collective being That comprises All existence; That through Your compassion On all creatures It be revealed to all How integral Each Message is To the health Of all the species Of our collective Being. 7 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In the reciprocity Of Your Universe, Which takes our Impressions; That everyone Who does good With one’s own life 6

Thirteen Aspirations of Faith

Takes part in the fixing Of the world, And that everyone Who uses that life For negative purposes Likewise participates In the destruction Of the world; That every action Has an impact On the rest of Existence. 8 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In Your perfect Judgment; That the amount Of good In the Universe Is greater than The amount of Negativity; And that our Entire movement Through the chain Of evolution Is designed To bring about The fulfillment 7

Schachter-Shalomi

Of Your Divine Intention. 9 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In your tradition; That the deeds Of our mothers And fathers Inure to the benefit Of their children; That the traditions Passed on Contain within them The seeds of the light Of Redemption. 10 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In Your compassion; That our prayers Are heard and Answered. 11 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith 8

Thirteen Aspirations of Faith

In Your Holy Presence, Dwelling in Our midst; That all who Show kindness To living creatures Also show kindness To You. 12 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In Your continuity; That physical death Does not terminate The existence Of the soul; That there are Innumerable Worlds In which souls Reside. 13 My God, I aspire to Perfect faith In the fixing Of the World; And our part In its awakening, 9

Schachter-Shalomi

Possessing life, Consciousness, And feeling, Becoming a fitting Vessel for the Revelation of the Divine Will.

10

2 A Neo-­Hasidic Credo Arthur Green When I first read Hillel Zeitlin’s essay “The Fundaments of Hasidism” at age twenty, I became a Neo-­Hasidic Jew. Zeitlin led me back to the Hasidic sources, which I have since been loving and learning, teaching and translating, now for more than half a century. Zeitlin, along with Martin Buber, and my in-­life teachers Abraham Joshua Heschel and Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, saved Judaism for me, much as the Hasidic Rabbi Pinhas of Korets once said that the Zohar had “kept him a Jew.” Collectively they moved me toward a rather defined faith-­stance (I intentionally choose this term over “theology”), from which I have wavered rather little. Zeitlin was the most important, and thus remains my rebbe. He showed me the abstract truth that lay behind the mask of personalist God-­language, which was already difficult for me. He then opened for me the possibility of a passionate and intense devotional life that might accompany such a quest; an abstract theology, I realized, did not consign me to an arid spirituality. From these teachers, and especially from Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, I sought out a vision of life as a journey filled with ever-­higher spiritual questions and challenges. My purpose here is to give language to the essence of that quest, to flesh out in specifics my lifelong project of bringing to birth a Neo-­ Hasidic Judaism that might have broad appeal to contemporary seekers. These seekers include many present and future rabbis, with whom I have tried to share my love of the original Hasidic sources, and the 11

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many spiritually serious Jews who have turned toward Eastern spiritual paths in despair of finding anything usable in our own spiritual patrimony. My heart goes out especially to this latter group, and I constantly have them in mind as I write. It is for them (though I daresay for myself as well, since I am spiritually so close to them!) that I have sought to use Hasidism in creating what I sometimes call a “seeker-­ friendly” Judaism. Elsewhere, most notably in Radical Judaism, I outlined a theological position that takes as its departure-­point an evolutionary approach, both to human origins and to the origins and development of religion.1 I believe that the evolutionary moment in which we stand offers us great challenges and unique opportunities. The first of these is the more obvious. Human and other forms of advanced life on our planet are dangerously threatened by the dominance of a single species, the human, over all forms of life, accompanied by our seemingly relentless exploitation of the Earth’s resources and disregard for its degradation. Unless we change our attitude toward the natural world from that of exploiter to responsible steward, we will simply not survive. But can it be coincidence that the first species to achieve such dangerous mastery is also the first to be blessed with the moral conscience and awareness that might save us from self-­destruction? And might that process not be aided by our living in an era when some of the greatest spiritual teachers among us seek to overcome the competitive spirit that has so plagued religion over the centuries? This too is a great evolutionary moment. The expanding of our cultural horizons has brought us to an era when the spiritual traditions of East and West are able to learn from and nourish one another as never before. This cross-­fertilization of spiritual energies can potentially play a great role in helping us chart our future course, both in saving the planet and in setting the direction for the further growth of the human spirit. We only have to open ourselves to it. 12

A Neo-Hasidic Credo

Over the past half century I have sought to bring forth a Judaism that can be an active player in this process, having profound teachings to offer as it is also open to learning from others in this great era of interfaith dialogue and collective growth. In so doing I made frequent recourse to the kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions, as I believe they provide tools that make such a transition possible. Here I would like to work in a different way. Rather than expounding on the nature of our theological situation, drawing on historical sources, and then offering conclusions, I want to lay out directly what I consider to be the key principles of Neo-­Hasidism. I offer both original text and my own commentary, following a format occasionally found in the kabbalistic corpus. In doing so I realize that I run the risk of being read dogmatically, in contrast to various statements in which I eschew dogma, insisting that religious truth need emerge from personal experience. Here let me say clearly that I have not abandoned that stance. The credo that you are about to read is precisely a distillation of whatever meager bits of wisdom I have collected in the course of fifty years’ experience as a seeker, nothing more. Zeitlin’s introduction to Hasidic thought was published just over a century ago. A bit later he published an “interview” with himself in which he described the new Hasidism he sought to create in interwar Poland and emphasized its continuities with and differences from the old. He also wrote fourteen admonitions for members of his intended community Yavneh, a sort of Neo-­Hasidic hanhagot or guidelines for personal practice (these are included in A New Hasidism: Roots, the companion book to this volume). Although there is no text called a “credo,” we can certainly surmise one from a reading of these in tandem. Back in the 1950s Schachter-­ Shalomi wrote something called “A Modern Hasid’s Credo,” which formed the basis for many of his later writings.2 His later, updated version of it appears as chapter 1 in the present volume. 13

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Here is my own Neo-­Hasidic credo, in the shortest form to which I am able to reduce it. It is very much a personal statement, but one that I hope will be useful to others as well. These brief theological points should be read together with my own interpretive commentary, spelling out the ideas in greater depth and providing further nuance. In order to help orient the reader, the relevant sections of this credo have been reprinted (in bold) immediately before the commentary.

Credo (Ani Ma’amin) Hasidism is a Judaism based on hesed, meaning love or compassion. It calls us to a love for God, for Torah or wise teachings, and for one another. All that we do in this world should be motivated by our pursuit of hesed. As hesed is an endlessly flowing love, a Hasid is one who loves and gives generously, stretching beyond limits, suspending judgment of those who receive that love, and serving without thought of recompense or reward. 1. There is only One. All exists within what we humans call the mind of God, where Being is a simple, undifferentiated whole. Because Y-­H-­W-­H (the Hebrew term for “God,” really “is-­was-­will be”) is beyond time, the oneness that underlies reality has never changed. Our evolving, ever-­changing cosmos and the absolute stasis of Being are two faces of the same One. Our seeming existence as individuals, like all of physical reality, is the result of tsimtsum, a contraction or deintensification of Divine Presence so that our minds can encounter it and yet continue to see ourselves as separate beings, in order to fulfill our worldly task. Daily life requires us to live as separate individuals and to recognize both the boundaries between self and other and the great opportunity for communion across those boundaries. In ultimate reality, 14

A Neo-Hasidic Credo

however, that separate existence is mostly illusion. “God is one” means that we are all one. Divine presence (shekhinah) underlies, surrounds, and fills all of existence. It is not limited to any particular place, nor is perception of it limited to Jews or Judaism. The encounter with this presence is intoxicating and transformative, the true stuff of religious experience. 2. To be a Hasid means to live in loving awareness of God’s presence in all that we encounter, and to act in response to it. Our pursuit of hesed leads us to find sparks of divine light scattered everywhere, in every human being and throughout the world, but often hidden behind both real and illusory “shells.” Our task is to seek out and discover those sparks, even in the most unlikely places, in order to raise them up and re-­join them to their Source. This work of redeeming the sparks and restoring wholeness, carried out on spiritual, physical, and social planes, fills the daily life of the true Hasid. It brings joy to the shekhinah (the Divine Presence) and to us as we reaffirm the divine and cosmic unity. “God needs to be served in every way.”3 All of life is an opportunity for discovering and responding to the Divine Presence. The way we relate to every creature is a mirror of our devotion to our single Creator, who lives in all of them. 3. That joyous service of Y-­H-­W-­H is the purpose of human existence. The One delights in each creature, in every single distinctive form in which it is garbed. But we human beings occupy a unique role in the hierarchy of ever-­evolving Creation, having the capacity for awareness of the larger picture and an inbuilt striving for meaning-­making. We must shape that awareness so as to make us desire to serve, to fulfill our unique role as denizens of two worlds. We become most fully human as we stretch to realize the divine image in which we are created. 15

Green

4. The essence of our religious life lies in the deep inward glance, a commitment to a vision of spiritual intensity and attachment to the One. Surface appearances do not suffice for us. This is true with regard to our encounter with humans, both ourselves and others. It applies also to our view of the world, as we seek the hidden One within the many. So too is it the key to our encounter with Torah and religious praxis. We are ever in search for their deeper truth, and approach them in quest for ever-­new layers of meaning. 5. Outer deeds are important; the mitzvot are the forms into which we pour our devotion; they call out to us to be fulfilled. There is no Judaism without ahavat ha-­mitzvot, a loving devotion to our forms of religious life. They are the tools our tradition gives us to achieve and maintain awareness. Each such mitzvah is to be seen as a great gift, an opportunity to stand in the Divine Presence in a unique way. At the same time, we need to recall that the mitzvot are means rather than ends in themselves. They are vessels to contain the divine light that floods the soul, concrete embodiments of the heart’s inward quest. They also serve as paradigms for the rest of human actions. To live fully in God’s presence is to do everything as though it were a mitzvah. 6. Our human task begins with the uplifting and transforming of our spiritual and emotional selves to become ever more perfect vehicles for God’s service. This requires us to demand much of ourselves, setting a high bar for our spiritual aspirations, including the life of prayer. This process begins with the key devotional pair of love and awe, which together lead us to our sense of the holy. But it also means treating ourselves with kindness, accepting our own human limitations. Care for both body and spirit, our own and others’, as God’s handiwork, is also a vital part of our worldly 16

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task. Regarding the body, there is much correction needed of a prior imbalance in Judaism. 7. The deeper look at reality should put us at odds with the superficial values of the consumerist and overly self-­centered society amid which we live. Being, unlike our Hasidic ancestors, citizens of a free society, we can and must take a critical stance toward all that we regard as dehumanizing or degrading in our general culture. Care for each person, including both Jew and non-­Jew, as a unique image of God and as our fellow-­limb on the single Adamic body or Tree of Life, is the first way we express our love of God. It is in this that we are tested, both as individuals and societies. Without seeking to impose our specific moral views on others, we envision a Jewish community that speaks out with a strong moral voice. 8. The above principles all flow directly from an expansive Hasidic reading of Torah, classical Jewish teachings. We live in an abiding and covenanted love relationship to Torah. That means the text, “written Torah,” and the whole of the oral tradition, including our own interpretive voices. All of these point us to the cosmic and wordless Torah that lies within and beyond them. We know that our people has mined endless veins of wisdom and holiness from within the Torah text, and we continue in that path, adding new methods of interpretation to the old. The whole process of renewal through constant reinterpretation is sacred to us. We want this to happen in a creative and openhearted way, and we devote ourselves to that effort. 9. We are Jews. As Jewish seekers, we have a special connection to our forebear Abraham, who followed the voice and set off on a journey that we still consider unfinished. Abraham was the original 17

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teacher of hesed, and we are his children. We have a special love for our people, past, present, and future, a love that only increases our love for all of humanity, indeed for all of God’s creatures. We bear within us the pain of Jewish suffering and the joy of Jewish rebirth. We consider the ingathering of exiles and the renewal of Jewish life that has taken place in the Land of Israel to be among the great miracles of our era. We fully and joyously embrace the emergence of a free and proud Jewish people in the Holy Land, and we identify with the many trials Israel has faced in the years of its existence. At the same time, a Jewish state must live up to the ideal of hesed, as reflected in the way it treats both Jews and others. When we feel it betrays that value of compassion, we Hasidim must stand up in protest. We Jews exist in order to bear witness to a truth, and we cannot allow a confrontation, even with very real enemies, to turn us aside from that mission. We care that our people, bearers of a great spiritual legacy, survive and carry our traditions forward, as embodiments of divine hesed. That means advocating for a deep and creative Jewish life wherever Jews live, both in the Diaspora and in Israel. 10. Our world suffers from a great imbalance of energy between the typically “male” and “female” energies. Neo-­Hasidism needs to be shaped by the voices of women alongside men, as full participants in every aspect of its emergence. We welcome devotion to the one God through the channels of shekhinah and binah—­Y-­H-­W-­H as saving and protecting Mother—­even as we know that all metaphors and symbols point to the elusive One that lies both within and beyond them. 11. Hasidism at its best and worst is built around the figure of the tsaddik, a charismatic holy man blessed by God and capable of transmitting divine blessing. We too recognize that there are 18

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gifted spiritual teachers in our world and we thank God for their presence and our ability to learn from them. But we live in an age that is rightly suspicious of such figures, having seen charisma used in sometimes dangerous and horrific ways. We therefore underscore the Hasidic teaching that each person has his or her own path to walk and truth to discover. We encourage spiritual independence and responsibility. 12. Hasidism, like Judaism itself, believes in community. The sense of hevrayyah or fellowship among followers of a particular path is one of the greatest tools it offers for spiritual growth. Cultivating spiritual friendships and communities that allow one to work through personal struggles and the obstacles each person finds in the path, as well as developing an ear to listen well to the struggles of others, are among the great gifts to be learned from the Hasidic tradition. 13. We are heirs to one of the world’s great spiritual traditions. We recognize that Torah is our people’s unique language for expressing an ancient and universal truth. For many centuries, persecution and hatred made it the legacy of Jews alone. While its exclusively inward-­looking focus gave it great depth, in our age it needs to breathe deeply the air of freedom, broadening its focus and addressing the great issues that confront all humanity. As we join with other seekers in the quest for that universal truth, we remain committed to preserving our ancient language and way of life in full richness, limited only by ethical challenges. We believe that we have much to offer in a spiritual conversation that transcends all borders, as we have much to learn from others. We enter into that conversation happily, coming together with others who admit in collective humility that none of our languages embodies truth in its fullness.4 19

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Commentary 1. There is only One. All exists within what we humans call the mind of God, where Being is a simple, undifferentiated whole. Because Y-­H-­ W-­H (the Hebrew term for “God,” really “is-­was-­will be”) is beyond time, the oneness that underlies reality has never changed.

The essential faith-­claim is that being is One. This is the way I understand the daily proclamation of Shema‘ Yisra’el, the core of Jewish liturgical practice. Note that I do not say that all being “originates” within God, as though I were offering an account of Creation: it was first there, then it emerged from there. I do not believe that change has ever happened. “You are from before the world was created; You are since the world was created,” that is, unchanged.5 The language we speak in explaining “Creation” may sound temporal, but that is only because we are telling a story, where one thing needs to follow another. Our existence as One, within God, is a permanent condition. We still exist “in the mind of God.” Even after all these billions of years, the oneness of being remains the ultimate truth. It is that simple wholeness of being that we call Y-­H-­W-­H, meaning is-­ was-­will be, or Being. The capitalization (possible only in English, not in Hebrew, of course) indicates that we revere it, that we accept Being as an object of worship. Like Job, we fall before its majesty, its mystery, including both its life-­giving and its destructive power. In doing so, we give to it the highest gift we humans can offer: we personify it. As we give to Being of our most precious humanity, we enable ourselves to address it as atah, “Thou,” to render it not only an object of veneration but a subject of prayer. As we reverse the letters HaWaYaH, or “existence” in Hebrew, into Y-­H-­W-­H, we perform an acting of naming. In that moment there is revealed to us a name so holy that we dare not pronounce it. I recognize that a phrase like “the mind of God” is the beginning of anthropomorphism—­hence the qualification of “what we humans 20

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call.” What lies behind it is the kabbalistic hokhmah, “divine wisdom,” the font of existence in which all being is fully present in a not yet differentiated state. Hokhmah is, for the Hasidic sources, the first of the ten sefirot, the stages of divine self-­manifestation. It is also described as ayin or “nothingness,” meaning that no specified identity is yet present in it.6 Like all of the ten sefirot of the kabbalists, hokhmah is transcendent of both space and time, though it may be depicted in metaphors that derive from both. Our seeming existence as individuals, like all of physical reality, is the result of tsimtsum, a contraction or deintensification of Divine Presence so that our minds can encounter it and yet continue to see ourselves as separate beings, in order to fulfill our worldly task. . . . In ultimate reality, however, that separate existence is mostly illusion.

This nonliteralist reading of tsimtsum has its origins in the seventeenth-­ and eighteenth-­century debates about how to understand this aspect of Lurianic Kabbalah. The early Hasidic masters adopted it as a key part of their mystical self-­understanding.7 It may be seen as a mystical parallel to Kant’s Prolegomenon: the mind by definition cannot know or make claims about that which lies beyond its scope. We live in a mental universe shaped by individual consciousness and self-­awareness. That is the way the human mind is fashioned. (The old Hasidic language would say, of course, “That is the way God in His wisdom created us.” I am not averse to such language but want to avoid it here in order to lessen confusion.) But how then do I dare to make the prior statement that all existence is one in the mind of God? Does not tsimtsum make it impossible for me to know or assert such a thing? Here again I need recourse to kabbalistic language. Da’at, best translated as “mind” or “awareness,” indeed resides within the realm of tsimtsum, the reduced consciousness of our ordinary mental self. This is the ordinary conscious self. But human beings are capable of insight that comes from a more profound 21

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realm of existence (or a deeper, preconscious level of mental activity). It is called binah, as in the phrase ha-­lev mevin, “understanding of the heart.”8 Such insight, often coming in brief flashes and resistant to expression in the prose of da‘at’s language, is the transcendent core of religious experience, leading us to an awareness that goes beyond the constricted consciousness within which we mortals are both blessed and cursed to live our daily lives. Religious teaching, often best encapsulated in the multivocality of myth and symbol, originates in that deeper level of mind. Religious experiences, including but not limited to such flashes of deep intuition, are the primary data around which theology is to be shaped. “God is one” means that we are all one.

This is sod keri’at shema‘, the secret of “God is one.” The rest is commentary. I have elsewhere quoted the comment of the Sefat Emet on this, a completely unequivocal statement of unio mystica or mystical union at the heart of Hasidism.9 My primary theological language is the abstract theology of early Hasidism. It was Zeitlin’s rendition of this that saved Judaism for me; I therefore see him as my most important spiritual master. But I too, like him, feel myself emotionally drawn to the warm and affectionate personalist language that is the other side of Hasidism, the relationship to God as parent, ruler, lover, and all the rest. I engage in a life of prayer that uses these metaphors constantly, and I embrace them as such. But they are always a means toward an end that transcends them, bringing me into such great love and awe that I am carried beyond their dualist premise back to the ultimate truth of oneness. The choice to express what is essentially a panentheistic vision through the vehicle of an ancient personalistic religious tradition is a conscious one. Hasidism, as a popular form of Jewish mysticism, does just that. The mystic knows in the heart that there exists naught but the One, that the rays of divine light or the echoes of the divine word are all that really 22

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is.10 They and their Source are not distinguishable. But this insight is dressed in the form of a commentary on “God said: Let there be light,” a tale of Creation that sounds like God and world are two separate entities, quite distinct from one another, the world created at a certain time by an act of divine speech. In doing so, the Hasid gains the ability to use the language of love and all the great emotional depth of human relationships to explore the inner mysteries. To permit myself to say atah (You), invoking Buber’s Thou, even when I know the Other is no real other, is an act that humanizes my spiritual journey. This choice of language also preserves the great biblical insistence that each human being is a unique and vital image of God, even while knowing that the reflection of divinity we see in that human face will lead right back to the deeper and more essential truth that there is only One. God’s presence (shekhinah) underlies, surrounds, and fills all of existence. . . . The encounter with this presence is intoxicating and transformative, the true stuff of religious experience.

This is the other, and larger, part of religious experience. It is the sense of divine immanence, an awareness that all of being shimmers with an inner glow that marks it as fraught with sacred character. It was well known to the Psalmist and is present in the works of all the great religious poets. (Rumi, Whitman, and Tagore come to mind, along with a host of others.) In calling this aura of holiness shekhinah, I am following a specifically Hasidic reading of the tradition. My favorites among the early Hasidic masters insisted, on the basis of early Rabbinic teaching, that divinity truly fills all the “lower” and physical worlds. Everything that exists, every creature, every moment, every event, exists within shekhinah. This means that the classic Western division between matter and spirit, reaching back to Plato, is misguided; the physical world itself is filled with spiritual energy, which alone animates it. These sources love the old rabbinic formula, “He is the place of the world, but the 23

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world is not His place,”11 which they take as implying that this world is totally contained within shekhinah, but that God also exists beyond, in mysterious and unknown ways, as Y-­H-­W-­H or ultimately elusive Being. The Kabbalistic yihud kudsha brikh hu u-­shekhintey, the unification of cosmic mystery and radiance, also depicted as primal “male” and “female” within God, becomes in effect the union of upper and lower worlds, the utter fusion of matter and spirit. It is not limited to any particular place, nor is perception of it limited to Jews or Judaism.

Judaism represents a universal truth. We, as the Jewish people, are bearers of that truth in order to share its insights and teachings with all humanity. This is what it means to be a “kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6). 2. Our pursuit of hesed leads us to find sparks of divine light scattered everywhere. . . . Our task is to seek out and discover those sparks, even in the most unlikely places, in order to raise them up and re-­ join them to their Source.

Surely this is a significant part of what has made Hasidism so attractive, both in its eighteenth-­century form and in this Neo-­Hasidic garb. There is a sense of spiritual adventure, in which one is ever seeking out the sparks, ever involved in that work of uplifting and transformation. Our earthly journey is depicted as a lifelong quest, filled with struggles to find, uplift, and redeem fallen bits of the single divine Self. When you add the phrase “even in the most unlikely places,” the drama is pitched to a high point; the journey becomes fraught with danger. Indeed it is. I know from my own failures. For us, living as we do in such a “secular” culture, the task is greater than ever. We have to raise up sparks not only from amid the conversation with the peasant in the marketplace, as the Ba‘al Shem Tov taught, but from off the computer and television screens, filled with everything from blatant pornography to the less openly pornographic, 24

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but equally distressing, worldviews projected at us by Hollywood, Washington, and Wall Street. . . . behind both real and illusory “shells.”

Those kelipot might be our own defenses, “shells” that we build around us to protect our most vulnerable inner selves. Sometimes they are also our false perceptions of others, constructed so as to keep us from truly opening to meeting them as they are. This work of redeeming the sparks and restoring wholeness, carried out on spiritual, physical, and social planes, fills the daily life of the true Hasid. It brings joy to shekhinah and to us as we reaffirm the divine and cosmic unity.

Neo-­Hasidism is a theology that rejects the sharp division between the spiritual life and the commitment to societal transformation and social justice. They are two sides of the same reality, constantly needing to nourish one another. Without live spiritual roots based on a commitment to love, the striving for social justice can become a new and thoughtless conformity to political correctness. Without effectiveness on the material and social planes, concern for spirituality can become solipsistic and self-­centered. The outer and the inner need one another to fulfill their tasks. 3. That joyous service of God is the purpose of human existence. The One delights in each creature, in every single distinctive form in which it is garbed.

This is probably my most audacious claim, one that I take directly from the early Hasidic sources. How do we dare make it? I can know what gives me pleasure, or what pleases those around me. But “the shekhinah takes pleasure?” “God delights?” What do I mean? Of course, such language exists in the realm of poesis rather than that of scientific discourse. Here I agree with my teacher Abraham Joshua 25

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Heschel: the traditions of philo sophia have indeed been read too narrowly in recent generations; the “love of wisdom” needs to be restored and made whole again by the admission of categories of human experience that come from levels of mind other than that of logic and provability. Our Western encounter with the philosophies of the East is all about this, and I believe that is the most important frontier to be crossed in the development of our self-­understanding and humanity, one we indeed need most urgently to approach. The future of theology will have much to do both with this encounter and with growing awareness of the complexity of multileveled consciousness. This will be helped by progress in the realm of brain science but should not be reduced to it. The Western intellectual tradition fought a terrible but necessary battle to free itself from ecclesiastical domination. The scientific advance of the past several centuries would not have been possible without that liberation. The way it succeeded in that fight was through establishing a new high altar of objectivity, one that (in unacknowledged paradox) could only be approached by maintaining critical distance. This has led to a bifurcation between poetic insight and philosophical truth, separating the acquisition of knowledge and the quest for wisdom. This is part of why philosophies originating in the East, where that battle did not take place in the same way, have been so attractive. Having said that, the assertion of divine delight is a return to the Psalmist’s insight. Part of the religious mindset is a glimpse of beatific vision, including a sense that the fullness and radiance of such vision is not the mind’s alone. The vision may present itself as representing an Edenic past or a glorious, not yet disclosed future. It may be what the Zohar identifies as ‘olam ha-­ba’, a world that is always “coming” but ever remains just a step beyond our current grasp. This window into divine joy is humbling; the greatest exultation we can feel is but its palest shadow. So the insight that comes from expanded mind (mohin de-­gadlut) is at once intellectual and emotional, transformative in both of those 26

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realms, though its Source lies beyond them. The truth of which it speaks is that of a universal Self radiating its light throughout the world. That light can penetrate every human mind that is able to free itself from its kelipot, the “husks” that I take to mean self-­generated defensive blinders. The light that shines through those cracks in the wall speaks of delight and comes to enlighten. We human beings occupy a unique role in the hierarchy of ever-­ evolving Creation, having the capacity for awareness of the larger picture and an inbuilt striving for meaning-­making.

The shining light, the calling voice—­they are one and the same. The sense of religious call does not stand or fall with the personified Caller. The voice “sings out to us from within the folds of the earth” (mi-­kenaf ha-­arets zemirot sham‘anu, Isa. 24:16)—­as much as it does from the highest heavens.12 It may indeed manifest itself in song or in verse or in the thundering cry of the biblical prophets. What is important is that it makes a claim on us and on our lives. Awareness of the larger picture takes us back to Job’s hearing the divine voice speak: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of earth?” We become human when we begin to see beyond the moment, beyond the fulfillment of our immediate creaturely needs. Even though an old prayer tells us that “man is no better than the beasts” (the Sephardic version can’t stand it and rushes in to insert “except for the pure soul!”), we detect “humanity” among our primate ancestors when we see them sublimating eros enough to begin to create art, to decorate beads or paint pictures on the walls of caves. The “uplifting” that is such a key part of Hasidic teaching begins there—­it is a universal human legacy. Being human means being able to uplift and transform. The call has been uttered. The “Where are you?” addressed to Adam in the Garden of Eden is a universal cry potentially heard within every human heart. It longs to be heard, as we long to hear it. This is the essential mitzvah: da‘at elohim, knowing God, responding to that call and its 27

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Caller. Acting on this mitzvah calls upon us to transform our lives, to work to redeem the world. Will we respond in time? 4. The essence of our religious life lies in the deep inward glance.

Let us look more deeply at three realms that are opened by this inward glance: person, world, and text. Person: Look more deeply both into yourself and into those around you. Do not be satisfied either with the well-­defended ego that first appears, or the needy, craving self that you may see next. Go deeply enough to seek out the soul, the vulnerable innermost self that is the seat of true love and wonder. Cultivate those close love relationships with which you are blessed as paradigms for the way you should learn to see all human beings, each an unfathomable mystery, a unique expression of the divine image. World: See the natural world around you in all its magnificence, contained within the small and seemingly “ordinary” as well as within the great. Develop an eye for wonder, both in yourself and especially in those you teach. Devote time and attention to cultivating that awareness; do not take it for granted. Be inspired to do more to save and to protect our world. Text: Recognize that Torah can be enriched, not diminished, by critical and especially literary insights. Seeing the texts in historical perspective should not keep us from engaging with the many other levels of reading, including the playful and the endlessly creative. Insight comes in all sorts of packages. Let Torah’s message to you emerge through creative interaction with it. 5. Outer deeds are important; the mitzvot are the forms into which we pour our devotion; they call out to us to be fulfilled.

The phrase “call out” translates the term mikre’ey kodesh. The forms of Jewish life call out to us to follow them. They constitute the “way” (halakhah) that our ancestors have walked for so many centuries. Once 28

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we open our hearts to them, we find them filled with the devotion and love poured into them by every prior generation, each in its own way. That history of devotion is never lost. For the seeker, it may become a great treasure house in which to deepen and enrich the contemporary quest. This openness to being moved by their power allows the mitzvot to uplift us as well. There is no Judaism without ahavat ha-­mitzvot. . . . They are the tools our tradition gives us to achieve and maintain awareness.

Followers of this teaching will differ greatly in their degree and style of commitment to religious observance. Neo-­Hasidism can embrace a wide range of relationships to traditional halakhah, varying in accordance mostly with the psychological and devotional needs of the individual. This has long been recognized within Hasidism. Yes, to be a Hasid means to hear the mitzvot calling out to us. But we need to be ready for them, to respond as we are able, to grow in our praxis as we deepen our faith. On the level of soul, that which is “between person and God” is all about inwardness, not quantity of acts or words. At the same time, Hasidism demands a halakhah, not defined as “law” but as a steady path on which to walk. We understand Jewish life as a spiritual path that grows through following regular and disciplined practice. Finding such a path within the forms offered by Torah and tradition is the task of each seeker and each community of seekers. That means halakhah, but one that grows, evolves, changes in response to inner call. The Hasidic sources often quote an older play on the word mitzvah, deriving it from the Aramaic tzavta or “togetherness.” A mitzvah is an act in which God and the person are drawn together, an opportunity to find one another in the midst of our eternal game of hide-­and-­seek. Growth in spiritual life is expressed by increased discovery of and devotion to the forms, inseparable from their deeper content. 29

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But in the course of growing involvement with observance, one should be careful not to get overly caught up in the game. The essential message here is to “keep your eyes on the prize”—­that is, on the end of deveikut or spiritual attachment and the open heart rather than on the means themselves. They also serve as paradigms for the rest of human actions.

The particular is always exemplary; this is what it means to see the mitzvot as means rather than ends. Our love of Shabbat, welcoming it as the sun sets, teaches us how to honor each day and the sacred presence within it. Our special love for Eretz Yisra’el, for the Land of Israel, teaches us how to revere all land, to treat all land as a place where God dwells. The love with which we perform any mitzvah is there to instruct us on how to love simple moments, objects, and places. 6. This process begins with the key devotional pair of love and fear, which together lead us to our sense of the holy.

We need to purify these aspects of our lives, coming to realize that all true love bears within it the love of God and that the only worthy fear is our awe at standing in God’s presence. True love and fear, along with other emotions that flow from them, open channels through which God’s blessing can flow into us. Inner discipline and purification of heart and mind are our constant spiritual work. But it also means treating ourselves with kindness, accepting our own human limitations.

Too much of religion, including Judaism, has served as a means for people to beat up on themselves, to increase the feelings of guilt with which we are already too burdened. The Ba‘al Shem Tov taught a different path, insisting that we will improve human behavior not by beating people down but by uplifting them, telling them how potentially great 30

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and holy they are. You need to treat yourself this way; then you will be able to do the same for others. Care for both body and spirit, our own and others’, as God’s handiwork, is also a vital part of our worldly task. Regarding the body, there is much correction needed of a prior imbalance in Judaism.

The physical self is deserving of respect. The Hasidic sources go a long way toward understanding this, finding God’s service in ordinary physical activities as well as in study and prayer. But they are still afflicted with the deep Western bias against the body, talking about transcending the corporeal self, “stripping off ” the physical, and so forth. A contemporary Neo-­Hasidism needs to carry this process of sanctifying the physical world and self beyond where the traditional Hasidic sources were able to go, and certainly to see things far differently from the direction taken by Hasidism in later years. This move is in harmony with the most ancient Jewish insights into tselem elohim, the notion that each human self, body and soul as one, is a unique embodiment of the divine image and thus needs to be protected and kept whole. A healthy Judaism needs to retain our most essential values while shedding some aspects of their medieval shell. The same applies to the physical world as a whole, meaning that Neo-­Hasidism must lead to a deep concern with protecting our physical home on this earth. Kedushat ha-­hayyim, the sanctity of all life, is a key Neo-­Hasidic value. So too is kedushat ha-­arets, beginning with our devotion to Eretz Yisra’el but referring to all of land—­and air and water—­as well. 7. The deeper look at reality should put us at odds with the superficial values of the consumerist and overly self-­centered society amid which we live.

A new Hasidism, to be lived within contemporary society without reconstructing the ghetto walls, will have to deal in complex ways with the secularization of consciousness and its views of self, world 31

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or society, and text. On the one hand, we remain a defiant religious minority ready to stand up as a critical voice to modern capitalist society’s superficial and trivialized view of human existence that has brought us to a culture of coarse materialism and countless human degradations. But we must also recognize the blessings of that secularization—­our liberation from a society of compelled religious belief and behavior—­and be wary of those forces that seek to reverse these freedoms. Hasidism’s first battle was fought against socially compelled and routinized religious behavior, just as deadening to true spiritual awareness as is secular superficiality. We have no desire to recreate premodern Jewish life or the shtetl, and we should avoid excessive romanticizing of it. Historical Hasidism underwent two great struggles: first against the dominant rabbinic culture, then against Haskalah or modernist Western “Enlightenment.” You might say that our situation more reflects the latter; the secularization of consciousness surely began with the Enlightenment, and we continue to live in its midst. Yes, but we need to go about that ongoing struggle in a manner completely different from nineteenth-­century Hasidism. What they did then is parallel to the current fundamentalist (in all three Western faiths) rearguard rebellion against modernity, against Darwinism, against biblical criticism, and more. We need to understand that those battles are over, decisively lost. Our religious consciousness has to awaken from the daze of that loss and seek old-­new paths for a spiritual expression authentic to our own era. Yes, as those battles were lost, there has been a cost. That certain naiveté about willful divine control of things in such a way that our prayers might make them go our way no longer works for us. Yet we do not stop praying! The sense of the ever-­present miraculous, ‘al nisekha shebe-­khol yom ‘imanu, is not at all diminished by evolution. This sense of wonder in the presence of divine majesty remains the object of our prayers. 32

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Nor is the transcendent beauty of insight into text, our special Jewish way of reading, lessened by our knowledge of the text’s human authorship. We need to allow ourselves the spiritual freedom to feel those things—­to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of our own skeptical selves (yes, tyranny exists on that side as well). And this freedom itself, we should recall with no small sense of irony, is a gift of modernity. Care for each person, including both Jew and non-­Jew, as a unique image of God and as our fellow-­limb on the single Adamic body or Tree of Life, is the first way we express our love of God. It is in this that we are tested, both as individuals and societies. Without seeking to impose our specific moral views on others, we envision a Jewish community that speaks out with a strong moral voice.

The oneness of being does not mean—­as a few mystics would claim—­ any less care for fellow-­humans or celebration of the differences between us. On the contrary, it means that we are all joined together in a bond that needs only to be discovered—­naturally, not forged artificially. In caring for the other, we reassert the One. 8. We live in an abiding and covenanted love relationship to Torah.

We Jews see ourselves as a covenantal community. This covenant is forged by our memory of transformative events recorded in our people’s historic saga. Remembering both that we were slaves in Egypt and that we stood at the foot of Sinai is what makes us a people marked by a sacred legacy and called to a sacred task. Never mind that neither of these can be confirmed by historians; these events transcend history. As we relive them, constantly, they become the language, the echo chambers, through which we speak about many other things that have happened and continue to happen in our individual and communal lives. Without insisting on the literal sense of covenant as presented in the biblical text, our link with the memory of both Egypt and Sinai 33

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is abiding and unbreakable. The People of Israel are indeed mushba‘im ve-­‘omdim me-­har Sinai, under oath to remain faithful to the memory of those events and their essential message. The whole process of renewal through constant reinterpretation is sacred to us.

The early Hasidic masters had a bold approach to the ongoing process of reading and reinterpreting Torah. Each generation, they taught, has its own soul-­root and needs to discover the meaning of Torah for its own time. Teachers emerge to do that, adding to and enriching the store of tradition as it is passed on to future generations. Anyone who denies this, some of the masters add, denies the power of Torah itself as a living embodiment of truth.13 Amen. We want this to happen in a creative and openhearted way, and we devote ourselves to that effort.

This commitment to the survival of Judaism as a creative force sets us apart from the ongoing traditional Hasidic community, which is mostly dedicated to preservation of the old way. We firmly believe that Judaism’s most creative centuries may yet lie ahead of us. We encourage ongoing creativity both in realms that were familiar to the old Hasidism—­Torah interpretation, storytelling, music—­and in many new media as well. This is a vital part of “serving God in all ways.” 9. We are Jews. As Jewish seekers, we have a special connection to our forebear Abraham, who followed the voice and set off on a journey that we still consider unfinished.

The unfinished journey is at the same time a spiritual, familial, and political one. Abraham is the classical Jewish seeker, smashing idols and trying on forms of truth until his path became revealed to him. But he is also avinu, our father, the progenitor of our tribe, which must continue to live in faith with his spirit. And since his journey 34

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took him to the Holy Land, the body politic that we Jews have created there in our beloved state of Israel must also share the open-­tent values of the one who set us out on our way. The true Israel is not only about Herzl’s vision, but about Abraham and Sarah’s, born of Jacob’s struggle with the angel—­one much older and wiser than any modern political entity. Remember that Abraham was ready to risk everything, even his relationship with God, for the sake of wicked “Palestinians” in Sodom. We are also Jews who live in the shadow of the greatest catastrophe of Jewish history, indeed one of the darkest episodes in human history as well. This leaves us sharply aware of the depths of human evil as well as the responsibility borne by indifferent bystanders. We recognize that the Jewish people has real enemies and promise not to be naïve about that reality; the price is one we cannot afford to pay again. At the same time, our post-­Holocaust “Never again!” applies both to ourselves and to all of humanity. It commits us to stand up against the forces of evil in our world, wherever they may be and whoever their victims. 10. Our world suffers from a great imbalance of energy between the typically “male” and “female” energies.

The overvaluing of the “male” (present, to be sure, in biological women as well as men) is manifest in excessive aggression and competition, found both in war and in rampant capitalism. These forces are in desperate need of healing, by drawing on the classic “female” values of caring, cooperation, and openheartedness. The old Hasidism, born of a deeply misogynist Kabbalah, saw the imbalance but was still part of it. Neo-­Hasidism openly seeks to right that wrong by welcoming both women and female energies into its ongoing creative rereading of tradition. The sages of the Talmud may have already been aware of the dangers caused by this imbalance when they depicted God as asking us 35

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to bring an atonement sacrifice for the Divine each Rosh Hodesh, the day of the New Month, because God had diminished the moon, giving it monthly cycles that make it less than the ever-­shining sun.14 The ignoring of women’s potential contributions to our society has indeed weakened us, and not only because they represent half of humanity. Our male-­dominated society is what has brought us to the brink of self-­destruction. 11. We too recognize that there are gifted spiritual teachers in our world and we thank God for their presence and our ability to learn from them. But we live in an age that is rightly suspicious of such figures, having seen charisma used in sometimes dangerous and horrific ways. We therefore underscore the Hasidic teaching that each person has his or her own path to walk and truth to discover. We encourage spiritual independence and responsibility.

The proper role of the charismatic teacher is to model for others the intensity of devotion to a path. Each follower is then to follow that example by cleaving to his or her own path, and certainly not simply following that of the master. The great tragedy of classic Hasidism was its turn to dynastic succession. Spiritual charisma, as attractive and dangerous as it is, does not pass through the genes. Hasidism became committed to ultratraditionalism and hence became frozen as a creative force, partly because leaders whose only legitimacy was based on dynastic succession could offer nothing more than nostalgic preservation of the past. We do not need to repeat that error. The best examples here are those of early nineteenth-­century Polish Hasidism, where disciple succeeded master, each proclaiming openly the need to strike out on a new and unique path. A variety of diverse paths and teachers seems appropriate to a Neo-­ Hasidism for our age. Charismatic gifts should be welcome in our world, but caution is always in order. 36

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12. Hasidism, like Judaism itself, believes in community. The sense of hevrayyah or fellowship among followers of a particular path is one of the greatest tools it offers for spiritual growth.

Judaism is a nonmonastic tradition. Our religion is designed for householders, people committed to raising families, who nevertheless seek an intense spiritual presence in their lives. In this sense Judaism is closest to Islam, as distinct from classical Christianity and Buddhism. The Hasidic community, like the Sufi brotherhood, is meant to create the sort of bond among serious devotees (who are at the same time householders and parents) that supports this vision. This means supporting one another within our own multigenerational families as well as creating supportive havurot or communities that become new “families” in our lives. Building communities of covenant is an essential part of the Neo-­Hasidic enterprise, where our loving commitments to one another serve as a context for moving toward a shared pattern of religious life as well. Joining the community, rather than following the rebbe, should be our essential means of growth. 13. We remain committed to preserving our ancient language and way of life in full richness, limited only by ethical challenges.

Yes, there are ethical limits to our traditionalism. We are not ashamed to say that we have learned much that is positive from living in an open society that strives toward democracy and equality. These values should remain part of our Judaism. Ultimately they are rooted in the most essential Jewish teaching: each person is a unique tselem elohim, divine image.15 Traditions that inhibit the growth and self-­ acceptance inherent in this teaching must be subject to careful examination and the possibility of being set aside. New ways of thinking that enhance our ability to discover the divine image in more ways, including in people and civilizations we once rejected, need to be taken seriously as part of Torah. 37

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Mordecai Kaplan was certainly right in calling Judaism an “evolving religious civilization.” Our ethical norms grew as civilization progressed. We went from a literal “an eye for an eye” to the payment of damages. Setting aside the biblical text, we stopped stoning suspected adulteresses or rebellious children to death. But in the course of our long struggle for self-­preservation, halakhic innovation lost its nerve. We need to reassert the early Rabbis’ claim to a right to move boldly when faced with moral and ethical norms that we know to be behind the times.16 We believe that we have much to offer in a spiritual conversation that transcends all borders, as we have much to learn from others. We enter into that conversation happily, coming together with others who admit in collective humility that none of our languages embodies truth in its fullness.

We especially welcome shared efforts in the realm of action. We seek to join with other people of faith and goodwill to reshape our society into one less based on greed and competition and more on human goodness. Stronger together, we need to engage in the most urgent task of our generation: protecting life on our beloved and much-­threatened planet.17 Notes

1. Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 2010). 2. Published in Ira Eisenstein, ed., Varieties of Jewish Belief (New York: Reconstructionist, 1966), 201–­11. 3. Tsava’at ha-­rivash (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), 3:2. 4. Though the number thirteen was not intentional, it is offered as parallel to the thirteen middot ha-­rahamim (qualities of mercy). The reader is asked to judge the present author with such mercy. 5. From the daily morning service. 6. This identification of hokhmah (wisdom) and ayin (nothingness) is characteristically Hasidic, diverging from most earlier kabbalistic sources 38

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that identified ayin with keter (the divine “crown”) and saw hokhmah as deriving from it. For an exposition of the ten sefirot written for the contemporary seeker, see Arthur Green, ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow, rev. ed. (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2016). 7. Louis Jacobs offers a very readable treatment of this debate in his Seeker of Unity (New York: Basic, 1966), esp. 49. 8. The present author has in mind the passage called Patah Eliyahu, taken from Tikkuney Zohar 17a–­b. Printed in Sephardic prayer books as a daily credo, this text is recited by Hasidim prior to Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday evenings. 9. See Arthur Green, The Language of Truth (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998), xxxvi–­xxxvii; and Arthur Green, These Are the Words: A Vocabulary of Jewish Spiritual Life (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2012). 10. See Shneur Zalman of Liadi’s Likkutey Amarim—­Tanya, Revised Bilingual Edition, trans. Nissan Mindel (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), 287–­307. 11. Bereshit Rabbah 68:10. 12. The reading belongs to Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, Likkutey Moharan (New York: n.p., 1966), 2:63. See Arthur Green, Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Tuscaloosa al: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 139. 13. This has been documented and discussed in Arthur Green, “Hasidism and Its Response to Change,” Jewish History 27, nos. 2–­4 (2013): 319–­36. 14. b. Hullin 60a. 15. Here the present author supports the view of Simeon ben Azzai in his debate with Rabbi Akiva, found in y. Nedarim 9:6. 16. The failure of halakhic authorities to deal decisively with such problems as agunah and mamzer immediately comes to mind. The inability of the Orthodox community to deal with homosexuality is also tragic and harmful to many. To cite another example, our inability to insist on the stunning of animals before Jewish religious slaughter is a blight on our moral courage. These are all halakhic issues, centered on Orthodoxy and its authority. But this lack of courage extends well beyond Orthodoxy as well. Vast numbers of liberal rabbis and other communal leaders are deeply concerned about the multiple injustices afflicting Palestinians in Israel and its occupied territories but choose to remain silent. Dim‘at ha-‘ashukim, “the tears of the oppressed,” suffice to trouble all of us amid our comfortable lives. 39

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17. An earlier version of this credo and commentary was originally published in William Plevan, ed., Personal Theology: Essays in Honor of Neil Gillman (Brighton ma: Academic Studies, 2013), 65–­87. It was reprinted in Arthur Green, The Heart of the Matter: Essays in Jewish Mysticism and Theology (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2015), 269–­90.

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3 Touches of Intimacy Leviticus, Sacred Space, Torah’s Center Nehemia Polen The book of Leviticus, Va-­yikra, has received much scholarly attention in recent decades. One need only think of major commentaries by such prominent figures as Baruch Levine and Jacob Milgrom, as well as important studies by Mary Douglas, Israel Knohl, and other notable scholars. Yet, by and large, this flowering of interest has not led to a better appreciation of Leviticus in the community of synagogue-­attending Jews and their rabbis. Sermons and divrei Torah on Va-­yikra still betray a basic unease with the book as a whole and its central topics. Typically, a homily may begin with an apologetic reference to the archaic and unappealing nature of animal sacrifice. After some nervous laughter, the speaker settles on a safe and well-­worn theme such as the dangers of gossip or lashon ha-­ra, “evil tongue.” This approach certainly has precedent in Rabbinic literature and can result in an edifying message. Yet listeners cannot help but notice that the speaker has evaded the main concerns of the text itself, and this in turn reinforces the suspicion that there is something inherently unsettling and embarrassing about the third book of the Bible. It is often noted that ethical concerns play a central role in Leviticus, and that the book makes no distinction between ritual rules and ethical mandates. Yet while lovingkindness and provision for 41

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the needy are indeed central to Va-­yikra, these concerns are hardly unique here. Similar sentiments are to be found throughout Deuteronomy and in Exodus’s Covenant Code, and most especially in the Prophets. It remains unclear, then, why we ought to pay attention when every year we reread the book of Leviticus, so much of which seems concerned with smoldering flesh and fat, to be roasted on a blood-­drenched altar at a large movable tent in the middle of a wilderness. What is the unique spiritual message of this text? What claim does it make upon us? To what is it calling us? Other than hidebound adherence to ancient custom, why do we continue to read it? Here the Hasidic readings become essential, and this is why our contemporary relationship with Va-­yikra has a role to play in a collection of Neo-­Hasidic studies. But first a word is in order here about Hasidic exegetical practice. Some contemporaries are inclined to see Hasidic readings of biblical passages as interesting and insightful but as having little to do with the peshat—­the plain sense of the text. In their eyes, Hasidic interpretations are forced interventions attempting to carve meaning out of an inhospitable and resistant ground. This is an especially tempting approach when it comes to Va-­yikra, where the base text itself is taken to be so unappealing and opaque. But as I have argued elsewhere, the best Hasidic readings have a profound respect for the textual surface, its contours and context. Study of the great Hasidic masters on Va-­yikra—­L evi Yitzhak of Berditchev, Elimelech of Lyzhensk, Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Cracow, Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, and many others—­leads to a heightened appreciation of Leviticus’s core concerns and resonances. Hasidic readings are not arbitrary, capricious, or misleading; they build awareness of textual content and context. Because they are not afraid to hear Va-­yikra’s authentic voice, they are able to reveal what the passages are about, what they wish to convey. 42

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I believe this is the case everywhere in Scripture, but it is especially true for Leviticus, where ancient priestly and modern Hasidic communities inhabit much the same conceptual and experiential worlds: charisma as divine gift and genuine power (not mere fame and celebrity); the Holy as demanding—­both dangerous and benevolent; sacred space as lodestone of transformation; sacred moments as etched features of temporal topography to be felt in a tactile way; ritual as gestural embodiment of true relationship; and, above all, God at the center—­ God as intimate, available, palpable Presence, not mere projection, never to be taken for granted, never to be conceptually frozen into an idol of one’s own making. Study of the great classics such as Kedushat Levi, Sefat Emet, and Mei Ha-­Shilo’ah has led me to see Va-­yikra itself as the core of Torah, its center of gravity and energy. Leviticus is not an awkward text in need of redemption at the hands of Hasidic masters who can turn dross into gold. The gold is already there, and the genius of Hasidism is to see that clearly and display it invitingly. And because Hasidism understands that every human realization of the divine plenitude is finite, aspectual, limited in perspective, every Hasidic reading points beyond itself, graciously yielding place for even deeper and richer insights to come in the fullness of time. That means that Hasidism gestures lovingly to the work of Neo-­Hasidism, inviting it to amplify and augment the endless storehouse of life-­giving insights vouchsafed to seekers of truth. For the well over twenty years I’ve been teaching Leviticus at Hebrew College, I have shared my conviction that Leviticus is the Torah’s heart. In my view, any understanding of the Five Books of Moses and the Bible as a whole requires that we place Va-­yikra and its perspective front and center. This essay attempts to share some of what I believe to be true about Leviticus. I will present an example of a strong Hasidic reading that is both spiritually sublime and stays true to the granular cultic details. In 43

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the last section I share some of my own experiences with Neo-­Hasidic spirituality and how they helped shape my reading of Va-­yikra.

Embodied Spirituality Most fundamentally, Leviticus offers an alternative way of knowing, an embodied spirituality that highlights space, demonstrative gesture, and gift-­giving as the touchstones of religious life. Rather than assuming that betterment of the human condition will take place by means of education and the promulgation of ideas, it relies on proximity and access to a locus of transformative energy and spiritual power to effect positive change. It avoids the didactic voice so common elsewhere in Judaism and instead celebrates immersive action, with great sophistication and effectiveness. We begin by noting that whereas studying, learning, and teaching are arguably the quintessential pursuits of Judaism, the most characteristic modes of absorbing and conveying its religious culture, yet the Hebrew root for these activities—­l-­m-­d [‫­—]למד‬does not appear in Torah before the book of Deuteronomy. A quick concordance check reveals that the root appears in various forms eighty-­six times throughout the Bible, seventeen times in Deuteronomy alone, yet not at all in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers.1 To be sure, the inculcation of religious values and practices is mentioned, but other words are used: le-­tsavot (to command—­see Gen. 18:19 ), sim be-­oznei (place in the ears —­Exod. 17:14), and, especially, in Exodus and Leviticus, le-­horot (to demonstrate, to show, to instruct by direct example; see Lev. 10:11, 14:57; compare Exod. 24:12). Rather than conveying information in a discursive stream of ideas, Leviticus envisions an intimate society arranged around a central sacred site, where proximity and contact create the conditions for elevation, transformation, and renewal. 44

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If You Build It, God Will Come Scholars of religion frequently distinguish between “locative” and “utopian” religions. Certain passages in Genesis exemplify the locative idea. For example, as Jacob leaves home to escape his brother’s wrath, he stumbles on a place (maqom) where he sleeps and has a revelatory dream. His encounter with God is so vivid that he realizes that he has, without planning or forethought, come upon the “House of God, the Gate of Heaven.” The passage in question (Gen. 28:10–­22) repeats the key word maqom six times. As Jacob declares explicitly, this is a location of intense religious energy; his experience would not have happened just anywhere, nor was it the result of any particular preparation on his part. It was induced by the energy of the spot, so he marked it and named it Bethel. By contrast, other biblical passages emphasize that God is present everywhere in the world and is accessible from any location, on condition of sincere devotion. Rabbinic Judaism is built on such an ontology. This captures the “utopian” idea, not in the sense of “no place” but of “any place.” (Perhaps a better word might be “pan-­topian.”) I believe that Exodus-­L eviticus describes a third option, one that I will call “invitational,” wherein space is partitioned by physical barriers, domains of restricted access are delineated, and a virtuous arena is cleared that invites the Deity to take up residence. Unlike the maqom-­ place of Genesis, sacred space in Exodus-­L eviticus is portable, to be erected and dismantled dozens of times throughout the wilderness journey. Each time, the manifest Presence of God enters the shrine that has been erected. The word maqom in the sense of specific location does not occur throughout this part of Scripture. The Presence is not dependent on geographical position or the prior religious history of a spot, but on maintaining the conditions that God finds inviting and congenial. 45

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This is accomplished by means of a schematic arrangement of nested rectangles: four-­sided Israelite camp in the wilderness, rectangular courtyard with bronze altar, sacred tent partitioned into an outer “Holy” area with sacred furnishings, and an innermost “Holy of Holies.” Even in the Holy of Holies the pattern of nested rectangles continues, for here we find the Ark containing the essential terms of the Covenant between God and Israel—­the Decalogue. The Ark is a rectangular solid; atop it rests a gold plate called the kapporet. More than a mere cover, the kapporet is the base for the enigmatic cherubim, the locus or “seat” from which, we are told, God communes with and speaks to Moses. The kapporet is the epicenter of the system as a whole, the target of ritual gestures mandated in Leviticus. Most importantly, it is the place upon which the kavod or divine Glory appears.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory Leviticus’s articulation of God is sophisticated and sublime, both physical and transcendent. It was once common to claim that the idea of God in Leviticus and closely affiliated texts (designated by scholars as “P”) is nonanthropomorphic; more recent suggestions have favored a conception of an embodied God in P. My own view is that neither of these opposing perspectives captures the subtlety and nuance of P. P never states that God resides in the Tabernacle. Rather it is the kavod, the Glory, that is located there, a divine manifestation that is closely associated with but not identical to God. The manifestation is subject to visual perception if one could survive the sight. In contemporary terms, the Glory can be thought of as a disturbance formed by energy so intense that it disrupts the surrounding atmosphere; the resulting luminescence takes on a characteristic shape and coloration. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East this phenomenon is called Melammu, “divine radiance, splendor, aura,”2 but unlike Mesopotamian parallels, the 46

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Bible never provides an actual graphic to accompany the verbal description. We are left to imagine the kavod in our mind’s eye, and it is clear that if one could see it, it would have a breathtakingly resplendent, recognizably humanoid appearance, as indicated by Exodus 33:17–­23 and Ezekiel 1. Rather than attempting a definition of God, rather than trying to comprehend divinity, Exodus-­Leviticus creates an encirclement, sketching a verbal envelope of borders and furnishings and vestments that mark the space where God is invited and chooses to reside. The partitioning of space and the gradient marked by curtains and veils shapes the contours where the sacred drama unfolds. One could aptly call the Tabernacle a “desert installation,” employing the term “installation” in the sense of an expressive project erected by an artist, often in large, expansive locales, generally for a limited time, intended to transform the perception of space. In this case, the installation clears space for a deity and thereby forms sacred community. The Tabernacle and all its elements encircle the Presence, cradling the spot where the Glory holds forth. The Glory is encircled by physical objects: the Ark, cherubim, God’s own autograph signature in the utterances of the Decalogue written “by the finger of God” (Exod. 31:18). These form an envelope that shapes perception of what ultimately is beyond perception, that which cannot be fully contained in the physical. Thus P achieves the nearly impossible feat of conjuring Presence as a totally real, visible effusion of energetic vitality, yet utterly transcendent, beyond conceptual capture. The compelling physical intensity of this kavod allows readers to experience, at least vicariously, direct contact with God’s manifest Presence, much as Moses did on top of Sinai as described in Exodus 33:17–­23. Asking to “see God’s kavod–­Glory,” Moses is placed in a cleft of the rock while the Glory passes by, shielding Moses with the palm of the divine hand. In an exquisite move of sacred choreography, the divine hand is removed just in time for Moses to see the back of the kavod, though not the face (Exod. 33:21–­23). The text invites us to imagine the divine palm 47

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pressing down on Moses as he leans forward at the opening of the cave, the “cleft of the rock.” God tells Moses, “I will shelter you with the palm of My hand” (Exod. 33:22). The Hebrew verb for sheltering or protecting is sakkoti, also found in connection with the parokhet, the veil separating the Holy space from the Holy of Holies, which “screened” (va-­yasekh) the Ark of the Covenant from view (Exod. 40:3, 21). And of course Sukkot is the name of the festival when we recall and reexperience our intimate closeness with God in the wilderness trek (Lev. 23:43; compare Exod. 13:20–­22 and Targum Jonathan to Num. 33:5), when we dwell in a sukkah that recalls Sinai and the Tabernacle. The presence of God as kavod, like all loci of genuine charisma, evokes desire and fear, blessing and peril. As Robert Kawashima writes, “An intrusion of transcendence into the empirical, [the kavod] is dangerous and volatile, a toxic and hazardous substance, as it were, requiring proper containment.”3 The wilderness Tabernacle is, among other things, a containment facility for the Glory, mediating access and restriction, distance and proximity.

Divine Desire Humans desire the assurance and favor that the immediacy of the Presence evokes, but God craves proximity and intimacy as well. The important summary statement at Exodus 29:42–­46 makes it clear that God deeply desires to reside among the Children of Israel; that was the goal of the Exodus. This underscores a theme already noticeable at Exodus 25:8, and as early as Exodus 6:7 and 19:5–­6, which employ language of erotic intimacy and relationship, reminiscent of the way the prophets describe God’s desire for Israel in marital terms. This is what Nahmanides, drawing upon Ibn Ezra, calls the “mystery” or “secret” of the Tabernacle: that God is not the perfect being of the philosophers, without need or desire, but to the contrary, craves intimacy as much as if not more than we do. 48

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A word about translation: many translators use words like “dwell” and “abide” as English renderings of shakhan. But there is nothing self-­consciously archaic, vague, or diaphanous about shakhan, which the Bible often uses in everyday contexts to mean “reside,” “take up residence,” “be a neighbor.” It is precisely the perceptibility, concreteness, and proximity of the Divine Presence in the encampment that is advanced by deploying the word shakhan. Having God as our neighbor changes everything: we must act differently in the awareness of such Presence, especially if we want God to continue to feel welcome and comfortable in our midst, to choose to call our community home.

Blessings and Brothers While the biblical narrative certainly conveys the dangers of the kavod, which repeatedly flares up to consume those who have evoked divine wrath or simply gone beyond an approved domain of access, we must also recall that the kavod appears at moments of divine favor. Moshe Greenberg (who translates kavod as “Majesty”) writes: “On Mount Sinai (Ex. 24:17), on the tabernacle on the day of its inauguration (Ex. 40:34f.), at the inauguration of the priests (Lev. 9:23), as later at the inauguration of Solomon’s Temple (I Kings 8:11), the Majesty appeared to signify God’s proximity to and presence amidst his people. Moses’ plea to see God’s Majesty (Ex. 33:18) indicates that its revelation to an individual is the highest token of divine favor.”4 The presence of the kavod implies God’s loving attentiveness and blessing. The central importance of blessing in Leviticus and P texts is often overlooked. The Priestly Blessing (Num. 6:24–­26) can be seen as Scripture’s paradigmatic and most noble exemplar of blessing. Striking in its elegantly spare directness (three words/five words/seven words in the Hebrew), it bespeaks protection, grace, and peace that result from the divine loving gaze. Addressing each individual in second-­person 49

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singular and universally applicable even today, it is notably short on specifics (there is no mention of abundant harvests and flocks as in Deuteronomy). Essentially what it promises is divine grace, the gift of God’s loving appreciation and beaming gaze. When I sense that God is smiling at me, what else needs to be said?5 Invoking divine blessing is a key role of priests—­arguably the key role—­throughout Scripture (Num. 6:22–­27, Deut. 10:8, 21.5; 1 Chron. 23:13, and especially Lev. 9:22–­23). In this last passage, the rites of dedication and inauguration of the desert Tabernacle having concluded, Aaron raises his hands to bless the people; this is the origin of the posture called nesiat kappayim, “lifting the palms.” Then something puzzling happens: Moses and Aaron—­stationed at the bronze altar in the outer courtyard—­enter the holy tent for an unspecified purpose, then emerge and bless the people once again (v. 23). It is at this point that the kavod appears to the entire people. But why did Moses and Aaron enter the Tabernacle? To be sure, the talmudic Rabbis offer reasons, such as that Moses instructed Aaron on the procedure for the incense offering. But why now, and why is the text silent about this? I suggest that the entry of the two brothers into the tent completes a narrative arc that began in Genesis, where brothers are always at odds with each other and the tension usually revolves around blessing, with siblings competing for their parents’ special favor. The benevolent collaboration of Moses and Aaron in Exodus and Leviticus reverses this pattern and is a model of two brothers who get their relationship right. The result is blessing for all and the appearance of the kavod to the entire people. Wisely, the biblical narrator does not tell us what Moses and Aaron say to each other in the sanctuary; perhaps they are silent, just gazing tearfully into each other’s eyes, with joy and nachas. In any event, when they emerge, the model of irenic sibling cooperation is firmly established, and the result is blessing and divine theophany. It is not only the Aaronide priesthood that is associated with blessing. Melchizedek, the first person called Kohen in Torah, greets and 50

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blesses Abraham after the patriarch’s successful expedition to rescue his nephew Lot (Gen. 14:18–­20). Jethro, the Kohen of Midian, travels to the wilderness encampment to greet his son-­in-­law Moses and bless his God, and is formally welcomed by Moses in return (Exod. 18:1–­12). In these passages and many others, blessing is closely connected with greeting, salutation, acknowledgment. I suggest that that is the core meaning of Berakhah, especially in P texts: to bless another person is to acknowledge that individual’s essential worthiness, to affirm one’s personhood, to offer a gesture of salutation. It is the enacted articulation of recognition, honor, and respect. Hence it is possible to bless God: since the Deity is typically invisible, a gesture of acknowledgment is particularly welcomed by God. (Thus the medieval discussions about how it is possible for humans to bless God are quite beside the point: God needs salutation and acknowledgment more than anyone, surely more than any embodied being.) And to be blessed by God is to have one’s unique personhood acknowledged and affirmed by the Being from whom the very concept of personhood emerges. There is no higher mark of distinction than this. The priests mediate God’s blessing to the people. And by honoring the Tabernacle and conveying the people’s gifts, they assure God’s ongoing residence within the community.

Place Me as a Seal upon Your Heart I have been arguing that Exodus-­L eviticus is, at its core, a manual of intimacy, a guidebook for cultivating and maintaining physical, emotional, and spiritual closeness. So it should not come as a surprise to find that Rabbinic literature repeatedly highlights the deep connections between P passages on the one hand and Song of Solomon on the other. This is true not only for amoraic compilations such as Shir ha-­Shirim Rabbah and Pesikta de-­Rav Kahana but also for tan51

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naitic texts: Mishnah, Tosefta, the halakhic midrashim, and the very early chronography known as Seder Olam Rabbah. When the day of the Tabernacle’s dedication is called the “nuptials,” when the sacrificial offerings are framed as erotic caresses, when the protruding staves of the Ark are called the divine breasts, the zone where Songs 1:13 is enacted—­it is easy to dismiss all this as interpretative excess reflecting a surplus of imaginative freedom.6 In fact, the Rabbis are reading both corpora with discipline and discernment, responding to deep similarities, parallels, and resonances. They recognize, as we should, that both are literary celebrations of embodied love, sensuous enactments of intimacy. It is hardly a stretch to see Songs 8:7, “Set me as a seal [hotam] upon your heart,” as an echo of Aaron’s breastplate, worn over his heart, and mounted with twelve stones upon which the names of the twelve tribes are engraved like seals (pituhei hotam; Exod. 28:15–­30). Songs 7:8, where the beloved’s erect and attractive posture—­ komateikh—­is spotlighted appreciatively, naturally recalls the capstone of God’s appreciative vision for ideal Israel at the end of Leviticus: “I will enable you to walk erect [kommemiyut]” (Lev 26:13). Not only are fragrances everywhere in the Song, but the specific spices mentioned parallel to a striking degree the ingredients of the sacred incense and the Oil of Anointing; compare Songs 4:14 with Exodus 30:22–­38. The phrase besamim rosh (chief spices, choice spices, Exod. 30:23) recurs in transposed form at Songs 4:14—­rashei besamim. Beyond specific lexical and terminological parallels—­which could easily be augmented—­there is the general mood of material sensuality; of kinship claims facilitating desire; of trysts in secluded spots; of the delicacy of encounter and the fragility of enduring relationship. And, finally, the eternal fierceness of love, an awesome flame that the old jps Bible translation renders as “A very flame of the Lord” (shalhevet-­Yah) that nothing can extinguish (Songs 8:6–­7)—­in precise parallel to the sacred altar-­fire that must never be allowed to be extinguished (Lev. 6:6). 52

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Blessing and Holiness I am advancing a convivial reading of Va-­yikra, attempting to reclaim a book of benevolent openness and passionate, joyous life-­affirmation. But what then of the key concept of Kedushah, “holiness,” typically understood as “separation,” often with a whiff of austere self-­deprivation, repressive asceticism, and social isolation? Rather than “separation,” I believe it is more accurate to think of Kedushah in terms of distinction. Kedushah entails marking off a particular domain—­spatial, temporal, and/or social—­as distinct, focusing attention in order to positively affect the domains not so marked. Thus it is closely linked with Berakhah, blessing. This coupling appears frequently, for example, Gen. 2:3; Exod. 20:11; Lev. 25:12–­21; 1 Chron. 23:13. This last verse is particularly revealing, since it links the havdalah of the Aaronides—­their demarcation for distinction—­to being “consecrated as most holy” (le-­hakdisho kodesh kodoshim: note the emphatic threefold use of the root k-­d-­sh) for service, in particular the offering of incense and for “pronouncing blessings in [God’s] Name forever,” that is, declaiming and transmitting positive sacred energy to the community at large. Berakhah and Kedushah can be seen as twin aspects of the same process: Kedushah’s transformative energy is centripetal, facing inward, while Berakhah’s faces outward. One could not exist without the other. Kedushah is not estrangement from the world, but engagement with it; the distinctiveness it calls for is to benefit those one serves and blesses. The centripetal impulse is purposive: to clear and activate inner space so as to bestow positive influence; the going inward is in order to emerge empowered to give blessing. We have already encountered this alternation of Kedushah and Berakhah in narrative form, with the story of the entry of Moshe and Aaron together into the Ohel Mo‘ed. This performative enactment of intimacy and moving to interiority, followed by emergence and facing the community in blessing, is the template for Leviticus as a whole: the stroke-­ 53

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counterstroke of inwardness-­outwardness, the sinusoidal curve of Kedushah-­Berakhah.7 The idea of Kedushah as a force for blessing in P is consistent with the occurrence of the concept elsewhere in Tanakh, where it is frequently linked with righteousness and compassionate concern for the weak and marginalized. Psalm 68:6: “The father of orphans, the champion of widows, God, in His holy habitation.” Isaiah 57:15: “For thus said He who high aloft forever dwells, whose name is holy: I dwell on high, in holiness; and with the contrite and the lowly in spirit.” Kedushah is also associated with beauty: Psalm 29:2: “Worship God in the beauty of holiness”; compare Psalm 48:2–­3; Psalm 96:9; 1 Chronicles 16:29. The passage in Chronicles includes the emotion of joy as well (v. 33); Isaiah 12:6: “Shout for joy, you who dwell in Zion! For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.” Psalm 71:21 adds music: “I will acclaim You to the music of the lyre. . . . I will sing a hymn to You with a harp, O Holy One of Israel.” All this means that Kedushah has a buoyant, uplifting, appealing quality. This is different from Rudolph Otto’s celebrated idea of fascinans, in that God’s holiness in Va-­yikra evokes not mere fascination but desire for relational closeness. It calls one to model one’s life and being on the sublime example of the divine model. For Otto, “the mystery is . . . not merely something to be wondered at but something that entrances him . . . captivates him and transports him with a strange ravishment, rising often enough to the pitch of dizzy intoxication; it is the Dionysiac-­element in the numen.”8 This is hardly the moral calling of Leviticus; Otto’s The Idea of the Holy does not discuss the book of Leviticus at all. Hannah Harrington writes in her study of holiness: As the Holy One, God is not only separated from all imperfection and weakness, but . . . embodies within Himself all goodness, 54

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including justice, mercy, and life itself. The command to Israel to be holy as God is holy (Lev. 19:2) is not simply an instruction to be “other,” nor is it a command to be mighty. . . .9 Holiness is not just a divine state of being but it is the extension of the divine nature into the human realm. Holiness, as the agency of the divine will, is neither a mere exhibition of power nor an abstract condition of “otherness” or “perfection” but a means to effect righteousness in the earth, and especially in Israel. . . . Thus God’s holiness is intrinsically linked to his will to do good, especially to those in need. . . .10 Holiness is not mere separation from the world but a . . . dedication to perform the divine will in the world. . . .11 God wanted to disclose himself to Israel. His holiness penetrated into the community of Israel in an effort, not to hide, but, to reveal himself to them.12 Harrington suggests that holiness in Leviticus is relational, expressing and cultivating the relationship between Israel and her God, rather than “an abstract condition of ‘otherness.’” I take this insight further: the covenantal provisions of Leviticus, typically called “laws”—­not always in an appreciative way—­are, rather, snapshots of the divine personality. They are not so much commands as disclosures of desire, guidance for maintaining a relationship that will always be delicate, never to be taken for granted (Exod. 19:5–­6; Lev. 19:2). The dos and don’ts of Leviticus are not legal provisions but windows into God’s preferences, calls to enact God’s likes and dislikes in the world. We are invited to model our behavior after God’s own. The rules are part of the broader narrative of God-­in-­ the-­world, of God’s reaching out to humans, first to Adam and Eve, then Noah, then Abraham, then Israel, with eyes always on humanity as a whole. 55

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A Theory of Change Kedushah is notoriously hard to define, but I will try here: “sublime force.” The word “force” is used as it is in physics: a push or a pull upon an object resulting from the object’s interaction with another object; when two objects interact, there is a force between them. “Sublime” has the dictionary sense of, “of very great excellence or beauty” (Oxford Dictionaries Online); or, alternatively, “of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe” (odo). And, in line with our discussion above, it is necessary to add, “as to inspire goodness, compassion, greater moral and aesthetic sensitivity.” What I have in mind here is exemplified by the summoning quality of great music conductors. As one player in a major symphony orchestra told me, “There are some conductors who make the orchestra play better, and then there are conductors who make the orchestra want to play better!” Noted maestro Charles Mackerras summarized the magic of great conductors as “emanation: sending messages on terms beyond the physical.”13 In Leviticus, the noncoercive invitational force that the Presence radiates is Kedushah. This purposive, transformative intensity exerts a positive influence toward excellence, virtue, loftiness, nobility. Kedushah cannot be taught, but it can be demonstrated, transmitted by example, conveyed by proximity. And that proximity is provided by the kavod, the immanent disclosure of the transcendent Deity, the Glory that has taken up residence in the camp, radiating sublime force, calling each individual and the community as a whole to more noble life. Leviticus articulates a theory of change that is different from that of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy change comes as a result of learning and teaching, by means of reasoning with others and with oneself. Moses is concerned to explain the Torah “very well” (Deut. 27:8; compare 1:5). At the end his life, filled with anxiety about his people’s future, Moses takes on the role that tradition will later call Moshe Rabbeinu—­“Moses our teacher”: patiently reviewing the material one 56

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more time, motivating, interpreting, persuading, coaxing, hoping that this time the message will stick. By contrast, Leviticus offers very little by way of explanation, mostly the inscrutable “I am the Lord.” This is because Leviticus assumes a different theory of change: explanations and moral preachments do not always lead to improvement. Rather, Leviticus believes that virtue can spread without being taught—­by contact, by inspiring example, by contagion.

Gift-­Giving But what about sacrificing animals? The word korban does not mean “sacrifice” but “offering,” meaning a gift that cultivates closeness; it does not connote an act of subtraction or diminishment, much less an infliction of pain or suffering—­on oneself or other sentient beings. The term is used for gifts to the sanctuary that clearly have no destructive aspect, such as in Numbers 7, where the tribal chieftains bring gifts called korban—­carts and oxen for transport, silver bowls and basins, gold ladles. To be sure, the gifts include Mincha of flour and oil, incense, and finally animals for the altar. But the cereal offering and incense are highlighted first and are offered independently of the animals, which are simply part of the culture of gift-­giving at that time (as now in much of the world). Leviticus’s blood-­applications serve to express kinship-­ relationship between Israel and her God at the altar, which is God’s proxy, God’s noniconic place-­marker in the sacred drama enacted at the Ohel Mo’ed—­Tent of Meeting, perhaps more aptly translated as Tent of Rendezvous or Tent of Tryst.14 Since cereal offerings function not only as gifts but can also atone for sins or misdeeds—­see Lev. 5:11–­13—­it is clear that blood is not indispensable in this system. P is a vegetarian at heart. Broadly, the offerings in Leviticus constitute a meticulously crafted, internally consistent system of asymptotic approach to the Deity. The applications are all rites of presentation that highlight the sanctuary’s 57

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positional logic, defining but also breaching its bounded domains and zones of intimacy. The system is a gestural enactment of convergence and accord, a grammar of entry and contact for the purpose of cultivating, deepening, and at times restoring relationship.15 The gift offerings maintain the presence of the kavod in the Shrine. In particular, the daily Tamid offering (an Olah or “burnt offering”) secures God’s residence in the camp, among the people (Exod. 29:45–­ 46). The Tamid is a modest offering (one lamb in the morning, one in the evening), performed daily from Sinai until the end of time, testifying to as well as nurturing the ongoing relationship between the Creator and Israel: “A continual burnt-­offering throughout your generations, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the Lord” (Exod. 29:42). The repetition marks an endless chain of days, linking the singular awe of Sinai with the quotidian rhythms of time’s unfolding: sunrise, sunset; breakfast, dinner. What could be simpler, what could more powerfully represent the security, the sense of natural inevitability, that bonds Israel and her God? The Tamid highlights a key insight of P: if a relationship is to thrive and overcome the inevitable crises that arise, it is important to make conciliatory efforts when things have gone awry. But it is even more crucial to cultivate the relationship when things are going well. This is best done with small, ongoing gestures of acknowledgment and appreciation, indicating that nothing is taken for granted, nothing is assumed as simply given. The gestures of respect are deposits of affection into a “relationship bank” that are available to be drawn upon in times of tension. Wise partners in a loving marriage know this truth intuitively; P makes it explicit with the Tamid. This offering is so fundamental that its provisions are stated twice, once in Exodus (29:38–­42) and once in Numbers (28:1–­8), thus framing the entire book of Leviticus. In the Second Temple period, the late biblical book of Daniel repeatedly mentions the suspension of the Tamid as a particularly shocking aspect of the Seleucid oppression (Daniel 8:11-­2; 11:31; 12:11). 58

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Ritual, Ethics, and Divine Persona I now return to the connection between the ritual and ethical rules in Leviticus. They are indeed on equal footing and are interwoven in its textual exposition. But there is a deeper truth reflected in the dovetailing. Both sets of rules are meant to portray the divine personality whole, to depict the divine silhouette in the world with dynamism and vividness. The dual scripts emerge simultaneously as God’s photomontage-­in-­action. This is the import of the oft-­repeated “I am the Lord your God.” I am suggesting that rather than categorizing Leviticus’s dicta as “law” meant to command Israel, we would do better to understand them as divine self-­depiction, with the aim of personalizing the kavod to serve as nondidactic inspiration for Kedushah in social and religious life. In contrast to scholars who claim that P and H (the Holiness Code) are separate, isolated corpora, I argue for their intimate interconnection: P discloses how the Glory can be persuaded to establish residence in the camp, while H depicts the consequences for Israel of having God as our neighbor, the changes we must make in our behavior if we wish to continue to enjoy God’s sensate Presence among us.16

Tracking Changes And this in turn opens the possibility of development in the divine personality, especially in areas specifically identified as matters of taste and preference, perhaps connected to the category of hukkim—­not “laws without rationale” but disclosures of divine personal inclination, either in appreciation or in avoidance. Only the Decalogue was written in stone. A similar idea was already advanced by the great Hasidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev in his Kedushat Levi, comment59

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ing on the verse: “According to all that I show you, the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so shall you make it” (Exod. 25:9). Based on this verse, Rashi states emphatically that the dimensions specified in these chapters of Exodus were to be followed for all time. However, Levi Yitzhak observes pointedly that in fact Solomon’s Temple and its furnishings did not follow the dimensions prescribed by God to Moses for the wilderness Tabernacle. He responds to this difficulty by asserting that the precise instantiation of the Tabernacle was shaped by the spiritual perceptions of that initial generation: “They channeled inspirited holiness by means of their service, and the contours of the furnishings took on the form appropriate to their prophetic spirit.”17 So too, Levi Yitzhak continues, each generation is charged with the task of realizing the Tabernacle’s heavenly template by channeling spirit in a mode appropriate to that generation’s prophetic style. Rather than calling for rigid fixity, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak encourages his readers to ponder what the shape of sacred space and divine service might be in our own time. The idea of development in God’s personal preferences regarding sacred service as understood by the people and its leaders has much support in Scripture. Exodus-­Leviticus describes a sanctuary in which silence reigns; hardly any words are spoken, either by priests or laity. Yet Chronicles and Psalms depict a Temple alive with music, both vocal and instrumental. At the same time, this notion also poses real challenges. It requires discernment and disciplined self-­critique to distinguish between genuine spiritual vitality on the one hand and indulgent capitulation to passing fashion on the other. Yet our postcritical religious moment requires that we rise to the challenge of imagining sanctified living in our day. We have become adept at placing Scripture in its historical setting, identifying its sources and sutures, plotting its all-­too-­human limits and boundaries. We must also be willing to reverse the direc60

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tion of scrutiny, placing our own cultural assumptions and religious conventions under the analytic gaze Scripture provides. If the above reading of Exodus-­L eviticus has merit, it suggests a renewed foregrounding of embodied materiality, of ritual and devotional practice in our religious lives as a counterbalance to the philosophical and Enlightenment emphasis on right thinking, intentionality, and sincerity. It requires relating to God in frankly human terms, as vivid personality, not as replacement for an abstract philosophical ideal but in fruitful complementarity with that ideal. It calls for return to worship as genuine encounter with the Divine, as giving of gift (even if just the gift of our presence and attention) and the receipt of grace.

Alone with the One I turn now to my earlier-­promised example of how Hasidic readings of Va-­yikra can be not only evocative and stirring but help bring us back to the world of the original text, to navigate its pathways with greater comprehension and confidence. In that spirit, I consider Leviticus 16:1–­ 34, the Yom Kippur rites. At thirty-­four verses, it is by far the longest, most detailed, and most complex of all the suite of rituals mandated for the High Holy Days. We know that as far back as Second Temple Judaism, Yom Kippur was The Day par excellence, the capstone of the religious calendar, a day of extreme solemnity, sanctity, and sublime import.18 But what of the biblical passage that underlies this day of momentous urgency and gravitas? What in the biblical text generates this spiritual intensity? In particular, what is today’s reader to make of the bulls, goats, and blood manipulations? To be sure, over the centuries the focus of Yom Kippur has shifted to teshuvah, “repentance.” The service in traditional synagogues is characterized by long litanies of specific sins arranged in alphabetical order. Jews in the shtetl would shed bitter tears over the slightest infraction 61

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of the laws. Today the focus of concern may have shifted, at least in some synagogues, away from violation of “mitzvot between humans and God,” such as the kosher food rules, in favor of “mitzvot of interpersonal obligation,” meaning ethical shortcomings. This shift in emphasis is already discernible in the Mishnah, the source of the famous teaching that Yom Kippur will not provide atonement for interpersonal sins until the sinner makes the effort to set things right with the wronged party, his or her fellow human being.19 Yet tractate Yoma in the Mishnah and Talmud is primarily concerned with Temple rites; seven of its eight chapters examine the sacrificial service, the tasks of the High Priest, and related matters. The topic of repentance only surfaces in the penultimate Mishnah of the last chapter. It is clear, then, that early Rabbinic sources, for all their interest in teshuvah, had no intention of minimizing the importance of the sacrificial rites or blurring the centrality of Leviticus 16:1–­34. So, if the rites remain opaque and the details leave us cold, how are we to take up this text? Modern Jewish Bible commentaries that incorporate the results of critical scholarship have presented the aim of Leviticus 16:1–­34 as purgation or decontamination. In his Jewish Study Bible Commentary, Baruch J. Schwartz entitles this section “Purging the Tabernacle annually.”20 Schwartz is following in the footsteps of Jacob Milgrom, arguably the preeminent scholar of Leviticus in our time. Throughout his massive Anchor Bible Commentary, Milgrom translates Yom Kippur as “The Day of Purgation.”21 In The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus, Baruch A. Levine labels verses 11–­19 as “The Purification of the Sanctuary.”22 The Conservative movement’s Etz Hayim opens its peshat exposition of Leviticus 16:1–­34 with the observation that the “primary objective of these expiatory rites is to maintain a pure sanctuary.”23 To be sure, these commentators duly note that in later periods the focus of Yom Kippur changed. As Levine writes, “This ancient view of Yom Kippur is somewhat different from that which came to predom62

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inate in later Judaism. . . . Atonement for the sins of the people eventually replaced the purification of the sanctuary per se as the central theme of Yom Kippur.”24 Yet, other than verses 29 and 30 that speak of the people’s “self-­denial,” there is nothing in the passage’s intricate schema of cultic acts that corresponds to the emphasis of repentance in subsequent centuries. In framing the main purpose of the day as purging the sanctuary of pollution, our commentators are drawing upon parallels from the ancient Near East. They undoubtedly feel they are fulfilling their responsibility to interpret the biblical text based on the findings of recent research, reflecting archaeological discoveries and philological advances.25 But the Babylonian and Hittite parallels, for all their allure, are ultimately misleading. They entirely miss the narrative arc that situates Leviticus alongside Genesis and Exodus, books that have already introduced the core themes of covenant, relationship between leader and people, and—­most importantly—­the attraction and dangers of intimacy with the Divine. Mary Douglas has taken Milgrom to task on this central issue of the meaning of Yom Kippur. She writes that metaphors such as cleansing and purging “belittle the theme’s grandeur” and strongly cautions that atonement is not a “laundering ceremony.” As Douglas observes, a return to the traditional translation “Day of Atonement” would “introduce less metaphoric noise from the vocabulary of washing.”26 To call the sacrificial blood “ritual detergent”27 strikes a dissonant and deflationary note. We are ill-­served by readings that reduce these verses to instructions on riddance and elimination. If our best modern commentators offer interpretations that frame the original Yom Kippur as a utilitarian maintenance operation, how can we be true to the text but also grasp it in a way that reveals spirit and urgency for our own time? I turn, once again, to Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev’s Kedushat Levi. In a section devoted to High Holiday teachings, Levi Yitzhak presents 63

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a reading of the Yom Kippur service that focuses not on pollution, as some have upheld, but on Aaron the High Priest as an individual and community emissary. This emphasis is entirely consonant with the passage, whose second verse reads, “And the Lord said unto Moses: ‘Speak to Aaron your brother, that he come not at any time into the holy place within the vein, before the ark-­cover which is upon the ark; that he not die; for I appear in the cloud upon the ark-­cover.’”28 The verse assumes that Aaron would want to gain access to the Holy of Holies, where the Glory has taken up residence. We recall that on Mount Sinai, Moses had asked to see God’s face and was granted a partial vision of the Glory. Earlier in Exodus (24:9–­11), Aaron and his two older sons Nadav and Avihu, along with Moses and seventy elders, are granted a vision of “the God of Israel” on Sinai. The allure of the holy and the desire to see the Glory are persistent themes throughout. This is reinforced by the first verse of Leviticus 16. Its narrative voice locates the entire chapter “after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the Lord, and died.” Chapter 16 is thus linked to the episode of Nadav and Avihu (Lev. 10) but makes no mention of a misdeed or “strange fire,” only that the two sons died while approaching God. Aaron’s situation is highly dramatic: he has been invested to serve as lead priest in the just-­erected sanctuary and to make offerings at the newly consecrated altar. But thus far, none of the rites of inauguration have taken place within the inner sanctum. He must surely wonder what role that zone might yet have and must feel its attraction. But the death of his own sons in this very space is fresh in his heart. He is alone with his own thoughts, alone with himself—­ and with the One just behind the veil. Levi Yitzhak draws upon an early Rabbinic tradition, recorded in the first Mishnah of tractate Yoma, that the High Priest was sequestered for seven days prior to Yom Kippur in a chamber of the Temple complex. This tradition plausibly applies the ordination rules of Leviticus 8:33–­35, which required Aaron and his sons not to leave the sanctuary 64

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premises for seven days, to chapter 16—­Yom Kippur. As Milgrom correctly observes in his comment to chapter 8, the seven days are a rite of passage, following a well-­known pattern of separation-­liminality-­ return to society, transformed.29 Levi Yitzhak did not know anthropology; he could not have read Arnold van Gennep or Victor Turner. But he is informed by the Mishnah and Talmud, which have much to say about the chamber where the High Priest spent seven days in preparation for his role on Yom Kippur. The Mishnah calls the room “Chamber of Parhedrin,” which the Talmud takes to mean “Chamber of Changes” or—­as Levi Yitzhak subtly recasts it—­“Chamber of Transformations.” This launches Levi Yitzhak’s exploration of what the High Priest was doing during those seven days: he was surely preparing for his unique and dramatic entry into the Holy of Holies where he would come face-­to-­face with the Glory of God. Drawing upon the Hasidic application of the kabbalistic sefirot, Levi Yitzhak envisions the High Priest contemplating the core human emotional and psychological dispositions: love, fear, pride, control, and so on. There are seven such emotional-­spiritual faculties, and on each one of the seven preparatory days the High Priest would ponder how one of them may have been misdirected by the all-­too-­ human tendency to apply sacred energy to feed ego. It should be emphasized that this is not the same as “repentance.” No specific sin is mentioned, merely the awareness that humans are predisposed to misappropriation of sacred faculties. What was required, then, was a meditative redirection of these powers back to their sacred source. At this point in his exposition, Levi Yitzhak turns to a verse in Isaiah (40:31): “But they that wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings as eagles; They shall run, and not be weary; They shall walk, and not faint.” The Hebrew word for “renew,” yahalifu, has the same root that the Talmud applies to the chamber of “changes” or “renovations.”30 Glossing Isaiah, Levi Yitzhak suggests 65

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that the way to refresh one’s strength and soar upward is to contemplate that one is given new vitality every moment by God. Indeed, it is only by divine grace that breath is bestowed: pulmonary pressure is a Godly gift, gentle and insistent. The breath meditation provokes a profound awareness of the delicacy and evanescence of life. Thus the High Priest is led to contemplate how the entire cosmos receives God’s vitality anew every instant. It is this contemplative awareness, energized by the breath meditation, that creates the supple and pliant conditions within the person to realize positive change: a reconfiguration of the dispositions toward divine service and surrender to the Absolute. This is what happens in the “Chamber of Changes”! But that is not all. Levi Yitzhak returns to the blood-­aspersions in the Holy of Holies as mandated in Leviticus 16, once upon the kapporet (Mercy-­Seat) and seven times in front of the kapporet. This is the high point of the entire rite: we have just been told by God’s first-­person voice that “I appear in the cloud above the kapporet,” meaning, in effect, that Aaron is to apply the life-­fluid directly upon the Divine Presence/Glory once, and seven times at the Glory’s feet. Just as his brother Moses had intimate contact with the Glory in the cleft of the rock, shielded by the divine Palm, so now Aaron effectively touches God yet is shielded by the smoky incense. Levi Yitzhak explains that each aspersion is an act of dedication and surrender, the first time to the ONE alone, and then seven—­elevating each of the seven dispositions mentioned before (love, fear, pride, etc.) to that ONE. Indeed, the Mishnah describes a counting practice performed by the High Priest: “ONE and one; ONE and two; ONE and three; ONE and four; ONE and five; ONE and six; ONE and seven.”31 The dedicatory act of the aspersion completes the transformative surrender and dedication of the human dispositions to their divine Source. This is the choreography of embodied elevation that the High Priest performs. Note that this Hasidic reading does not replace the cultic acts with a different metaphoric valence. Rather than being allegorized out of 66

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existence, the blood-­aspersions are inhabited with kabbalistic resonance; the verses in their concreteness are realized and confirmed, freshly invested with palpable dynamism. With Levi Yitzhak as our guide, we can read Leviticus 16 in its original sense and find vital spiritual energy that speaks to us in our own time. This is surely the way Jews of the Second Temple period heard our text. As Michael Schneider has shown, Second Temple sources such as Ben Sira believed that the High Priest underwent an apotheosis, a kind of deification, in the Holy of Holies.32 The encounter with God was in effect a communion, with God appearing in human form, while the human emissary of Israel was transfigured on Yom Kippur. This was the source of the ecstatic joy and erotic energy that characterized Yom Kippur in early sources, including Rabbinic texts such as the Mishnah and Tosefta. Yom Kippur is not an archaic riddance procedure. It is central because it enacts restoration of relationship and intimacy with the One whose Glory inhabits the Holy of Holies. The drama of Yom Kippur is that of the High Priest, representing all Israel, penetrating the modesty veil that shields the Glory from prying eyes and surrendering himself at the Glory’s feet, thereby undergoing a transhuman exaltation, a comingling with divinity. Why do Jews who are distant from synagogue life much of the year find their way to Yom Kippur services? I suggest that it is not to recite words awash in guilt, and certainly not to recall an ancient rite of purgation. It is, I suspect, the ongoing attraction of a time when people and priest together felt that heaven and earth were really in touch; when life itself was at stake; when the beginning of all beginnings could be relived so that the cosmos could start afresh; when immersion in pure waters was both metaphor and reality sensed in every cell of the body; when hearts could be aligned and relationships set aright.33 This experience, however attenuated and encrusted, still echoes through the millennia. 67

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This is the Yom Kippur that Levi Yitzhak calls us to achieve. His reading is a detailed script of ritual movements grounded in close reading of the biblical text as realized in Rabbinic sources, at the same time alive with inwardness and sublime spirit to sustain and inspire readers in his day—­and in ours.

Return to Sacred Space Most crucially, Exodus-­L eviticus invites us to revisit our concept of sacred space. It is a good thing that synagogues have become much more inviting and user-­friendly than was typical in the past, when regulars often eyed newcomers with suspicion and treated them as invaders. What may have been eroded in the relaxed casualness, however, is the truth that Leviticus knows so well: that sacred space requires reverence, that the blessing of God’s presence demands ongoing effort, that holiness is fragile, that boundaries are not necessarily barricades, that silence is eloquent, that energetic locus can fuel virtue. A personal reminiscence: In early 1971 I came to Havurat Shalom in Somerville, having just left a traditional yeshiva after eleven years of talmudic study. I relished the intellectual freedom and ferment I found in the havurah and was grateful for the warmth and generosity with which I was welcomed, but perhaps most of all I appreciated the sublime beauty and intense focus of the services. Serious davening had been a feature of yeshiva life; each service was a sacred island in time unmarred by chitchat or shared whispers. High Holiday prayers alternated between utter silence and thunderous refrains; there were full prostrations and tremulous entreaties. While I no longer held the theological views that prevailed in yeshiva, I yearned for that intensity to continue. I attended devotional gatherings of other religious traditions that were indeed characterized by sublime focus and embod68

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ied practice, often involving music and movement. Looking for this richness in a Jewish setting, my encounter with Havurat Shalom was a revelation and spiritual lifeline. The havurah davening room was lit softly, with a genuine live flame in the Ner Tamid, actually a yahrzeit lamp that was replaced and reverently lit daily. Seating was on the floor, on cushions. Services were led with care and mindful attention, punctuated by nigunim and silence. The room was small enough to cradle the sound and hold the reverberation. Each individual present sought to add his or her voice to the group, to give and receive spirit and elevation. The mood was joyous and inclusive yet filled with awe. There were no judgmental or intrusive gazes. Eyes sparkling, faces blissful, the benevolent shared energy was palpable. Here was what I sought. Peace descended even before the service began. One entered the room and felt under a different dispensation. There were no formalized rules for what might and might not be done in the davening room, yet the culture was picked up without words. The havurah had created, in a community of religious diversity and theological openness, a true sanctuary, meaning a space where spirit was so palpable that elevation occurred just by entering. The inner melody of one’s soul underwent a change of key, sang more brightly and nobly, with greater clarity of voice, just by sitting on the cushion. This is what it means to say that sacred space has transformative power. Long ago Va-­yikra proclaimed this truth. The early Hasidim lived it. Fresh initiatives in Neo-­Hasidism show it to be entirely realizable in our own day. There is no greater need in Jewish religious life than to revive and recreate the refuge and the blessing of sacred space. Notes

1. Abraham Even-­Shoshan, ed. A New Concordance of the Bible: Thesaurus of the Language of the Bible, Hebrew and Aramaic Roots, Words, Proper Names, Phrases and Synonyms (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1981), 601 (Hebrew). 69

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2. See Shawn Zelig Aster, The Unbeatable Light: Melammu and Its Biblical Parallels (Muenster: Ugarit Verlag, 2012). 3. Robert Kawashima, “The Priestly Tent of Meeting and the Problem of Divine Transcendence: An ‘Archaeology’ of the Sacred,” Journal of Religion 86, no. 2 (2006): 226–­55. 4. Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–­20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1983), 54. 5. For a Hasidic perspective, see Nehamia Polen, “Birkat Kohanim in the S’fat Emet,” in Birkat Kohanim: The Priestly Blessing, ed. David Birnbaum, Martin S. Cohen, and Saul J. Berman (New York: New Paradigm Matrix, 2016), 259–­74. 6. See t. Kippurim 2:15, ed. Shaul Lieberman (New York: Beit Ha-­Midrash le-­Rabbanim she-­ba-­America, 1955), 238. 7. This reading here runs closely parallel to the views of Seth Brody, who explored these themes in Kabbalah and Hasidism. See Seth L. Brody, “Human Hands Dwell in Heavenly Heights: Contemplative Ascent and Theurgic Power in Thirteenth Century Kabbalah,” in Mystics of the Book, ed. R. A. Herrera (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 123–­58; Seth L. Brody, “‘Open to Me the Gates of Righteousness’: The Pursuit of Holiness and Non-­Duality in Early Hasidic Teaching,” Jewish Quarterly Review 89, nos. 1–­2 (1998): 3–­44. 8. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 31. 9. Hannah K. Harrington, Holiness: Rabbinic Judaism and the Graeco-­Roman World (London: Routledge, 2001), 12–­13. 10. Harrington, Holiness, 27. 11. Harrington, Holiness, 28. 12. Harrington, Holiness, 30. 13. Quoted in Michael White, “In a Battle of the Batons, a Barely Visible Alchemy: Elim Chan’s Flick Conducting Prize Is Rare Win for a Woman,” New York Times, December 10, 2014. 14. For blood-­rites actualizing kinship and covenantal connection, see Exod. 4:24–­26; Exod. 24:3–­8. 15. For a detailed exposition, see Nehemia Polen, “Leviticus and Hebrews . . . and Leviticus,” in Richard Bauckham et al., eds., The Epistle to the Hebrews and Christian Theology (Grand Rapids mi: Eerdmans, 2009), 213–­25. 16. Ron Rendtorff provides persuasive arguments for doubting the existence of the Holiness Code as a separate source. See his “Is It Possible to Read 70

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Leviticus as a Separate Book?” in Reading Leviticus: A Conversation with Mary Douglas, ed. John F. A. Sawyer (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996), 22–­39; Ron Rendtorff, “Two Kinds of P? Some Reflections on the Occasion of the Publication of Jacob Milgrom’s Commentary on Leviticus 1–­16,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 18, no. 60 (1993): 75–­81. 17. Kedushat Levi, ed. Michael Derbaremdiger (Monsey NY: n.p., 2007), vol. 1, parshat terumah, 220. 18. See Daniel Stokl Ben Ezra, The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity (Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 15–­17. 19. m. Yoma 8:9. 20. Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 231. 21. Jacob Milgrom, ed., Leviticus 1–­16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 1009–­83. 22. Baruch A. Levine, ed., Leviticus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 103. 23. Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2001), 679. 24. Levine, Leviticus, 99. 25. See, for example, Milgrom, Leviticus 1–­16, 1067–­70, on “Temple Purgation in Babylon.” 26. Mary Douglas, “Atonement in Leviticus,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 1, no. 2 (1993/1994): 109–­30. 27. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–­16, 254, 256. 28. Adapted from the JPS Tanakh 1917. 29. Milgrom, Leviticus 1–­16, 566–­69. 30. b. Yoma 8b. Rashi, s.v. mahalifin otah, explains that the chamber would be renovated each year as a new High Priest was installed. 31. m. Yoma 5:3. 32. Michael Schneider, The Appearance of the High Priest—­Theophany, Apotheosis and Binitarian Theology: From Priestly Traditions of the Second Temple Period through Ancient Jewish Mysticism (Los Angeles: Cherub, 2012) (Hebrew). 33. These themes are not latterly introductions of the Hasidic masters and do not originate in Second Temple texts, but biblical scholars recognize them as at the core of Leviticus. See Stephen Geller, “Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the Pentateuch,” Prooftexts 12 (1992): 97–­124; Robert S. Kawashima, “The Jubilee Year and the Return of Cosmic Purity,” Catholic Bible Quarterly 65 (2003): 370–­89. 71

4 The Anxiety of Ethics and the Presence of God Don Seeman The Ba‘al Shem Tov used to say that no one should mock a person for making extravagant motions during prayer: “Would you mock a drowning man who made extravagant motions to keep his head above water?”1 This is a powerful expression of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s appreciation for human problems and the human quest for everyday transcendence. But an unsympathetic reader might also have asked whether drowning in the presence of God was not really the point of Hasidic worship after all. The extravagance of Hasidic spirituality was recognized by its advocates as well as its opponents. Its spirituality was attuned simultaneously to the proposition that “there is nothing at all but God”2 and to clear-­eyed recognition of our own concrete existence here in this phenomenal world, sometimes numbingly petty and sometimes (even at the same time) desperate with thirst for even a “trace of a trace” of transcendence, “a thirst for the living God.”3 My own path to Hasidism passed through the stories of Martin Buber and Elie Wiesel.4 As a teenager there was something electrifying—­ lifesaving—­for me in that encounter with a group of masters for whom ideas mattered, for whom Torah was not just an attenuated heritage but a call to the sanctification of everyday life. It was only later, when I had developed the requisite linguistic and analytic skills, that I began to invest serious effort in the study of primary Hasidic texts (sometimes in the company of like-­minded fellow travelers), and later still that I came 73

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to value the friendship and camaraderie of many Hasidim, including some whose acquaintance I first made through ethnographic fieldwork. And so, I approach this essay as an academic scholar of religion who has also been deeply conditioned by a variety of personal encounters with Hasidism, its texts and its people. I find it hard to imagine Jewish life today without the ferment of Hasidic teaching, whose spiritual and intellectual forces extend well beyond the boundaries of traditional Hasidic communities—­the very condition of possibility for the “new Hasidism” discussed in this volume. Yet I also remain anxiously, lovingly, alert to some of the challenges or even dangers this meeting can entail. Shorn of its traditional restraints and ritual disciplines, what potencies may be released? In a world suffused with and saturated by divinity, as Hasidism claimed and Neo-­Hasidism generally affirms, what is there to prevent the subtle substitution of personal ambition or desire for the recognition of divine beneficence? Or, to put this somewhat differently, how can the anxiety of ethics (which often seems to be dependent on a sense of responsible autonomy or even separation from God) be made to coincide with the ineluctable Divine Presence? Over the years I have seen some of these dangers realized in profoundly difficult and unsettling ways. And while these are not problems or dilemmas in any way unique to modern Hasidism, I find myself especially troubled when they arise in this context—­perhaps because, as one of my favorite Hasidic authors frequently reminds his readers, the line between life-­giving teaching and deadly falsehood can be so exceedingly thin.5 From my point of view, both the appreciation and the critique of possibilities in Neo-­Hasidism are best understood as internal to the dynamics of the Jewish tradition as a whole and to the horizons opened by Hasidic teaching in particular. This is the “open rebuke and concealed love” (as opposed to love, hate, or mere indifference) that Hillel Zeitlin once described as the necessary stance for an honest scholar 74

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of religious phenomena to adopt.6 Appreciation and hesitation—­ratso ve-­shov—­are nothing but two sides of a single coin.

Ha-­Shem Is Here, ha-­Shem Is There, ha-­Shem Is Truly Everywhere! Academic scholars continue to debate the meaning and force of the Hasidic revolution that swept through Eastern Europe starting in the late eighteenth century, but Hasidic writers themselves often point to the idea of radical divine immanence taught by the Ba‘al Shem Tov. Without denying that this is also grounded in particular readings of earlier texts—­“there is no place empty of Him,” declares Tikkunei Zohar—­ writers such as the late Lubavitcher Rebbe do not shrink from labeling the distinctive Hasidic constellation a “new revelation” that has attained, in his view, canonical or authoritative status for contemporary Jews.7 It flows from this view, moreover, that God must be present even in places of filth or moral and ritual impurity (as the opponents of Hasidism indeed feared), which implies in turn a monistic apperception of divine unity in everything—­that there is no unredeemable evil, for “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof ” (Ps. 24:1).8 This is no lighthearted teaching. Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira conveyed it with searing clarity in some of his last recorded sermons from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. “When a man ascends and unifies with the voice of God that is in the Torah,” Rabbi Shapira writes, “he hears Torah from all the sounds of the world, from the twittering of birds and the lowing of cattle, and from the tumult of human beings, and thus all evil is lifted up [i.e., transformed] into good.”9 Rabbi Shapira never denies, in any way, the reality of human suffering, frailty, and moral collapse; nor does he shrink from laying these, in at least some of his sermons, at God’s feet. But like every Hasidic writer, he begins with the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s radical claim that not a leaf turns in the 75

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wind without God deciding where and upon whom it will blow, and for what purpose.10 This view was by no means universally accepted among pre-­Hasidic writers, not least because of the challenge it seems to pose—­and which Hasidic writers have had to address—­to the principles of natural order and free will.11 On a moral-­experiential or phenomenological level, the idea that divine providence pervades everything at all times can be profoundly comforting to those who suffer but it can also be perceived as a forceful, even aggressive justification for an unjust world, or for my own pain and that of others. Many moderns would say, along with Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, that if the price of a meaningful and harmonious universe is to attribute the suffering of even a single child to benevolent divine order, that would indeed be too high a price to pay. “And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket,” Dostoyevsky’s Ivan insists, close on the heels of a story about the anguish of one tormented child. “It’s not God that I don’t accept . . . only I most respectfully return Him the ticket.”12 The idea that God is the author of our calamities may be experienced—­and is sometimes experienced—­as a kind of assault in its own right, as it was in Job’s complaint against his self-­righteous, God-­justifying friends. But radical divine immanence and radical divine providence go together in Hasidic teaching. Noteworthy to me is the way some important Hasidic writers—­among them Rabbi Shapira and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—­nevertheless resisted the common temptation to claim that they themselves knew the true meaning of that providence when it came to devastations like the Holocaust.13 Here, silence, it seems to me, was mercy. Radical divine immanence has been central to the unexamined vernacular theology of many American Jews.14 Hebrew-­school students often learn a song popularized by the Hasidic singer Moshe Tanenbaum (“Uncle Moishy”): “Ha-­Shem is here, ha-­Shem is there, ha-­Shem is truly everywhere, up, up, down, down, right, left and all around, here there 76

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and everywhere, that’s where He can be found!” The idea certainly has biblical antecedents, such as Jeremiah 23:24 (“Behold, I fill the heavens and the earth”). Yet the immanent view—­that God is present in all things—­has become such a central part of our religious vernacular that it can be difficult to recall how hotly this idea (popularized especially by the Kabbalah of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero) was debated, even or perhaps especially among Lurianic kabbalists, since the seventeenth century. Rabbi Emmanuel Hai Ricci, for one, argued that it was not divine essence or presence but God’s power and dominion that fill every space; it would be a disgrace, he insisted, to say that the divine sovereign could be present even in filth and impurity. His opponents, such as Rabbi Yosef Irgas, argued just as vociferously that it would a far greater disgrace to say that God was not present.15 Many in the Hasidic camp, including the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, argued that this was precisely at the heart of the debate between early Hasidim and their opponents, led by Rabbi Elijah, the Vilna Gaon. In Rabbi Schneerson’s view, the Gaon held (like Rabbi Emmanuel Hai Ricci) that the Lurianic mystery of divine contraction or tsimtsum meant quite literally that the divine light and essence had been withdrawn to make creation possible in the space left behind (tsimtsum kefshuto). The Hasidim, by contrast (and the Chabad Hasidim in particular), insisted that divine contraction or occlusion was only apparent—­that divinity and divine light continue to fill every space now, just as they did before creation.16 Scholars have pointed out one complication of this view. Already by the second generation of the Hasidic-­Mitnagdic polemic, we find the Gaon’s most esteemed student, Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, ultimately agreeing with what has been presented here as the Hasidic view—­ that “there is nothing at all but Him.” On this reading, Rabbi Hayyim merely insisted that this shared truth not be conveyed too cavalierly to the masses, who would be likely to abuse it by acting as if it called for the “transcendence” of ethical and halakhic norms. 77

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The force of Rabbi Hayyim’s argument needs to be clearly understood. If there is nothing but God, and divinity is present in all things—­even in sin or impurity (for how could they exist without the spark of divine vitality?)—­why should I be overly careful to insist on the distinctions and taxonomies of which human life and norms—­even sacred norms—­ are built? The paradox of traditional Jewish life, according to Rabbi Hayyim, is that everything is oriented to God’s law, yet the law itself requires a certain forgetfulness of the true relation—­a panentheistic one—­between God and world. It may well be, as scholar Shaul Magid and others have argued, that Rabbi Hayyim wants only to deny the human experience—­rather than the deeper ontic reality—­of divine immanence, but be that as it may, he certainly has some very immediate practical issues also in mind.17 No one can master the intricacies of talmudic study, Rabbi Hayyim opines, while he is intoxicated by divine extravagance. On the contrary, he says, a scholar ought to study Torah for its own sake and not (at least in direct experiential terms) for the sake of God or Divine Presence. Like Rabbi Yehuda Loew of Prague (the famed Maharal, d. 1609) before him, Rabbi Hayyim was aware of the danger in his own approach—­that one might come to so love the Torah as to forget its divine source and forget God—­but Rabbi Hayyim’s solution did not involve luxuriating in rapturous acosmism, as he thought the Hasidic approach did.18 Someone who is worried about forgetting God ought to pause every so often in learning to mindfully remember the divine nature of Torah, but real attainment in learning—­the most prized of all the divine obligations that the Torah itself imposed—­requires at the very least a degree of sovereign human “bracketing” of divine consciousness.19 The creative scholar, as Rabbi Soloveitchik would later say, is himself a creator of worlds, a majestic personality quite distinct from what he refers to not uncritically as homo religiosus.20 But while Hasidim and its opponents (known as the Mitnagdim) continue to argue the relationship between mystical experience and 78

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legal normativity to this day, Rabbi Hayyim’s warning applies equally to any consideration of human ethics that allows for submersion in rapturous divinity. It isn’t that rapture is in any way inherently unethical, as Buber at a certain point in his life seemed to think. Many of the great mystics were themselves paragons of virtue, and a few, such as Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, were also important jurists. Rather, at the risk of oversimplification, I think Rabbi Hayyim is driving home an argument that has been borne out by at least some recent adventures in Neo-­Hasidism: that the literature of mystical rapture and divine immanence does not lend itself very well to the plodding but oh-­so-­ important elaboration of limits and taxonomies upon which ethical life depends. To put it very bluntly, I think the claim being made here is that any religious phenomenology that is focused too closely on the immediacy of Divine Presence will tend to undervalue the complicated human multiplicity that calls for balance and adjudication, that which might also be called “justice.” There is a way in which the glory of God can sometimes (though not always) mediate against the ethical dignity of the merely, unapologetically, human.21 Consider for a moment the experience of studying Hasidic texts in comparison to studying the literature of Lithuanian Mussar. Roughly contemporaneous, both Hasidism and Mussar, a movement of ethical renewal and personal introspection, began as revolts against the distanced intellectualism and pilpul (textual dialectics) that had come to dominate the culture of European Talmud study and, hence, of Jewish education. But Hasidism, which gained its greatest early strength in Poland and the Ukraine, focused on the intimacy of the divine relation, which scholar Gershom Scholem called a “mystical psychology.”22 Grounded in the cosmology of medieval and early modern Kabbalah, Hasidism turned decisively toward consideration of the inner world at the relative expense of theosophy. Lithuanian Mussar, by contrast, offered no full-­blown cosmology, but a somewhat truncated and decidedly pragmatic rather than nonmystical psychology. According to the 79

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Hasidic critique, Mussar tried to burn away the human impulses toward evil and egocentricity rather than sublimating and ultimately sanctifying them (which is of course related to Hasidic teachings on immanence).23 My point here is not to take sides in this debate between two forms of life and learning I dearly value, but rather to call attention to two simple observations. The price one pays in Mussar is a certain loss, both in intimacy as well as an otherwise potentially strengthened sense of divine transcendence or “verticality”: a restraint of the rapturous impulse. The price one pays in Hasidism is that human relations seem liable to be overtaken by the overpowering presence of the Divine. One reads Hasidic texts for a long while before coming across the kind of fierce and dedicated attention to intersubjective dilemmas and situated ethics that emerge on almost every page of Lithuanian Mussar literature. One exception that proves the rule is the ethical phenomenology developed by Rabbi Shalom Dovber of Lubavitch (“the Rebbe Rashab,” 1860–­1920) in his Kuntres Hehaltsu. For Rashab, the root of human hatred and impatience with one another is our unwillingness to emulate the divine tsimtsum (self-­contraction for the sake of others) by diminishing ourselves to make space for others. This seems like a clear precedent for language that would later become central to the ethical phenomenology of the French Jewish phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas, but it is not for nothing that Levinas prefers to trace his intellectual genealogy back to Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin—­the opponent of Hasidism—­rather than Rashab or other Hasidic writers.24 This is because Rashab asks us, in fidelity to Hasidic teaching, to emulate the divine tsimtsum specifically by acknowledging our own bittul or self-­ nullification in light of the Divine Presence.25 This isn’t a formulation I think Levinas or Rabbi Hayyim could comfortably adopt, because the specter of bittul or self-­annihilation has in it the seeds of a rapturous desire to lose oneself in the Divine Presence.26 Well aware of this, writers in the Chabad tradition have put forward many different ways of mediating this claim or affirming the need for 80

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boundaries and limits, but Rabbi Hayyim’s critique is not easily set aside. For Levinas, the tsimtsum of the self in light of the other person is an ethical response decoupled from any meaningful cosmological referent or mystical psychology. He draws on the “inimitable resources” of kabbalistic language but also largely disenchants that language.27 Following a particular reading of Maimonides, Levinas denies that the Divine may ever appear as a kind of presence, but only as an ethical relation or demand—­one that mediates against the whole Hasidic (and Neo-­Hasidic) gestalt in important ways for us to ponder.

Buber, Heschel, Levinas, and Maimonides on the Glory of God Maimonides famously observed—­and made it the center of his whole teaching—­that the ethical moment in Judaism follows hard on the heels of our understanding that we cannot know God directly. In the whole first book of the Guide of the Perplexed—­but also in the first book of his Code of Law—­Maimonides explains step-­by-­step why we cannot apply anthropomorphic conceptions to God. It isn’t only terms such as “hand” or “sorrow” that cannot be applied naively to God, but even abstractions like “presence” or “being,” without which we have a hard time thinking at all.28 Consider the famous theophany of Exodus 33, in which Moses first asks God to “show me Thy glory [kavod]” but is told that he may not see God’s face but only his “back.” For Maimonides, this is not really a theophany—­a divine appearance—­at all. It is, rather, a parable for human intellectual limits, a realization that even Moses, “the master of all prophets,” could not really comprehend the ways in which God is different and incommensurable from all that is other than God. To see God’s “back” but not his “face” means, according to Maimonides, that one can only understand some—­not all—­of the ways in which 81

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God is distinct. It is like the ambiguity of trying to distinguish “Fred” from “Tom” from the back, while one of them is walking away, rather than our looking at him directly in the face. Finally perceiving the true limits of human knowledge, Moses “passed over” from the philosophical project of knowing God to the more modest consideration of divine actions and the “attributes” (such as kindness and mercy) to which they point. Not really descriptions of God—­rather, divine activities in governing the universe—­these attributes can be emulated through human activity. “Just as He is called Compassionate,” the Rabbinic teaching quoted by Maimonides insists, “so you too should be compassionate.”29 On this account, our human ethical fixation comes not from a surfeit of Divine Presence but precisely from our hard-­won recognition that we cannot grasp God as any kind of a presence at all. If invoking the ghost of Maimonides seems out of place here in a reflective and somewhat personal essay on Neo-­Hasidism, I can only say that for me (as for some of the greatest Hasidic writers) this juxtaposition really is crucial. Medieval writers such as Nahmanides and Rabbi Meir ibn Gabbai took serious and sometimes caustic issue with Maimonides precisely because they thought Moses was invoking real, sensual perception of the Divine Presence when he asked to see God’s glory; they also insisted that this request was at least partially granted by a perceptual encounter with the lower reaches of divinity.30 The possibility of such perception, and not just for Moses, may well be the possibility upon which Hasidism—­and by extension Neo-­Hasidism—­hangs. Given the stakes, it is not surprising that some kabbalistic writers sought to harmonize Maimonides’ view with their own. One of the most important modern mystical writers, Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook, once suggested that Maimonides’ philosophical strictures saved Kabbalah from falling into idolatry by forcing its advocates to grapple with his austere insistence on the incommensurable God.31 By the 82

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same token, some Hasidic writers frankly noted that they took exception to Maimonides’ theology of divine abstraction, while others, like the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, came to insist that their own emphasis on the perceptible presence of divinity in all things should be construed as the very fulfillment of Maimonides’ requirement that we come to know God’s unity.32 I do not find this to be the most compelling reading of Maimonides, at least as of now, but I do find it a compelling spiritual stance in its own right. As modern Jews, sometimes we are best given to inhabit the debates themselves, rather than their contested conclusions. Participants in an online forum I recently came across were debating whether the song “Ha-­Shem Is Here, Ha-­Shem Is There!” really does encapsulate radical divine immanence, and if so, whether they had any objection to their children singing it.33 Around the same time, I asked a friend of decidedly Mitnagged bent, someone who sympathizes deeply with the opponents of Hasidism (but who also happens to send his young daughter to a local school run by the Chabad Hasidic community—­which should tell you something about Chabad’s unparalleled success in the United States), whether he had ever considered the issue. To my surprise, he told me that he had already started speaking to his daughter, who was not yet ten, about his theological reservations. I used to joke with students that a true Maimonidean would have to sing “Ha-­Shem’s not here, Ha-­Shem’s not there, you cannot find Him anywhere,” though I am not sure how that jingle would play to the preschool crowd. At any rate, regardless of popularity, theologies are worth trying to elaborate with some clarity. Maimonides himself cites verses that seem to imply divine omnipresence, though he appears merely concerned to counter the heresy that divinity could be thought of as concentrated in any particular place such as a temple or sanctuary.34 Here, as elsewhere, he struggles to convey in human language that which human thought and language most stubbornly resist. 83

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I cannot prove that Levinas was thinking about Maimonides when in his last year of teaching at the Sorbonne (1975–­76) he offered a course on “God and Onto-­Theology,” but I contend he certainly should have been. “Can we think of God,” he asks, “outside of onto-­theology, outside of God’s reference to being?”35 Levinas’s whole philosophical oeuvre seems directed to answering this question: he insists that God is encountered in the face of the other, which is his way of describing the primeval, nonnegotiable responsibility to the other that precedes (or which is presumed by) the very act of speech. It is no accident that even in his philosophical or “Greek” writings (those without special reference to Judaism or Jewish problems), Levinas frequently uses terms derived from or reminiscent of the “inimitable language” of tsimtsum. Though Levinas was no kabbalist, I think this reading of divine contraction builds on his intuition that the language of being and presence, and all that spring from them—­ like the subjective adventure of religious “inspiration” (taking the Divine inside oneself )—­threaten a core sovereignty of human ethics or obligation. “Responsibility,” writes Levinas, “cannot be stated in terms of presence.”36 Though many of the people interested in today’s Neo-­Hasidism have also displayed a fascination with Levinas (especially his Jewish writings), insufficient attention has been paid to the fact that these languages tend to push in different directions, toward different kinds of Jewish ethical regimes, where such differences matter. So it is fascinating to note that Levinas’s attempt to “think of God . . . outside of God’s reference to being” is directly opposed by none other than two of the greatest purveyors of Hasidic teaching to non-­Hasidic audiences in the twentieth century: Martin Buber and Abraham Joshua Heschel. “Presence,” after all, is a core theme of Buber’s whole literary and philosophical output, from Tales of the Hasidim to I and Thou.37 It is the full, direct, and unadulterated presence of the other and one’s own presence for the other that Buber continually underlines. Tell84

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ingly, his translation of Moses’ demand to see God’s glory in Exodus 33 also follows the lead of Maimonides’ kabbalistic critics by insisting that Moses’ quest was for an encounter with direct and unmediated Divine Presence. As a teenager I fell in love with Buber, not just for his Hasidic stories but also for his Zionist and philosophical writings. His letter to Mahatma Gandhi—­more than any other single piece of writing—­ expressed for me the urgency of the Jewish national project in modern times. But on a religious level I also came to feel that something was missing. More than any other thinker I can name, Buber represented the clarity of what the ancient Rabbis called ‘ol malkhut shamayim (the yoke of the kingdom of heaven). The weight and force of personal divine command throbs through many of his essays, and the letter to Gandhi is a case in point. But he ultimately knows nothing of what the Rabbis also called “the yoke of the commandments” (‘ol ha-­mitzvot), referring to the specific obligations that make collective life across the generations possible. A chasm cannot help but open between Buber and the Hasidic masters he wrote about, even at their most anarchic, because Buber’s Moses wants only Divine Presence and is uninterested in divine law. A Rabbinic midrash building on Exodus 33 tells us that when God showed his “back,” as it were, to Moses, God was also showing him the form of the traditional square knot that is tied at the back of the phylacteries (tefillin) traditionally worn by Jewish men. This is an intriguing and apparently anthropomorphic midrash, but I want to call attention here to Levinas’s amazing gloss: “Look, even here,” he exclaims, “a normative teaching!”38 It is the revelation of Law—­the shape of the knot—­rather than the Divine Presence to which Levinas thinks the Rabbis wanted to call our attention. This is in fact a perceptive and thoroughly Maimonidean reading of the whole biblical episode in which this rabbinic midrash is interpretatively embedded. “Responsibility,” he tells us in his lecture on onto-­theology, “cannot 85

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be stated in terms of presence.” Yet he also goes on to add that “it is an impossibility of acquitting the debt . . . an excess over the present,” and that “this excess is glory [la gloire],”39 which for Levinas refers back unmistakably to the biblical glory or kavod in Exodus 33.40 He emphasizes the ethical and intersubjective dimension of glory already implicit in Maimonides’ account. In my view, it is not a sign of failure but of unmistakable spiritual and intellectual vitality that disputes between medieval kabbalists and medieval philosophers—­or between different sixteenth-­century students of Lurianic teaching—­continue to inspire such vigor among elite writers such as Buber and Levinas and descendants of the ancient students in the modern blogosphere alike. Sometimes I do wish that modern thinkers would more openly reveal their intellectual genealogies, if but to sharpen our own appreciation for what is at stake in these arguments. Abraham Joshua Heschel, the scion of a great Hasidic dynasty who escaped Nazi Europe to become a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (and also an important contributor to Neo-­Hasidism), at least had the good graces to name his adversary. “The glory is the presence,” he writes, taking an open swipe at Maimonides, “not the essence of God; an act rather than a quality. . . . Mainly the glory manifests itself as a power overwhelming the world.”41 Heschel is speaking here not just as a phenomenologist of religion or spokesman for the revival of American Judaism, but to some considerable degree as a representative of the Hasidic ethos and worldview.42 The terms he invoked so approvingly—­the perception of divine glory as a “power overwhelming the world”—­were precisely those that skeptics of Hasidism such as Hayyim of Volozhin feared Hasidism would promote. Intriguingly, in this regard Shai Held identifies Heschel’s ethical teaching more closely with his insistence on divine self-­ transcendence or self-­limitation (a theme related to tsimtsum) than to the phenomenology of Divine Presence or glory he also championed.43 86

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Hasidism, Neo-­Hasidism, and Suicide Bombers Of course, Hasidim do not always view the divine glory as a power threatening to overwhelm and obliterate; it also permeates, enlivens, and sustains. Since the world was created—­is constantly being created—­through the power of divine speech, the Ba‘al Shem Tov once taught, those letters serve continually to provide the divine vitality without which creation would fail.44 “It isn’t by bread alone that man lives, but by all that goes forth from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3) means that bread too, and the humans that consume it, are only enlivened by the word of God. In the best of cases, this contributes to a perception of divine unity in which humans participate not only with God but also with one another. For Heschel, this was arguably a prod to his wide-­ranging ethical and political engagement with—­among other things—­the American civil rights movement. This ethic plays on themes of connectivity and shared sweetness rather than on alterity or obligation, and, like any spiritual vision, it comes with its own potential virtues and pathologies. One of the Hasidic writers I have come to love best (and who has also come to influence Neo-­Hasidic trends), Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner (1801–­1854) of Izibica, gave this teaching his own special set of emphases. The spiritual work a person must accomplish in the world, he avowed, includes a process of “clarification” (berur) that ultimately leads to the possibility of seeing God “face to face,” as well as the enjoyment of “the good things of this world” without fear of misusing or perverting them.45 He termed this state of sanctified pleasure and living in the Divine Presence “glory” (kavod), because it is premised on the divine immanence that suffuses, sustains, and enlivens all things. One of my own contributions to the scholarship on Rabbi Mordecai Joseph and his published collection of teachings, called Mei ha-­Shiloah, was to argue that we should approach these (and other Hasidic) teachings through the prism of ritual process rather than more abstract 87

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“Hasidic doctrine.”46 Spiritual teachings, I stressed, are wedded indelibly to the life of the commandments through which they are given shape and mediated. Reflecting back upon it now, my decision to begin writing about Hasidism for an academic audience through Rabbi Mordecai Joseph’s teachings in Mei ha-­Shiloah was also premised, in ways I did not fully understand when I began, upon my own lived process of working through existential crisis and despair. The dark days of the Second Intifada had coincided with the beginning of my married life in Jerusalem and a frustrating period in my academic career. Our family life conformed for a very long time to the minimal movements we needed to each hold down a job or to manufacture some fragile sense of normalcy while the world seemed to be quite literally exploding all around. One of my students calmly told me she had missed class that day because the bus she had been waiting for had simply blown up in a mushroom of fire, with everyone aboard, just a few yards from her stop. That was the reality we were all living in. Everyone was touched by it in some distinctively personal and nontrivial way—­not just the friends who lost their lives or came that close, but also the one who gave birth in the hallway of a hospital without medication because there was simply no pain medication to be had in Jerusalem on the day of some outrage, or the Palestinian taxi driver who couldn’t come to pick me up on some days because he was afraid of revenge beatings and lived in simple terror that one of his teenage sons might get drawn into the violence. The Hebrew University bombing in 2002 hit me especially hard, not just because I often had lunch at the Sinatra café where it happened, but also because I arrived on the scene only a few minutes later to learn that two of my own students had been killed. It had been my last day of work before leaving for a planned sabbatical, and though my wife and I eventually relocated for a time to Atlanta, the anger and grief of those times stayed with me. Writing about anger, grief, and ritual pro88

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cess in Hasidism made sense for me as an anthropologist and religion scholar, but in retrospect I had needed to write about these things for personal reasons, and maybe still do.47 For Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner and the school he founded, anger is the ultimate “foreign king,” an oppressor who constantly alienates us from the knowledge of immanence, that “all is in heaven’s hands.”48 It is, as his son Rabbi Yaakov Leiner (1828–­1878) wrote, “like a householder who grows angry when a guest flouts his will. . . . If he understood that he is not the master of the house he would not grow angry at all.”49 In my view, Rabbi Mordecai Joseph’s teachings on anger are both more and less radical than commonly assumed. They are less radical because he understands that in our quotidian reality some anger is inevitable and even necessary; indeed, he argues that the capacity for anger is related intrinsically to our capacity for recognizing and acting on the difference between right and wrong. Yet these teachings on anger are also more radical, because the Maimonidean “balance” of the emotions we are expected to strike in our current reality must ultimately give way to an appreciation of the immanent divine glory in all things, even those that are now prohibited. This is a stage to which Rabbi Mordecai Joseph’s great-­grandson, Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Elazer Lainer, refers metaphorically as “crossing the river Jordan,” no doubt bearing in mind Maimonides’ famous assertion that it was only because of inappropriate anger that biblical Moses was denied permission to cross over into the Promised Land.50 From the vantage point of the school founded by Rabbi Mordecai Joseph, this is no accident. Moses, the lawgiver, is by definition bound to a world of taxonomies and distinctions in which anger has a foothold (as in the world of Mussar). “You shall not bring a blemished offering,” Rabbi Mordecai Joseph understands typologically, as the attempt to worship God from within a consciousness of blemish, as if “the earth and all that is in it” did not already belong to and therefore participate in the perfection and beneficence of God’s glory.51 89

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It is certainly a sign of changing times that a work such as Mei ha-­ Shiloah, which was nearly unknown (and hard to obtain) outside knowledgeable Hasidic circles when I first encountered it on a tip from my teacher Rabbi Dovid Ebner in the late 1980s, has recently been catapulted to the center of debates about the nature of law and tradition in—­of all places—­Modern Orthodoxy. Rabbi Mordecai Joseph and his school have been cited and disputed in the recent furor over biblical criticism, homosexuality, and women’s ordination, though none of these are themes he actually addressed. His teachings have sometimes come to stand as ciphers for the contested value of religious intuition over doctrinal orthodoxy or traditionalism among contemporary readers.52 As for my own reading, Rabbi Mordecai Joseph seemed to skirt dichotomies between theory and practice: he presented his radical exegetical insights in the context of a ritual process that favored yishuv ha-­da‘at (settled attentiveness) over other potential values such as ecstasy, religious fervor, or bittul (nullification). It may seem counterintuitive to some, but I found the deep Maimonidean strain in this brand of Hasidism very appealing.53 Still, a text such as Mei ha-­Shiloah simply does not provide a programmatic guide to perplexity, let alone a political and religious program for halakhic practice. Its most startling interpretations, such as the one that turns lustful Zimri rather than zealot Pinhas into the hero of Numbers 25, are based not on the claim to some nebulous religious “intuition” but on a kind of radical religious empiricism—­a disciplined and extremely difficult process of self-­testing and asceticism comparable in some ways to the experimental trope in Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.54 “This is to say,” Rabbi Mordecai Joseph writes, “that someone who distances himself from the evil impulse and guards himself from sin with all his might until he has no strength to guard himself anymore but his impulse overcomes him so that he commits an act, then this is certainly from Blessed God.”55 90

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Statements like this are not the stuff of comfortable Orthodoxy. One may easily raise questions about the wisdom of attributing one’s own desire to God, but the first steps, it seems to me, are to take the author’s own claims and methods more seriously than has sometimes been the case, and to relate those teachings to what we know of the fairly traditional, pious way he conducted his own life. Reading Mei ha-­Shiloah on the Torah faithfully is like reading some of the great theorists of literature, like Maimonides on the Bible or Claude Levi-­Strauss on the structural study of myth. You may not always be convinced that their explanations are the right ones, but you come away changed and unable to view the original texts in the same naive way you did before. Rabbi Mordecai Joseph posits that Scripture would not have bothered to recount the exploits of ordinary sinners unless they were spiritually serious people from whose sins (real or apparent) spiritually serious people have something to learn. The greatest sinners, moreover, are often those closest to the truth but for some subtle failure. The man who violated the Sabbath to collect wood in Numbers 15:32 only did so, we are told, because he recognized that the Sabbath reflects messianic consciousness, but erred in thinking that he was already freed of halakhic norms and limitations. Reading the text this way not only makes it harder to exercise harsh judgment against the great sinners of the Bible, but do to so against the flawed everyday individuals among whom we count ourselves as well. If Pinhas could not know what holiness was in Zimri’s heart or how he had worked to determine the will of God for his particular case, shouldn’t it give me pause when I am angry or judgmental of my own neighbor? In the context of frightening communal violence that has frequently been justified in religious terms, Mei ha-­Shiloah has been a kind of lifeline for me, reminding me that there are other ways of being at home with God, rooted not in wrath but in the appreciation of divine goodness. Rabbi Mordecai Joseph resisted all forms of religious ecstasy, including the ecstasy of self-­annihilation sometimes associated with martyr91

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dom, on which he adopted a surprisingly sober, Maimonides-­inflected view. The real martyrdom, he wrote, is sometimes to give up one’s life in the world to come by refusing martyrdom in this world, outside of those cases in which Jewish law or the specific obligations of one’s own spiritual perfection require it.56 Rabbi Mordecai Joseph understood the irresistible religious pull of self-­annihilation but called on humans to mostly resist it. For all of his vaunted antinomianism, it is worth noting that he seems to abhor premessianic radicalism and always pulls away from the side of anger toward the side of joy. Palestinian suicide bombers were not the only martyrs I had in mind while I wrestled with these texts. I make no claims to any special understanding of Dr. Baruch Goldstein’s decision to walk into the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and open fire on Muslim worshippers at the cost of his own life and many others—­both his own victims and those killed in innumerable revenge attacks—­on Purim day in 1994. But I did devote myself to understanding Barukh ha-­Gever, the mystical tract written by Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, an important, Chabad-­affiliated figure in contemporary Israeli Neo-­Hasidism, as a celebration of his act.57 For me his tract posed an existential challenge I couldn’t ignore. The massacre, in Rabbi Ginsburg’s treatment, was an expression of divine glory supplanting reason, ethics, and normative Jewish law. Such “terror as a mystical technique,” as I have called it, sought to invoke divine glory by violently shocking the witnesses or onlookers out of their complacent attitude and into violence. The intended audience of the act were not Palestinians but the Jewish Israeli public—­especially the religious public—­who, instead, widely reviled Goldstein’s act; in Ginsburg’s view they had grown “insensitive to such things” as national and divine honor. If some readers of Mei ha-­Shiloah challenged Jewish ethics and normativity in one direction, by finding their moment of divine glory in the enjoyment of “all the good things of this world,” Barukh ha-­Gever pulled Jewish ethics murderously asunder in the other, raising anger and rejection of this world to core theological principles. 92

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I wasn’t wrong to think that Rabbi Mordecai Joseph posed a strong internal-­Hasidic challenge to Ginsburg’s rant: in a second edition of Barukh ha-­Gever, published as the title essay in a volume devoted to the memory of Baruch Goldstein, Ginsburg devoted a footnote to registering—­but then pointedly putting aside for later consideration—­ the anitzealotry tenor of Rabbi Mordecai Joseph’s teaching on Pinhas. For Rabbi Mordecai Joseph, lust and anger are the two antipodes between which human psychology swings, and the role of religious practice is to strike the elusive correct balance between them until such time as anger can be transcended, root and branch.58 If there are also those who, in the meantime, abuse his expansive teaching to excuse a degrading libertinism, I suppose he would say that they are like the biblical Amalek, who recognized correctly that “all is in the hands of heaven,” and yet falsely assert that this recognition delivers them from any personal responsibility for their actions.59 It is striking how the biblical villain Amalek comes to stand for the most similar view to Rabbi Mordecai Joseph’s own teaching, separated only by a certain ritual subtlety and mechanism of spiritual self-­critique. If there is one lesson that even non-­Hasidim can usefully learn from Mei ha-­Shiloah, this is it.

Patchwork: On the Anxiety of Ethics In The Way of Man: According to the Teaching of Hasidism, Martin Buber tells of a certain Hasid who decided to serve God by fasting from one Sabbath to the next. As his fast was ending he noticed that he had become filled with pride at the self-­denial he had wrought, so he ran to take a drink and end his fast early—­all to avoid unforgivable pride. But at the last moment he realized that his pride had already been broken, so he put the water down and completed his fast, only to repeat the whole process again from the beginning a little while later. When 93

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he eventually came before his master, the Rabbi of Lublin, to tell him what he had done, the master shouted “Patchwork!” at him in derision. Buber, of course, lends this story his own existentialist frame. It does not matter, Buber says, which work one chooses in the world, which manner of devotion, so long as one gives it one’s whole heart.60 As a teenager this teaching appealed to me a great deal, and I am glad that it did. But does it still? The Hasidic authors I know and love best were well aware that any mode of worship—­whether through kindness or severity, through learning or prayer—­has the potential to become an idolatry when it is practiced merely ‘al ha-­gavvan, as an isolated and self-­ sufficient prism outside the shifting spectrum of the Infinite.61 “Those who are merciful to the cruel,” a midrash tells us, “will become cruel to the merciful.”62 Jewish law and tradition are often like that, forcing us to refrain from eating one day and then to feast on the next, to exercise both mercy and judgment (but a little more mercy!), to seek spiritual perfection but simultaneously to make all of the compromises one inevitably must in order to make a living, raise a family, and build a community. My life may well have become a patchwork of competing loyalties and shifting priorities—­certainly from the perspective of my teenage self it has—­but I try to recognize the potential for heroism in that patchwork now—­or, perhaps more honestly, the potential for service of other kinds than heroism in this good world God has made. In the circles I travel we are sometimes told that Hasidic teaching and Neo-­Hasidic practice have come to fill a void left by rapacious modernism and dry intellect, as well as the failure of other collective projects (such as Zionism or Modern Orthodoxy) to provide a sense of ongoing spiritual community. So it may be. I am happy to have contributed to the movement in some very small way through my own writing and teaching inside and outside of academia. But I also want to offer two strong correctives to the view that these teachings might be adopted primarily as alternatives to critical thinking or the anxieties of ethical reflection. 94

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The first is that Hasidism is not all of a piece. Those who wish to make its teachings their own ought to avoid the tendency to amalgamate every teaching or teacher into a single bland canon of “Hasidic (still less, ‘New Age’) spirituality.” The soaring profundities of Chabad Torah, the liberating sweetness of Izbitz, the unique kingdoms of Bratslav, Berditchev, or Gur are not merely stylistic variations on a theme; they are sovereign worlds of thought and practice that include sharp disputes about a variety of matters considered both vital and worth articulating. “The Hasidic masters had available to them not only a diversity of books and schools,” insists scholar Moshe Idel, “but also divergent paradigms or models, from the earliest Talmudic-­midrashic times on through the early Middle Ages and Renaissance.”63 One of the best ways to combat a narrowing and ultimately self-­ defeating fundamentalism is to become aware of the diversity within Hasidic teachings and the sheer multiplicity of their resources, developed over the course of centuries. While there are undoubted advantages to being a member of a traditional Hasidic community with its commitment to a single rebbe and a well-­trod path of divine service, one advantage to engaging these teachings outside their traditional milieu is the likelihood of cultivating a more diverse bookshelf, with all of the stimulation and friction such diversity engenders. My second point may be more controversial in Neo-­Hasidic circles, but it has to be said: Divine Presence is not nearly enough. We need an anxiety of ethics too, and this is frequently (though not, I hasten to add, exclusively) associated with a willingness to put rapture on hold, or to cast doubt on the very possibility of unmediated divine intimacy. To claim unmediated traffic with the Divine other than through God’s middot or ethical attributes, Rav Kook once mused, is tantamount to the “dust of idolatry.”64 Or, to illustrate this tension in another way, think about two different readings of the famous story in Genesis where Abraham offers hospitality to three guests who 95

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turn out to be angels from God. In the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s reading, by welcoming these strangers Abraham welcomed God, even before he knew that they were angels; they were an instantiation of the Divine Presence.65 The non-­Hasidic writer Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin (1816–­1893), by contrast, argued that Abraham had been engaged in prayer or meditation before he welcomed the guests and then left his meditations aside in order to perform a mitzvah by welcoming guests.66 Both readings appeal to me in different ways, but only Rabbi Berlin accompanies his with a thoughtful discussion about how to balance different obligations where hospitality and the calls of the spirit may not always coincide. My own ability to identify intuitively with each of these apparently contrary views simultaneously may have been one of the forces pushing me, for better or worse, toward an intellectual and highly textual (though not exclusively academic) engagement with Hasidic teaching. This allowed me to encounter these teachings with real spiritual and intellectual seriousness, yet without feeling the need to foreclose on alternative possibilities that are also inextricably present in the broad sweep of traditional Jewish thought and practice. If the resolution of opposites is a religious telos, as Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and some of my other most admired teachers have proposed, that may entail living with real contradictions in the meantime.67 One can take advantage of the benefits a particular Jewish spiritual orientation affords without having to deny its inevitable limitations or the value of its counterweight. Years ago, on the last day of Passover, I was privileged to attend the seudat Ba‘al Shem Tov hosted by the late Professor Isadore Twersky at the Talner beit midrash in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he presided as rebbe. Someone asked him whether he felt closer to the Ba‘al Shem Tov, his proximate spiritual forebear, or to Maimonides, the subject of his scholarly passion. He was silent for a moment, until it became clear that he would not answer. 96

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I identify with that reticence. If, more recently in my public life, I have come to more strongly emphasize the Maimonidean frame, it has had something to do with pushing against the grain of contemporary Jewish life. I have become increasingly skeptical of the extravagance that assertions of Divine Presence seem to entail (especially when they are untethered by strong ritual and ethical disciplines), as well as the abuse or moral failure of some of the people who have most strongly pressed those claims.68 In the wake of the flood, Mei ha-­Shiloah notes, Noah’s own experience of fear and introversion taught him to intuit more clearly than before God’s desire for a world of moral limit.69 The people and teachers I still admire the most, at any rate, are those with the capaciousness (and humility) to encompass conflicting spiritual trends with honesty and to build new, often surprising personal coherencies out of the conflicting impulses that course through our tradition. This may be the best we can strive for at this juncture, and it may also be a worthy aspiration. Notes

1. Keter Shem Tov (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1988), par. 215, 55. 2. Deut. 4:35. For just one of many, many examples, see Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Likkutey Amarim—­Tanya 1:33 (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2010) . 3. Ps. 42:2. On the “trace” of divine transcendence, see, for example, the overview by Eli Rubin, “Absent Presence: The Revelatory Trace (reshimu) of Divine Withdrawal,” www​.chabad​.org​/ library​/article​_cdo​/aid​ /3004920​/jewish​/Absent​-­­Presence​.htm. 4. Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Schocken, 1961); Elie Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982). 5. See Don Seeman, “Martyrdom, Emotion and the Work of Ritual in R. Mordecai Joseph Leiner’s Mei Ha-­Shiloah,” ajs Review 27, no. 2 (2003): 253–­80. 6. Hillel Zeitlin, ‘Al Gevul Shnei ‘Olamot: Ketavim, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 2003), 9–­15. This essay has also been translated in Hillel Zeitlin, Hasidic 97

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Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin, trans. Arthur Green (Mahwah nj: Paulist, 2012), 120–­27. 7. See Tikkunei Zohar, no. 57, fol. 91b; and no. 70, fol. 122b. On the Ba‘al Shem’s “new revelation,” see, for example, the end of Iggerot Kodesh, vol. 2 (New York: Kehot Publication Society, 1987), 394–­95. 8. See Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Earth Is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the Jew in East Europe (New York: Henry Shuman, 1950); also Hillel Zeitlin, “The Fundaments of Hasidism,” in Zeitlin, Hasidic Spirituality, 71–­119; and Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 253–­80. 9. Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira, Esh Kodesh: Torah Me-­Shnot Ha-­Za‘am (Bnei Brak: Va’ad Hasidei Piaseczna, 1960), 163. First cited in Don Seeman, “Ritual Efficacy, Hasidic Mysticism and ‘Useless Suffering’ in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Harvard Theological Review 101, nos. 3–­4 (2008): 499. 10. This is a voluminous topic, but see, for example, the sources collected by Lubavitcher Hasid R. Michoel Hanokh Shai Galomb in his Sha‘arei Limmud ha-­Hasidut (New York: Kehot Publication Society, 2010), 115–­30. 11. See David Berger, “Miracles and the Natural Order in Nahmanides,” in Isadore Twersky, ed., Rabbi Moses Nahmanides: Explorations in his Religious and Literary Virtuosity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 107–­28; Morris M. Faierstein, All Is in the Hands of Heaven: The Teachings of Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner of Izbica (New York: Ktav, 1989). 12. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Lowell, 2009), 268. 13. See, for example, his Sefer Ha-­Sihot 5751, vol. 1 (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1992), 233–­34 . 14. For more on the idea of vernacular theology, see Don Seeman, “Divinity Inhabits the Social: Ethnography in a Phenomenological Key,” in Derrick Lemons, ed., Theologically Engaged Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 15. See Rabbi Emmanuel Hai Ricci, Yosher Levav, ed. Yosef Tavia (Safed: Alei Ayin, 2010), 28–­29; Rabbi Yosef Irgas, Shomer Emunim ‘im Mevo Petahim (Berlin: B. Cohen, 1927). For an introduction to the considerable academic literature on this subject, see, for example, Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), 260–­73; Moshe Idel, “On the Concept of Zimzum in Kabbalah and Its Research,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 10 (1992): 59–­112 (Hebrew); Joseph Dan, Jewish Mysticism and Jewish Ethics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), 102–­7. 98

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16. See Rabbi Menachem Schneerson’s 1939 letter on this subject, published in Rabbi Yosef Yitshak Havlin, ed., Sha‘arei Emunah: Teshuvot u-­Bi’urim Bi-­Yesodot Ve-­Ikkarei Ha-­Emunah (Jerusalem: Heichal Menachem, 1991). 17. See the various primary and secondary sources discussed in Shaul Magid, “Deconstructing the Mystical: The Anti-­Mystical Kabbalism in Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin’s Nefesh Ha-­Hayyim,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 9 (1999): 21–­67. 18. R. Hayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh Ha-­Hayyim (Bnei Brak: n.p., 1989), sha‘ar 3:2–­2, 150–­55. See also the introduction to Rabbi Yehudah Leib ben Betsalel Loew of Prague’s Tif ’eret Yisrael, ed. Rabbi Hayyim Pardes (Jerusalem: Yad Mordecai, 1985), 77–­86. 19. Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, Nefesh Ha-­Hayyim (Bnei Brak: n.p., 1989), sha’ar 4:2, 209–­11. 20. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1984). 21. For a more complete discussion, see Don Seeman, “Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor in Modern Jewish Thought.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 73 (2005): 1015–­48. 22. Scholem, Major Trends, 341; Seeman, “Ritual Efficacy,” 499. 23. See most succinctly Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson’s comments recorded in Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Ha-­Yom Yom (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1943) for 7 Kislev. These debates continue today; see, for example, the blog Chabad Talk, www​.chabadtalk​.com​ /forum​.showthread​.php3​?t​=​1163. Hillel Zeitlin also treated the differing agendas of Mussar and Hasidism in his essay “Sihot ‘al-­Chabad,” in Zeitlin, ‘Al Gevul Shnei ‘Olamot, 265–­71. 24. Emmanuel Levinas, “‘In the Image of God’ according to Rabbi Hayyim Volozhiner,” in Emmanuel Levinas, Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. Gary D. Mole (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 151–­67. 25. Rabbi Shalom Dovber Schneersohn, Ma’amar Hehaltsu (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998). 26. See, for example, Rabbi Dovber Schneuri, “Kuntres ha-­Hitpa‘alut,” in Ma’amarey Admor ha-­Emtsa‘i: Kuntresim (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1991), as well as the detailed introduction to this work by Louis Jacobs, Tract on Ecstasy (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2006). 27. Levinas, “‘In the Image of God,’” 155. 99

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28. Don Seeman, “Honoring the Divine as Virtue and Practice in Maimonides,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 16 (2008): 195–­251. 29. See Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, I:54; Seeman, “Honoring the Divine.” 30. See Nahmanides, Perush ha-­torah, ed. Rabbi Hayyim Dov Chavel, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-­Rav Kook, 1976), 250–­51; Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai, ‘Avodat Ha-­Kodesh (Jerusalem: Ahavat Shalom, 1980), 3:30; Seeman, “Honoring the Divine,” 209. 31. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Ma’amarei ha-­Ra’ayah (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook,1984), 105–­33. 32. See Jacob Gotlieb, Rationalism in Hasidic Attire: Habad’s Harmonistic Approach to Maimonides (Ramat Gan: Bar-­Ilan University, 2009), 53–­56 (Hebrew). 33. Read: http://​judaism​.stackexchange​.com​/questions​/2424​/ hashem​-­­is​ -­­here​-­­hashem​-­­is​-­­there​-­­really. 34. This theme runs throughout the first book of Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, but see especially chap. 19. 35. Emmanuel Levinas, God, Death and Time, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 149; see also Don Seeman, “Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor,” 1037. 36. Levinas, God, Death and Time, 195. 37. See Pamela Vermes, Buber on God and the Perfect Man (London: Littman Library, 1994), 119–­30, first cited in Seeman, “Honoring the Divine,” 213. 38. Emmanuel Levinas, “Revelation in the Jewish Tradition,” in Levinas, Beyond the Verse, 129–­50. 39. Levinas, God, Death and Time, 195. 40. Seeman, “Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor,” 1038. 41. Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976), 82; Seeman, “Honoring the Divine,” 214. 42. For a good account of Heschel’s indebtedness to Hasidism precisely on these issues, see Moshe Idel, “Abraham Heschel on Mysticism and Hasidism,” in his Old World, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-­ Century Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 217–­34; see also Seeman, “Ritual Efficacy,” 475–­76. On Heschel as a Neo-­ Hasidic figure, see Arthur Green, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns,” Modern Judaism 29 (2009): 62–­79. See also Michael Marmur, Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sources of Wonder (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016). 100

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43. See Shai Held, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015). The extent to which this theme in Heschel is compatible with the Hasidic elements of his broader thought deserves separate dedicated treatment. 44. This is an especially prominent dimension of Chabad teaching. See, for example, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Likkutey Amarim—­Tanya, sha‘ar ha-­yihud ve-­ha-­emunah, chap. 1; Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Likkutey Sihot, vol. 25 (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2006), 200. 45. Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 268. See Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­Shiloah, vol. 1, mishlei, 5b:220. Throughout this essay, folio pages of this work refer to the 1973 printing by J. Leiner in Brooklyn; parenthetical page numbers refer to the 1990 printing by Sifrei Kodesh Mishor in Israel. 46. Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 253–­80. 47. Seeman, “Martyrdom, 253–­80; Seeman, “Ritual Efficacy,” 499; Don Seeman, “Apostasy, Grief and Literary Practice in Habad Hasidism,” Prooftexts 29 (2009): 398–­432; Don Seeman, “Otherwise than Meaning: On the Generosity of Ritual,” Social Analysis 48 (2004): 55–­71. 48. Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­Shiloah, vol. 1, shoftim, 61b:187; Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 254. 49. Rabbi Yaakov Leiner, Beit Ya‘akov (Warsaw: n.p., 1909), noah, no. 19, fol. 34a; Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 254–­55. 50. Mordecai Yosef Elazar Lainer, Tif ’eret Yosef (Warsaw: n.p., 1935; Brooklyn: J. Lainer, 1992), va-­yelekh, fol. 7a; Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­ Shiloah, vol. 1, yehoshua, 1b:208; Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 255. 51. Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­Shiloah, vol. 2, shoftim, 36b–­37a:118. Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 274. 52. For just one set of recent examples, see Herzl Hefter, “‘In God’s Hands’: The Religious Phenomenology of R. Mordechai Yosef of Izbica,” Tradition 46, no. 1 (2013): 43–­44; Herzl Hefter, “The Challenge of Biblical Criticism: Dogma vs. Faith,” Morethodoxy: Exploring the Breadth, Depth and Passion of Orthodox Judaism, http://​morethodoxy​.org​/2013​/09​/16​/guest​ -­­post​-­­by​-­­rabbi​-­­herzl​-­­hefter​-­­the​-­­challenge​-­­of​-­­biblical​-­­criticism​-­­dogma​ -­­vs​-f­­ aith/; as well as Herzl Hefter, “Why I Ordained Women,” Times of Israel, July 19, 2015, http://​blogs​.timesofisrael​.com​/why​-­­i​-­­ordained​ -­­women/; as well as Yaakov Ariel, “Gay, Orthodox, and Trembling: The Rise of Jewish Orthodox Gay Consciousness, 1970s-­2000s,” Journal of Homosexuality 52 (2007): 91–­109. A critical rejoinder to all of these was 101

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offered by Dovid Bashevkin, “A Radical Theology and a Traditional Community: On the Contemporary Application of Izbica-­Lublin Hasidut in the Jewish Community,” http://​www​.torahmusings​.com​/2015​/08​/open​ -­­orthodox​-­­symposium​-­­iv/. 53. See Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 253–­80; see also Shaul Magid, Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism and Messianism in Izbica/Radzin Hasidism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 40–­72. 54. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (New York: Dover, 1983). 55. Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­Shiloah, vol. 1, pinhas, 54a:165. 56. Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­Shiloah, va-­ethanan, 55a:177; Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 277. 57. Seeman, “Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor,” 1015–­48; Don Seeman, “God’s Honor, Violence and the State,” in Robert W. Jenson and Eugene Korn, eds., Ploughshares into Swords? Reflections on Religion and Violence (Jerusalem: Center for Jewish-­Christian Understanding, 2014). 58. Seeman, “Martyrdom,” 253–­80. 59. See Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­Shiloah, vol. 1, be-­shalah, 23b:85. 60. Martin Buber, The Way of Man: According to the Teaching of Hasidism (New York: Citadel, 2006), 17–­19. 61. This is a major theme, for example, in Gershon Hanokh Henikh’s Sod Yesharim Tinyana (Jerusalem: n.p., 2006), noah. 62. Kohelet Rabbah 7:16. 63. Moshe Idel, “Buber and Scholem on Hasidism,” in his Old World, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-­Century Thought (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 209. 64. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, “The Moral Principles,” in Ben Zion Bokser, ed., Classics of Western Spirituality: Abraham Isaac Kook (New York: Paulist, 1978), 156. 65. See the sources collected in Ba‘al Shem Tov ‘al ha-­torah, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mossad Anshei Ma’amad, 1993), va-­yera, 234. 66. Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, Ha‘zmek Davar (Jerusalem: n.p., 1985), 114–­15 on Genesis 18:1. 67. See Yehudah Mirsky, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 68. See Rachel Werczberger, Jews in the Age of Authenticity: Jewish Spiritual Renewal in Israel (London: Peter Lange, 2016); Shaul Magid, “Shlomo Carlebach and Meir Kahane: The Difference and Symmetry between 102

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Romantic and Materialist Politics,” American Jewish History 100 (2016): 461–­84; Shaul Magid, “Carlebach’s Broken Mirror,” Tablet, November 1, 2012, http://​www​.tabletmag​.com​/jewish​-­­arts​-­­and​-­­culture​/music​/115376​ /carlebach​-­­broken​-­­mirror; Yaakov Ariel, “Love in the Age of Aquarius: The House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco 1967–­1977,” Religion and American Culture 13 (2003): 139–­65; Seeman, “Violence, Ethics and Divine Honor,” 1015–­48. 69. Leiner, Likkutey Mei ha-­Shiloah, vol. 1, noah, 5b:19.

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5 Hasidism and the Religious Other A Textual Exploration and Theological Response Or N. Rose The teachings of Hasidism have been an essential part of my religious life since childhood. Raised in the nascent Jewish Renewal community, I was introduced to the sermons, stories, and ritual practices of the Hasidic masters by my parents and their mentors and peers, including Rabbis Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, Shlomo Carlebach, and Arthur Green. I continued to explore various Hasidic teachings and practices in my personal life and through my graduate studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Brandeis University. Today, as a rabbi and educator, I regularly study, teach, and write on Hasidic thought and practice. After decades of active engagement with it, the language, ideas, and symbols of this great religious and social movement, and of its Neo-­Hasidic interpreters, have become integral to my identity. Among the many captivating elements of Hasidic thought, one of the most meaningful to me is the Eastern European mystics’ call to recognize the unity of and sacred potential in all life: “God’s glory fills the whole earth” (Isa. 6:3). Every day I carry with me the Hasidic imperative to search for the holy within the mundane, knowing that its full realization is always aspirational. Unfortunately, however, even as the Hasidic masters planted the seeds of an inclusive spiritual worldview—­pointing to the divinity 105

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that inheres in all things—­they often spoke of non-­Jews in strongly negative terms. In many of the foundational texts of this great revival movement gentiles are portrayed as deficient or demonic and their cultures as distorted or evil. And when the Hasidic masters did speak about the existence of goodness or holiness among non-­Jews, they frequently instructed their disciples to redeem these “sparks” from the sullied hands of their wayward neighbors and restore them to their proper place within an exclusively Jewish devotional context. Of course, I recognize that I live in a very different time and place than many of the rebbes whose insights have shaped my life most profoundly. Regardless, as a person committed to human equality, I simply cannot accept the claim that Jews are superior to non-­Jews, ontologically or otherwise. Further, I believe that I must engage reciprocally with (both religious and secular) non-­Jews, sharing insights and exploring questions of meaning and purpose. What is more, while I feel strongly that Judaism has great wisdom to offer its adherents and to the world at large, I believe this is also the case with other religions—­Western and Eastern. At the same time, as a longtime student of Hasidism who has been deeply nourished by its teachings and practices, I am unwilling to disengage from it. Even as I disagree with the Hasidic masters on these fundamental issues, I choose instead to continue the dialogue. As I see it, it is crucial to explore these sources carefully and offer alternative positions when necessary. These teachings continue to play a significant role in the lives of countless Jews (Hasidic and non-­ Hasidic). This is particularly important in an age when Jews have gained unprecedented political and military power, and in which some Jewish religious leaders use these materials to inspire or justify the mistreatment of non-­Jews. In this essay I examine several Hasidic teachings on the non-­Jew, first situating them in their historical context and spiritual lineage and then offering a critical response. In carrying out this exegetical 106

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and theological exercise, I seek to contribute to the ongoing renewal of this rich and evolving tradition that has provided my family and me—­and so many other seekers—­with vital spiritual nourishment over the generations.

Kedushat Levi: A Case Study The famed early Hasidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (1740–­1809), known as the Barditshever among Hasidim, gave several sermons on the non-­Jew. I have chosen the Kedushat Levi, the Barditshever’s major homiletical collection, as my case study in this essay for two reasons: one historical, the other personal. First, it is widely considered a foundational text in the Hasidic tradition; the book has been reprinted many times since its original publication in 1811 and is often quoted by other Hasidic teachers and writers. Also, Levi Yitzhak is a particularly beloved figure in the Jewish folk imagination, both within Hasidism and beyond it. Second, I find this book to be deeply insightful and inspiring in many ways, including the master’s reflections on the need to treat all members of the Jewish community—­rich and poor, learned and untutored—­with dignity and care. In fact, in Hasidic circles Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev is known as the archetype of the compassionate Hasidic master. A leader possessing great intellectual acumen and scholarly erudition, the Barditshever is remembered above all else as an ohev Yisra’el and a melits yosher, a lover and defender of the people of Israel. This is illustrated in the many legends about him, including tales of his kindness to strangers, his outreach to sinners, and his audacious reproofs of God for injustices visited upon the Jewish people.1 Levi Yitzhak’s love for his people, so prevalent in the legends, is also reflected in his derashot (sermons). One striking example can be found in the following comment on the biblical figure of Abraham: 107

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Our Father Abraham, a man of compassion [ish hesed] . . . would always find merit in Israel. It is for this reason that he gave food to the angels when they came to visit him, though he knew that angels do not eat. [He did so] to teach them about human needs, that they might understand our situation and not be harsh with Israel.2 In this imaginative reflection, Levi Yitzhak envisions Abraham as such a caring and thoughtful advocate of the (future) community of Israel that he took it upon himself to teach the angels about the challenges human beings face in their attempts to serve God as embodied creatures with fleshly needs. The importance of a religious leader’s care for and protection of his flock is a central theme in the Kedushat Levi.3 One might assume, therefore, that Levi Yitzhak’s compassion for his community, especially those on the margins, might lead him to adopt a similar attitude toward non-­Jews (or some segment of this very broad category of human beings). This is simply not the case. The vast majority of his teachings on the subject (which I have organized according to the classical Jewish themes of Creation, Revelation, and redemption) are quite negative.4 Utilizing this thematic approach, we can see how Levi Yitzhak’s scattered comments about the non-­Jew form a more coherent religious worldview. Creation: “For the Sake of Israel”

Among the first Hasidic texts ever published was Maggid Devarav le-­ Yaakov (1781), a collection of teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch (d. 1772), Rabbi Levi Yitzhak’s spiritual mentor.5 The book opens with the following statement: “God’s first thought in Creation was to create Israel. . . . For the Holy Blessed One, past and future are all the same, and thus the Holy One derived pleasure from the deeds of the righteous [tsaddikim] even before Creation.”6 The assertion that God created the world for the sake of Israel, or for the sake of righteous Jews specifically, is a common trope in Hasidic literature. The 108

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Eastern European mystical masters imagine God emerging from His pre-­Creation state of “all-­in-­all” because of the pleasure (ta‘anug) He experiences from future tsaddikim.7 This very emotional surge leads the Divine to bring all of life into being. The ultimate purpose of Creation is the emergence of the Jewish people, led by “the righteous of the generation,” who satisfy the Creator’s deepest desire by entering a covenantal relationship with Him and by freely and lovingly fulfilling the teachings of the Torah. Levi Yitzhak affirms this position in various ways throughout his teachings. For him the key textual source is the midrashic statement, “Bereshit—­for Israel [bishvil Yisra’el], who are called reshit [first].”8 Elsewhere the Barditshever expresses this idea in harsh comparative terms: “The general principle is as follows: the bounty [shefa‘] that emerged [from the Divine] into the worlds is fundamentally for Israel, while the vitality [hiyut] of the nations is the excess [motariut], as is well known.”9 Levi Yitzhak carries this idea further in a reflection on a talmudic discussion (in b. Yebamot 61a) about the biblical term “adam,” based on a brief quotation from Ezekiel 34:31. He approvingly quotes the Rabbinic statement that only Israel and “not the nations of the world” is to be called adam. Paraphrasing earlier kabbalistic sources, Levi Yitzhak goes on to say that the word adam can be read as alef-­dam, a combination of the letter alef with dam, the Hebrew word for “blood.”10 The esoteric message of this wordplay is that the souls of Israel issue from the most sublime region within the godhead (as represented by the alef, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet), illuminating their physical beings (as represented by the Hebrew word dam or “blood”). The souls of Israel were hewn within the Upper Mind, as in the saying [Genesis Rabbah 1:4], “Israel arose in thought,” and as it says [Deut. 32:9], “For the Lord’s portion is His people.” Therefore, the alef of adam shines on them specifically. . . . This is not true of the nations of the world.11 109

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Not only does Levi Yitzhak consider Israel to be God’s true joy, but in this teaching he claims that there is an ontological difference between Jews and non-­Jews. While the latter might share the same physical bodies, their spiritual makeup is different: Jews possess a light that shines upon them from the heights of heaven. It is not surprising, therefore, that elsewhere (consciously or not) the Barditshever uses the terms “Jew” (Yisra’el) and “human being” (adam) interchangeably: “Behold, it is known that all of the worlds were created only for Yisra’el and for the lower world upon which adam serves his Maker.”12 Based on these texts, one is left with the impression that Levi Yitzhak regards non-­Jews as less than fully human. Revelation: What Did God Disclose at Sinai?

In one of his final comments on the book of Deuteronomy, moving from Creation to Revelation, from Eden to Sinai, Levi Yitzhak writes: At first glance it is difficult to understand the meaning of the midrash [b. Avodah Zarah 2b] that the Holy Blessed One offered the Torah to every [other] nation, that they did not want to accept it, and that only then did He come to our people. It is hard to imagine that it was possible for God to give the non-­Jews the Torah. In truth, the Holy Blessed One did this to [deepen His] love [for] Israel. By approaching every nation, having them decline acceptance [of the Torah], and having the seed of Israel accept it, His love for them [Israel] increased. And so, by making these rounds [added] love came to Israel and added hatred came to the nations of the world. It is for this reason that our Sages of blessed memory said [b. Shabbat 89b] that “It [the mountain] is called Sinai, because hatred [sinah] descended upon the nations of the world [from it].” This hatred existed only after the giving of the Torah; before it there was no hatred for the nations of the world.13 110

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Here Levi Yitzhak designates Sinai as the key moment in which God expresses His love for the Children of Israel and His hatred for the nations of the world. God never intended to give the Torah to anyone other than the Israelites. God’s tour of the ancient Near East is a sort of ruse, a means by which to strengthen—­or justify, or both strengthen and justify—­His opposing emotions for His beloved people and for their detested neighbors. Note that Levi Yitzhak often uses the terms “mitsrim” (Egyptians), “resha‘im” (evildoers), and “umot ha-­‘olam” (the nations of the world) interchangeably, thus lumping together ancient Israelite foes, sinners, and all non-­Jews. Throughout the Kedushat Levi, he often speaks of a world sharply divided between Israel and the nations—­a world in which he says God has great love for Yiddin (Jews) and hatred for goyim (non-­Jews). But if that is the case, Levi Yitzhak asks rhetorically, why do both experience divine favor? He answers as follows: The Blessed Creator bestows bounty and gives His goodness to His people Israel, but bounty also comes upon the nations. The difference between them is that the goodness that He gives to His people Israel is for the good, but the goodness that comes upon the nations follows the saying “He requites His enemies immediately to be rid of them” (Deut. 7:10).14 In a similar text from the end of Genesis, Levi Yitzhak is more explicit about what he means by God ridding Himself of the nations of the world: When God bestows goodness upon the gentiles it is to give them all their goodness and reward in this world and to cut them off from the world to come. With Israel, it is just the opposite: it is to increase their reward in the world to come [see Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 22a].15 111

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According to these texts, while God showers blessing upon Jews and non-­Jews, His intention in doing so is entirely different in each situation. As in so many other Hasidic texts, one’s kavvanah (intention) is essential to the task at hand.16 Redemption: Uplifting Holy Sparks

The Hasidic masters often ask about the true purpose of the Israelites’ extensive journey through the wilderness after their redemption from Egyptian bondage. Why did they stop at specific places and camp in these locations for longer or shorter periods of time? What message does God wish to transmit to us through the detailed descriptions of these travels? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apta (d. 1825) offers the following explanation: We recall that which is well-­known and recorded in all the holy books, that the mystery of the Children of Israel journeying through the wilderness and other places is the mystery of the elevation of the holy sparks which were immersed in the deepest depths.17 Basing their claim on Lurianic Kabbalah, the Hasidic masters insist that all of God’s creations possess holy sparks (nitzotzot)—­invisible but very real nuggets of divine energy that are hidden within the physical universe.18 This is true of animate and inanimate objects alike.19 The task of the mystical devotee is to free the sparks trapped within or concealed beneath the kelipot (husks of materiality) and to return them to their primordial source, where they are purified and “sweetened in their roots.”20 This, in turn, leads to the showering of renewed blessing upon the earthly world. Eventually, when all the holy sparks are unearthed and purified, say the Hasidim, the world will be healed and the Messianic Era will commence.21 In this context, Levi Yitzhak frequently advises his disciples to liberate the nitzotzot or sparks from their wayward neighbors. “When a Jew speaks with a non-­Jew, the Jew draws forth the holiness that is contained within the non-­Jew.”22 Commenting on life in the Messianic 112

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Era, Levi Yitzhak writes that “all the creatures of nature will do the will of the People of Israel. . . . All of them will have to obey the will of God and of His people Israel.”23 Unlike in the text above about “the world to come,” here Levi Yitzhak does not state that the non-­Jew will be “cut off ” in the age of the eschaton or the Messianic Era. Rather, he envisions a situation in which Israel will emerge as a world power, and humans and beasts alike will bow before them as God’s true representatives on earth.24 Elsewhere he states that in the messianic future, “Even the nations will know and recognize that He alone is King of the world . . . and they will offer Him the crown of leadership.”25 Exactly how the nations will interact with the Jewish people and serve God in this new reality is not explained.

Text and Context: Levi Yitzhak’s World In order to respond to Levi Yitzhak’s teachings on the non-­Jew, the first step, as I see it, is to explore the historical context in which he lived. Levi Yitzhak and his community occupied a precarious position within the socioeconomic landscape of Ukrainian life. A vulnerable minority, they had limited rights and freedoms within the Polish-­Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire (after 1793). Leaders of both the Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox churches continued to preach older messages of Christian supersessionism and contempt for Jews that were not only spiritually demeaning but also inspired sporadic outbursts of violence.26 As one of the leading rabbinic figures of his day—­the “Lover” and “Advocate” of Israel—­the Barditshever clearly felt a responsibility to help bolster his people’s morale, reminding them of their human dignity and spiritual worth.27 This led him to proclaim fiercely that despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Jewish people remained God’s Chosen People: they had not been abandoned nor replaced but were living through a painful phase of history from which the Divine 113

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would eventually redeem them.28 In making his case to his followers, Levi Yitzhak developed a deeply antagonistic theological and pastoral message that employed chauvinistic rhetoric similar to that of his Christian counterparts. He also drew on a variety of earlier Jewish teachings that depicted non-­ Jews and non-­Jewish religions negatively. Take, for example, the Zohar, perhaps the most influential text on all later Jewish mystics, from which Levi Yitzhak quotes and paraphrases many times. As Arthur Green writes: The Zohar is filled with disdain and sometimes even outright hatred for the gentile world. Continuing in the old Midrashic tradition of repainting the subtle shadings of biblical narrative in moralistic black and white, the Zohar pours endless heaps of wrath and malediction on Israel’s enemies. In the context of biblical commentary these are always such ancient figures as Esau, Pharaoh, Amalek, Balaam, and the mixed multitude of runaway slaves who left Egypt with Israel [who were] treated by the Zohar with special venom. All of these were rather safe objects for attack, but it does not take much imagination to realize that the true address of this resentment was the oppressor in whose midst the authors lived.29 One could easily substitute the word “Zohar” in this passage with that of “Kedushat Levi” without undermining the validity of Green’s comments. Indeed, in the intervening years between the appearance of the Zohar (late thirteenth century) and the birth of Levi Yitzhak (mid-­ eighteenth century), many other influential Jewish thinkers reiterated these same negative ideas.30 This was a significant part of the spiritual legacy inherited by Levi Yitzhak and his colleagues. At the same time, I believe we must continue the conversation and grapple with the substance of these troubling texts. Otherwise we risk ceding the discussion to others who would use these sources to legitimize attitudes and behaviors I regard as unethical and dangerous.31 114

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If a great master like Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev taught that “goyim are lesser beings than Jews,” why should any later Hasid, or any other inspired reader of the Kedushat Levi, treat his non-­Jewish neighbors with respect and care, let alone consider the validity of their religious or cultural choices? Light and Darkness: A Reading Strategy

While it is certainly possible to articulate my criticism in an exclusively contemporary idiom, I believe that using Hasidic terminology is crucial to the project of renewing this mystical tradition in which language and symbol are so important. Are there, then, Hasidic ideas, texts, or symbols that might help me address the disturbing materials under review? I turn back to the images of the holy sparks and the husks or shells—­ not to use these terms as Levi Yitzhak did, to separate Jews from non-­ Jews, but rather to tease apart the Hasidic teachings themselves. Just as every human being is an admixture of light and darkness, so too are the teachings of the Hasidic masters. They had moments of great insight, to be sure, but they also suffered from instances of spiritual constriction, when their fear, anger, pain, or pride clouded their vision. Using Hasidic terms, I would say that the masters moved between states of gadlut (expanded consciousness) and katnut (limited consciousness). The task of the contemporary reader is to undertake a thoughtful process of berur (discernment), of sifting, sorting, and clarifying which of the teachings of the rebbes to embrace, which to reinterpret, and which to leave aside. The early Hasidic masters are themselves important role models for such an undertaking. As religious revivalists, they did not accept the teachings of earlier sages (biblical, rabbinic, or mystical) out of whole cloth but skillfully selected and reinterpreted those teachings that best represented their spiritual commitments. We, too, need to glean from the Hasidic tradition wisely, culling materials that are most helpful to us in our quest for meaning and responsible living. 115

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This does not mean, however, that one should ignore, excise, or apologize for objectionable materials,32 but it does require the reader to privilege some texts over others and to develop new interpretations of older teachings.33 In our case, this includes drawing on sources that portray non-­Jews in a more nuanced—­or positive, or both nuanced and positive—­manner,34 and reading sources that address only Jews in a more inclusive fashion. In undertaking this exegetical process, however, it is important to articulate what it is about a given text or concept that excites, agitates, or disturbs us before seeking to adapt it. This is not solely a matter of intellectual honesty. Doing so can also help us to clarify our values and ideals. Some years ago the Christian writer and critic James Carroll was asked about the desirability of editing the Gospels to exclude offensive or disturbing texts. “Absolutely not!” he replied, “I want to keep these texts, so that I can preach against them.”35 Furthermore, confronting these troubling materials offers us the opportunity to apply the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s teaching that when observing in another person (or text, in our case) an attitude or personality trait that angers or frustrates us, we should not simply castigate that person but also use this experience as an occasion for self-­reflection.36 “Why does this person’s arrogance bother me so much? Is it because of my own pride?” The disturbing Hasidic materials I read lead me to ask if the prejudice and hostility expressed in these texts is alive in some way in my own heart.

Responding to the Kedushat Levi In this spirit, I wish to respond directly to Levi Yitzhak’s claims about non-­Jews and their cultures. I strongly disagree with the mystical notion that Jews are ontologically superior to non-­Jews because our souls emanate from a more sublime realm in the godhead or because we are 116

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endowed with a higher quotient of divine light. I simply cannot affirm these and all other religious teachings that seek to create hierarchies in which the spiritual potential of human beings is defined by race, religion, ethnicity, or gender.37 I also take issue with the related notion that Jews should view non-­ Jews and their cultures as vessels or shells from which to extract fragments of divine light. Not only does this objectify other human beings; it also forecloses the possibility of reciprocal engagement with the religious other. No one community has an exclusive hold on truth or goodness. It is wise, therefore, for us to participate in constructive dialogue across faith lines, exploring our similarities and differences, learning how to agree and disagree while honoring the inherent dignity (see Gen. 1:26–­27) of all people. In navigating this challenging terrain, I have benefited greatly from studying the teachings and biographies of two Neo-­Hasidic luminaries and interreligious pioneers: Abraham Joshua Heschel and Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi. After immigrating to the United States in 1941, Reb Zalman (as he was widely known) studied in the Chabad Lubavitch yeshiva in Brooklyn, New York, for several years. Even before completing his ordination process, he was dispatched by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn (d. 1950), to help establish a yeshiva in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1946.38 Shortly after arriving in his new community, Reb Zalman prepared for his outreach work to Jewish youth by making a visit to the local public library in search of resources on child development.39 Among the books he found on the new acquisitions table was Difficulties in Mental Prayer by Eugene Boylan, a Cistercian monk from Mount St. Joseph Abbey in Ireland.40 The title of this devotional manual immediately caught the young rabbi’s eye: [It] intrigued me, for outside Lubavitch Hasidim, no Jews I had yet encountered even mentioned the reality and nature of “mental 117

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prayer.” . . . Over the next few weeks, Difficulties in Mental Prayer awakened my soul to the realization that other religions besides Judaism hold real wisdom and effective methods for drawing closer to God.41 This experience was transformative for Reb Zalman. After years in his Chabad yeshiva, he had come to believe that “the true spiritual treasures were among us Jews, and even among Jews mostly with the Hasidim, and among the Hasidism mostly with the Lubavitchers.” However, this chance encounter with Difficulties in Mental Prayer led him to reconsider his religious worldview and to begin to redraw his “reality map.”42 As a result, he proceeded to engage in regular dialogue and joint action with non-­Jewish friends and colleagues, discussing their commonalities and differences and exploring ways to work together for healing and transformation.43 In particular, he cultivated several important personal relationships with mentors and peers from other religious traditions. According to Reb Zalman, one of his most formative religious experiences was studying with the distinguished African American preacher, teacher, and writer Rev. Howard Thurman (1899–­1981). The two met in the early 1950s when Reb Zalman enrolled in a graduate program in the psychology of religion at Boston University for which Thurman served as the academic adviser. Reb Zalman began this educational undertaking with some trepidation: Deep down in my guts I felt anxious about entrusting my soul to a Christian—­knowing that they all want to convert Jews. . . . Was he [Thurman] open enough to allow me to learn spiritual disciplines and resources to make me a better Jew?44 To Reb Zalman’s credit, rather than holding tightly to this negative generalization and avoiding Thurman, he met and respectfully explored 118

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his ambivalence with the acclaimed Christian leader. Reb Zalman was profoundly moved by Thurman’s answer to him: With a pensive expression, he put down his coffee mug. His graceful hands went back and forth, as though mirroring my dilemma. Howard Thurman looked right at me and said, “Don’t you trust the ruah ha-­kodesh [Holy Spirit]?”45 Experiencing Thurman’s theological query consciously expressed in Hebrew as a sign of deep respect and understanding, Reb Zalman carefully considered the question for the next few weeks. He then went on to apprentice with Dean Thurman, whom he would lovingly refer to as his “Black Rebbe.” Reb Zalman describes in his memoir how, years later, when one of his sons was approaching the age of bar mitzvah, he introduced him to Thurman and asked the minister to offer them a Berakhah (blessing) as they—­father and son—­neared this important milestone (just as any traditional Hasid might ask his rebbe to do at such a liminal moment). Reb Zalman was deeply moved to learn that the encounter had made a lasting impression on Thurman too, who wrote about it in an unpublished portion of his own autobiography, With Head and Heart.46 Abraham Joshua Heschel was also active in interreligious engagement, particularly in the realm of politics. One well-­known example was Heschel’s friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Reflecting on his experience marching in the now-­famous Selma to Montgomery (Alabama) march, an outgrowth of the rabbi’s passionate commitment to the struggle for civil rights, Heschel wrote: For many of us the march . . . was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips, and marching is not kneeling, and yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.47 119

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Heschel regarded the march as a holy act, as an embodied devotional response to God’s call for justice and compassion. This appears to be an adaptation of the classical Hasidic concept of ‘avodah be-­gashmiyut, “service through materiality”—­the notion that one must attempt to sanctify one’s everyday activities beyond the realm of prayer (commonly referred to as avodah she’ba-­lev, “service of the heart”) and other conventional religious acts. Heschel universalized this teaching by daring to suggest that this eclectic group of activists—­Jews, Christians, and others—­participated together in joint worship. As they marched through the streets of Alabama their “legs uttered songs.” Interestingly, as he did so (here and elsewhere) this modern Jewish scholar, public intellectual, and American activist nonetheless sought to integrate his experiences from the traditional world of Eastern European Hasidism.48 Heschel also wrote that marching with mlk and the other activists reminded him of walking with the great Hasidic masters of his youth through the streets of Warsaw: he felt a sense of sacred nobility in the presence of these brave protesters.49 I find these vignettes about Heschel and Reb Zalman particularly poignant because both of them were refugees from Nazi Germany who narrowly escaped to the United States. Further, both had faced antisemitism in Eastern Europe even before Hitler came to power. Given their painful personal experiences and the many negative teachings about non-­Jews in Hasidic and other classical Jewish sources, their openness to people of other religious and cultural traditions is even more impressive. Both men made the bold choice to engage in interreligious and cross-­cultural activities rather than limit or avoid such encounters, as many others from their Hasidic communities chose to do. As an educator working with future Jewish leaders—­rabbis, cantors, educators—­I must provide my students with appropriate interreligious training and give them the tools to grapple with difficult questions for which there are no simple answers. These Neo-­Hasidic innovators are models for us today as we strive forward in this sacred work. 120

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A Closing Reflection I turn one final time to the Kedushat Levi. In the Torah portion of Terumah God instructs Moses to build the Tabernacle, saying, “Like all that I show you—­the structure of the Tabernacle and the structure of all its vessels—­thus shall you do” (Exod. 25:9). Why, classical Jewish commentators want to know, does this command include the seemingly superfluous clause “thus shall you do”? The great French exegete Rashi (d. 1105) understood it as an instruction to use the Tabernacle as the blueprint for the Jerusalem Temple. A century later the leading Spanish sage Nahmanides (d. 1270) questioned this reading, pointing out that the altar in the Tabernacle and the one in Solomon’s Temple were clearly different. In his response to this question, the Barditshever harmonizes the two medieval positions: Rashi was correct to assert that God’s command was “for all generations,” but this should not be understood literally. Rather, the message of this biblical teaching is that “in every generation, when you want to build the Temple, the structure should be in accord with the prophecy that is then attained. That should determine the form of Temple and vessels.”50 In other words, the expression “in every generation” is an abiding call to live in the present, based on our understanding of what God desires of us in the here and now. In challenging Levi Yitzhak’s precepts concerning non-­Jews, I am attempting to live into this teaching. I embrace the Barditshever’s understanding that in every generation we must work diligently to discern God’s call, knowing that we always do so imperfectly. As he comments on Psalm 27:4 in the name of one of his elder colleagues, Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel, the Maggid of Zlotchev (d. 1786): “One thing I have asked of YHWH . . . to behold the beauty of YHWH this I will ask.” I will continuously ask that I recognize that there is still a greater rung of understanding above the current 121

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one, and that I might behold God’s beauty at this more elevated level. And when I reach this higher plane that I continue to inquire, knowing that there is no end to this process.51 Inspired by these wise words, let us continue to search humbly for God’s infinite beauty, actively seeking it out both near and far—­within and beyond our communities. Notes

1. See, for example, Samuel Dresner, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev: Portrait of a Hasidic Master (New York: Hartmore House, 1974); Elie Wiesel, “Rabbi Levi-­Yitzhak of Berditchev,” in Elie Wiesel, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 89–­112; and Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi and Netanel Miles-­Yepez, A Merciful God: Stories and Teachings of the Holy Rebbe, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (Charleston sc: CreateSpace, 2010). The first scholarly anthology on the life and work of Levi Yitzhak recently appeared in Hebrew; see Tzvi Mark and Roee Horen, eds., Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev: History, Thought, Literature, and Melody (Rishon LeZion: Yedioth Aharonot and Chemed, 2017) (Hebrew). 2. Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, Kedushat Levi, ed. Michael Aryeh Rand, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: n.p., 2005), pinhas, 73–­74. All translations are Or Rose’s own unless otherwise noted. 3. In one fascinating text on the subject, Levi Yitzhak teaches (based on Zohar 1:77b and other Jewish mystical sources) that Moses healed Noah’s soul by serving as a strong advocate for the Children of Israel, whereas Noah failed to plead before God to stop the Flood and save the people of his generation. Among the wordplays the Barditshever uses to support his claim is that when the Israelites sinned by fashioning the Golden Calf, Moses demanded that God forgive them, saying: “if not, please blot me out [meheni] from Your book” (Exod. 32:32). The word meheni contains the same letters as mei Noah, “the waters of Noah,” thus alluding to a connection between these two figures and the leadership challenges each of them faced. See Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, noah, 29. 4. In fact, it appears that the Barditshever’s antipathy toward gentiles rivaled his affection for Jews. 122

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5. To learn more about the Maggid and his circle of disciples, see the introduction to Arthur Green et al., eds., Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table, vol. 1 (Woodstock VT: Jewish Lights, 2013), 1–­73. See also Ariel Evan Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch”( PhD diss., Harvard University, 2015). 6. Dov Baer of Mezritch, Maggid Devarav le-­Yaakov, ed. Rivka Schatz-­ Uffenheimer, no. 1 (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), 1. 7. As is common among Hasidic preachers, in some instances Levi Yitzhak uses the term tsaddik as a general reference to righteous individuals while in other cases he does so to refer specifically to the Hasidic masters. Here it is intended as a broad statement. 8. Bereshit Rabbah 1:1; Va-­yikra Rabbah 36:4. 9. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, va-­yiggash, 183. He makes this comment as part of a laudatory statement about Joseph, who “lived in holiness” even while dwelling “among the excess [motariut]” in his many years in Egypt. Levi Yitzhak often blurs the lines between ancient biblical foes such as the Egyptians and the “nations of the world.” 10. See Tikkunei Zohar, no. 70, fol. 135a. 11. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, pesah, 414–­16. 12. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, bereshit, 7–­8. See the Maggid’s use of this same wordplay in Maggid Devarav le-­Yaakov, no. 24, 38–­40; see also Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, Me’or Eynayim, Bereshit, cited in Arthur Green, Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl: Upright Practices, The Light of the Eyes (New York: Paulist, 1981), 72. 13. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 2, ve-­zot ha-­berakhah, 182. 14. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi,vol. 1, va-­yishlakh, 130. 15. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, va-­yehi, 174–­75. 16. One could ask why God chooses to bestow goodness upon the nations of the world at all if God views them in such negative terms. On more than one occasion, Levi Yitzhak argues that this is God’s most basic way of interacting with His creations. While God may “garb” Himself in various middot (attributes), hesed (lovingkindness) is essential to the divine personality. See, for example, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, va-­yetze, 109. 17. This teaching can be found in his collection of sermons, Ohev Yisrael, in a comment on the Torah portion of Be-­ha’alotekha. Louis Jacobs cites it in his anthology Hasidic Thought (New York: Behrman House, 1976), 171–­ 72. Levi Yitzhak makes the same point in his opening comment on the 123

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Torah portion of Mase‘ei, meaning “Journeys” (Num. 33:1–­36:16), in Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 2, 78. 18. See Gershom Scholem, “The Doctrine of Creation in Lurianic Kabbalah,” in Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Quadrangle and New York Times, 1974), 128–­44. 19. See, for example, Tsava’at ha-­rivash, no. 109, trans. and ed. Jacob Immanuel Schochet (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1975), 38. 20. See Louis Jacobs, “The Uplifting of Sparks in Later Jewish Mysticism,” in Arthur Green, ed., Jewish Spirituality, vol. 2, From the Sixteenth-­Century Revival to the Present (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 99–­126, esp. 115–­25. 21. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 2, megilat eikhah ve-­tisha’ be-­av, 91–­92. Scholars disagree about the nature of messianic thought in early Hasidism. See, for example, the differing views of Gershom Scholem, “The Neutralization of the Messianic Element in Early Hasidism,” in Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971); and Moshe Idel, “Hasidism: Mystical Messianism and Mystical Redemption,” in Moshe Idel, Messianic Mystics (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1998). 22. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 2, shavuot, 9–­10. In one particularly negative text, Levi Yitzhak claims that the “nations of the world, the idolaters” are “like trees and stones, for they possess no point of holiness.” See Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 2, va-­ethanan. However, in several other cases he does speak of the presence of “holy sparks” among gentiles that are in need of rescue and restoration. 23. Kedushat Levi, vol. 2, likkutim, 566–­67. 24. In a related sermon on the book of Lamentations, Levi Yitzhak argues that so long as the Jewish people are exiled from the Land of Israel it remains a dangerous “wasteland” (midbar) overcome by wild beasts, even if it is inhabited by other peoples. Why? Because “the Land of Israel is specifically ours and does not accept the habitation of any other nation.” He bases this position on the ontological assertion that God designed the world such that no other people could ever properly settle the Holy Land. Among the biblical sources he offers to support his case is “And your enemies that dwell therein shall be astonished” (Lev. 26:32). See Norman Lamm’s translation and comments on this text in his edited anthology, The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary (New York: Ktav, 1999), 532–­33. 25. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, be-­shalah, 274. 124

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26. See David Biale et al., Hasidism: A New History (Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 2018). As the editors of this volume point out (in a section entitled “The Gentile World,” 30–­32), while the gentile was often presented as a “monolithic, threatening character” in theoretical texts such as the Kedushat Levi, Jews and non-­Jews actually had more complicated and nuanced relationships: “Real Gentiles came from a variety of social categories and were encountered in numerous contexts. In some, they were feared and hated; in others, they were dealt with matter-­of-­ factly, learned from, and even liked and trusted.” 27. Levi Yitzhak was, in fact, engaged in various political matters on behalf of the Jewish community, both locally and regionally. See, for example, Yohanan Petrovsky-­Shtern, “The Drama of Berdichev: Levi Yitshak and His Town,” Polin 17 (2004): 83–­95. 28. The present author believes this was one of the reasons why Levi Yitzhak chose to publish a selection of his teachings on Hanukkah and Purim several years before his larger collection of sermons appeared posthumously in 1811. Like other Jewish thinkers before him, Levi Yitzhak viewed these minor holidays as examples of the subtle ways in which God can work to sustain and redeem the Jewish people. He contrasted this with the Passover drama, in which the Almighty freed the Israelites with great “signs and wonders.” Hanukkah and Purim thus served as important models for how Eastern European Jewry might understand their own communal situation, helping them to remain faithful to God and to recognize the power of the tsaddikim—­modern, mystical versions of Mattathias, Judah, Mordechai, and Esther—­as well as their own role in this redemptive process. This subject is explored at length in Or Rose, “‘My Children Have Defeated Me’: Divine Limitation and Human Agency in the Kedushat Levi,” in Ariel Evan Mayse and Arthur Green, eds., Be-­Ron Yahad: Studies in Honor of Nehemia Polen (Boston: Academic Studies, 2018). 29. Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford ca: Stanford University Press, 2003), 88–­89. See also Elliot Wolfson’s important study, Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Moving beyond the Jewish mystical tradition, see David Novak, The Image of the Non-­Jew in Judaism: An Historical and Constructive Study of the Noahide Laws (Lewiston ny: Edwin Mellon, 1983); and Alan Brill, Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 125

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30. See, for example, the comments of Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague cited in Shmuel Yosef Agnon, ed., Present at Sinai: The Giving of the Law, trans. Michael Swirsky (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 19–­ 20. On the intellectual influence of the Maharal on the early Hasidic masters, see Bezalel Safran, “Maharal and Early Hasidism,” in Bezalel Safran, Hasidism: Continuity or Innovation (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1988), 47–­144. See also Shahar Rahmani, “Israel’s Advocate: The Intellectual Foundation for Levi Yitzhak’s Advocacy of Israel in the Writings of the MaHaRaL of Prague,” in Mark and Horen, 229–­61. 31. See, for example, Allan Nadler’s report on Rabbi Sa’adya Grama’s book, Romemut Yisra’el u-­farashat ha-­galut (self-­published, 2003), Forward, December 19, 2003. Grama’a uses a slew of classical Jewish texts, including Hasidic materials, to argue for the racial superiority of Jews over non-­Jews. As Nadler notes, several leading Orthodox authorities publicly denounced the book. The writings of Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg, discussed in Don Seeman’s essay, “The Anxiety of Ethics and the Presence of God” in chap. 4 of this volume, also reflect a dangerous strand of this legacy in contemporary Jewish thought. 32. See Or N. Rose and Ebn Leader, God in All Moments: Mystical and Practical Spiritual Wisdom from Hasidic Masters (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2003); and Green et al., Speaking Torah. 33. Among the differences between traditional Hasidim and many Neo-­ Hasidic interpreters is the question of authority. Here Levi Yitzhak specifies that the tsaddikim in each generation have the power to innovate, while the present author is inviting a much wider group of readers to participate in this process, both individually and communally. For a fuller discussion of the model of the tsaddikim and its place in contemporary Jewish life, see “Does a New Hasidism Need Rebbes?” by Ebn Leader in chap. 12 of this volume. 34. See, for example, Shaul Magid, “Ethics Disentangled from the Law: Incarnation, the Universal, and Hasidic Ethics,” Kabbalah 15 (2006): 31–­ 75. Included in this essay is a more nuanced text from the Kedushat Levi about the status of the convert as it relates to the apprehension of Torah and the theophany at Sinai. 35. James Carroll’s comments were offered during the discussion at a conference entitled “Catholics, Jews, and the Prism of Conscience: Responses to James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History,” Brandeis University, January 22, 2001. 126

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36. Versions of this teaching are found throughout Hasidic literature. See, for example, Norman Lamm, “Peace,” in Norman Lamm, The Religious Thought of Hasidism (New York: Ktav, 1999), 413–­15, 422–­24. 37. For a related discussion of the difficulty of applying kabbalistic symbolism to contemporary Jewish theology, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Woman—­ The Female as Other in Theosophical Kabbalah: Some Philosophical Observations on the Divine Androgyne,” in Laurence J. Silberstein and Robert L. Cohn, eds., The Other in Jewish Thought and History (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 166–­204. See also Nancy Flam’s essay, “Training the Heart and Mind toward Expansive Awareness: A Neo-­ Hasidic Journey” in chap. 8 of the present volume. 38. Zalman M. Schachter-­Shalomi, My Life in Jewish Renewal: A Memoir, with Edward Hoffman (Lanham md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 65. 39. Reb Zalman’s willingness to go to the public library in search of writings on child development was itself an indication of his openness to learning from non-­Jewish sources. However, he still believed that the “true spiritual treasures” could be found only among Jews. 40. Eugene Boylan, Difficulties in Mental Prayer (Westminster md: Newman, 1943). 41. Schachter-­Shalomi, My Life in Jewish Renewal, 65. See Reb Zalman’s recounting of this discovery in the interview included in this book’s companion volume, Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, eds., A New Hasidism: Roots (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2019). 42. Schachter-­Shalomi, My Life in Jewish Renewal, 66. In time, he would come to view the religions of the world in Gaian-­inspired terms, regarding each as a different part of the body of life. In this “organismic” model, each tradition has its own specific shape and design, but they are all permeable, interconnected, and in need of sharing “vital nutrients.” See Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, “Toward a New and Kerygmatic Credo,” Shalom Center (2008), https://​theshalomcenter​.org​/node​/1395. See also Shaul Magid, “Rainbow Hasidism in America—­The Maturation of Jewish Renewal—­A Review Essay,” The Reconstructionist (2004): 34–­60. See also his work on Reb Zalman in Shaul Magid, American Post-­Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 35–­132. 43. While the present study weaves together lessons from both pioneering figures, this is not meant to suggest that their approaches to interreligious dialogue and action were identical. 127

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44. Schachter-­Shalomi, My Life in Jewish Renewal, 90. 45. Schachter-­Shalomi, My Life in Jewish Renewal. 46. Schachter-­Shalomi, My Life in Jewish Renewal, 91. Thurman’s autobiography is Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1979). 47. The statement “I felt my legs were praying” is well-­known and often quoted by Jewish leaders, but this fuller quotation is taken from a television interview with Dr. Susannah Heschel conducted by Melissa Harris-­ Perry of msnbc on March 8, 2015, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma March: www​.msnbc​.com​/melissa​-­­harris​-­­perry​/watch​/john​ -­­lewis​-­­recounts​-­­memories​-­­of​-­­bloody​-­­sunday​-­­410061379607. 48. To learn more about Heschel’s Neo-­Hasidic project, see Arthur Green, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns,” Modern Judaism 29, no. 1 (2009): 62–­79. As Green notes, Heschel was careful not to criticize his Eastern European forebears or contemporaries explicitly, even as he presented a much more universalistic spiritual vision than theirs. Further, Heschel did not develop a full theology of the religious other. Among his few sustained reflections on the subject was his 1965 address at Union Theological Seminary, “No Religion is an Island,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 21, 2, part 1 (1966): 117–­34. Arnold Eisen explores the contents of this presentation, including its tensions, in his article “Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Challenge of Religious Pluralism,” Modern Judaism 29, no. 1 (2009): 4–­15. See also Alon Goshen-­ Gottstein, “No Religion Is an Island: Following the Trail Blazer,” Sh’ma: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 26, no. 1 (2007): 72–­111. 49. See Susannah Heschel’s introduction to the anthology of her father’s writings, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997), xxiii. 50. Levi Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, terumah, 220. 51. Yitzhak, Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, shemot, 202–­4.

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6 Building the Body of the Shekhinah Reenchantment and Redemption of the Natural World in Hasidic Thought David Mevorach Seidenberg Kabbalah began the process of reenchanting the Jewish relationship with nature after Jewish philosophy had drained Judaism of its mythic character.1 The mythical fields and forests of the kabbalists in the Zohar became the real fields and forests in which many Hasidim and their rebbes prayed. But just how much can we make of this encounter with nature, and how useful is it to the ecological conversation of our age? One of the earliest records of Hasidism, a letter written by the Ba‘al Shem Tov to his brother-­in-­law describing the Besht’s soul-­ascent to meet the soul of Mashiah (the Messiah), explains that in fact this is the messianic goal of the Besht’s teachings. Upon meeting soul-­to-­soul, the Besht asks Mashiah, “When will the master come?” Mashiah answers: “When your wellsprings spread beyond [or ‘outside’].”2 How far beyond? Outside what boundary? To what end, what limit? The letter does not specify. One obvious meaning: the teachings of Hasidism should spread beyond the narrow world of the Besht’s disciples and conquer the hearts of Jews across Eastern Europe (which they were soon to do). One might also imagine these teachings reaching beyond the Jewish world to affect a broader humanity. (For this understanding we would need Martin Buber, writing a century and a half later than 129

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the Besht.) But we can imagine a still greater expansiveness, in which the teachings extend beyond the human world to include the more-­ than-­human world of nature. The Neo-­Hasidic movement is already an unfolding of this vision and a universalizing of the Besht’s teachings. But here I am going to look exclusively at this third rung of expansion, exploring Hasidic teachings that can help us move beyond the confined circle of the human world to embrace and live in fuller communion with the more-­than-­human. Reb Zalman often talked about this process in terms of protecting Gaia, the spiritual personification of Earth, and I believe it must play a central role in any version of Neo-­Hasidism. I suggest that we complete the mission nascent in Hasidism to make manifest the shekhinah in the more-­than-­human world. Doing this in a maximal sense could entail transcending our normal anthropocentrism, finding God’s presence and image in the more-­than-­human world in a way nature itself inherently reveals.3

The More-­than-­Human World According to stories, the Besht would go off into the mountains for days at a time to do what we might call meditation. If we are to believe the tales, this process must have included intense observation of the natural world. Although the mode of observation was religious, not scientific, we are told that the Besht saw the hand of the Divine in every gesture and movement of the creatures. For example: Once the Ba‘al Shem Tov showed to his disciples a certain leaf as it fell to the ground and told them to pick it up. They did so and saw that a worm was underneath it. The Ba‘al Shem Tov explained that the worm had been suffering due to heat, so this leaf had fallen to give it shade.4 130

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Note the Besht’s emphatic declaration that a leaf does not fall without being directed by God. Whereas earlier sages generally applied hashgahah peratit (divine providence) to the destiny of each living being, the Ba‘al Shem Tov recast hashgahah peratit as extending to all beings independent of their participation in the human world, and indeed to every change in the world. In the workings of hashgahah the Besht saw the expression of a divine compassion that touched the individuality of each and every living thing. The Besht passed this legacy of field and forest on to his great-­ grandson, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772–­1810). One of the great poetic spirits in the Jewish tradition. Nahman had an intense passion for being “out in nature” (to use a contemporary idiom). He even enjoined upon the Hasidim in his school to observe the practice of going alone every day into the fields or forests to pray aloud. The highest prayer, he claimed, is actually a gathering-­up of all the prayers of the more-­ than-­human world: Know that when a person prays in a field, all of the grasses and plants together come into the prayer, and they help him, and give him strength within his prayer. And this is what it means when prayer is called “conversation” [sihah]: it refers to “the growth of the field” [siah ha-­sadeh, Gen. 2:5], [meaning] that every shoot from the field gives strength and helps his prayer. And this is [what the verse means when it says,] “And Isaac went out to reflect in the field” [la-­suah ba-­sadeh, Gen. 24:63]: that his prayer [sihah] was made with the help and strength of the field [siah], that all the plants of the field gave strength and helped his prayer . . . for all the plants prayed with him.5 Here and throughout his teachings about the natural world, I believe Nahman was describing his lived experience and using Scripture to give that experience weight. 131

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In his conception, prayer, so essential in every system of Hasidic thought, is rooted in the conversation of the plants and ultimately in the Earth itself. One could say that human beings are not the creators of language but tools used by other living beings to fashion their language into prayer. Furthermore, Nahman explained that the uniqueness of every landscape is what inspires the unique song of one who is intimate with the land: Know that every shepherd has a unique melody [nigun] according to the grasses and the place where he herds. For every animal [behemah] has a grass unique to her that she needs to eat, and also a shepherd is not always in one place, and according to the grasses and the place where he herds, so he has a nigun. For every grass there is a song [shirah] which it speaks . . . and from the song of the grasses is made the nigun of the shepherd. . . . And this is the dimension of “From the edge [or ‘wing,’ kanaf] of the earth we heard songs [zemirot]” [Isa. 24:16]—­[it means] that songs and nigunim come out from “the wing of the earth,” for by means of the grasses growing in the land a nigun is made. And since the shepherd knows the nigun, by means of this he gives strength to the grasses . . . and there is pasture for the animals.6 While every blade of grass sings its own song, all the plants in a given locale form a kind of chorus, and from their chorus one derives a unique, whole, unified melody connected to that place. When one sings the song of a specific place, according to Nahman, one also helps the plants in that place to grow. Thus our relationship with the plants is one of mutual help. This is not just a beautiful idea—­it is essential to a theology of nature. Nahman’s teaching explains how each ecosystem or habitat can be a unique expression of divine blessing and love. 132

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From this standpoint, the mutual quality of our relationship with the more-­than-­human world is already hinted at in the Torah verse, “And all the growth of the field was yet to be in the land, and any plant of the field was yet to sprout, for Y-­H-­W-­H Elohim had not made it rain on the land, for there was no human to serve the soil” (Gen. 2:5).7

The Divine Ecosystem Elsewhere Nahman taught that song and prayer, being encumbered by words, cannot reach the highest levels of divine reality, whereas a nigun, a melody without words, can cross the silence and empty space that separates the universe from God and even reach all the way to Ein Sof, to the infinite, primordial source.8 Humanity thus has a vital role to play in the unfolding of the cosmos by creating nigunim, bringing the melody of Creation back to the Creator. Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–­1813), a prominent student of the Maggid of Mezritch (the disciple of the Ba‘al Shem Tov who turned Hasidism into a movement) who himself founded Chabad Hasidism in the late eighteenth century, voiced parallel ideas about the spiritual power of plants and trees, though he emphasized that this came from the power of the Earth itself. The plants of Earth grew from one year to the next because of a great upwelling of spiritual light emanating from the Earth itself—­which, he taught, is the only manifestation of the original light of Creation that is still revealed to us: For during the seven days of the beginning, there shone in this world a radiance from the light of the Ein Sof in pure or freely given Love [hesed hinam] . . . to make plants and trees and fruits grow from nothing to something continually, more than enough, year by year, which is an essence of the dimension of Ein Sof.9 133

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In describing this light, Shneur Zalman used the kabbalistic term or hozer, meaning the light that is reflected or returned back to the source of Creation.10 In other words, as we are sustained by the plants and the creatures that eat them, we become part of a great cycle that keeps the infinite light flowing back to the One. While the human role in the cycle of divine blessing was always part of Kabbalah, its relation to the world of nature became sharper in kabbalistic circles just before Hasidism began. For example, a seventeenth-­ century kabbalistic prayer for the fruit trees, recited at the Tu b’Shevat seder,11 asks that God cause the flow of blessing to flow over the fruit trees and awaken the sap in them, through our eating fruit and “our meditating upon the secret of their roots . . . to make them grow and bloom from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.”12 The purpose of prayer and meditation was to stimulate new blessings to flow into the trees and into the physical world. Together these passages and images describe an ecosystem of language, song, and prayer in which the human being is one organ of a complex cycle that nurtures both life and divinity. Understanding that we are in dialogue with the world around us—­not just as metaphor but as phenomenology—­opens us up to new dimensions of experience. Rather than seeing language as something separating us from most other creatures, human language emerges from the rhythms and fluidity of a world constituted by relationship. In this sense, our challenge today is not to learn to speak with the more-­than-­human world but to realize that we are already speaking with it.

Redeeming the Sparks Whereas Rebbe Nahman lifted up the song of all beings, the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s characteristic manner of interacting with the more-­than-­human was to seek out divine sparks and redeem them. 134

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The Besht often described the charge of redeeming the sparks as a process that could reveal the image of God concealed in everything. Using code words to allude to this concept, he sometimes described each spark as a “human being” and a komah shelemah or “complete [spiritual] body.” “In truth,” the Besht explained, “in every desire of the world, there are sparks of the dimension of human beings [beney adam] of a complete body [komah shelemah].”13 More remarkably, the Ba‘al Shem Tov also taught that the sparks found throughout the more-­than-­human world contained the image of God. This essentially put a humanizing face onto nature. As Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye (1710–­1784), one of the earliest promulgators of the Besht’s teachings, reported: It is known that every spark, from the silent, growing, moving-­ living and speaking ones [i.e., rock, vegetable, animal, human], has in it a complete body [komah shelemah] drawn from 248 limbs and 365 sinews [i.e., a human body].14 These sparks were said to represent God’s image embedded in other creatures. Scattered sparks and scattered souls, or fragments of soul-­ life, were alternative ways of describing the same reality.15 However, the presence of these sparks in other creatures did not necessarily imply that those creatures had intrinsic value. Nor did human compassion toward the sparks necessarily translate into compassion toward the world, as we will see. Imprisonment or Gestation?

Hasidic thought often included a Gnostic element, derived from Lurianic Kabbalah,16 that regarded the material world negatively, and this affected whether compassion for the sparks entailed compassion for the creatures that held them. As Ya‘akov Yosef explains, we are enjoined to 135

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redeem the sparks we encounter because they are imprisoned in other creatures and in the material world: When [a spark] is found within the silent or the growing being (rock-­mineral or plant), it is in the prison house, for it cannot spread out its hands and its legs or speak, for “its head [is] on its knees and gut” [Exod. 12:9]. And one who is able through the goodness of one’s thought to raise the holy spark to living or speaking brings it out to freedom, and there is no greater redeeming of captives [pidyon shevuyim] for you than this, as I heard from my teacher. Redeeming the sparks, according to this picture, meant releasing these “captives” from the prison of the natural world. Such a view could easily inspire the opposite of compassion toward the world. This makes it hard to characterize the Hasidic view of nature.17 It is not certain that the metaphor of imprisonment was part of the Besht’s original teaching or if Yaakov Yosef added it to the transcription. Regardless, this formulation, which became fairly normative, is problematic for any contemporary ecotheology. However, a transformative image embedded in the verse Ya‘akov Yosef quotes in the name of the Besht may help us. If you imagine a spark whose “head is on its knees and gut,” which cannot spread out its hands and legs or speak, this does not conjure the image of a prison but that of a fetus in the womb, awaiting birth. Even though one could imagine the womb as a place of confinement, it is so only for the moments or hours between the breaking of the waters and a baby’s birth. For the rest of a fetus’s maturation, the womb is the source of all life and preserver of all wholeness. Neo-­Hasidism, then, can lift up that image, choosing to look at our world as one awaiting birth into a state of redemption. We ought not imagine that this birth rests entirely in our human hands, but that we can help midwife the birth, with grace. 136

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Consumption or Contemplation?

The pathos of redeeming imprisoned sparks was magnified in later explanations of the Besht’s teaching. For example, Aharon (Arele) Roth (1894–­1947), rebbe of the Shomer Emunim-­Toldos Aharon community, introduced the teaching just quoted with these words: My beloved brother, when some bit of food is brought before you, or drink, you must imagine . . . that here there is a spark crying out and seeking and pleading to you that you would have mercy on her . . . and not push her away, God forbid.18 According to Ya‘akov Yosef in the same passage, redeeming the sparks “is the purpose of a Jewish person’s service in Torah and mitzvot” and not just eating. However, there was and is a tendency in normative Hasidism to focus on redeeming the sparks by consuming the food in which they are found. This would seem to be quite a few steps distant from encountering nature in its own terms, and essentially requires one to incorporate (and thus “raise to the human level”) the object within which the spark is found in order to release it. Moreover, other teachings emphasize that redemption happens not through the act of eating itself but through using that food’s strength to serve God by studying Torah or doing a mitzvah, further distancing the Hasid from an encounter with other creatures as beings-­in-­themselves.19 I believe that the Besht’s meaning was broader, however. Redemption was effected not only by using something for a holy purpose but, more fundamentally, by encountering that thing or being with holy intention. The passage from Ya‘akov Yosef emphasizes that it is “the goodness of one’s thought” in the encounter that redeems the sparks. This idea that our intention is what sanctifies and redeems the sparks we encounter was part of the milieu and sources of the Hasidic tradition. The Peri Ets Hadar prayer already quoted does not call on us to 137

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eat fruit of the seder in order to free sparks from the physical world but rather to cause the Tree of Life to bring shefa‘, abundant divine energy, to the trees and to the physical world so that the trees can joyfully make more fruit.20 Thus, the Peri Ets Hadar focuses on the liberation of hiyut, life force, rather than sparks. In those few passages in which the Peri Ets Hadar does focus on sparks, these are sparks trapped by our sins rather than by the world: May all the sparks scattered by our hands, or by the hands of our ancestors, or by the sin of the first human against the fruit of the tree, return now to be included in the majestic might of the Tree of Life.21 Going all the way back to the Garden of Eden, the depth of tikkun imagined by this prayer suggests an encounter that not only bears all of history but also the possibility of changing all of history at a single stroke. What an incredibly powerful idea: that by how we view the world, especially nature, around us, we are responsible for and play a role in revitalizing Creation! We can use the Peri Ets Hadar as a model to inform the way we interpret and apply the Besht’s teachings in our time. However, even with the most positive interpretation, the Ba‘al Shem Tov seems attached to the idea that the sparks we encounter can only reach their potential through human intervention. In a Neo-­Hasidic theology of nature, we would also seek to understand many more avenues through which the sparks in each being, and in Being as a whole, could reach their potential. For the needs of our time, we could add one more element that is not native to the Besht’s thought. When we assist in birthing the sparks in other beings of this world into personhood, we will also find that the other beings—­not just human but also animal, plant, soil, ecosystem, or any other life-­form—­assist in the birth of sparks from within ourselves.22 Imagine, then, that every interaction between beings has the potential to birth the sparks from the unconscious divine realm into the world 138

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of meaning and consciousness. The essential element is not how we use something but the goodness of our thought—­whether we behold something with proper love and awe. The alternative to doing this is what we see around us: the destruction of our more-­than-­human world. As the Ba‘al Shem Tov teaches, “The righteous person [tsaddik] repairs the sparks, but those who go after their heart’s desires, they are eating and destroying human beings.”23

Dirah Ba-­Tahtonim: A Dwelling Place Below If the physical world is not a prison from which trapped sparks need to be redeemed, is it instead fully the dwelling place of divinity? The earliest aggadic midrash, Genesis Rabbah (fourth or fifth century), taught that it was so: “The root [or essence] of God’s presence was in the lower creatures” (‘ikkar shekhinah ba-­tahtonim haytah).24 But by the time Exodus Rabbah was written some six centuries later, the teaching had literally become reversed, so that the text now read: “The essence of the shekhinah was not in the lower realm.”25 The point was that humanity was God’s only site of earthly indwelling, and this was equivalent to being “rulers among the lower creatures.”26 In the face of this tendency, the normative Hasidic understanding of this concept recovered a place in the world for God by teaching that the primary dwelling place of God was within the human heart.27 In this way, later kabbalistic and Hasidic interpretation was also able to make an end run around the tragic negation of the shekhinah in the world. In the sixteenth century, Rabbi Azaryah de Fano explained that by returning to God with one’s whole heart, one “sets up a dirah [dwelling place] for the shekhinah within his heart.”28 Shneur Zalman of Liadi taught that when the soul’s love for God burns so fiercely in your heart that you wish to leave the body, you should “return to your 139

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heart” and remember that “you are living in this body . . . in order to be a dirah ba-­tahtonim [a dwelling place below] for God’s oneness.”29 These teachings bring us close to the beautiful idea that we each must work on our hearts in order to make a dwelling place for God within us. But looking at these same ideas from the perspective of Neo-­Hasidism and the evolution of civilization, we need to ask: Is it enough to return to God by repairing ourselves, without repairing the world that surrounds us? Can we do work on our own hearts, without also working to revive the radiance of the shekhinah in the whole world? In fact, a more ecocentric, biocentric interpretation of dirah ba-­ tahtonim in Hasidic thought can be found in the teachings of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–­94). The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote: Since the essence of the commandments is to make for the Holy One, blessed be, an earthly dwelling, it is necessary to fulfill them by means of nature [hateva‘] really [mamash] [meaning, through physical actions using physical objects], so that the world’s nature itself [teva‘ ha-­’olam ‘atsmo] will be made into a dwelling place.30 While Schneerson is referring to the need to fulfill commandments by physical means, he takes this idea much further. Similarly, in another passage, he reinterprets his ancestor Shneur Zalman’s teaching that during Elul, the time leading up to Rosh Hashanah, “the king is in the field.” Shneur Zalman explains that this means that God’s presence is especially accessible, like a king who is traveling and camps outside the city in a field; all are able to greet him without the formality of the royal court.31 The Lubavitcher Rebbe, however, asserts that the true meaning of this metaphor is not that the king has come to camp in the field for Elul but rather that the field was already the real dwelling place of God’s essence: “The king is in the field”: God’s essence, blessed be, is in the field, especially [davka], as is known, that among the lower creatures 140

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[ba-­tahtonim, davka] is the dwelling place [dirah] of His essence, blessed be.32 God’s true place is not in the palace, Schneerson explains, for the Alter Rebbe doesn’t say “the king goes to the field” in Elul but rather “the king is [already] in the field.” And whereas for the Alter Rebbe, “the field” means the time and place where we can encounter God’s essence without the levushim, the trappings, of God’s crown and majesty, Schneerson emphasizes that the field is the place where God dwells. Furthermore, this field is nature itself, this physical world. It is not some anthropocentric realm separated from nature. The ultimate end of this process, Schneerson wrote, is “the perfecting [shelemut] of nature. . . . It will be recognized openly that nature is divinity.”33 Anthropocentrically, one could integrate all these teachings by saying that as the human heart becomes a dwelling for God, so too does the world surrounding us. But from a more biocentric perspective, perhaps the truth is that when our hearts become dwelling places for the Divine, we become able to perceive the indwelling of divinity already in the world. What is more, for all human beings, including Neo-­Hasidism, this is not just metaphor. Human sin has indeed distorted the divine energy that once coursed abundantly through nature. Whether the king is already in the field or the king is coming into the field, this field means the environment, the ecosystem, the real land, where we can either push away the feet of the shekhinah34 or discover the Divine within all beings.

Komah Shelemah: The Divine Imprint Whereas the Ba‘al Shem Tov applied the term komah shelemah, “complete form,” to the human psyche and to the sparks found in physical reality, komah shelemah means much more than this. Ya‘akov Yosef quotes 141

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the Besht as saying that “the totality [kelalot] of the world is a single unity, a komah shelemah.”35 It is not that the whole of Creation yearns to reach its full stature, but that it expresses the full stature it already has. Like several kabbalists before him, the Besht saw the world as an image of God—­perhaps the greatest image.36 Avraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apt (1748–­1825), elaborating on the Besht’s teaching, said that “Adam is a komah shelemah [an image of God], a kind of microcosm [‘olam katan], and each and every world from the lower and upper worlds is a komah shelemah, and so is the totality of the worlds a komah shelemah.”37 Key to Avraham Yehoshua Heschel’s idea is that everything in nature corresponds with some aspect of the human being; hence the human being is a full world or a small world, a “microcosm.” And since the human being is also created in God’s image, this implies that the very universe or Creation is created in God’s image.38 Some non-­Hasidic Orthodox teachers expressed similar ideas. For example, Naftali Tsvi Yehudah Berlin (1817–­1893) wrote, “The moment that it arose in thought and speech that there would be nature, then was the Place [Ha-­makom, i.e., the Creator] called Elohim.39 And since all of Nature is included in Adam, behold, he is in Elohim’s image.” The image of God in each human being is the image of Creation. These correspondences between person and world enable us to say that the world is God’s image. These same correspondences explain how a human being can effect tikkun, repair and redemption, on a cosmic level. More than this: every world within the universe is also a komah shelemah (a complete structure). This provides a second basis for Neo-­Hasidism to say that every ecosystem has ultimate value and expresses the image of God. Every species may also be regarded through the same lens as a kind of komah shelemah and ‘olam katan (a microcosm). Thus, embedded in the concept of komah shelemah is a way of viewing the redemption of the sparks, the divine nature of the cosmos, and the intrinsic value of ecosystems and species, as well as the uniqueness of each human being and the 142

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depths of human psychology and spirit that can help us formulate an ecologically powerful theology of nature. Speculating about this idea is not enough. Actually applying it to our interactions with the more-­than-­human world, including not only our spiritual interactions with nature but also our ethical interactions and even scientific interactions with ecosystems and species, holds extraordinary promise. It calls on us to treat others, including other species, as ends rather than means.

Building the Body of the Shekhinah Finding intrinsic value—­meaning value that calls us to serve, rather than value that serves us—­in the more-­than-­human is a way to reenchant us with the natural world and to make manifest the Divine Presence in all things. Its opposite is the fleeing of the shekhinah from the world, which is equivalent to the disenchantment of nature and its reduction to a set of useful functions. The entire goal of Torah and mitzvot, according to Zev Wolf of Zhitomir (d. 1800), is to build the structure of the shekhinah so that the komah or body of the divine feminine can be equal to the divine masculine, called the Holy One. In the structure of the sefirot, the diminished stature of the shekhinah in comparison with the Holy One is depicted by representing the shekhinah as a single sefirah suspended beneath the other sefirot, six of which represent the Holy One. Because they are not equal, they cannot see eye to eye and cannot conjoin “body to body.” But “in the time of the days of Mashiach, Her komah will be equal to His komah . . . with a komah zekufah equal unto Him.”40 Therefore, the Holy One “trembles [with desire] to build the komah of the shekhinah to be komah facing komah.”41 The Holy One asks the shekhinah: “Who is with You in exile? Are there those searching for Y-­H-­W-­H who seek Your unity, to raise up the limbs of the shekhinah and to build Your komah?” 143

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According to Zev Wolf, only in exile is shekhinah like a kind of appendage of the sefirot. In redemption She will become a complete and independent body, able to join the Holy One. Humanity or Israel is responsible for raising up shekhinah’s limbs and building Her body: And all this falls upon us, to bring near the time of redemption through means of good acts [so that] Her komah will be built and established. . . . For this is the essential drive of our soul in Torah and mitzvot [and prayer] . . . to be assiduous in repairing shekhinah, to build Her and to prepare Her with a komah shelemah.42 We participate in completing the body of shekhinah through our actions and intentions, and Her completion brings redemption. The Holy One can only tremble and ask us to do this; redemption depends on us. But what are the limbs of the shekhinah that we must raise up? Homiletically speaking, if our komah in all its parts and limbs comprises all the creatures, and the komah of the shekhinah comprises the komah of all humanity, then the creatures themselves are included in Her limbs. If we were to treat the forests, the species, the endangered habitats, as though they were limbs of the shekhinah, as though our redemption and the redemption of shekhinah depended on how we interact with them, this would indeed be enormous.

The Mystery of Life “All who wound God’s works, wound God’s image, and the name of Y-­H-­W-­H does not rest on a wounded place.”43 This wisdom, drawn from the Zohar, can stand us in good stead whether we are trying to make sense of Hasidism or ecology. The Peri Ets Hadar envisions and extols “the majestic might of the Tree of Life”—­an image that can be taken both in mystical terms as referring to the divine Tree of Life that 144

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sustains the cosmos, and in evolutionary terms as the Tree of Life composed of all the lives and species that have ever existed that brought us to this moment. In either framework, that majesty is being diminished daily by human actions. We are lopping off branches sooner than they can regrow. If we take life to be the ultimate value, how might this change our ethical norms? How might it change our reception and perception of Hasidic teachings? One inference could be that we have an obligation not to remove water from the cycle of life. Water represents hesed, which according to Kabbalah and Hasidic thought is the quality expressed by God’s original act of Creation. Water both actually and symbolically is life. From a more mystical perspective, not only is water life, water wants life, water desires life. When we divert water to our uses, we can ask ourselves: Is that water being returned to the ecosystems to nurture life at least to the degree it would have without our intervention? Are our actions nurturing the Tree of Life and bringing blessings to the world around us? This idea could have practical policy implications. For example, every well that gets hydrofracked permanently deletes millions of gallons of water from the biosphere. This is an extraordinary deprivation not just for the world but also for the “element” of water itself, as it is no longer available to sustain life. Thus removing water forever from the biosphere is wrong, unless it furthers life in some concrete, measurable, and permanent way. We can also apply this standard to organic matter. When we compost food scraps, we honor the life force, the hiyut that is the divine essence of our food, enabling it to contribute again to life. If, as happens in our industrial society, we mix toxic chemicals (from batteries, cleaners, paint, etc.) into our landfills along with food scraps that could have decayed back into earth, then we poison that which was created by life so that it cannot safely return to the soil as organic compounds 145

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that will sustain future life. This would constitute “sinning” against our food, and, in terms the Besht would recognize, sinning against the sparks in those creatures whose lives have nourished us. Fundamentally, the problem here is not wasting food but undoing the cycle that turns food back into life-­giving earth. This literally weakens the orders of Creation, just as it dishonors the force of life that courses through the elemental circuits of earth and water. Integrating halakhic, kabbalistic, and Hasidic ideas can lead us to a robust environmental ethic that will strengthen our ability to live in a prayerful and sustainable way.44 One could even say that “Choose life” is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.

The Personhood of All Creatures Choosing life is an abstract idea. We also need an ethic that can choose lives—­that is, the lives of the creatures over our own needs, whenever our needs are not essential. I would like to define this ethic more broadly as friendship with all creatures. In a sweet teaching about humility, the Ba‘al Shem Tov describes all creatures as haverim, “friends” or “comrades.” Here again, he calls to mind a worm: One should say in his heart that one is greater than his friend because he serves with more passion [or “connection,” deveikut]. He is like the rest of the creatures, created for the need of serving the One, blessed be He. And God gave to his friend intelligence, just as He gave him intelligence. For the worm gives service to the Creator with all of his intelligence and strength; and humanity, too, is compared to a maggot and worm, as the verse states, “I am a worm and not a human being” (Ps. 22:7). If God had not given him intelligence, he would not be able to serve the One except 146

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like a worm. A person should think that a worm and the rest of the small creatures are important, like friends in the world, for all are created beings, and none have any ability except what was given to them by the Creator, and this matter should always be in one’s mind.45 Friends in the truest sense treat each other with love and awe, with compassion and respect. Friends regard each other with an eye toward what the other needs, and how one can help the other. I offer one more Neo-­Hasidic element. Every creature should be seen as a potential rebbe, in the spirit of the saying, “Who is wise? The one who learns from every person,”46 and in the spirit of Reb Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, who asked his Hasidism to take turns in the rebbe’s chair. It is true that we must use other creatures in order to survive—­ whether to farm or to eat or to make tools from or use for work. But we can use the other beings well, in ways that nurture them and support a world in which all can thrive. Then we can lift up the sparks in everything around us, and the divine image can shine all the more through every level of the world. This, then, is at the crux of the transformation from Hasidic to Neo-­ Hasidic spirituality: Can we decisively reinterpret Hasidic teachings to recognize the inherent holiness of the world around us, as a dwelling place of the Divine, instead of just recognizing our power to save the sparks that are the traditional Hasidic locus of this holiness? Put another way, if Creation is the result of the “breaking of the vessels,” and if Hasidic ‘avodah—­work or service—­separates the sparks from shards of the physical world, Neo-­Hasidic ‘avodah must serve the shards and sparks to help them become whole within the physical world, and must also make the world more whole. This is the challenge of our times: to nurture and celebrate the birthing of a renewed world founded in love of the Divine. Song of Songs 147

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7:12–­13 can awaken us to this vision: “Come my beloved, let us go out to the field . . . there I will give you my love.” Notes

1. This is not to say that Jewish philosophy has nothing to contribute to a theology of nature. Maimonides was and still is the only Jewish thinker to significantly challenge anthropocentrism and his work is essential. See David Seidenberg, “Maimonides,” in Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (New York: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005), 1026–­27. 2. Keter Shem Tov ha-­Shalem, no. 1 (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2004), 4–­5. 3. David Abram coined the term “more-­than-­human world” to emphasize that the human world is both embedded in and part of the natural world. See David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous (New York: Vintage, 1996). “More-­than-­human” embraces a world that is both immanent and intimately related to us, and also acknowledges that this world transcends our needs, purposes, and knowledge. From a mystical perspective, it would not be wrong to imagine the worlds of divinity included in this framework. 4. Sha‘ar ha-­Otiyot, hashgahah pratit, quoted in David Sears, The Vision of Eden: Animal Welfare and Vegetarianism in Jewish Law and Mysticism (CreateSpace, 2015), 15. 5. Likkutey Moharan 2:11. 6. Likkutey Moharan 2:63. 7. La-­’avod et ha-­adamah is usually translated as “to till the soil” or “to work the ground.” While that would not be incorrect, the Hebrew phrase does not connote the human being controlling and dominating the land. In fact the formulation is not different from the phrase “to worship” or “serve Adonai.” For the ancient Hebrews, farming was a sacrament and a way of serving the land. 8. Likkutey Moharan 1:64. 9. Likkutey Amarim—­Tanya (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1956), iggeret ha-­kodesh, no. 20, fol. 129a–­133a. 10. However, the meaning he gives this term is sui generis. See David Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology: God’s Image in the More-­Than-­Human World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 255–­65.

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11. The celebration of the New Year for the trees that takes place between winter solstice and spring equinox. In Kabbalah it is also a celebration of the Tree of Life. 12. First published in Hemdat Yamim, vol. 2 (Livorno: n.p., 1763), fol. 109a–­b. On Peri Ets Hadar, see Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 212–­13, 357–­59. The full moon of the month of Shevat is also celebrated in Kabbalah as the new year of the Tree of Life. 13. Yitshak Ayzik Safrin, Notser Hesed ‘al Masekhet Avot, chap. 3, quoted in Sefer Ba‘al Shem Tov ‘al ha-­torah (Jerusalem: Nofet Tsofim, 1997), bereshit, 157:129–­31. 14. Ben Porat Yosef (Pieterkov: n.p., 1884), 74a. 15. Quite often, later teachers interpreted the sparks as sparks of a human soul that had reincarnated into an animal or plant in order to achieve a tikkun. See, for example, David Sears, The Vision of Eden: Animal Welfare and Vegetarianism in Jewish Law and Mysticism (Charleston sc: CreateSpace, 2015), 153. But while this interpretation is common in many stories about the Besht, it is not explicit in these texts. The Besht’s disciples may have added it in order to tame the Besht’s radical teachings. See Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 298–­99. 16. According to Luria, the world was created out of broken shards from a previous Creation, which shattered because it could not contain the divine light. Sparks of that divine light became trapped in the shards, and humanity was created in order to rescue them. 17. On the debate about the value of the natural world in Hasidism, see Seth Brody, “Open to Me the Gates of Righteousness.” Jewish Quarterly Review 89, nos. 1-­2 (1998): 3–­44. Scholars such as Gershom Scholem thought that Martin Buber misrepresented Hasidism, but there is more to Buber’s interpretation than most scholars would allow. 18. Shulhan ha-­Tahor (Jerusalem: n.p., 1996), chap. 2, 165. 19. Keter Shem Tov ha-­Shalem, 218:124–­25. It could also come by using a tool or vessel that contained a spark to do a mitzvah. 20. ‘“Then the trees of the forest will sing out’ [Ps. 96:12] and the tree of the field will raise a branch and make fruit, day by day.” 21. Peri Ets Hadar was first published in Hemdat Yamim, vol. 2, 109a–­b. Published translations of the complete prayer can be found in Yitzhak Buxbaum, A Person is Like a Tree: A Sourcebook for Tu BeShvat (Northvale nj: Jason Aronson, 2000), 146–­48. For further information, see Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 357–­59. 149

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22. The Besht does explain that the sparks one redeems are specifically related to the root of one’s own soul. This idea could be interpreted as implying that our own souls are being redeemed in the same process. 23. Yitshak Ayzik Safrin, Notser Hesed ‘al Masekhet Avot, chap. 3, quoted in Sefer Ba‘al Shem Tov ‘al ha-­torah (Jerusalem: Nofet Tsofim, 1997), bereshit, 157:129–­31. 24. Genesis Rabbah 19:7. 25. Exodus Rabbah 13:2. 26. Batey Midrashot 1, bereshit 9. 27. Some Hasidic teachers taught that only the hearts of the Jewish people could become a dwelling place for God. More generally, even as Kabbalah and Hasidic thought expanded the image of God to include many aspects of the more-­than-­human world, many of the same texts limit the image of God in humanity, applying the concept only to Jews—­an element that Neo-­Hasidism must decisively reject. See, for example, Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 228. 28. Yonat Elem, chap. 9, fol. 7b. 29. Likkutey Amarim—­Tanya, chap. 50, fol. 71a. 30. Likkutey Sihot, vol. 13 (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), 40. 31. Likkutey Torah (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2002), re’eh, 32a. 32. Likkutey Sihot, vol. 4 (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), 1344. 33. Torat Menahem, vol. 2 (Brooklyn: Otsar Hahasidim, 2002), 100. 34. This idiom is used in the Talmud Bavli to describe one who walks in an arrogant manner (b. Berakhot 43b) or one who sins secretly (b. Hagigah 16a; b. Kiddushin 31a). 35. Ketonet Passim, ed. Gedaliah Nigal (Jerusalem: Mekhon Peri ha-­Arets, 1985), metsora’, 90. 36. Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 250–­55. 37. Ohev Yisrael (Zhitomir: n.p., 1863), 86; compare 50, 127. 38. It took many centuries before this equivalence was made explicit in Jewish texts. The earliest reference this author has found is in Yosef ben Shalom Ashkenazi’s thirteenth-­century work Perush le-­Parshat Bereshit and in his commentary on Sefer Yetsirah. See Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 250–­52. Note that Maimonides, in seeing the universe as a person with a soul and a heart, made an earlier interpretation compatible with this view. See Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 268–­71. 39. Like the Hasidic sources, the NeTSIV here is clearly playing on the numerical equivalency of Elohim (God) and ha-­teva’ (nature). 150

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40. Or ha-­Me’ir, vol. 3 (Warsaw: n.p., 1883), 79–­80. Compare same work, vol. 1, 43; vol. 2, 43; and many other places. 41. Or ha-­Me’ir, vol. 4, 27–­28. 42. Or ha-­Me’ir, 28. 43. Zohar 3:123b. 44. See the discussion and sources regarding the mitzvah of covering the blood of an animal in Seidenberg, Kabbalah and Ecology, 147n476, 154, 349. 45. Tsava’at ha-­rivash (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), 12:5. 46. Pirkei Avot 4:1.

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Part 2

Ahavat Torah, the Love of Torah Practice and Devotion

7 Neo-­Hasidism and Halakhah The Duties of Intimacy and the Law of the Heart Ariel Evan Mayse My decades-­long journey as a Jewish seeker is rooted in the practice of martial arts of my youth. I will always remember standing on a summit in the heart of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, breathing slowly at the end of my black-­belt test. A broken brick lay on the rocks between my feet, settling into the earth as I gazed out into the vast expanse of pine forest and granite cliffs. It was there that I felt myself overwhelmed by the presence of God for the first time. A kind of sacred energy, as yet unnamed, was coursing through me; the life force of the world was now breathed into my very being. For years I had repeated the same motions, pouring forth my spirit anew through the timeworn patterns and exercises, and constant training had led me into the quiet realm of the holy among these trees and rocks. I lacked the words to describe this experience, but my heart had woken to a new kind of consciousness. My world changed forever in those moments. Yet as time wore on, accessing these feelings and concretizing them in my life outside the dojo became difficult. I began to search for a path that would give life to the spiritual worlds that had been awakened within me through holistic daily praxis. Ever since adolescence, I have been driven by a deep-­seated desire to serve. I longed to find a life-­path through which I could answer this inner call to a devotional vocation. 155

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This quest for expansive practice through worship and service of the Source of all being led me to the worlds of Jewish mysticism. In my return to Judaism I found a religion of law, a path of life in which theology becomes embodied within the sacred deeds of communities and individuals. The contours of Jewish life include a great network of traditions, rituals, and practices, the observance of which is classically understood as obligatory. This element of disciplined training, hardened focus, and constant repetition of deed spoke to my experiences as a martial artist. In karate we were taught that commitment to process and practice is in some sense even more important than achieving the ultimate goal. Attaining a black belt represents a milestone but not a conclusion; it is indicative of a stage in a never-­ ending physical and interior journey. The Jewish path, I came to see, also offers a journey of devotion, poetry, and yearning. The writings of the great Jewish mystics showed me a new realm of lived experience, along with the spiritual vocabulary and symbolic language I could cultivate to describe my longing to stand in the presence of the Divine. This new expanse of sacred literature, my gateway to the world of Jewish practice and theology, sparked another quest: to break open the heart as I had once shattered the brick. Doing so, said the Hasidic mystics, smashes the chains of the ego and draws forth inspiration and illumination from the source of Being that fills the infinite vastness of the human spirit. Jewish theology, from its biblical origins to later flourishing, affirms a covenantal relationship between man and God grounded in the performance of deeds and commitments. “We will do and we will come to understand,” uttered the Israelites in their repercussive encounter with the Divine on Sinai. The practices of Judaism, and above all the commandments, shape the worshipper’s path to the Infinite. While some have described these obligations as existing in a state of persistent tension (fraught or fruitful), with one’s passionate love for God cultivated within the interior palace of the soul, many Jewish thinkers 156

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understand that obeisance and devotion are intimately imbricated into a single religious journey.1 Indeed, in Hasidic spirituality, love and obligation are coterminous—­both present as a balanced posture in the beating heart of the religious experience. Like my teachers before me, in these sermons and homilies I too discovered an overflowing wellspring of inspiration. The literature of Hasidism is filled with rich descriptions of the fiery interior life that is actualized by serving God through sacred deeds. There, in the mystical wisdom of Hasidic piety, I had found the gateway through which I stepped into the next stage of my religious quest. The observance of Jewish law, or halakhah, defines the rhythms of life and patterns of behavior in contemporary Hasidic communities. A novel and exciting form of legal discourse emerged in the Hasidic world, reflecting its unique type of intense mystical piety that is grounded in the experience of God in this world rather than a quest for transcendence and release.2 Hasidic halakhah has grown increasingly stringent since its confrontation with modernity in early decades of the nineteenth century. While its boldness, creativity, and surely its intensity have not entirely diminished, the modern Hasidic approach to halakhah is fiercely traditionalist in outlook. But for many contemporary Jews, particularly those outside the Orthodox world, halakhah is no longer the most important—­or even a significant—­guiding force in their lives.3 When halakhah does occupy an importance place for most liberal Jews, that commitment is often a matter of personal choice, for in many cases this exceptional turn toward the duty of rituals and practice is made by the individual in spite of the community’s attitude. Modern Jews may indeed feel comfortable with commitment and practice in many other spheres, from yoga to the difficult-­to-­define notion of tikkun olam, but only rarely do they feel this sense of obligation toward the far-­reaching traditions of halakhah.4 The emergence of “spirituality” as a popular approach to the inner life that is divorced from—­or at least not necessarily wed157

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ded to—­specific religious practices has only increased the degree of alienation of many Jews from the vital source of halakhah. The present essay seeks to articulate a Neo-­Hasidic theology of halakhah, an understanding of sacred deeds and the divine command that can redress the challenges of modernity and enliven the heart of the contemporary Jewish seeker. This begins with a brief turn to the teachings of the key figures presented in the companion volume to this book, whose writings are the hearthstones of contemporary Neo-­Hasidism. My goal, however, is not to describe their work but to add a new voice to the conversation. I will stake the claim that Neo-­ Hasidism must be a movement of praxis, one affirming that the life of the spirit is embodied and expressed through concrete deeds. A sense of obligation must be central to our conversation about halakhah, just as a mandate of responsibility is integral to our covenantal relationship with the Divine. God continuously beckons us to become active partners in the unfolding of the cosmos and the fulfillment thereof. This agency requires us to engage with—­creatively, but intensely—­ the realms of Jewish practice and ritual, for it is through sacred deeds that we articulate our response to God’s call.5 There is no one single path or ubiquitous model of Neo-­Hasidic halakhah, reflecting the fact that Neo-­Hasidism has no dogmatic theology, universal standards of practice, or centralized leadership. This spectrum also evinces the inherent pluralism of the legacy of halakhah itself.6 In fact, much of our understanding of the various forms that a Neo-­Hasidic halakhah may come to inhabit is still in formation. The present volumes demonstrate that Neo-­Hasidism proudly includes a wide variety of different practices and forms of Jewish life. A serious, robust commitment to halakhah does not necessarily entail allegiance to any particular denomination. The call of Neo-­Hasidism is a summons to the quest to stand in the presence of the Divine, a search we undertake through the practice of Torah and the mitzvot. To this end we must formulate an approach to halakhah that guides our lives, 158

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shaping us spiritually and morally, and leading us toward awareness of the One in every moment. In the pages to come I will suggest my own vision of this sacred path, acknowledging full well that it reflects who I am as an Orthodox rabbi. But I also write as a spiritual being, summoned to the mystical life, speaking as an Orthodox Neo-­Hasid to a broader community of seekers. The fact that I am drawn toward a life of devotion and love, of obligation and intimacy, has essentially informed my understanding of halakhah and its application in the contemporary world.

The Roots of Renewal The place of practice, obligation, and the role of halakhah itself were issues debated by Neo-­Hasidic thinkers across the twentieth century. Though he never returned to the Chabad community of his youth, Hillel Zeitlin’s reclamation of the spiritual vocabulary of Hasidism was complemented by adopting a life of Jewish practice and intense pious commitment. His writings on Yavneh clearly demonstrate that sacred deeds and communal obligations were a key part of his imagined devotional community. Martin Buber, by contrast, remained largely alienated from Jewish practice. He understood religious commitment to be entirely personal. Buber suggested that nobody—­neither a living teacher nor the authoritative voice of tradition—­can disclose to the individual what God asks of him at any moment.7 Yet although Buber refused to submit to traditional forms of halakhah, this passage and others reveal that Buber saw commandedness as a compelling, constantly regenerating force.8 Moreover, he suggests that this dynamic commanding voice issues forth not in moments of personal ecstasy or introverted contemplation, but rather from the dialogical engagement of two human spirits. The Jewish imperative cannot be static or unchanging, because it is born anew in moments of soulful communication. 159

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Informed by a very different reading of Hasidism, Abraham Joshua Heschel reminded his American readers that deeds and actions are the very essence of Jewish spirituality.9 But confronted by the resurgence of a certain type of legal-­minded Orthodoxy in America, he was aghast that people had come to worship of halakhah rather than God, thus equating the study of Jewish law with the true heart of the matter: delving into the divine essence of Torah and seeking God in the devotional self-­transcendence of prayer. Heschel decried “pan-­halakhism,” or the obsession with halakhah to the near-­total occlusion of devotional or theological reflection, claiming that it was fundamentally alien to the upbringing he had received in Hasidic Warsaw—­and hence to Judaism itself.10 Halakhah was a crucial element in Heschel’s spiritual piety, for it calls the Jewish people to ever-­higher levels of commitment, devotion, and the quest for justice, but he was careful never to let Jewish law ascend the pedestal reserved for God alone. Shlomo Carlebach and Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi disagreed fundamentally on the issue of halakhah. Though both spent a number of years in the Chabad Hasidic community, Reb Shlomo experimented throughout his life but never really broke with his past in the Orthodox world. Most people, he thought, are still within the framework of obligation to halakhah, although our yearnings reach far beyond it. Reb Shlomo taught that in rare times and under certain circumstances, the will of God and the traditional halakhah may not be identical, and in those moments we must have the audacity to break free and answer the call of the hour. But his Neo-­Hasidism was largely a renewal that took place within the structures of traditional life, yet without the intellectual and spiritual closed-­mindedness of twentieth-­century Orthodoxy.11 Reb Zalman, by contrast, experimented much more broadly with incorporating new practices from other religions and totally rewriting existing Jewish rituals. His thinking on halakhah became increasingly radical after his departure from Orthodoxy in the 1960s, and he wandered quite far from the classical path of observance. Reb Zalman argued 160

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that the paradigm shift of the Aquarian, post-­Holocaust world required a total reformulation of Jewish practice in keeping with the new spiritual ideals of the age. In his later years, however, Reb Zalman returned to greater commitment to halakhah, seeking to integrate his view of practice with the Jewish tradition and thus reshape Jewish law in such a way that its eternal values come to light in the contemporary world.12 Finally, Arthur Green abandoned Orthodoxy after a brief flirtation with strict observance to halakhah in his late adolescence. His distaste for halakhah was amplified by the dry, occasionally even cruel, legalism he experienced during his rabbinical training at the Jewish Theological Seminary and his avowed commitment to heterodox pluralism.13 Yet over the decades Green has remained in sustained dialogue with halakhah and even included it—­albeit with his own expansive definition—­in his recent Judaism’s Ten Best Ideas: A Brief Guide for Seekers.14 He underscores that halakhah must always be understood through the lens of aggadah, the theological and devotional principles that shape the formation of Jewish praxis in each generation. Green’s return, late in life, to a disciplined path of Jewish praxis (as he defines halakhah) has not included a reembrace of Jewish law as a system of cut-­and-­dried obligation.

Halakhah: Before the Law The Neo-­Hasidic vision begins with the search for a definition of halakhah other than the conventional translation of “law.”15 The devotional side of halakhah is unfortunately obscured when it is rendered variously as law, nomos, Gesetz, or sharia.16 This definition of halakhah also gives the impression that it is an immutable and rigidly structured science. While this is by no means the only description of the nature of law itself, the legal essence of halakhah has often been invoked by Jewish thinkers who suggest that it is a system governed by unchanging values and principles. 161

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Neo-­Hasidism, by contrast, interprets the word halakhah in relation to halikhah, the “way” or “journey” along the sacred path. This subtle reorientation preserves our understanding of halakhah as a way of life but highlights it as being a path that leads us to the One. Halikhah returns us to the biblical stories in which our forebears are described as “walking” (mithalekh) with God. Thus understood, to observe halakhah and to commit oneself to its sacred praxis and obligations entails dedicating oneself to the task of walking in God’s path in this world. “Cosmic ways are His” (halikhot ‘olam lo), said the Prophet Habakkuk. This phrase, often taken as a reference to halakhah in Jewish exegesis,17 may also be translated as “eternal paths”—­the ever-­unfolding and many-­branched avenue of practice leading to the Divine. The constancy (or eternality) of halakhah is manifest not through taking on unchanging forms but in the fact that halakhah is an all-­enveloping religious obligation that makes claims upon every aspect of one’s life. In every moment halakhah calls us to walk in the ways of God anew, imitating the Divine through service, openheartedness, and presence. Each year we return to the same verse: “And Jacob went [va-­yelekh] on his path” (Gen. 28:10). Halakhah is a quest for the Divine full of motion and movement, a religious journey that is neither static nor stationary; halakhah is a Heraclitean path that cannot ever be traveled the same way by two different individuals. Yet although the nuanced richness, flexibility, and devotional significance of the term halakhah is not conveyed through its common translation as “law,” I wholeheartedly affirm that the sacred praxis to which it refers is nonetheless grounded in its origin as a divine command. Halakhah is neither a collection of popular “folkways” nor the accumulated wisdom of our ancient tradition. The fulfillment of the halakhah across the generations is the perpetual human answer to the divine call, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9).18 But the construction of the halakhah—­that is, its constant reinterpretation—­is Israel’s endless response to the divine command, “I am Y-­H-­W-­H” (Exod. 20:2). The 162

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thunderous theophany on Sinai, the radical moment of divine unveiling in which the boundaries between human and divine were rent asunder, changed the relationship between God and Israel forever.19 The divine command, God’s word come into human language, established a covenantal bond in which Israel was invited to take an active role in shaping the revelation across time.20 The Rabbis taught that the giving of the Torah included “everything that a faithful student was ever to innovate,”21 but these teachings were present as pure and unformed potential. “I Myself have been written and given,”22 said God in delivering Scripture to Israel, and we affirm that “the verse was left to the sages”23 to interpret and give it life. The rabbinic project and its exegetical framework define the contours of the biblical mitzvot. The eternal commanding utterance will always be divine, but it is given voice as its details are shaped and defined by human exploration. This description of our role in the process of revelation and the development of halakhah, however, only sharpens the question: Is the authority of halakhah human or divine?24 This crucial point returns us to a debate nearly a century ago between Franz Rosenzweig, the great twentieth-­century Jewish theologian, and his friend and colleague Martin Buber. Rosenzweig rebuked Buber for his claim that the halakhah has little to offer for those in search of vivid and spontaneous religious experiences. Rosenzweig, by contrast, argued that in order to reclaim such spontaneity and inner power we must remember that the heart of Jewish praxis is Gebot—­a divine command or a bidding—­rather than the legalistic framework of the Gesetz or “law.”25 Against Buber’s claim that revelation is “never a formulation of law,”26 Rosenzweig proclaims: Even for him who observes the Law, revelation is not what you call law-­giving. “On this day” [Ex. 19:1]27—­that is his theory of experience as well as yours. He as well as you deems it unfortunate that the commandment issued “on that day” should give rise to the old law. We do not consciously accept the fact that every 163

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commandment can become law, but that the law can always be changed back into a commandment.28 He admits that the Gesetz leads toward abstraction and ossification, but argues that responding to God’s Word—­hearkening to the Gebot—­as an imperative of immediacy and commandedness (not strict legal duty) transforms formal obligation into an immediate response to God’s everlasting call. We should recall that when he received word of his student Nahum Glatzer’s claim that the halakhah is a purely human creation and that only the election of Israel was of a divine origin, Rosenzweig replied: “Can we really draw so rigid a boundary between what is divine and what is human?”29 Specific attempts of codification, which crystallize the halakhah at a moment in time and space—­Maimonides’ code, the Shulchan Arukh, even the Mishnah itself—­are only limited distributaries of the mighty river. They are works of greatness, even genius, but the expansive, ever-­flowing literature of halakhah reveals a different degree of majesty. It has unfolded, unremittingly, across the generations as a perpetual, dialogical encounter of call-­and-­response, in which the commanding One and Israel exist in timeless conversation. Precisely because halakhah is an ongoing duet in which voices both human and divine intertwine, it can—­and must—­encompass all elements of life; it must speak to every state of being, forging a connection between the individual and God in all varieties of the human experience. It must have room for moments of expansive inspiration complemented by times of spiritual aridity; both of these inform the human experience, and both are essential for growth. “Constant pleasure is no pleasure at all,” say the Hasidic masters.30 Perpetual illumination is meaningless, for often it is necessary to descend into the pit, going down into dire straits of difficulty and even failure in order to rise up as a transformed being. In a moment of homiletic fancy, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav claims that mastery of halakhah enables one to navigate this life of constant motion, and intensity: 164

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If you wish to walk along the paths of teshuvah, you must become an expert in halakhah.31 For this you need two types of mastery: expertise in drawing near [ratso], and expertise in return [shov].32 This [modality] is a kind of entering and exiting, as in, “If I ascend up into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in the netherworld, behold, You are there” [Ps. 139:8]. . . . Even if you attain a kind of uplift, rising to some higher rung great or small, you must not remain there and become complacent. You must become an expert [in the quest], knowing and believing that you must always ascend higher and higher. This is called “drawing near.” The opposite is true as well. If you fall, God forbid, to a very low place, even unto the lowest netherworld, even there you must never give up hope, whatever it might be. Search out and seek God and strengthen yourself, wherever you are, [serving the Divine] in whatever manner.33 This playful definition of halakhah (clearly reading the word in the quest-­centered light of halikhah) points to its centrality in the unceasing but nonlinear journey toward God. These vacillations between uplift and descent are the sacred peregrinations of the religious life. But this Hasidic teaching should also be read as suggesting that halakhah represents a vast web of ideas and practices that encompass the full range of human experiences. Yet, of course, halakhah is more than a safety net to carry us when we fall. It is the dynamic process of exploration and transformation, a path through which we can reclaim illuminating moments of higher consciousness.34 Halakhah thus construed is the disciplined, constant journey of striving for the One. This path holds a multitude of opposites: ascents and falls, inward voyages and external deeds, intimate nearness and heart-­wrenching distance. All of these states are incorporated into and addressed by a single, integrated religious path. This is not to say that one’s mood or feeling of Divine Presence, or lack thereof, should neces165

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sarily affect one’s level of obligation. There are unique halakhic answers for different life situations, but God’s beckoning and our response are not matters of whimsical subjectivity. In effect, the precepts and principles of halakhah must touch and respond to every aspect of human experience.35 These include business practices, ritual events, holidays, personal conduct, communal worship, and the most sensitive and private moments of life and death. In all of these the voice of God is eternally commanding, thunderous in its repercussive silence, calling upon the spirit of humankind to reply through deed and devotion. The halakhah of Neo-­Hasidism is an empowering approach to Jewish life that incorporates daily practice, rigorous inner work, and constant spiritual exercise through mindfulness and contemplation. Far from being an attenuated or denatured form of tradition, its core is the regular and disciplined performance of the mitzvot. Our path invites both communal praxis and personal journeys, calling for submission to tradition but also creativity and constant change. The voice of halakhah always calls us to higher ethical standards, to a paradigm of service and devotion in times of elation as well as constriction, and summons us to walk toward the One with courage, honor, and love. This conception of halakhah, rooted in the dynamic essence of halikhah, is the constant path that reflects the ultimate goal of knowing that we move through the world in the presence of God.36

The Duties of Intimacy A neo-­Hasidic conception of halakhah begins with the affirmation that religious rituals and obligations should lead us to a life of devotion. This is the purpose of halakhah, for the ultimate goal of our religious quest is to stand in the presence of the One.37 The rites, commitments, and responsibilities of halakhah must shape our journey toward the ultimate goal of deveikut, a moment of radical aware166

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ness and awakening to the Divine. “Religion begins,” wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel, “with a consciousness that something is asked of us. It is that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which man’s answer is elicited.”38 Our answer to God’s enduring and ever-­present beckoning comes in the form of sacred deeds, specific actions shaped by the covenant that have the power to bring us into the presence of the Infinite. The mitzvot, these divine commandments, are the heart of the expansive world of halakhah. They are the branches from which the verdant literature of halakhah stems forth. It is crucial to remember this hierarchy, for the details, additions, or expansions that surround the commandments are always in danger of occluding the central deed. But the mitzvot, given form and definition through halakhah, are unique opportunities; they are gateways of access through which we enter into God’s presence.39 Mitzvah is thus understood as related to the Aramaic word tsavta, or “connection,” as frequently claimed in the Hasidic sources. The commandments set the bond between the worshipper and the Divine, and performing these sacred deeds makes it possible to step beyond one’s ordinary consciousness and into the dimension of the holy. Through the mitzvot that govern our relationship to the calendar as well as the physical world, the realms of sacred time and sacred space become intertwined within the inner sanctum of the human heart.40 We must move beyond the notion that we are to perform the commandments just because tradition mandates that we do so. The mitzvot, beloved for their power to connect us to the Divine, are not to be cast aside or derided simply as a means to an end. Nor are the commandments orders to be submissively obeyed in an attempt to maintain the benevolent grace of the King and receive accolades or rewards. The primary goal of this formalistic, perfunctory type of religious worship is to become yotse yedey hovah, to have fulfilled and thus become released from one’s obligation. The Neo-­Hasidic approach, by contrast, places the emphasis on the quest to be yotse yedey shammayim, a Rabbinic 167

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phrase best translated in this context as courageously answering the summons of heaven.41 Viewed through Hasidic eyes, the mitzvot are best described as the duties of intimacy. The kabbalists have long noted that the letters of the word halakhah are the same as those of ha-­kallah or the bride, referring to shekhinah. Hasidic sources strengthen this association by commenting that the blessing recited before one performs a mitzvah, “Blessed is the One who has sanctified us [kidshanu] with His commandments,” echoes the language of a Jewish wedding, called kiddushin.42 This suggests that in performing the mitzvot we are betrothed unto God, sanctified by our commitment and brought into the divine embrace. Each morning we recite the verses, “And I will betroth you unto Me forever; yea, I will betroth you unto Me in righteousness, and in justice, and in loving-­kindness, and in compassion; And I will betroth you unto Me in faithfulness; and you shalt know Y-­H-­W-­H” (Hosea 2:21–­22). Sacred deeds have the power to bind our soul to God; the verses here invoked in the ritual of putting on tefillin should in truth apply to all commandments. Wrapping the straps of the tefillin around the fingers has the aura of putting on a wedding ring, and with such heartfelt whispers we affirm our espousal to God through these sacred and intimate tasks. We know from our human experiences that meaningful intimate relationships must also entail responsibility. Surely it is no different for those who seek to become enfolded in the Divine. Our duties may be lovingly performed, but devotion to a beloved is not simply supererogatory; obligations are part and parcel of the mutual vows that bind us evermore. This means that one must develop what the Hasidic masters often call hibbat ha-­kodesh, a sense of dearness and love for all things sacred. We are to look upon the mitzvot, and the halakhah that instructs us how to perform them, as modes of drawing awareness of God into our every deed and every moment. This means gazing at the halakhah not through the stern, unyielding eyes of the judge but 168

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through the gentle and beneficent gaze of a lover whose willing sense of obligation flows from passion and commitment. The mitzvot have a special place in our lives, and no other actions can match their intensity or power. The commandments do, however, reveal something about the hidden potential of all deeds. Here I invoke a lesson from Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger, whose clever exegesis of a well-­known talmudic principle sheds light on the continuum of intensity that includes both the sacred and the seemingly mundane: The sages said: “Everything that departs from the general rule, departs in order to teach us something about the entire principle.”43 The Children of Israel are singled out from the general [community of humanity]. Even within Israel there are great and righteous people, who teach us something about the community as a whole. So too Shabbat departed from the general rules of time to teach us something about time as a whole, and so it is with the Tabernacle and the Temple. They teach us something about all places.44 Certain people, moments, or places have been singled out for their unique status, but not because they are essentially singular. They represent the capacity of holiness to become intensified and magnified in time, space, and the human realm, demonstrating through their example that every thing and each moment may become a vessel for God’s sacred energy. This principle could be applied to the mitzvot en masse—­namely, that the commandments were given to teach us that all deeds, every human movement and action, are opportunities for serving God. Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh Leib Alter makes this very point in another of his sermons: My grandfather and teacher [Rabbi Yitzhak Meir of Ger] explained that the message of the wells dug by the patriarchs is [that we must] turn aside the external and find the hidden illumination within; 169

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there is a point of inwardness in all places. . . . And now the commandments that each Israelite has, for every day we wear tsitsit, tefillin, they are like the wells. The blessed Holy One infused all physical deeds with holiness through the commandments, for there is nothing in the world that is not connected to a mitzvah. Even money has tzedakah, and so forth. Through them we can find the hidden illumination even in physical deeds. Through effort every person can find truth in every place.45 The description of the power of the mitzvot as saturating all deeds is possible because of the all-­encompassing nature of halakhah, for there are no experiences in life regarding which the halakhah should be silent. An early Hasidic teaching from Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl comments as follows: My teacher [Rabi Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch] was wont to call this “mundane matters [hullin] that are performed in a purely holy manner.”46 Even something that appears ordinary can be made holy, since the Torah is within all things. In eating, for example, there is so much Torah and many paths [to the Divine], and there are so many laws in washing one’s hands. The same is true in business. My teacher said that the life force of those things comes from Torah and the laws pertaining to them. Torah and the Holy One are one, since everything has some hook in the Torah, even the smallest of creations.47 Our lived experience of the Divine in all moments comes through the matrix of halakhah, which means that nothing—­no deed or action, however slight—­may be undertaken without thought. The Ba‘al Shem Tov taught that halakhah should be read as an acronym for the verse hari‘u la-­Hashem kol ha-­arets (“shout unto Y-­H-­W-­H, all the earth,” Ps. 98:4).48 The Earth and the very cosmos reverberate with God’s pres170

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ence, which is summoned forth into our consciousness by engaging with the world through halakhah. Sanctify your deeds by adapting to the contours of the halakhah, thus wedding exterior practice with the fires of inner kavvanah and intention, and thus become like Moses before the burning bush. You may come to realize that ground upon which you have been standing was holy all along.49 This expansive notion of sacred deeds is complemented by an element of obedience and submission, central to my own relationship to halakhah. Commitment to halakhah engenders a lifetime of devotion that strives for true selflessness or, at the very least, seeks to push aside the ego and rise above self-­centeredness. This approach is an expression of our yir’ah, a sense of awe and fear before the Divine. Infinitely more than when I stand overwhelmed by the wonder of nature, my breath catches and my soul trembles as I step into awareness of the majesty of God. Together with the rush of passionate love come the very real palpitations of fear. Discipline and consistency are pillars of the religious life. The mitzvot were given to refine us, one Rabbinic tradition has it: just as the fire of the forge rids metal of any impurity, so too do the mitzvot uplift, ennoble, and transform us.50 They allow our inner divine to shine through and overcome the base, craven aspects of the human being. There is an ancient part of our Jewish tradition that emphasizes the power of deeds to shape our consciousness, for actions create a channel—­or a vessel—­into which the sublime stream welling up in the heart may flow. This posture of yir’ah can be of great value for one who is beginning a religious or spiritual life. It must never be misconstrued as the only goal of the mitzvot, however, because submission and discipline become imbalanced without the forces of love and devotion. Also worth considering here is the role of custom or minhag. These practices are tremendously important in Ashkenazi culture and attained an especially great place in the Hasidic world. In some cases minhagim are even a source for determining the halakhah, since, for Ashkenazi 171

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scholars, communal practice is itself an authoritative force.51 We might describe minhagim as binding obligations entered into willingly, not because they stem from an ancient covenant of Sinai but because through custom Jewish communities take agency in deciding how to represent their theology in deeds. This arousal from below, as the Zohar would have it, is dearly precious to both man and God precisely because the customs were not explicitly commanded. Few people in the Neo-­Hasidic orbit have inherited minhagim directly from their parents.52 But many of us have absorbed customs from teachers, friends, or books, or from our community of seekers. Yet building on this model, minhagim could be an important source of inspiration and empowerment in the contemporary Neo-­ Hasidic world. Communities and devotional fellowships should continue to develop their own customs, and individuals should do so for themselves and for their family, embodying minhagim as a type of piety and devotion that goes beyond the simple rubric of obligation.53 I believe that this rubric of communal enfranchisement will be particularly useful in the Neo-­Hasidic setting, in terms of reformulating traditional gender roles and establishing new standards and minhagim that articulate a greater degree of the cardinal value of inclusivity.54 We have underscored the force of halakhah in training and transforming the practitioner, since it shapes our actions and structures our vision and experience of the world. But halakhah is not just about us. The Hasidic masters describe God as in need of human deeds, as it were. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi explains that halakhah is to be understood as the means of leading (molikh) divine vitality into the cosmos. Rabbinic tradition tells us that God, too, performs the commandments.55 “You shall walk in His ways,” Moses reminds us time and again in the book of Deuteronomy. To strive along the path of the commandments is to embark on a journey of kindness and openheartedness that has been undertaken by God as well. This suggests that in performing the mitzvot we bridge the boundary between the human 172

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and divine realms, infusing the soul and the world with an influx of God’s light and bounty. Of course, the power of the mitzvot to heal the fractured world includes ritual commandments that bind the seeker and God, but it extends equally to the realm of interpersonal ethical and religious duties (mitzvot ben adam le-­havero).56 We cleave to God through the commandments, says Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, but performance of the mitzvot must always begin with acts of compassion toward others.57 Observance of halakhah and attention to its values should cultivate kindness, love, and empathy. The mandates of the Torah lead us to overcome our natural drive toward banal self-­centeredness, for through attuned discipline of practice and a rich inner world we come to bestow blessing and grace upon others.

Embrace of Change and Creativity This approach to halakhah that highlights commitment, and even submission, is only part of the picture. The original Hasidic understanding of halakhah, and surely a Neo-­Hasidic conception as well, embraces constant change as a natural—­even definitional—­aspect of the halakhah. This means that rituals and precepts evolve organically over time, as communities shift and as new technologies and ideas are introduced. But in some cases the positive approach to change leads us to refine or alter elements of halakhah because the structures or details are no longer appropriate. I understand this willingness to change to be an expression of ahavah, of unending love that emerges from the partnership of God and humanity. This deep tenderness and affection emboldens us to change halakhah when necessary, and it stands together as a counterpoint to the yir’ah found in our submission. Together the Tikkunei Zohar calls these two the “wings of the soul,”58 for only when partnered can ahavah and yir’ah bring us to uplift and ascent. Awe before the Divine leads us toward 173

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surrender and deference, and the complementary force of love calls us to creativity and agency. In most cases it is appropriate for us to have humility, allowing the tradition to shape and to guide us. This modesty is innate to the process of halakhah, which is by its nature a highly conservative system. It is very difficult to repeal a custom or a practice that has been accepted and incorporated by the Jewish people across the generations.59 Of course, in select circumstances one can argue that the original halakhah no longer applies, either because the situation is different or because there has been some sort of paradigm shift. In some cases this latter situation is acknowledged explicitly, but more often than not these transformations are quiet revolutions that happen within the highly technical rabbinic discourse of halakhah through hermeneutical turns and subtle redefinitions. But the Hasidic masters have taught us that there are moments and times in which courage and audacity are required. Our sensitivity to such situations in which real change is necessary is alerted by the understanding that the halakhah, as classically formulated, is not identical to the will of God.60 Yes, the weight of tradition versus our contemporary religious experience is very great indeed, and the voice of halakhah remains determinative until the moment of confrontation. But a Neo-­Hasidic understanding of halakhah affirms that, as human thought, morality, and ethics progress, we must continue to express these unfolding values through the traditional forms of halakhah.61 All cases in which the classical halakhah does not address the immediate, unique call of the hour require their own careful consideration. I do not believe there can be a situation in which every fiber of my being, including my moral barometer and my spiritual sensibility (both deeply formed by my engagement with Torah), tells me to act in one way and the halakhah commands another. In such moments I believe that there are essentially two choices. Either I have failed to hear correctly the values expressed by the classical halakhah or, alternatively, 174

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the halakhah as it has been interpreted is either no longer appropriate or, at the very least, does not apply to this particular situation. I cannot believe that there is such thing as an unethical or unjust halakhah. When such intolerable moments of confrontation ensue, we are obligated to change or reinterpret the halakhah in some way.62 This discussion begins with an awareness that there are things written in the Torah that have long been understood as not meant to be taken literally; that is, rabbinic discourse has interpreted them as not being meant to be applied as the law.63 But some rabbinic traditions explore the issues of whether or not the restraints of halakhah may be applied in a manner that is unfair and even cruel.64 They speak of individuals who have been wronged by the law and by judges, who rule correctly but callously, and suggest that God alone can provide comforts for such injury.65 Such passages are not the innocent musings of the rabbinic imagination. These sources reveal a concern and understanding that, both because halakhah speaks in norms and because it is rooted in an unchanging body of canonical literature, in its codified form halakhah can be brutal and lack humanity when applied to the contemporary world of an adjudicator. Awareness of this issue, however, has motivated rabbinic figures throughout the ages to strive for solutions to prevent halakhah from hurting people. “Jerusalem was destroyed because the judges followed only the law of Torah,” claims a brooding voice recorded in the Talmud.66 And the principle of going “beyond the letter of the law” (lifnim mi-­shurat ha-­ din), which is already visible in early Rabbinic legal works, seeks to counterbalance the problem of unjust or even barbaric formulation of the halakhah by looking for equity beyond the strict confines of the law. Neo-­Hasidism extends these rabbinic voices a bit further, arguing that halakhah itself must be applied so that it does not bring about situations of duress or hurt.67 The ability to reach for such a halakhah of compassion and attentiveness is rooted in the underlying ethos of change, inherited from 175

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our teachers among the Hasidic masters. The following early source, a homily by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Efraim of Sudilkov, is striking for its clarity as well as its boldness: “This is the book of the descendants of man” [Gen. 5:1]. Let us begin with what I have said about the verse “Moses diligently sought out the goat for the sin offering” [Lev. 10:16]. Tradition notes that these words, “diligently sought” [darosh darash] are the midpoint in a letter count of the Torah.68 One needs to understand what is meant by this, what difference it makes. In my humble opinion, [it is as follows]: We know that the Written and Oral Torahs are all one, that neither can be separated from the other. Neither is indeed possible without the other, since the written Torah reveals its secrets through the oral interpretation. The written Torah without the oral Torah is incomplete. It was like half a book until the sages came and interpreted Torah, lighting up our eyes and revealing its hidden secrets. Sometimes they would uproot something from the Torah, as is the case with regard to [punishment by] lashes. The Torah says: “He shall be stricken forty times” [Deut. 25:3], but the sages reduced it by one.69 They did all this by the light of their holy spirit, because the blessed Lord was manifest upon them. [This enabled them] to see the root of everything written in the Torah in its true state, empowering them to do this. The wholeness of the written Torah is thus dependent upon the oral. . . . This is true of each generation and its interpreters. They make the Torah complete. Torah is interpreted in each generation according to what that generation needs. God enlightens the eyes of each generation’s sages [to interpret] His holy Torah in accord with the soul-­root of that generation. One who denies this is like one who denies Torah, God forbid . . . for the entire Torah is composed of the blessed One’s names.70 176

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Here we have a particularly bold formulation: Scripture and the sacred practices of the ever-­evolving halakhot and mitzvot connected to it together constitute the book of humanity, for we have been tasked with weaving the Written and Oral Torahs into a single, unified whole. Each generation and its leaders must blend these forces anew. This homily suggests that some elements may simply need to be renewed or reinterpreted, but, in some cases, real changes must be made. To deny this is to deny Torah itself, for rejecting the flexibility of Torah is to deny that it is still a living being—­a torat hayyim.71 Of course, in the eighteenth century these shifts were relatively minor. In our own context, however, I think we must be willing to read this text as facilitating much greater changes. What works for one generation, the actions and modus vivendi that are appropriate for them, cannot necessarily be continued seamlessly by the next generation. We grapple with new situations, challenges, and ideas, some of which are to be rejected and others that should be absorbed into the halakhah to further refine and deepen its voice. In order to navigate this process of change, it is not enough to say that a point of halakhah (and all the more so a category) “doesn’t work” or that it’s simply old-­fashioned. Change must employ the indigenous language and the chorus of voices in halakhah, which hold all the seeds for future evolution. One must know the essential contours of a mitzvah, discerning its biblical core from the rabbinic ordinances, layers of custom, and so forth. One must know the positions of the major decisors of halakhah, understand their values, and grasp the various streams or traditions of halakhah as they have evolved. Key to this enterprise is an expansive and penetrating expertise in classical Rabbinic literature, since there may be other elements of our tradition that provide a different perspective. Shabbat is sacrosanct and hallowed, of course, but the value of saving a life instantaneously overrides the Sabbath prohibitions.72 Human dignity, created as we are in the image of God, is an example of another such value.73 Together this aggregate of data 177

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and supple understanding informs the scholar, preparing the way for the correct principles to be deployed when change in the halakhah is absolutely necessary. But a Neo-­Hasidic halakhah is not simply about finding a precedent in some obscure medieval sage, rehabilitating a minority opinion long dismissed, or using clever legal legerdemain to elide or override an element of our tradition. The boldness and honesty of the halakhah of Neo-­Hasidism demands that we listen to the values and the morality expressed by our tradition, and use them to reformulate the laws when cruelty and injustice are clear.74 These include inclusivity, compassion, attention to the suffering of others, engendering love, human dignity, the divine nature of all people, financial considerations, and ensuring spiritual fulfillment, flourishing, and justice.75 My teacher Rabbi Daniel Sperber told our ordination class that the first step in becoming a good rabbi is to decipher the opinion of the Shulchan Arukh, but the second stage is to understand how to circumvent its word when unique temporal, ethical, or spiritual exigencies so demand. I would like to underscore that creativity means neither anarchy nor uncoupling the notion of obligation. Our duties are to God, not to the words of a medieval law code, and for this reason the responsibilities are second to none! And halakhah changes because of urgent need, not simply because of convenience. When I present Hasidic sermons on these issues to my students, their initial response reveals an assumption that such change will lead to increasing leniency and perhaps even to the dissolution of halakhah altogether. I do believe with all of my heart that halakhah must always be a voice of compassion in addition to a cry of challenge.76 But Neo-­Hasidic halakhah does not always incline to leniency, and certainly does not unfasten our commitment to obligation in hearkening to the divine command. In fact, I believe there are many arenas in which Neo-­Hasidic ethical and spiritual values lead to stricter formulations of halakhah than in classical rabbinic discourse. The notion of cruelty toward animals 178

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[tsa‘ar ba‘alei hayyim] needs to be totally reformulated in our day. Often construed as an injunction against animal suffering in the abstract, it has not been applicable if the suffering is for some human purpose. Foie gras is forbidden, surely, but I think there are now sufficient grounds to prohibit all meat consumption in industrialized societies.77 Recent years have seen an outpouring of compendia summarizing the minutiae of ritual halakhah in staggering detail. Yet where, I wonder, is a work with the courage to declare that contributing to pollution (whether through industrial waste, single-­use containers, service dishes, etc.) is forbidden? A Neo-­Hasidic reading of the realm of Nezikin (the mishnaic order of “damages”) would make it clear that the obvious modern application of these principles is to forbid such things, not as civil responsibilities but as religious obligations. On a more personal level, smoking and other destructively unhealthy practices surely violate the biblical injunction to protect one’s body and life repeated throughout the book of Deuteronomy.78 Like second-­hand smoke, such behaviors inflict harm upon the world and hurt those around us. Thinking more expansively, halakhah must recognize that the Jewish people have a different responsibility in the contemporary world. When we were a walled-­off minority, we took halakhic responsibility only for ourselves. But halakhah challenges us in new ways as full members of the polity.79 The prohibition against smoking should extend to owning tobacco stock, not to mention fossil fuels and weapons conglomerates. These are but a few examples among the many that reveal the stricter side of a devotionally oriented Neo-­Hasidic halakhah, which must never fail to challenge us to higher moral standards of behavior in the context of our covenantal obligations to God and, by extension, the project of creation. As a creative, inspirational, and ethical force, halakhah summons us to take part in transforming and redeeming this fractured reality in which we live. By performing the mitzvot we confront the world as it is, called the sefirah malkhut in kabbalistic tradition, without losing sight of our vision of the world that may yet—­ 179

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and must—­become. In some sense, it is the power of halakhah that spans the gap between the unredeemed present and the gift of the future, which, allowing for some compresence, ushers a spark of the world to come into our reality.80 But malkhut or shekhinah, the symbol of God’s own need for redemption and cosmic repair, is also associated with halakhah and the Oral Torah. Here I claim that the ethos of Neo-­Hasidism grants us the necessary audacity to remember that, in certain moments, halakhah is itself in need of healing.

Attention to Personal Situations Superficial observance and rote worship are antithetical to the spirit of Hasidism. This quest for constant renewal was among those that reverberated with the lessons I absorbed in the dojo of my youth. Our teacher would ask us to repeat the same kata (traditional arrangements of moves) many hundreds of times, but he always reminded us that one must never fight the same battle twice. The set of motions never changes, but the motivating force and the imagined opponent (including the inner one) is never the same. This is essential to training in martial arts, for no two moments or situations are ever the same. In a similar way, Hasidism seeks to infuse traditional structures, practices, and concepts with new devotional significance. The Ba‘al Shem Tov interpreted the Psalmist’s words “Do not cast us into old age” (Ps. 71:9) as a soulful petition against devotional service becoming threadbare and ossified.81 He taught that we must pray for our worship never to become old or stale; that our sacred words never fade into empty shells devoid of meaning or intention. The inimitable Kotsker Rebbe is said to have demanded that his students cultivate not frumkeit (external piety) but rather frishkeit (freshness) in their service of God.82 No two people, no two situations, and no two moments are ever exactly the 180

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same, and therefore the Hasid must strive to respond with dynamism and commitment, hearkening to fulfill God’s command with focus and intention. In the words of a twentieth-­century Hasidic master: Each person must have a Shulchan Arukh within his heart. This means that you must not do things out of habit. Follow the instruction of your heart, with awareness and intelligence [be-­da‘at ve-­ haskel]. This will lead you to feel joy and vitality from the pleasant and sweet holiness. It is similar to what happens in the world. A person may have everything good, and nevertheless has no satisfaction whatsoever, even unto the end of his days, such that he will destroy himself, God forbid. It is the same with matters of Torah and commandments: some perform [many sacred deeds] and study quite a bit, as they are accustomed to do, but they do so without any vitality. It as if these actions are being done by someone who is dead. Consider everything in your understanding heart, and then you will feel the pleasantness of the service and rejoice in the vitality of worship. This is the meaning of the Shulchan Arukh of your heart.83 Rabbi Israel of Grodzisk, the great Polish Hasidic master and the author of this source, lifts up this image of the inner Shulchan Arukh to suggest that the law of the heart is of paramount importance for providing vitality and life in all acts of religious service. The Shulchan Arukh of the heart must of course be connected to that of the text, but the two may not always be identical. Without this interior writ of continuous renewal, the commanded deeds of sacred service fade into rote, desultory observance. The inner source of regeneration shows us how to animate the performance of the Shulchan Arukh—­that is, the halakhah—­in each and every moment. Doing so requires focus, concentration, and unceasing attunement. 181

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But the Hasidic emphasis on the importance of the individual goes beyond the quest for newness and personal meaning in all of one’s deeds. This reading builds upon the inherent pluralism in the discourse of halakhah, one that appreciates multiple perspectives and even allows for multiple valid positions simultaneously.84 No decision can ever be fully proven or demonstrated so as to curtail any further argument, for in the realm of halakhah there are no truly dispositive answers.85 And decentralized authority has long been a part of our tradition. In commenting on the famous talmudic maxim, “After the destruction of the Temple, the blessed Holy One has only the four cubits of halakhah in this world,” Rabbi Shmuel Edels remarks that the halakhah was once determined by the Sanhedrin, the rabbinic court that met in the Temple. These sages were the final arbiters, and their singular authority stemmed from the fact that shekhinah dwelt with them. But Rabbi Edels notes that in the present judges and decisors must determine the halakhah on an individual basis, and shekhinah is with all of them!86 The judge must rule in accord with the vision of his own eyes, responding to the human situation with interpretation of the legal discourse;87 no single law code can encompass every situation.88 It has been left to the sages and the scholars of each generation to determine the laws that apply in which situation, and to whom they apply.89 Such decision-­making requires an extraordinary ability to weigh values and contextual considerations in addition to total mastery of the rabbinic corpus.90 Because of the difficulty and complexity, decisions are primarily within the purview of scholars, but, as we shall see, there are ways of counteracting what might otherwise become an outright victory of spiritual elitism. Hasidic teachings, building on a Lurianic tradition, speak of something called the shoresh neshamah or soul-­root.91 Such sources explain that the inner spiritual being of each individual is connected to a specific realm in the sefirot, and that this link is manifest through their unique 182

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formulation of the halakhah. For example, people rooted in gevurah, the sefirah associated with the divine attributes of severity and stringency, tend to rule that things are forbidden. People rooted in hesed, in the sefirah of God’s kindness, openness, and embrace, are inclined to rule that something is permitted. Translating these ideas into modern parlance, we might suggest that scholars bring their intuitive or “personal” knowledge to bear when deciding the halakhah. But, flipping the perspective from that of the adjudicator to that of the practitioner, I take these sources to mean that no single, unified form of halakhah will be correct for everyone. Individuals grounded in the soul-­root of gevurah naturally tend toward severity, and such an approach to halakhah (defined as such by a certain scholar or a particular community) may fit their spiritual needs quite well. The opposite, of course, is true for someone rooted in hesed. One should not forget, however, that honestly encountering a style of halakhah appropriate for a different soul-­root will provide a fruitful challenge to prevent blind self-­affirmation and complacency.92 This dialogue, and perhaps even incorporating certain practices from another approach, could provide a crucial degree of balance. Yet Hasidism, and all the more so Neo-­Hasidism, takes this attention to the individual even farther, suggesting that only the individual person can know what God asks from him or her at that moment. Part of our approach to halakhah thus means knowing that the situation of every individual is utterly unique. Each spiritual journey is singular. I believe such quests must generally take place within the contours of the halakhah, a force of discipline and uplift that shapes the spiritual journey within a Jewish framework. This view surely reflects my own shoresh neshamah, in which the inner longing for devotion and service finds expression through regimented and constant practice. But I also affirm wholeheartedly that there are very real moments in which one may need to break from normative mandates. Only the individual can know when such audacity is needed, however. No one else, not even 183

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a dear teacher or bosom friend, can identify such moments with total certainty or clarity.93 In some cases the awareness of the vicissitudes of one’s personal journeys should incline him or her toward a more lenient stance on a particular issue or practice. The shadow-­side of the self, also called the evil inclination or yetzer ha-­ra, takes on many forms. In some cases it entices us toward humra, or stringency, knowing that we may be blind to piety itself becoming an idol worshipped through unthinking allegiance: Sometimes the evil inclination will come to you, claiming that you have done a great sin, even though it was nothing more than a stringency, or not a transgression at all. Its intention in this is to cast you into despair, for in your sadness you will stop serving the blessed Creator. You must understand this ruse, and say to the evil inclination: “I will pay no mind to this stringency that you are suggesting to me! Your purpose is only to stop me from serving God. You speak lies, and even if there truly is a smidgen of sin, it will bring greater pleasure to my Creator for me not to pay any mind to this stringency and fall into sadness in my worship. On the contrary, I will serve God with joy! This is a great principle. My intent is not to worship myself but to bring pleasure to God.”94 Pietism and stricture can become a vicious master, thus derailing spiritual growth by causing one to be overcome with sadness and contrition. Yet many Hasidic sources remind us that, in some cases, the stricter interpretation of a law or practice may indeed be called for. This is not because one is uncertain about the true halakhah (and therefore seeks to fearfully fulfill as many opinions as possible) or because there is a particular value in stringency for its own sake. A nonobligatory type of devotion or pious practice may also bubble forth from the very depths of our precognizant being: 184

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When you devote your mind to the blessed Creator, God will send you thoughts regarding what you must do, as it says, “Cast your burden upon God, [and He will sustain you]” [Ps. 55:23]. If you truly want, desire, and long [to perform] some pious practice [devar hasidut], presumably it must be necessary—­for God has delivered it into your thoughts.95 So the longing for piety may be the work of the evil inclination, but this yearning may also be a sublime revelation of God’s desire. Of course, these sources mean one thing in an eighteenth-­century community where full observance is the norm and mean something very different in our own pluralistic world. Translated into our vocabulary, these teachings offer sage advice to the seeker looking for a window or an access point to a more Jewish pattern of life. Such a person must carefully weigh each move, understanding that no benchmark of ritual observance will work for all people. We should note, however, that the untoward temptation to permissiveness and leniency is often much more difficult to identify, all the more so in our contemporary lives. Knowing how to apply these principles of decision and discernment is terribly difficult. It takes constant vigilance not to fall into self-­ deception or to give in to the temptations of sloth and convenience. Before doing anything, one must think carefully about why and to what end. The Kotsker famously declared that the most important question anywhere in the Talmud is one that appears on every page: mai ta‘ama—­ “What is the reason for this?” A true Hasid is one who has developed the courage to reflect upon this question before every deed. [“If you walk in My ways, and keep My commandments, and do them” (Lev. 26:3)] The Midrash comments, this is what is written, “I considered my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies” (Ps. 119:59). I heard in the name of Rabbi Yitzhak of Vurke that not everyone who wishes to claim a great name should do so. . . . If a 185

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person arises in the morning and wraps himself in the tallit and tefillin immediately, he is not fulfilling a mitzvah. First he must cleanse himself and fulfill the verse, “Your camp shall be holy” (Deut. 23:15). So it is with all matters of the commandments. Think first and settle it in your mind if this is a mitzvah or not. This is why the verse says, “If you walk in My ways,” implying something that is uncertain. Regarding all of [the] statutes and commandments, one must examine to see if he should follow that path and do the mitzvah, or if [perhaps he should] not.96 Determining when, and how, to fulfill a divine precept should not be taken lightly. Furthermore, not every mitzvah should be performed in all moments, nor are all aspects of halakhah situationally appropriate for every person. Understanding the contours of God’s desire requires a supple form of listening and introspection. The worshipper cannot simply peek into the Shulchan Arukh and know what to do in every situation. Such a standardized code can only apply in most cases, but in others flexibility and insightful resilience are needed. One must examine the specific moment, gazing upon the surrounding community as well as casting an inward glance toward possible ulterior motives, and only through such a diligent process of introspection and clarification come to a decision regarding what action is to be taken—­or not. Yet despite our best efforts, the Will of the Divine is ultimately unknowable, impenetrable, and opaque. We are called to strive to fulfill it to the best of our ability, remembering always that it is not simply obedience to halakhah that God has commanded of us. Of all the Hasidic communities, the dynasty of Izhbits has given this ethos the fullest treatment. Sources such as the following homily illustrate this point: The unique quality [lit. “the source of life”] that God invested in the tribe of Efraim is the ability to determine, without fail, 186

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the correct legal ruling and halakhah in every contingency they face and not to deviate from it. . . . The unique quality of Yehuda, however, is to look directly toward God in every instance. Even though he may know which way the law tends to lean, nonetheless he turns to God to instruct him regarding the hidden truth in this particular situation. . . . He does not want to rely on himself [i.e., his interpretation of the law]; rather, he seeks God’s renewed enlightenment to comprehend His will. At times this approach may necessitate taking action contrary to the halakhah, since it is a “time to act for the Lord.”97 It is crucial to remember that in the Izhbits community, the possible anarchy embedded in this perspective was tempered by piety and a tremendous emphasis on personal integrity. And furthermore, any action contrary to the classical halakhah was to be performed only when the worshipper achieved a level of clarity that this move—­and not the words of conventional halakhah—­was the Will of God. Our experience of the cosmos and of our inner world is governed by a degree of perpetual uncertainty, and rare indeed are these moments of illumination, divinely revealed sparks of lucidity in which the clouds depart and the light of conviction shines through. The question, of course, is what to do in the meanwhile: obey, or break free? My own answer to this highly personal question is twofold. Unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary, my heart draws me to act in accord within the terms of our covenant with God as classically understood in the normative halakhah, though noting full well that this very definition encompasses a wide spectrum of opinions and positions beyond the strictures of contemporary Orthodoxy. I also believe that the observance of halakhah, yielding the soul to its values and seeking the Divine Presence within its wisdom, actually serves to increase our sensitivity to hearing the voice of God and the call of the moment. 187

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Sources such as the homilies we examined moments ago tempt us to assume that an approach to halakhah that focuses on the individual would always lead to leniency and abrogation. The following story, however, offers a rather extreme reminder that awareness of God’s unique call to each individual may just as easily cut in the opposite direction. In 1943 a young man named Simha Rotem (née Kazik) discovered a way to smuggle the Piaseczner Rebbe out of the Trawniki concentration camp. The rebbe could certainly have left, considering such a move a tactical decision to evacuate the leader, as was the case in the communities of Satmar, Ger, and Chabad. But when confronted with the choice, the Piaseczner Rebbe decided to stay and justified this by citing the words of Aaron when Moses castigates him for not eating a sacrifice after the death of his children—­“ha-­yitav be-­‘eyney ha-­Shem?” (Lev. 10:19)—­would such action have been good, would it have been proper, would it have found favor in the eyes of God? Of course, the Piaseczner Rebbe knew the mandate and obligation to preserve one’s life in such circumstances. But, suggested the rebbe, those rules cannot pertain here; God does not want me to save myself by abandoning my flock. It had to be the will of God that he remain with his students and followers, even unto his death.98 So how do we carry out this clarification, developing the discernment required to know as an individual what it is that God asks of me at any moment? It is extraordinarily difficult. One must root out any self-­interest through penetrating introspection. In his Mevo ha-­She‘arim, a bold work that is essentially a handbook for the cultivation of prophecy, the Piaseczner Rebbe describes what to do in a situation where one lacks a sense of direction.99 Sometimes when there are robust explanations for two sides of any issue, one cannot use logic to proclaim with certainty which of them is true or most correct. Be still, recommends the Piaseczner, and in that quiet and sacred contemplative space a different voice will come through. That inner flash—­that still, small voice—­is the voice of God coursing through the human unconscious and into the realm of the intellect. 188

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Yet most people will not attain this stage persistently. Should I come to hear the voice of the Divine with clarity and perspicuity, once or even twice, it would be enough for me. It is nearly impossible to know what God demands of us with total certainty. And so, in addition to the tools of introspection, it can be essential to have a teacher and quite helpful to find a hevruta—­a steadfast partner with whom to study.100 The role of such people is not necessarily to tell you what to do, although in some cases their outsider’s perspective can help reveal elements of your self (either unlocked potential or masked egotism) that were hidden even to you. But the roles of the master and a colleague are akin, for both demonstrate through lived example how others struggle with these same questions. They too seek to answer the call of the Divine, and in their struggle for authenticity and integrity they demonstrate how such a never-­ending quest may be bravely maintained.101 Yet we in the Neo-­Hasidic world know that even such teachers and trusted companions cannot always provide us with definitive answers; to borrow a turn of phrase from the Chatam Sofer, “No two hearts are ever alike in the service of God.”102

Aggadah and Halakhah Contemporary Jewish discourse generally erects a sturdy wall between the realm of spirituality and aggadah on one hand and the kingdom of halakhah on the other. Although the division between halakhah and aggadah in classical Rabbinic literature is a matter of genre more than it is two isolated realms or projects,103 medieval Jewish thought split into the pure Talmudism versus Kabbalah and philosophy; both of the latter were intellectual disciplines beyond the confines of halakhah.104 The casting of Judaism as a religion of law alone dates back to Spinoza or even Paul, whereas the contemporary forms of this argument originate in the early moments of Jewish modernity. Rooted in 189

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the teachings of Moses Mendelssohn and continuing in more recent works such as those of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a significant number of Jewish thinkers have sought to define Judaism exclusively in terms of halakhah and obedience thereto.105 Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, whose religious phenomenology is richly devotional, nonetheless rooted the realm of authentic Jewish experience exclusively in the practice of halakhah and the philosophy expressed by it.106 Some Jewish scholars have even suggested that because Judaism has no mandatory beliefs, indeed no theology (or spiritual vision whatsoever) is necessary or even desirable. Dyed-­in-­the-­wool legalists have become rarer as we have entered the twenty-­first century, but the influence of this way of thinking is still immense. This approach to Jewish life and practice may be summed up in the Rabbinic dictum quoted earlier: “After the destruction of the Temple, the blessed Holy One has only the four cubits of halakhah in this world.”107 This statement is often understood as asserting the primacy of halakhah over all other matters, for only halakhah provides a structure for the Divine after the Temple. Any philosophy or theology that is properly Jewish, says this line of reasoning, must be derived from the essential data of the halakhah, the empirical bedrock of all Jewish thought. This mode of thinking is most common in the contemporary Orthodox community, where halakhah is the dominant voice—­indeed, the alpha and the omega—­in most religious conversations. But many members of the liberal Jewish world also insist that halakhah and theology or aggadah are essentially disparate fields of study and realms of commitment that have little or nothing to do with one another. In these circles, commitment to theology and a quest for spirituality do not necessitate dedication to halakhah, understood as everything from customary rituals to superstitious practices—­some of which are relevant but a great many others anachronistic and out of place in the modern world. 190

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Taking our cue, however, from Heschel’s insistence on the full integration of halakhah and aggadah, perhaps we might read this text about God’s “four cubits” as conveying a very different message.108 The hurban, the razed Temple that reveals the brokenness of the cosmos, is most acutely visible in the fact that we render unto God only the four cubits of halakhah. A healed world, by contrast, will allow the Divine to dwell in our midst in a robust, holistic manner. One early nineteenth-­century Hasidic master presents an even stronger reading of this talmudic tradition.109 Ours is a world of absurdity, emptiness, and fracture, he says, and therefore it needs a home for God. In our contemporary reality this is surely halakhah. But to confuse the structure of the Temple with the actual godly presence within it, to mistakenly believe that the halakhah is self-­sufficient, is to make the very same error as the ancient Israelites when they assumed that God would never destroy His house. The Divine Presence that fills the dwelling place is the aggadah, the realm of the spirit, the call of morality and reason, and the spiritual quest and inner experience. In sum, halakhah may indeed be the ritual framework or domicile of the Divine, but aggadah is the actual inflowing of sacred energies into this structure. The perspective of Neo-­Hasidism encourages contemporary Jews on all sides of this debate to reconsider the interface between theology and halakhah, exploring the ways in which these two realms actually enrich and challenge each other in terms of conceptual process, communal experience, and the personal devotional life. Neo-­Hasidism affirms and upholds that theology and halakhah are inseparably intertwined. This is true in the realm of theory, but it is also true of the lived experience of the Jewish people, and the personal theology or devotional inner world of the private seeker. Neo-­Hasidism thus resists both of the extremes, demanding responsibility and calling upon us to balance the inner and exterior elements of our religious lives. This path includes intellectual contemplation, mystical love of God, and over191

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whelming awe before the Divine, but also demands that this interior work be expressed in concrete actions.110 Many scholars and Jewish thinkers have questioned the halakhah-­ aggadah binary, pointing out that these realms are inextricably linked even in classical Rabbinic literature.111 The laws of the synagogue and study hall, for example, are lifted from those governing our conduct in the Temple, an association grounded in aggadah with ramifications for the practice of halakhah. A similarly indivisible entwining of worlds is found in the sages’ teachings on tselem Elohim, or creation in the image of God.112 Perhaps the most interesting example of this cross-­pollination lies in the fact that the talmudic enumeration of 613 commandments originated as a homiletic statement of aggadah that was then reappropriated into the very heart of the halakhah! All discussions of the relationship between aggadah and halakhah are grounded in the following teaching of an early midrash. This source presents an invitational complement to the exclusive focus on legal elements of the Rabbinic corpus: The expounders of aggadot [i.e., aggadah] say: Do you want to know the One Who spoke and the world came into being? Study aggadah, through which you will come to know the One and cleave to His ways.113 Knowledge of God, what Jewish thinkers eventually came to describe as theology, is embodied in the narrative stories, the ethical messages, and the symbolic language of aggadah. This wisdom is not scholastic, of course, for it must spur one to action, reinfusing the practice of halakhah with additional layers of significance and power. According to this midrash, theological reflection must lead one to action and deeds. Answering the divine call and developing our mystical attunement to the Divine, as a Hasidic reading might, thus bridges from contemplation to action. 192

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My point here is not about the great importance of aggadah on its own but rather to demonstrate that Rabbinic, medieval, and modern theology, as well as personal spiritual reflection, may be used to interpret and at times reformulate the halakhah. This influence, of course, cuts in both directions: aggadah compels us to a certain action, inspiring us to find new theological significance and spiritual meaning through studying or performing the preexistent structures of halakhah. But I hope that the aggadah may yet be restored to its rightful place.114 It must come to serve as a reservoir for creativity and a spiritual, moral, and ethical voice—­imbricated with the voice of the law—­that reminds us of the centrality of God in all that we do, thus shaping the manner in which the halakhah is constructed and applied. The Jewish mythos has long dreamed of the return of the moon to a stature of fullness equal to that of the sun. Such is our dream for the restoration of the gentle illumination of the aggadah, the power of which is all too often diminished before the fiery strictures of the halakhah.115 To what extent may each point of halakhah be understood as making a theological claim?116 In other words, does every legal formulation or decision reveal something regarding one’s beliefs about God and the divine Will? Thus construed, debates over the contours of halakhah may also be read as disagreements among Jewish thinkers over the nature of God and the mandates of divine morality grounded in imitatio Dei. Treating the sources of halakhah, however, with the same spiritual sensitivity as theology requires an interpretive framework. Here I suggest adapting a version of the ancient PaRDeS, building on the work of Michael Fishbane and his recasting of Jewish hermeneutical theology.117 Fishbane himself applies this framework to the Bible and to the Jewish liturgy, but he suggests that this fourfold matrix may be applied to other kinds of Jewish literature. How might this paradigm guide our interpretation of halakhah?118 The term pardes is itself an ancient acronym for peshat, derash, remez, and sod, which represent four interrelated but distinct interpre193

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tive approaches to the experience and ideological content that emerge from the human encounter with the religious text. Rather than a strict hierarchy, a hermeneutical ladder of ascent, these forms exist together in our realm of lived experience; we inhabit them simultaneously, in different modalities, shuttling between them in moments of shifting consciousness and paradigm. Thinking what it might mean to study and perform halakhah through the theological lens of the aggadah, I offer the following description of these interpretive stages: Peshat: This stratum represents our first and most basic encounter with the halakhah: the text, the embodied practice it signifies, and the specific details governing its performance. We acknowledge the defined contours of what is understood as being forbidden and what is permitted, noting that the halakhah speaks through a multitude of particularities. We are cognizant of the shi‘ur, or definitional measurements of each mitzvah or halakhah, and we seek to know the scope and contours of the sacred deed. All subsequent interpretation begins with mindfulness of the specific features of each halakhah and conscious attentiveness to its details. Derash: Here we begin to seek out the relationship between this specific halakhah and the wealth of symbols present in the mythic imagination of Judaism. These associations may be drawn in light of conceptual affinity, linguistic similarity, or shared origins in a single biblical verse or text. Instead of seeing a halakhah or a mitzvah as an isolated unit of specifics, we engage with it now as a single thread in the exquisite web of theological symbols and rituals that guide and galvanize our religious lives. Remez: In the world of remez we begin to ask ourselves deeper questions of meaning. What are the ultimate human, existential, religious, and moral issues to which this halakhah gestures? What is the value, the ethical teaching, or the theological notion to which this mitzvah commands our attention? In this realm our exegesis will become increasingly personal and individual. Remez cannot be the same for different 194

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people as they gaze into the texts of our tradition, since this type of interpretation emerges precisely in the “white space” that exists in the encounter between the reader and the text. New and deeply personal exegesis emerges in light of the singularity of each individual’s life, but also because of how the Jewish tradition as a whole has shaped his or her spiritual and ethical character. The sources of our tradition have, in a way, escorted and taught us to gaze at the canon through the eyes of the individual. Sod: The constant journey toward ever deeper foci of contemplation, undertaken over the course of many years, leads the seeker or scholar into the very realm of the ineffable. This experience is unsayable, at least in its full complexity and profundity, for the boundaries of the self and the individual spirit melt away before the awesome power of the Divine. Here we encounter the heart, the innermost essence of the halakhah, a confrontation that leads beyond all specifics, indeed beyond all language. This moment of reaching the Divine Presence within the very heart of the text or the core of the sacred praxis is the goal of the interior journey. This vitality is the commanding divine Voice, the fragment of the Word uttered on Sinai that reverberates through all elements of halakhah. By stepping into the level of sod, entering the life-­breath that animates sacred deeds, we come to relive the moment of Revelation, being commanded once more but with greater immediacy, empowerment, and illumination. The most basic encounter with halakhah is that of the peshat. Most people in a particular community perform—­and experience—­the halakhah in a similar manner, though of course there may be a range of acceptable approaches in that group. There is coherence, if not conformity, and a sense of security and support that comes through communal obligation and performance. As one enters into the halakhah more and more deeply, however, his or her relationship to text, to the experience of the halakhah, and to its theological significance will become increasingly personal. Instead of trying to extract a set of immutable, 195

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hidden first principles from the raw data of halakhah, I suggest that all practitioners—­seeker and scholar alike—­see themselves as charged with developing a unique relationship to and understanding of halakhah. The polyvalent and expansive realms of derash, remez, and sod cannot be the same for all people. Yet cohesion in the realm of exegesis and experience is not necessarily even desirable, for the search for meaning and profundity is inherently a personal one. It is to journey into the kingdoms of aggadah hidden within the ever-­unfolding halakhah; one dips, for a moment, into the shining, shimmering pool of light that invigorates and enlivens the halakhah. The farther we go into these sacred and uncharted depths, the more one traces the essence of the halakhah back to its ultimate Root. This awareness and illumination may be something that one wishes to share with other seekers and fellow-­travelers, but it may also be an evocative resonance entirely of one’s own. This provides balance between the values of personalized, individual experience and communal cohesiveness. One reacclimates, as it were, in the return from this inner awakening of the heart to the structure of halakhah, rejoining the communal praxis but doing so as a changed being. But does this illumination lead one to alter his or her own practice? In some cases I believe that it must. As one enters the realm of sod, one attains a new type of intimate knowledge bestowed by the Divine. The inverse return through the layers of remez, derash, and peshat means that these are also infused with a new type of meaning, and, when necessary, they are brought into line with the understanding cultivated in the world of sod. But if so, this element of the quest does pose a challenge for issues of the community standards and individual praxis. The fact that communities must determine for themselves how the halakhah must be applied in their unique situation is an expansion of the autonomy granted to the inner life of the private individual. The personal reverberations and moral, theological, and spiritual imperatives that emerge from venturing into the realm of aggadah may either 196

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complement or challenge the classical halakhah. These attainments are a sort of interior revelation with which the scholar of halakhah as well as the theologian must work. Sharing of one’s individual experience may indeed provide fruitful conversation for the entire community. Might we daringly call this quest into and subsequent return from the ineffable, a journey beyond even the innermost reaches of the intellect, by the name of prophecy? Despite trepidation regarding the misuses of prophecy and philosophical arguments to the contrary, it is clear that the realms of nevu’ah and halakhah were never fully separated.119 The discourse of halakhah is studded with references to ruah ha-­kodesh (“the Holy” or “Divine Spirit”) and prophecy, not as ancillary citations but as spiritual illumination meant to inform the construction of the halakhah.120 References to nevu’ah or ruah ha-­kodesh are particularly common in Hasidic works of halakhah even to the present day. And Hasidic sources frequently refer to the emergent thoughts from the preconscious mind as a sublime, quiet form of prophetic visitation, thus requiring the same careful consideration due to any other divine revelation.121 Neo-­Hasidism does not cloak itself in the hubris of claiming the prophetic mantle. But the import of reading of halakhah through the looking glass of aggadah does not rest upon the authority of ruah ha-­kodesh. The quest into sod, the spiritual marrow of the halakhah, is a far suppler and less formalized power; it represents an avenue of intense contemplation that culminates in spiritual awakening, and, in some cases, an illuminated new perspective and thus a changed course of action: The challenges we have regarding Torah are there because of our “shells” (kelippot). A certain place remains hidden from us, causing an objection in our minds. But when we raise ourselves up to binah [the fiftieth gate and place of infinite rebirth] and there confront the pain of that objection, we come to see it from the vantage point of binah [i.e., from a deeper perspective] and thus defeat the shells 197

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[that were holding us back]. Then the truth is revealed: it was our own inner harshness that had set the curtain in place, dividing us from truth [and higher understanding]. When we ponder [the matter] and hold fast to binah, we take that harshness along with us and then come to sweeten it in its innermost source.122 The scholar plunges into the very deep ground of the self, reaching toward the earliest realms of conscious intellection. There, in the realm of sod, he or she will encounter the innermost moral or spiritual intuition that has been shaped by the aggadah that clothes the One Who spoke and brought the world into being. Perhaps Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, the author of this source, is suggesting only that venturing into the world of binah will allow us to see the astounding beauty of the halakhah in its present form, its previously hidden grace and magnificence. But even the deepest contemplation and studied appreciation cannot make all classical halakhah beautiful. Our moral intuition, an inner force that is also grounded firmly in the tradition and shaped by the ever-­beckoning voice of the aggadah, reminds us that something must give. Thus we might also read the Hasidic source above as suggesting something more revolutionary. From this precious interior vista, gazing forth from the expansive vantage point of the innermost world, one may come to see another potential path along which the halakhah should be trained to unfold. Then, imbued with this realization wrought from the sod, we need only to grasp hold of the courage to shepherd the halakhah toward this new position. Hasidic teachings often remind us that an ancient alphabet cypher can turn the word mitzvah into none other than Y-­H-­W-­H, the most sacred and ineffable name of God, when applied to the first two letters.123 A mitzvah is thus a sacred deed, a divine command that is both partially revealed and partially hidden. The realms of the hidden spirit and revealed deed are totally entwined. Here I take this to refer to the 198

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intertwining of halakhah (revealed praxis in the physical world) with aggadah (spiritual experience, journey, personal theological reflection), which together spell out the sacred divine name that is the source of all Being. Thus our understanding of halakhah would reflect the independence of halakhah and aggadah, not as binary categories but two, interwoven streams feeding into the mighty river of our tradition. This theology of halakhah prepares us to answer the question as to why the study of halakhic texts is still important. Of course, one must know how and what to do, and, more importantly, one must be immersed in the sources of halakhah to be able to work with it creatively and authentically. But a Neo-­Hasidic approach to the study of halakhah means more. As noted earlier, all texts, including legal ones, may be read through a Hasidic lens of devotion and spiritual seeking. Not only are Rabbinic legends and biblical narratives to be interpreted in this way; materials from the Bible to the Shulchan Arukh can also be interpreted as offering something toward inward devotion. Exegetes like Rabbi Soloveitchik, a darshan as well as a legalist, and Rabbi David Hartman were brilliant at eliciting this type of meaning. They saw the philosophical underpinnings of Jewish legal discourse, teasing them out so that the story of halakhah spoke to and articulated the most profound Jewish—­and enduring human—­questions. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach accomplished this as well, in his own way, as is evident in the teaching included in A New Hasidism: Roots, the companion volume to this book. This type of study is what the Hasidic masters called ‘al derekh ha-­ ‘avodah: reading and interpreting a text as a form of sacred service. In a sense the act of study itself has power. Studying halakhah well is a very difficult enterprise, for it requires precision and attention to detail as well as tremendous breadth. According to the Lurianic tradition, immersing oneself in the difficult ideas of halakhah shatters the tough “husks” that surround the sparks of divinity. In the psychological and spiritual language of Hasidism, these are the things that hold us back and obscure our vision of divine unity. 199

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In my role as a teacher of Talmud and halakhah in addition to Jewish thought and theology, this is what I try to do. I ask my students: How does it shape you as person? How does it bring you closer to God? How does it mend the world? How can this text allow me to grow as a person? A devotionally oriented Neo-­Hasidic interpretation of a talmudic passage or a section of halakhah may affect the bottom line of how a ritual or commandment is to be practiced. More often, this theological scaffolding adds new intellectual layers or spiritual dimensions to the religious experience shaped by these halakhot. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Hasidism, asks: Why must we continue to study the Talmud after the many codes of Jewish law have already been written?124 Don’t these tell us just what to do? The Talmud, answers Rabbi Shneur Zalman, is the quarry of raw material, the conceptual universe from which we can construct a nearly infinite array of new ideas. He describes these new structures as a veritable sukkah, a protected dwelling place that insulates us against the forces of spiritual ossification, rote worship, and intellectual myopia. This is his interpretation of the verse: “I have placed My words in your mouth, and with the shadow of My hand I have protected you” (Isa. 51:16)—­the great sea of Torah as it unfolds across the generations is truly the sheltering hand of the Divine.125 We must never forget, not for a moment, the notion that mitzvah is a tsavta, a bond or connection that links us to God and to other people. The commandments allow us to transcend our ordinary consciousness. This approach to the mitzvot shapes our understanding of the entire project of Jewish law and observance; their ultimate goal must be to guide us toward an experience of radical intimacy with the Divine. Halakhah should never become stagnant; it is supple, constantly changing and evolving. Yet the divine voice that resonates within the halakhah makes real and profound claims upon us. There are moments of creativity and innovation, but there are also moments of submission and obeisance. Once again, translating halakhah as “law” is more mis200

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leading than it is helpful, just as plainly rendering the idea of a mitzvah as “commandment” obscures its power to forge an intimate connection between the human and divine realms. Halakhah is the sacred way, the path through which we are called to construct the tabernacle of our lives and thus to build a dwelling place for God in the world.

The Leader and Role Model Explorations of halakhah, even theoretical discussions focused more on issues of the spirit than formal jurisprudential procedure, must engage with the question of authority. Who has the credentials to decide halakhah? What are the controls that set the limits of its evolution and development (as well as its arrest)? Who is permitted to enter into this process and who is excluded, whether for lack of knowledge or communal standing? As an individual whose formative years were spent in America, I value the role of the individual immensely. Yet I understand and affirm that halakhah is also a communal practice, and in this we cannot hope to neatly divide between private and public religious lives. It may not matter much to other people which blessing I choose to recite before certain types of food, but the halakhot that govern issues such as prayer, kashrut, Shabbat, and so forth have communal implications as well. Some traditional Hasidic communities have a posek or chief dayyan (that is, a rabbinic judge) in addition to their rebbe (whose role is primarily spiritual), whereas in other groups the same person fulfills both functions. This centralized leadership even within the small community allows for cohesion and shared expectations as well as standards. The Neo-­Hasidic community is home to so many different understandings of halakhah that it will never have a single voice on this subject; nor will it ever have a single leader in matters of the spirit or practice. Halakhah as the manifestation of the inner world of the indi201

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vidual cannot be reduced to an issue of public policy. This does not mean, however, that halakhah should be an unregulated enterprise in which each person has absolute license to decide independently for himself or herself how, what, and whether to practice. In all this presents a rich and complex tension that points toward the indispensable role of the community, the private sphere, and the spiritual leader. But such tensions are a part of the Hasidic legacy as well: The Oral Torah changes according to the sages of the generation. This one says such-­and-­such, and another says something different. The conduct of the halakhah accords with the generations. Rashi decided that tefillin should be donned in one way, and Rabbeinu Tam decided that it be done in a different manner.126 The truth is that the halakhah follows the attribute [middah] with which the blessed One directs the world [in that particular age]. If it is conducted by means of [divine] love [i.e., hesed], then the halakhah accords with the sage whose position reflects that. If it is tiferet, then the halakhah follows that one. This explains why Israel lovingly desired to receive the Torah [on Mount Sinai], for they said, “We will do and we will understand” [Exod. 24:7], but at first did not want to receive the Oral Torah. . . . It was difficult for them [to grasp] that the Oral Torah would change in accord with the tsaddik of each generation. He causes the world to be directed by a certain [divine] attribute, and so too is it with halakhah of the Oral Torah.127 Surely Rabbi Levi Yitzhak—­the official rabbi and court head of the important Lithuanian community of Pinsk and then Berditchev—­ was not advocating religious anarchy, a legal free-­for-­all in which the preference for human autonomy led each leader to develop his own unique version of the halakhah. He was more cautious, suggesting that the transformation of the law must happen on a communal, perhaps 202

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even a national scale. But change must begin with the tsaddikim, for only they have developed the sacred attunement necessary to discern how the law is to be formulated in this time and place. Halakhah cannot be reshaped to reflect fleeting whims of private individuals. This suggests an elitist approach, since change emerges exclusively from the intellectual and spiritual leadership. Tsaddikim alone understand the different attributes with which God engages the world, and, more importantly, only they have been entrusted with the power to command these divine attributes. Tsaddikim occupy a different place in the Neo-­Hasidic community. Elsewhere in this volume Ebn Leader argues for the role of a mashpia‘, a teacher whom one trusts not only as a confidant and a spiritual mentor but as a guide to help shape one’s personal practice. This may not mean issuing a formal ruling, as would a traditional posek, but rather demonstrating through lived example how the practice should be performed. Halakhah is, after all, halikhah—­it is a path, a journey undertaken as an individual but in the context of sacred communities. We need to have, as Heschel suggested, text-­people people rather than textbooks.128 This is true in the world of ethics, but true also in the world of ritual performance: Rabbi Yitshak of Vurke explained the talmudic teaching, “Anyone who studies laws [halakhot] each day will earn a place in the World to Come,”129 as follows: this refers to a person who has attained [a high rung of ] Torah [zakhah ba-­torah] and is connected to the blessed One. He does nothing lightly, not even moving one of his limbs, for all of his actions are performed for the sake of God. Everything that he does is called halakhah, for he walks in the path of the One [holekh be-­darkhei ha-­Shem]. This is the meaning of the sages’ teaching, “Anyone who studies halakhot each day . . .”—­ each of this person’s deeds throughout the entire day is halakhah. This is the meaning of the verse, “worldly ways [halikhot ‘olam] are 203

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his” [Hab. 3:6]—­the entire world [‘olam] was created for the sake of people like this, for they bring great pleasure to the blessed Holy One and His shekhinah. If one achieves this level, in which all of his deeds, actions, and feelings are devoted to God alone and not undertaken for any ulterior reason, he will always be connected to the Torah. All of his actions are God’s Torah. The ultimate goal of Torah is to become connected to God, and the six hundred and thirteen commandments are prescriptions for achieving this rung. . . . But this type of path is extremely difficult. He must keep his eyes trained on the target and never miss. None of his actions should seem trivial. It is as if he is ascending a rope above a stormy sea. He must take care and focus all of his attention not to lean to one side or the other. If he inclines even a hairbreadth, he will plunge into the sea.130 This text bridges from the question of personal situation (addressed in a preceding section) to the place of the earnest worshipper or seeker as a role model or image to be emulated by others. Such an individual cannot simply be mimicked by his friends and followers, for that which is one person’s Torah—­one’s own unique quest or task in this world—­ does not have the same importance for the onlookers. Integrity, introspection, and honest self-­awareness are key values, for the outer deeds that become Torah are only so because the inner font of inspiration has been brought into attunement. The stakes are very high, for even a moment of inattention and inauthenticity can cast the entire project into the roiling depths of the sea. Classical Hasidism believes that the rebbe’s legal formulation actually has the power to channel and transform reality. The tsaddik understands the matter with total clarity and confidence; one glance at the face of the questioner is enough for him to diagnose the problem and to determine the halakhah in every case. Of course, there is a voice in 204

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Hasidism also, brought to the fore in Neo-­Hasidism, that says nobody—­ not even the rebbe—­can tell me what I need to do. But this independent, even iconoclastic impulse is counterbalanced by a firm belief that our teachers should serve as living examples of what it means to walk toward the Divine with integrity, passion, dignity, and commitment.131 This point about the centrality of teachers brings us to the conclusion of this essay. As has long been true of Hasidism, I see a crucial distinction between submission to God and submission to the Shulchan Arukh. But what of submission to a teacher? This too is central to my spiritual path, though such obeisance never becomes complete dependence. My openness to command from the Divine beyond is linked to my willingness to receive binding instruction from a human teacher. Martial arts taught me that one must submit not only to the goal, whether it be attaining a black belt or achieving deveikut, but also to the very journey itself. Yes, indeed, it takes a great deal of trust to say to a teacher that I will walk surefootedly down his path. This is what the Hasidic masters and other Jewish thinkers call emunat hakhamim, or “faith in the sages.” In the dojo I learned to trust my teacher, both because of the esteemed lineage he represented and his creative additions to the project he inherited from his own masters. Here I make a crucial distinction between this sort of faith and the later phenomenon of da‘at torah, or unquestioning, absolute submission to a halakhic authority in all spheres of one’s life.132 The role of the sensei, loosely translated as “one who has gone before,” is to give the student the discipline and the inspiration to become a confident, unique, and self-­sufficient practitioner. The role of the rebbe, as I see it, should be similar. I recently heard the following teaching in the name of the name of Rabbi Shlomo Twerski of Denver. Between every person and God, said Rabbi Twerski, there is a baffling maze. Our job in this world is to strive forward with bravery and, over the course of our lifetime, make progress to the best of our ability. But the rebbe has an addi205

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tional responsibility. The task of the tsaddik is to tell others about the dead ends he found. Rabbi Twerski explains that our teachers are neither superheroes nor perfect conduits for divine instruction. They too are on the path, but they have the courage to share their journey with others.133 In many respects my quest into Neo-­Hasidism has been a search for roots and discipleship. Unwilling to join a Hasidic community, even one that is relatively open to outsiders, I have looked for teachers who electrify and challenge me, masters whose lineage I can accept and whose teachings and demands I can follow with integrity. I have thus committed myself to a Neo-­Hasidic community with a long tradition of seeking to become grafted onto the tree of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, to use the image often invoked by Reb Zalman. We have a legacy of brokenness as well, a break originating in the nineteenth-­century confrontation with modernity and the terrible, shattering break caused by the Holocaust. But, despite this very real fracture, Neo-­Hasidism has succeeded in establishing a lineage for itself that may be traced to the very heart of Hasidism, and I have put my faith in this accrued wisdom from across the generations. The Neo-­Hasidic part of my commitment to halakhah is very much about joining this legacy. The teachers of my lineage set as their task the quest to reclaim the spiritual vocabulary and symbolic language of Hasidism for the contemporary seeker. Carrying forward this project with humility and reverence, my goal in the present essay has been to do the same for the realms of halakhah for our Neo-­Hasidic community. Notes

1. See Isadore Twersky, “Religion and Law,” in Shlomo Dov Goitein, ed., Religion in a Religious Age (Cambridge ma: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974), 69–­82; Jacob Katz, “Law, Spirituality and Society,” Jewish Social Studies 2, no. 2 (1996): 87–­98, 105–­8. For an exploration of the relationship between law and spirit in Jewish mysticism, see Elliot R. Wolfson, 206

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Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 187–­285. 2. See Maoz Kahana and Ariel Evan Mayse, “Hasidic Halakhah: Reappraising the Interface of Spirit and Law,” ajs Review 41, no. 2 (2017): 375–­408; and Ariel Evan Mayse, “The Ever-­Changing Path: Visions of Legal Diversity in Hasidic Literature,” Conversations: The Journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals 23 (2015): 84–­115. 3. Here the reference to the Orthodox community is deliberate, though this essay stresses that denominational labels are particularly problematic when we come to speak about halakhah as a spiritual discipline. On one hand, there is currently a desire to foster a much more serious and spiritually attuned dedication to halakhah in Conservative circles, reflecting the movement’s long-­standing critical—­but intensely committed—­engagement with the discourse of Jewish law. And, on the other hand, many Orthodox communities have become increasingly vocal about the crisis resulting from a situation in which the observance of halakhah, though still determinant in shaping patterns of life, is more a matter of inherited adherence to social norms than it is devotion to God. See Daniel J. Elazar and Rela Mintz Geffen, The Conservative Movement in Judaism: Dilemmas and Opportunities (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), esp. 146–­47, 167–­69. On Orthodoxy as a social identity whose boundaries demarcate the group vis-­à-­vis all others, see Michael K. Silber, “The Emergence of Ultra-­Orthodoxy: The Invention of a Tradition,” in Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), 23–­84; Adam S. Ferziger, Exclusion and Hierarchy: Orthodoxy, Nonobservance, and the Emergence of Modern Jewish Identity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); David Ellenson, After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2004). 4. See Levi Cooper, “The Assimilation of Tikkun Olam,” Jewish Political Studies Review 25, nos. 3–­4 (2013): 10–­42. 5. Thus Neo-­Hasidism cannot be called posthalakhic in the way that it is a postdenominational or postcritical movement. Compare Shaul Magid, American Post-­Judaism: Identity and Renewal in a Postethnic Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 111–­32. 6. This theoretical pluralism is, of course, checked by limited practical application as communities accept certain positions or practices. 207

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7. See Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, trans. Maurice Friedman (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 3; and Martin Buber, “Jewish Religiosity,” in Martin Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. E. Jospe (New York: Schocken, 1967), 80. See also Franz Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1955), 72–­92, 111–­18; and Buber’s explanation of his position in a letter to Maurice Friedman in The Letters of Martin Buber, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer and Paul Mendes-­Flohr, trans. Richard and Clara Winston and Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1991), no. 624, 576–­77. 8. To see Buber’s interpretation of Judaism as purely antinomian is thus an unfortunate reduction. He is better described as an anomian, or better, a metanomian thinker; see Paul Mendes-­Flohr, “Martin Buber’s Reception among Jews,” Modern Judaism 6, no. 2 (1986): 111–­26; and Paul Mendes-­ Flohr, “Law and Sacrament: Ritual Observance in Twentieth-­Century Jewish Thought,” in Arthur Green, ed., Jewish Spirituality, vol. 2, From the Sixteenth-­Century Revival to the Present (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 317–­45. 9. See Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1955), 320–­35; and Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Toward an Understanding of Halacha,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996), 127–­45; and compare the composite picture of halakhah that emerges from the essays “Jewish Theology,” “Hasidism as a New Approach to Torah,” “The Mystical Element in Judaism,” “God, Torah, and Israel,” and his critical remarks about Buber’s relationship to Jewish praxis in “Interview at Notre Dame,” all included in Moral Grandeur. See also Samuel H. Dresner, Heschel, Hasidism, and Halakha (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); and Arthur Green, “God’s Need for Man: A Unitive Approach to the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel,” Modern Judaism 35, no. 3 (2015): 247–­61. 10. In this Heschel is pushing back against the ethos presented in works such as Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983). See Dresner, Heschel, 102–­5. 11. See Micha Odenheimer, “On Orthodoxy: An Interview with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach,” Gnosis 16 (1990): 46–­49. 12. Reb Zalman’s most recent and mature thinking on this subject appears in Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi and Daniel Siegel, Integral Halachah: Transcending and Including (Victoria bc: Trafford, 2007). 208

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13. See Green’s little-­known Hebrew missive “Havurat Shalom: Mikhtav le-­ Haver Orthodoxi,” Petahim 13 (1970). 14. Arthur Green, Judaism’s Ten Best Ideas: A Brief Guide for Seekers (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2014), 19–­27. More broadly, see Arthur Green, Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2003), 72–­92; Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 2010), 113, 166; and Ariel Evan Mayse’s remarks in his essay “Arthur Green: An Intellectual Portrait,” in Hava Tirosh-­Samuelson, Arthur Green: Hasidism for Tomorrow (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 38–­42. 15. This subtle distinction between halakhah and Western conceptions of “law” is a foundation stone of the conception of halakhah presented in this essay. For this reason, this work differs significantly from those of many erudite scholars exploring halakhah (and its contemporary formulation) from the perspectives of philosophy of law and legal theory. The devotional tenor of this chapter—­essentially an invitational, personal work of confessional theology—­leads this author in a very different direction. 16. See Heschel, God in Search of Man, 325, where the author laments the translation of Torah as nomos as tragically limited. This specific point mirrors Buber’s own criticism of the use of nomos in the Septuagint translation, a likely, quite apparent, but unacknowledged influence on Heschel. 17. b. Niddah 73a. 18. See Green, Radical Judaism, 98. 19. See Abraham Joshua Heschel, Torah min ha-­Shamayim be-­Aspaklaryah shel ha-­Dorot (New York, 1962, 1995), translated into English as Heavenly Torah: As Refracted through the Generations, trans. and ed. Gordon Tucker (New York: Continuum, 2005); Benjamin Sommer, Revelation and Authority: Sinai in Jewish Scripture and Tradition (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2015). 20. The work of Tamar Ross on feminism provides a pathbreaking example for how notions of continuous revelation may inform our contemporary religious lives; see her Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism (Lebanon nh: Brandeis University Press, 2004). 21. Va-­yikra Rabbah 22:1. 22. b. Shabbat 105a. 23. b. Hagigah 18a. 209

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24. See Christine Hayes, What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives (Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 2015); Jacob Katz, Divine Law in Human Hands: Case Studies in Halakhic Flexibility (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1998). 25. Franz Rosenzweig, “The Builders,” in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, esp. 85. See Paul Mendes-­Flohr, “Rosenzweig and Kant: Two Views of Ritual and Religion,” in Jehuda Reinharz and Daniel Swetschinski, eds., Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians: Essays in Jewish Intellectual History in Honor of Alexander Altmann (Durham nc: Duke University Press, 1982), 315–­41; and Ephraim Meir, Letters of Love: Franz Rosenzweig’s Spiritual Biography and Oeuvre in Light of the Gritli Letters (New York: Peter Lang, 2006). 26. See the letter in Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 111. 27. Nahum Glatzer’s note to this passage explains that it is in “reference to Israel’s arrival at Mount Sinai. The classical commentators take ‘this day’ to mean: ‘The words of the Torah shall always be new to you as if the Torah were given—­today.’” 28. See Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 113. 29. See Rosenzweig, On Jewish Learning, 119. 30. For example, see Keter Shem Tov (New York: Kehot Publication Society, 2004), no. 121, 69. 31. The following definition of teshuvah offered by Reb Zalman, which appears in Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, eds., A New Hasidism: Roots (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2019), the companion to the present volume, is precisely the sense in which the term is meant here: “The beginning and the end of a Hasid’s spiritual path is teshuvah, continually ‘turning’ one’s awareness back to the divine source, remembering from whence we come and our common identity in the divine being. Teshuvah is also repentance, a reorientation to a radical humility that serves as the foundation for true righteousness in our world. No matter how righteous one appears or feels oneself to be, there is always room for repentance; for the paradox of true righteousness is the requirement of self-­abasement, realizing one’s utter inability to serve God perfectly and humbling oneself in response.” 32. Building on the Hasidic interpretation of Ezekiel 1:14, which reads the word hayot (angels), described as passing back and forth before God’s chariot, as hiyut or “life force.” 33. Nahman of Bratslav, Likkutey ‘Etsot (Jerusalem: n.p., 2002), teshuvah, no. 10, 232–­33. Compare Likkutey Moharan 1:12. Reb Shlomo referred 210

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to this quest as finding one’s “elevator Torah” in the “Torah of the Nine Months” teaching included in Green and Mayse, A New Hasidism: Roots. 34. See Elliot R. Wolfson, “Walking as a Sacred Duty: Theological Transformation of Social Reality in Early Hasidism,” in Ada Rapoport-­Albert, ed., Hasidism Reappraised (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1996), 180–­207. 35. This point about the necessary reach of halakhah to the nitty-­gritty spheres of life (and the incorporation of the mundane into the sacred by means of law) was made with great eloquence in Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, 32, 40–­48, 108–­9. 36. David Hartman sought to articulate a theology of Jewish practice, drawing sources from rabbinic and philosophical works rather than from mystical literature; see David Hartman, The God Who Hates Lies: Confronting and Rethinking Jewish Tradition (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2011). This work, however, was unmistakably penned in Hartman’s twilight years, and the book is strikingly pessimistic about the possibility of formulating such a halakhah infused with spiritual values. 37. R. Moshe Isserles (ReMA) begins his gloss to the Shulchan Arukh as follows: “‘I have set Y-­H-­W-­H before me always’ [Ps. 16:8]—­this is a great principle in Torah and among the virtues of the righteous who journey [holkhim] in the presence of God [lifney ha-­Shem]”; see his comments to Orah Hayyim 1:1. Being mindful that every deed happens before the One, indeed the ultimate goal of a life of halakhah means that there are no ordinary moments and there are no mundane actions. ReMA’s notes, the authoritative Ashkenazi commentary to perhaps the single most influential code of halakhah, call us to envision halakhah as cultivating—­as well as being enriched by—­an awareness of standing in the presence of God. 38. Heschel, God in Search of Man, 162. 39. There is a talmudic story about a sage who complained about the inefficacy of a religious practice rumored to have apotropaic (i.e., protective) powers. Chastising the rabbi, a colleague reminded him that the greatest reward is not material benefit of any kind but simply to stand in the presence of the King; see b. Berakhot 9b. 40. Sefat Emet, pesah 5636. 41. See, among others, b. Bava Metsi‘a 37a . 42. For example, see Likkutey Amarim—­Tanya (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1956), chap. 46. 43. Quoted in the famous Barayta de-­Rabbi Yishma‘el, now recited as part of the morning prayer service. 211

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44. Sefat Emet, pekkudei 5652. 45. Sefat Emet, toledot 5633. 46. b. Hagigah 19b. 47. Me’or ‘Eynayim, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: n.p., 2012), be-­shalah, 170–­71. 48. Abraham Isaac Kahn, ed., Likkutim Yekarim—­Yosher Divrei Emet (Jerusalem: n,p., 1973), no. 35, fol. 130b, referring to the Lurianic work Peri Ets Hayyim, sha’ar ha-­zemirot, chap. 4. 49. Mey ha-­Shiloah (Brooklyn: n.p., 1973), pt. 2, mattot, fol. 33b. 50. Bereshit Rabbah 44:1. 51. See y. Yevamot 12:1; compare Tosafot to b. Berakhot 14a and b. Bava Batra 2a; and the comments of Mordechai ben Hillel to the very beginning of b. Bava Metsi’a 7. See also Israel Ta-­Shma, Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2006); and Daniel Sperber’s magisterial eight-­volume work Minhagei Yisra’el: Mekorot ve-­toladot (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1989–­2007), which explores the role of custom in Jewish life and literature across the many centuries. 52. Many Neo-­Hasidim also live in the world artfully described by Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 28, no. 4 (1994): 64–­130. 53. For a moving description of the power of supererogatory piety, see Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno, Esh Kodesh (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2008), hukkat, 264–­69; and Nehemia Polen, “Miriam’s Dance: Radical Egalitarianism in Hasidic Thought,” Modern Judaism 12, no. 1 (1992): 1–­21. 54. Robert Cover makes a crucial point in “The Folktales of Justice: Tales of Jurisdiction,” Capital University Law Review 14 (1985): 181–­82: “My position is very close to a classical anarchist one—­with anarchy understood to mean the absence of rulers, not the absence of law. Law, I argued, is a bridge in normative space connecting [our understanding of ] the ‘world-­that-­is’ (including the norms that ‘govern’ and the gap between those norms and the present behavior of all actors) with our projections of alternative ‘worlds-­that-­might-­be’ (including alternative norms that might ‘govern’ and alternative juxtapositions of imagined actions with those imagined systems of norms. . . . The organized behavior of other groups and the commitments of actors within them have as sound a claim to the word ‘law’ as does the behavior of state officials 212

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. . . . Each community builds its bridges with the materials of sacred narrative that take as their subject much more than what is commonly conceived as the ‘legal.’” Cover’s formulation of the communal right to self-­determination, which clearly reflects a certain thrust of halakhic discourse and values, suggests that the construction of halakhah need not be understood as a purely “top-­down” injunction set out by rabbinic authorities. The practice agreed upon and adhered to by local groups, from intimate fellowships to synagogues or perhaps even the community of an entire city, takes on “canonical” status by dint of its practitioners’ commitment. See the discussion of this passage in Gordon Tucker, “The Sayings of the Wise are Like Goads: An Appreciation of the Works of Robert Cover,” Conservative Judaism 45, no. 3 (1993): 28–­30. This point about the nexus of law and empowered community has deep roots in the Jewish political tradition, emerging from the intersection of halakhah with Greek and medieval theories of the polity; see Menachem Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford ca: Stanford University Press, 2001). 55. See b. Berakhot 6a; and compare Shemot Rabbah 30:9. 56. See Sam Berrin Shonkoff, “The Two Tablets: On Dissolving Ethical-­ Theological Dualism in Sacred Attunement,” Journal of Religion 93, no. 4 (2013): 434–­51, which highlights the dissipation of such boundaries in the writings of Professor Michael Fishbane. 57. No’am Elimelekh (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978), balak, 448–­49. 58. See Tikkunei Zohar, tikkun 10, fol. 25b; Tikkunei Zohar, tikkun 45, fol. 82b. 59. See the first two chapters of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, hilkhot mamrim. 60. This notion of a divine Will that is not coterminous with the codified law emerges from the theology of the medieval German Pietists; see Haym Soloveitchik, “Three Themes in the Sefer Hasidim,” ajs Review 1 (1976): 311–­58. See also the discussion in Asher Weiss, Minhat Asher: Bereshit (Jerusalem: n.p., 2004), no. 21, 127–­34. 61. A paradigm for thinking about this comes from Moshe Shmuel Glasner, Dor Revi‘i (New York: n.p., 2004), hakdamah, where the author discusses the way halakhah should respond to the development of moral standards as well as innate ethical principles that exist independent of explicit divine commands. Of course, Soloveitchik’s Halakhic Man is a sort of modern paean to human creativity. But the thrust of his argument is subtly conservative, because the principles of such innovation are themselves 213

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absolutely atemporal and unchanging. See also his “Majesty and Humility,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 17, no. 2 (1978): 25–­37. 62. The normative, compassionate thrust of halakhah has always been to search for leniency when faced with cases involving a mamzer or agunah, to cite but two endemic and heartbreaking examples of injustice in the face of the law. 63. This point is often made regarding the disobedient elder, the impudent and rebellious child, the sotah ritual, and so forth. For example, see b. Sanhedrin 71a. See Moshe Halbertal, Interpretive Revolutions in the Making: Values as Interpretive Considerations in Midrashei Halakhah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1997) (Hebrew); and Daniel Statman, “Halakha and Morality: A Few Methodological Considerations.” Journal of Textual Reasoning 6, no. 1 (2010). See also Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (Rav ShaGaR), Halikhot ‘Olam: Halakhah ve-­Historiyah (Alon Shvut: Makhon Kitvei ha-­Rav Shagar, 2016). The works of the late author, a courageous Israeli teacher, scholar, and legal thinker, reveal a striking sensitivity to the role of history and mutual human-­divine engagement in the unfolding of halakhah. And, more broadly, see the thoughtful and compelling Avionam Rosenak, Halakha as an Agent of Change: Critical Studies in Philosophy of Halakhah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2009) (Hebrew). 64. There is a famous midrash about Daniel the tailor, quoted in Steven Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Madison wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 211–­12. See the exploration of this topic by Professor David Halivni, “Can a Religious Law Be Immoral?” in Arthur A. Chiel, ed., Perspectives on Jews and Judaism: Essays in Honor of Wolfe Kelman (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1978), 165–­70; Gordon Tucker, “God, the Good, and Halakhah.” Judaism 38, no. 3 (1989): 365–­76; and Moshe Silberg and Amihud I. Ben Porath, “Law and Morals in Jewish Jurisprudence.” Harvard Law Review 75, no. 2 (1961): 306–­31. See also the debate between H. L. A. Hart, “Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals,” Harvard Law Review 71 (1958): 593–­629, and Lon L. Fuller, “Positivism and Fidelity to Law: A Reply to Professor Hart,” Harvard Law Review 71 (1958): 630–­72. 65. See also Menachem Lorberbaum, “Hilkheta le-­Meshiha?: On the Religious Role of the Philosophy of Halakhah,” in Aviezer Ravitzky and Avinoam Rosenak, eds., ‘Iyyunim Hadashim be-­Filosofiya shel ha-­Halakhah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 97–­115 (Hebrew). 214

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66. b. Bava Metsi’a 30b. Compare m. Ketubot 9:2. 67. See Aharon Lichtenstein, “Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?” in Marvin Fox, ed., Modern Jewish Ethics: Theory and Practice (Columbus oh: Ohio State University Press, 1975), 62–­ 88; Aaron Kirschenbaum, Equity in Jewish Law: Beyond Equity: Halakhic Aspirationism in Jewish Civil Law (Hoboken nj: ktav; New York : Yeshiva University Press, 1991); Saul Berman, “Lifnim Mishurat Hadin,” Journal of Jewish Studies 26, no. 1 (1975): 86–­104; and part 2 in Journal of Jewish Studies 28, no. 2 (1977): 181–­93; Deborah Adèle Barer, “A Judge with No Courtroom: Law, Ethics and the Rabbinic Idea of Lifnim Mi-­Shurat Ha-­ Din” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2016). 68. b. Kiddushin 30a. 69. b. Makkot 22b. 70. Moshe Hayyim Efrayim of Sudilkov, Degel Mahaneh Efrayim (Jerusalem: n.p., 1976), bereshit, 5. 71. Perhaps we might even say that repudiating the capacity of Torah to flourish and blossom anew in each generation is tantamount to turning the ever-­blooming sacred Tree of Life into a moribund, formalistic Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. 72. See Maimonides’ formulation of this principle in Mishneh Torah, hilkhot shabbat 2, in which he foregrounds its religious and ethical significance. 73. See Daniel Sperber, “Congregational Dignity and Human Dignity: Women and Public Torah Reading,” Edah Journal 3, no. 2 (2002). 74. The reader may hear an echo of Ronald Dworkin’s argument about the necessity of legal interpretation in light of precedent and moral merit versus the generalizing theory of legal positivism; see, among others, Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1986); and Ronald Dworkin, “Law as Interpretation,” Critical Inquiry, issue on “The Politics of Interpretation,” 9, no. 1 (1982): 179–­200. 75. Holding these values, which must necessarily change and respond to the evolutionary unfolding of the human and divine conditions over time, as the guiding principles in the construction of halakhah puts this writer far afield of the position expressed in works such as David Novak, Natural Law in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Instead this author considers himself a student of thinkers such as Eliezer Berkovits, who affords priority to the ethical in light of human reason and common sense rather than an ethereal and intractable natural morality. See Eliezer Berkovits, “Law and Morality in Jewish Tradi215

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tion” and “The Nature and Function of Jewish Law,” in David Hazony, ed., Essential Essays on Judaism (Jerusalem: Shalem Press, 2002), 3–­40 and 41–­88. 76. See Daniel Sperber, “‘Friendly’ Halakhah and the ‘Friendly’ Poseq,” Edah Journal 5, no .2 (2006); Ari Ackerman, “‘Judging the Sinner Favorably’: R. Hayyim Hirschensohn on the Need for Leniency in Halakhic Decision-­ Making,” Modern Judaism 22, no. 3 (2002): 261–­80. 77. Doing so takes the logic of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in Iggerot Moshe (New York: n.p., 1985), even ha-­’ezer, vol. 4, no. 92, to its logical contemporary application. See also Ze’ev Levy, “Ethical Issues of Animal Welfare in Jewish Thought.” Judaism 45, no. 1 (1996): 47–­57. 78. See Deuteronomy 2:4 and 4:9, 15. See the incisive remarks on smoking by Rav Re’em ha-­Cohen in Shabbat be-­Shabbato, no. 1421 (2012), parashat aharei mot—­kedoshim,; and the discussion of the various issues at play in Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Asher Bush, chairman, “The Prohibition of Smoking in Halacha: A Ruling by the Va’ad Halacha,” 4 Tammuz 5766 (June 30, 2006), www​.rabbis​.org​/pdfs​/Prohibition​_Smoking​ _Full​_Translation​.pdf. 79. This issue exists in one form in North America and in a very different form in the modern state of Israel, where the renewal of Jewish religious life has taken place on a national—­rather than communal—­level. See Eliezer Berkovits, “The Spiritual Crisis in Israel,” in Hazony, Essential Essays on Judaism, 201–­12 and esp. 212: “Halacha, in its authentic function, must address itself to the Jewish people and not to members of congregational ideologies.” 80. This builds upon the conception of law offered by Robert Cover in his immortal “The Supreme Court 1982 Term—­Foreword: Nomos and Narrative,” Harvard Law Review 97 (1983–­84): 9: “Law may be viewed as a system of tension or a bridge linking a concept of reality to an imagined alternative—­that is, as a connective state between two states of affairs, both of which can be represented in their normative significance only through the devices of narrative . . . . But the concept of a nomos is not exhausted by its ‘alternity’; it is neither utopia nor pure vision. A nomos, as a world of law, entails the application of human will to an extant state of affairs as well as toward our visions of alternative futures. A nomos is a present world constituted by a system of tension between reality and vision.” 81. Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, Or ha-­Me’ir, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: n.p., 2000), 140. 216

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82. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Kotzk: The Struggle for Integrity, ed. Dror Bondi, trans. Daniel Reiser and Itiel Beeri (Jerusalem: Maggid, 2015), 74–­ 80 (Hebrew). 83. Emunat Yisra’el (Warsaw: n.p., 1917), fol. 94a–­b. 84. To name but a few studies on this topic, see Avi Sagi, The Open Canon: On the Meaning of Halakhic Discourse, trans. Batya Stein (London: Continuum, 2007); Christine E. Hayes, “Legal Truth, Right Answers and Best Answers: Dworkin and the Rabbis,” Diné Israel 25 (2008): 73–­121; Michael Rosensweig, “‘Elu va-­Elu Divrei Elokim Hayyim’: Halakhic Pluralism and Theories of Controversy,” Tradition 26, no. 3 (1992), 4–­23; Moshe Sokol, “What Does a Jewish Text Mean?: Theories of ‘Elu ve-­ Elu Divrei Elohim Hayim’ in Rabbinic Literature,” Daat 32–­33 (1994): xxiii–­xxxv. 85. See the comments of Nahmanides to this effect in his introduction to Malhamot Hashem, vol. 1, ed. Bernard Dov Chavel (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1963), 413–­14. This formulation mirrors Nahmanides’ remarks in the introduction to his critical gloss on Maimonides’ Sefer ha-­Mitzvot; for a partial translation, see Tucker, “Sayings of the Wise,” 37. 86. See his comments to b. Berakhot 8a. For other reflections on this shift and the pluralism that emerged from it, see Yaakov ben Asher, Arba ‘ah Turim (Jerusalem: n.p., 2015), orah hayyim, introduction; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, introduction, based on t. Sanhedrin 7:1 and t. Sotah 14:9; Moses de Leon, Sefer ha-­Rimmon, ed. Elliot R. Wolfson (Atlanta: Scholars, 1988), 366–­67; and compare Moshe Cordevero, Pardes Rimmonim (Jerusalem: n.p., 2016), 9:2; Isaiah Horowitz, Sheney Luhot ha-­Berit, toledot adam, beit hokhmah telita’ah, translated in Miles Krassen, Isaiah Horowitz: The Generations of Adam (New York: Paulist, 1996), 269. See also Gershom Scholem, “Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories in Judaism,” in Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1971), 282–­303. 87. b. Sanhedrin 6b. 88. On the dialectic of canonization and creativity, see Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1997). 89. See the fierce critique leveled by Rabbi Abraham ben David against the codifying impulse of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, described in Isadore Twersky, Rabad of Posquières: A Twelfth-­Century Talmudist, rev. ed. (Skokie il: Varda, 2001), 128–­97. 217

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90. See the description of this process offered by Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein in his “The Human and Social Factor in Halakhah,” Tradition 36, no. 1 (2002): 89–­114, where he reminds the reader of the classical division between pesak and pesikah and the elements that go into the formulation of each. See also Aaron Kirschenbaum, “Subjectivity in Rabbinic Decision-­Making,” in Moshe Sokol, ed., Rabbinic Authority and Personal Autonomy (Northvale nj: Jason Aronson, 1992), 61–­91. 91. See Kahana and Mayse, “Hasidic Halakhah” ; Jonathan Garb, Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 150–­55. 92. A teaching is quoted in the name of the Ba‘al Shem Tov on the verse, “It is not good for a person to be alone”: solitude and isolation allow one’s ego to grow unchecked, whereas religious growth becomes possible through creative engagement with others. See Sefer Ba‘al Shem Tov ‘al ha-­torah (Jerusalem: n.p., 2007), no. 121, 84–­85. 93. In this, the supple flexibility in light of one’s personal condition should be distinguished from the more systematic rebuilding of a category of halakhah or specific praxis in light of a different ethical mandate or religious value. 94. Kahn, Likkutim Yekarim, no. 23, fol. 4b. 95. Kahn, Likkutim Yekarim, no. 11, 2b. 96. Quoted in Moshe Menahem Walden, ed., Ohel Yitzhak (Piotrków: n.p., 1914), fol. 42a–­b. 97. Based on Herzl Hefter, “‘In God’s Hands’: The Religious Phenomenology of R. Mordechai Yosef of Izbica,” Tradition 46, no. 1 (2013): 49, citing Mey ha-­Shiloah, va-­yeshev. 98. Nehemia Polen originally heard this story from Rabbi Shalom Noah Berezovsky, the Rebbe of Slonim, from 1981 until his death in 2000. See Simha Rotem, Memoirs of a Ghetto Fighter: The Past within Me, trans. Barbara Harshav (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1994), 3. 99. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Mevo ha-­She’arim (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2001), chap. 2, 203–­4. 100. See, for example, Levi Cooper, “The Legacy of the Piaseczno Rebbe,” Jewish Educational Leadership 5, no. 1 (2006): 51–­54; and Levi Cooper, “A Fellowship of Spiritual Development,” Jewish Educational Leadership 6, no. 1 (2007): 46–­48. 101. See Kalonymus Kalman Epstein, Ma’or va-­Shemesh, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: 1992), kedoshim, 363–­64, where the author explains that attaining the 218

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highest states of holiness and deveikut can only happen in the context of an intentional, sacred community. 102. See Moshe Sofer, She’elot u-­Teshuvot Hatam Sofer (Bratislava: n.p., 1841), orah hayyim, no. 197. 103. See Nehemia Polen, “Derashah as Performative Exegesis in Tosefta and Mishnah,” in Lieve Teugels and Rivka Ulmer, eds., Midrash and the Exegetical Mind (Piscataway nj: Gorgias, 2010); and Nehemia Polen, “Hasidic Derashah as Illuminated Exegesis,” in Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson, eds., The Value of the Particular: Lessons from Judaism and the Modern Jewish Experience; Festschrift for Steven T. Katz on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 55–­70. 104. See Jacob Katz, “Halakhah and Kabbalah as Competing Disciplines of Study,” in Green, Jewish Spirituality, vol. 2, 34–­63. 105. See Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, ed. Eliezer Goldman, trans. Eliezer Goldman, Yoram Navon, Zvi Jacobson, Gershon Levi, and Raphael Levy (Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1992), 3–­29. 106. The classic work is Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man; but see also Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Halakhic Mind (Ardmore pa: Seth, 1986). See, more broadly, Chaim Saiman, “Legal Theology: The Turn to Conceptualism in Nineteenth-­Century Jewish Law,” Journal of Law and Religion 21, no. 1 (2006): 39–­100. 107. b. Berakhot 8a. 108. See Heschel, God in Search of Man, 331–­32, where he deploys the same talmudic adage to make this very point. 109. Yehezkel Panet, Mare’eh Yehezkel (Bnei Brak: n.p., 2000), mo’adim—­ shabbat shuvah, 98. 110. In a very different context, Hayim Nahman Bialik argued vociferously for the need to bring these two literatures together. To his audience of contemporary Hebraists, largely secular thinkers rebelling against tradition, he needed to emphasize the importance of halakhah as a source for cultural revival. See his essay “Halachah and Aggadah,” included in the collection Revealment and Concealment: Five Essays, trans. Zali Gurevitc (Jerusalem: Ibis Editions, 2000), 45–­87. 111. A magnificent treatment of this subject appears in Shmuel Sperber, Ma’amarot (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978), 187–­273. See also Yair Lorberbaum, “Reflections on the Halakhic Status of Aggadah,” Diné Israel 24 (2007): 29–­64. And, in the wake of Cover’s thesis in “The Supreme 219

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Court 1982 Term,” also see Barry Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Moshe Simon-­Soshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Jane Kanarek, Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 112. Yair Lorberbaum, In God’s Image: Myth, Theology, and Law in Classical Judaism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 113. Sifrey Devarim, ‘ekev, no. 39. 114. This reading of halakhah and aggadah is inspired by the attempt of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook; see Ben Zion Bokser, trans. and ed., Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, the Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems (New York: Paulist, 1978), 196–­98; Avinoam Rosenak, The Prophetic Halakhah: Rabbi A. I. H. Kook’s Philosophy of Halakhah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2007) (Hebrew); Avinoam Rosenak, Cracks: Unity of Opposites, the Political and Rabbi Kook’s Disciples (Tel Aviv: Riesling, 2013) (Hebrew); and Yehudah Mirsky, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 2014), esp. 31–­35,127–­40, 183. 115. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Torah Or (New York: Kehot Publication Society, 2005), va-­yiggash, fol. 44d–­45a. 116. See, among others, Jacob Neusner, The Theology of the Halakhah (Leiden: Brill, 2001); Jacob Neusner, The Halakhah and the Aggadah: Theological Perspectives (Lanham md: University Press of America, 2001), and the response by Bernard S. Jackson, “On Jacob Neusner’s Theology of Halakhah,” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 12, no. 1 (2009): 129–­56. See also Louis Ginzberg, “Jewish Thought as Reflected in the Halakah,” in Judah Goldin, ed., The Jewish Expression (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 163–­73. 117. See Michael Fishbane, Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 71–­107, 134–­46. Compare 114–­29 for his very insightful remarks on the life of praxis through halakhah. See also Michael Fishbane, The jps Bible Commentary: Song of Songs (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2015), xix–­lix. 118. This element of the author’s project is, in a sense, an extension of the quest to establish ta‘amei ha-­mitzvot or “reasons for the commandments,” a subject of inquiry and great debate from Rabbinic literature to the present day. See Isadore Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), 374–­430.

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119. See Rabbi Avraham Yitshak Kook’s famous essay “The Sage Is More Important than the Prophet,” translated in Bokser, Abraham Isaac Kook, 253–­55. And see also Eliezer Schweid, “‘Prophetic Mysticism’ in Twentieth-­Century Jewish Thought,” Modern Judaism 14, no. 2 (1994): 139–­74; Daniel Reiser, “‘To Rend the Entire Veil’: Prophecy in the Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira of Piazecna and Its Renewal in the Twentieth Century,” Modern Judaism 34, no. 3 (2014): 334–­52. 120. See Kahana and Mayse, “Hasidic Halakhah.” 121. Hillel Zeitlin, Hasidic Spirtiuality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin, trans. and ed. Arthur Green (Mahwah nj: Paulist, 2012), 151–­62. 122. Me’or ‘Eynayim, vol. 1, devarim, 307–­8; translated in Arthur Green, Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table, vol. 2, with Ebn Leader, Ariel Evan Mayse, and Or N. Rose (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2013), 86. 123. When the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet is exchanged for the final letter, the second for the penultimate letter, and so on, the letters mem and tsaddi of the word mitzvah become yod and heh, thus completing the name Y-­H-­W-­H. 124. Likkutey Torah (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2002), derushim le-­ shemini ‘atseret, fol. 84b. 125. The great David Hartman often remarked, “What is the difference between the Shulchan Arukh and the Talmud? Immersion in the Shulchan Arukh is like taking a bath. It’s nice, but you can’t really go anywhere. Diving into the Talmud, on the other hand, is stepping into the ocean of infinite possibility.” 126. See b. Menahot 34b. 127. Kedushat Levi, vol. 1, ed. Michael Derbaremdiger (Monsey ny: n.p., 1995), purim, 237. 128. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), 237. 129. b. Niddah 73a. 130. Yerahmi’el Yisra’el Yitshak Danziger, Yismah Yisra’el (Jerusalem: n.p., 2002), va-­yiggash, fol. 102a–­b. 131. This interprets a tradition from Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Krakow, who recommends that one become attached to a teacher who is never lenient in any matter, large or small; see Ma’or va-­Shemesh, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: n.p., 1992), shoftim, 595.

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132. Jacob Katz, “Da‘at Torah—­The Unqualified Authority Claimed for Halachists,” Jewish History 11, no. 1 (1997): 41–­50. See also the work of Michael Zvi Nehorai, Halakhic Knowledge vs. Halakhic Faith (Jerusalem: Department of Education and Culture, Division of Religious Culture, 1981–­82) (Hebrew). His argument, summarized eloquently in English by Tucker, “Sayings of the Wise,” is as follows: “Nehorai characterizes the spirit of the true halakhist as fearing Heavenly, not human, authority. . . . By speaking of the responsibility of the jurist to be God-­fearing and not people-­fearing, Nehorai is, in effect, expressing the view that halakhic judges are not there to impose a view of truth on us by virtue of their position . . . but rather to express, in a stable and institutional way, a religious society’s reverence for God. They are thus there to produce, rather than to cut off, conversation on what the will of God is, and therefore what halakhah should be.” 133. See also the parable of the man wandering through the forest attributed to Rabbi Chaim of Tsanz, translated in Shmuel Yosef Agnon, ed., Days of Awe: A Treasury of Jewish Wisdom for Reflection, Repentance, and Renewal on the High Holy Days (New York: Schocken, 1995), 22–­24.

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8 Training the Heart and Mind toward Expansive Awareness A Neo-­Hasidic Journey Nancy Flam I have spent the last nearly forty years in formation as a Neo-­Hasidic Jew. The ideas and texts of the Hasidic tradition, and ways in which these were shaped and transmitted by Neo-­Hasidic leaders such as Arthur Green, Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, and Shlomo Carlebach, drew and sustained me from the beginning of my Jewish spiritual search until today. The powerful and enduring pull of this tradition lies for me in its potential to train the mind and heart toward expansive awareness. In this essay I would like to share a few of the most important texts and teachings that have accompanied me along this journey of consciousness-­training, in the deliberately chosen modality of personal narration. I share my own journey as a student of Hasidic texts not to suggest it as a map for others but with the hope that it may spark interest and insight. Mine is an overwhelmingly aggadic sensibility. I am as interested in what happens for you as for me when we read Hasidic teachings as postmoderns, understanding that language, hermeneutic traditions, the individual reader, social location, and community context together give rise to meaning. The central concern of Hasidism is how to live a life of devotion, how to live in conscious relationship with the Divine Presence that runs throughout the entirety of creation and the entirety of our lives. To 223

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be in touch with God’s presence, to be consciously connected or davuk to that reality, and to live, think, speak, and act in the world from that place of devotion has always been my central and overwhelming desire. “Ahat sha’alti me’et Y-­H-­W-­H, otah avakesh . . . One thing do I request of Being, this is what I ask” (Ps. 27:4). My one desire has been to know through a felt-­sense—­or absent that capacity, to hold in faith—­that at every moment, whether joyous or painful, clear or confused, God is present, and with such awareness to meet my own life and the life of others with hesed ve’emet (lovingkindness, truth, and faithfulness).1 Hasidism gave me language, imagery, stories, and texts about the inner life of Jews in search of the Divine, and powerful voices of master teacher-­practitioners that speak through their teachings. But—­ critically—­Neo-­Hasidism gave me a living community of fellow-­seekers dedicated to studying this lineage of teachings to see how they might take shape within us. For me, the wisdom and insights of the Hasidic lineage are of true value only insofar as they find their way into my everyday thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting. Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: What is the ultimate nature of the sacred words which tradition preserves? These words are not made of paper but of life. The task is not to reproduce in sound what is preserved in graphic signs; the task is to resurrect its life, to feel its pulse, so that the life within the words should reproduce its kind within our lives. Indeed, there is a heritage of insight as there is a tradition of words and rituals. It is a heritage easily forfeited, easily forgotten.2 The insights of Hasidism I first encountered through the work of Neo-­ Hasidic scholars and practitioners captured my heart because they resonated with something precious I already knew, but knew only dimly; I wanted to claim that heritage of insight and embody it. The inner world these texts attested to illuminated dimensions of being 224

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that had occupied me powerfully since adolescence. I felt affirmed in what was most real and valuable to me, as well as a sense of belonging to an important mystical tradition within Jewish history and to a lineage of God-­seekers, past and present.

Longing for You My first encounter with both Hasidism and Neo-­Hasidism occurred during my freshman year at college. Arriving as a seventeen-­year-­old Jewish woman from suburban Los Angeles to an exceedingly male-­ defined, Protestant, rural, Ivy League college, I gravitated to Hillel for comfort; not only for its events, but to the simple room where it was housed. Somehow, in its tiniest of libraries (occupying a single, two-­ sided magazine rack), I came upon Arthur Green and Barry Holtz’s Your Word Is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer, a compilation of short Hasidic teachings on the life of prayer.3 The entire book felt like a homecoming, but one text in particular would not let me go, so clear was it in esteeming the central yearning at my core: “Do not be like those who serve the master in order to receive a reward. Be rather like those who serve the master not in order to receive a reward.” But another version of this text reads: “. . . serve the master in order not to receive a reward!” Both versions are correct, but the latter speaks of a higher rung of service. The first version surely speaks of a proper kind of prayer, one in which the worshipper directs his thoughts only to the needs of God. It matters little to him whether his own personal petition is granted or denied. All of this servant’s deeds are for the sake of heaven. But there is yet a higher rung, of which the second version speaks. There is a man who lives with a burning desire to speak 225

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with the king. The king has issued a decree that anyone who comes forward with a petition shall have his wish granted. This man, however, longs only to stand before the king and speak with him always. In him the king’s decree arouses only fear: whatever he asks, the king will grant, and no longer will he be able to speak with him! He would rather his petition not be granted, so that he might have reason always to return to the presence of the king. This man serves “in order not to receive a reward.” This is the meaning of: “a prayer of a poor man who is faint, pouring forth his words before the Lord.” The poor man seeks nothing more in prayer than that his words pour forth before the Lord.4 I knew myself to be the “poor man” (even then, I was already adept at interpolating gender!). This longing for God was something that needed to be expressed rather than fulfilled. Or, as the text suggests, longing for God was its own fulfillment, paradoxically the sense of absence itself a sign of presence. One could even say that the yearning was an indication of a wholeness that exists and can be known intellectually in one dimension but can never be realized experientially in another. There is a famous image in Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s tale of “The Seven Beggars” about the heart and the spring that illustrates this latter understanding. The heart stands at one end of the world, and the spring at the other: The world’s heart stands opposite the spring and yearns and always longs to reach the spring. The yearning and longing of the heart for the spring is extraordinary. It cries out to reach the spring. The spring also yearns and longs for the heart. . . . Why doesn’t the heart go toward the spring if it so longs for it? Because, as soon as it wants to approach the hill, it can no longer see the peak and cannot look at the spring. (When one stands opposite the mountain, 226

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one sees the top of the slope of the mountain where the spring is situated, but as soon as one approaches the mountain, the top of the slope disappears—­at least visually—­and one cannot see the spring.) And if the heart will no longer look upon the spring, its soul will perish, for it draws all its vitality from the spring. And if the heart would expire, God forbid, the whole world would be annihilated, because the heart has within it the life of everything. And how could the world exist without its heart? And that is why the heart cannot go to the spring but remains facing it and yearns and cries out.5 This imagery is based on a kabbalistic understanding of the world’s creation through a process of emanation whereby the recondite, unknowable Divine Reality (from the human perspective) flows out into evermore manifest (to our human perception) dimensions of being; God both remains separate in Itself and permeates and animates all existence. It gives the world its heart (and everything else). The heart needs to gaze upon, recognize, and be in relationship to the spring. It cannot become united or else the necessary separation that allows the world to exist would collapse into oneness. It—­and we—­ must retain separateness vis-­à-­vis the Source. The longing is therefore both an indication of separation in one dimension, and connection in another. Much of Jewish mysticism, including Hasidism, comes to teach this single, two-­sided reality: an ontological, absolute oneness of being along with a phenomenological, conventional experience of separateness. It does so through a great variety of ideas and images: God both surrounds (sovev) and fills (memale) all worlds, that is, is “beyond” or transcendent and “within” or immanent; there is but one reality (ein ‘od milvado) but it fills all particulars of creation with its presence (melo kol ha-­arets kevodo); in our relationship to the Divine we are to cultivate both ahavah (love), which brings closeness and connection to Y-­H-­W-­H, and yir’ah (awe), which inspires distance and 227

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separation from that overwhelming, unfathomable Power; the same Reality appears one way from God’s point of view and another from ours; and so on. The path of longing reinforces separateness while establishing connection through a strong engagement with emotion. Many texts speak of the value of great enthusiasm in liturgical prayer (hitlahavut) and fervent expression in spontaneous individual prayer (e.g., Rabbi Nahman’s hitbodedut). Deveikut nigunim, melodies composed toward the end of opening the heart in connection to God, can evoke extremely powerful feelings. Cultivating strong emotion fit my temperament as well as the developmental moment of late adolescence when tears of longing, joy, love, and—­or, alternatively—­awe allowed the life force (hiyut) to flow through me with tremendous power and so fill my prayer with both a sense of yearning toward the One and the awareness that I was already participating in the very life of God coursing through me. Intuitively, experientially, I knew through the path of devotional longing that God was both “other” and more than my small self even as it seemed to be present to me through the very act of prayer itself. “People think you pray to God, but prayer itself is of the essence of divinity,” taught Pinhas of Korzec.6 Addressing God as other, as “You,” was (and is) perfectly fitting to maintain the separation and connection as described above, and to cultivate the entire field of emotion in relation to Y-­H-­W-­H. “You” is a fiction, “the face we put on the Oneness,” as Arthur Green writes.7 But employing it in prayer, in addressing Being, makes room for the “full catastrophe”8 of personhood, of what it is to live—­as we must—­in a social world of conventional separateness, allowing not only for moral agency and responsibility, as Green has noted, but also for love, grief, anger, fear, and all the rest.9 Once we orient our minds and open our mouths to address God as “You,” every relationship we’ve ever had since the moment we were born, beginning with our first howls for food and comfort, and including every joy and disappointment we’ve 228

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known since, becomes available as fuel for our expression to the Source of All. To live in this world as persons and to be a separate self engaged with the Divine is to live in relationship, accompanied by the full panoply of attendant emotions. It’s quite possible that many of our Hasidic forebears knew exactly what they were doing by “putting a face on the Oneness” and did not engage with dialogic God language literally or naively. Certainly we, as psychologically minded Neo-­Hasidic practitioners, traverse complex and subtle territory: we knowingly enter the fiction of “You” with a necessary investment of energy and conviction that doing so may draw us closer to the One. In my own experience, this dialogic opening to an imagined “You” with the classic “Thirteen Attributes” of lovingkindness, compassion, patience, truth, and so on has provided me with a path for cultivating the very same precious capacities in myself. Made in the image, I invite a devotional connection to that source of goodness, and know its energies, capacities, and orientation are strengthening and guiding me paradoxically from within and beyond (or perhaps, through an innerness so beyond that it thoroughly transcends my understanding).

No You, No Me There are those who identify two major typologies within Hasidic spirituality: the dialogic (sometimes described as ecstatic) devotional, for whom Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev and Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav often serve as examples; and the monistic, quietistic (sometimes described as contemplative) practitioner, of whom the Maggid of Mezritch and some of his students such as Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir are seen as paradigmatic.10 While the former rely upon a strong sense of both a human and divine self or persona (as described above), the latter practice a spiritual effacement of both.11 229

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My orientation toward the dialogic—­what is sometimes spoken of as a “personal relationship” with God—­served me very well for years. But for many contemporary Jews, the path of Jewish devotion based on a construct of God figured in personal terms and addressed in dialogue does not work because it feels facile, fabricated, and false. They cannot imagine engaging God as “You” to be a useful fiction that might be embraced with a “second naivete,”12 with the potential of leading to a truly clear and expansive heart and mind. Skillfully engaging the construct of “You” so as to avoid conceptual idolatry (mistaking a part for the whole) requires psycho-­spiritual subtlety and the will to engage it. It is certainly one reason why so many Jews have embraced spirituality through meditation alone, unencumbered by such demands. I myself came to need more than the path of longing. Not only had it become intolerably alienating to be internalizing and addressing divinity as male, it became physically and psychologically exhausting to constantly cultivate the emotional intensity of prayer rooted in passionate dialogue in order to experience God’s presence. With a spouse, children, and career, I had grown out of adolescence and needed the complement of a quieter, more contemplative path to cultivating closeness to God. Perhaps I had accomplished well enough the developmental task of constructing a healthy sense of self in order to function in the world; I was now ready to loosen its hold so as to see, feel, and know God in yet other ways. As Daniel Matt writes: The ego and its personal God are interdependent, mutually reinforcing. If I am a self, I need a personal God. . . . The personal God and the ego participate in a secret covenant; one might call it a conspiracy. God’s personality and mine share a pact of mutual admiration and sustenance. We confirm each other’s apparent separateness. The mystical oneness of God undermines my separate sense of self. I am part of God’s oneness. The separateness of my ego and the personality of God are illusory mirror images. 230

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Who is made in whose image? Through eons of evolution, out of the oneness of it all, we have been fashioned, emerging as a conscious self. That self has projected a personal God in our own image, a God to whom we attribute our own creation. The ego is a marvelous fiction, a necessary illusion. We don’t really possess it; we are possessed by it. Not having one is unimaginable, an unbearable thought. If selves did not exist, anarchy and madness would rush in to fill the vacuum. There are good reasons for preserving the myth of the self as a particular, concrete thing, rather than an abstraction. That is why society invests such an enormous amount of time and energy in constructing a self that can accept moral responsibility. We need the ego. Madness and anarchy are not attractive alternatives. To put it less dramatically, if the phone rings we answer it and identify “who we are.” As long as we live in the world, we cannot manage for very long without a self. A personal God is appropriate for the ego. To the extent that I see myself as a separate entity, I can relate to such a God.13 I felt a pull to investigate the “illusory mirror images” of my “self ” and God’s “self.” I was ready to be schooled in the second typology of Hasidic spirituality, that which works strongly to diminish the sense of one’s own ego so that all might be perceived as the flow of God, of Being. I found traces of this orientation in a rereading of Your Word Is Fire (in the chapter entitled “Beyond the Walls of Self,” no less). These lines then grabbed me: A person should be so absorbed in prayer that he is no longer aware of his own self. There is nothing for him but the flow of life; all his thoughts are with God. He who still knows how intensely he is praying has not yet overcome the bonds of self. . . .14 In prayer seek to make yourself into a vessel for God’s Presence. God, however, is without limit; “Endless” is His name. How can 231

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any finite vessel hope to contain the endless God? Therefore, see yourself as nothing: only one who is nothing can contain the fullness of the Presence.15 There are extraordinary moments for many of us when the mind becomes so truly still that one’s sense of separate self seems to disappear, moments when the mind rests its attention fully on just one thing: the eyes receiving the green vitality of forest life on a solitary stroll, the ears receiving the words of someone speaking from the heart, the body receiving the physical sensation of in-­breath, out-­breath, or perhaps concentration so great in prayer that there is only thought or word in holiness passing through (“shekhinah speaking through one’s throat,” as it is described); and with these, often, a sense of great well-­ being. All is receptivity, all is flow. Based on my life as a person in relationship, I knew intuitively how to yearn in prayer, how to talk from constructed “me” to constructed “You,” but I didn’t know how to practice this other kind of ego-­diminishing, nonresistant awareness to Being so that it might become more constant. The Hasidic texts on self-­effacement to make room for God’s fullness everywhere intrigued me, but it was only when I began practicing mindfulness meditation that I learned a discipline for training the mind in just this way. The practice is simple, but not easy. It involves the development of deep concentration so as to see the moment-­to-­moment construction and dissolution of experience as it is formed in the mind. One of the three central insights to which this kind of meditation leads is that of “non-­self,” understanding on an experiential level that all being (including one’s own, and we Jews would say God’s) is not made of “things” but is process unfolding, perhaps the very meaning of Y-­H-­W-­H: Was-­ Is-­Will Be. I brought mindfulness-­meditation practice into my Jewish life, and read Hasidic texts through its lens. I encountered many texts that spoke 232

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of a kind of concentration similar to what I knew from deep mindfulness meditation, but I also encountered two attendant problems. The first was that the Hasidic texts were clear that a certain training of mind was necessary, but they didn’t seem to come with an instruction manual. (Or as Alan Morinis, director of the Mussar Institute, once said about a title he considered for one of his books on seeking holiness as a Jew, “Yes, but How?”) The second was that because of the relative esotericism of such practices with which I had no prior training, I needed a teacher to show me how to practice, but there were significant obstacles. Most of those with an unbroken lineage to contemplative Hasidic teachings on training the mind had been murdered in the Holocaust. Furthermore, should I find such a living teacher, would he take on a non-­Orthodox woman as a student? So I stuck with mindfulness meditation as my training toward emptiness, Ayin (Nothingness), and non-­self; and I brought that conditioning of mind into my daily engagement with Torah, ‘avodah and gemilut hasadim—­with Scripture, with service, and with works of compassion and kindness. The second problem I found was that the texts on ego nullification (bittul) are suspect from a feminist point of view. I am not speaking primarily about the fact that from a sociological perspective, women living in patriarchal societies are likely to need psychological ego enhancement rather than ego diminishment. Rather, the texts are suspect because they often teach about the necessity of leaving or overcoming the body, valuing mind, spirit, and contemplation over embodied awareness. Because these texts originate in patriarchal societies where evaluative binaries of good-­bad, light-­dark, man-­woman, culture-­nature, body-­ spirit, Jew-­gentile are the norm, we must read with a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” questioning what these texts are actually encoding.16 I cannot read a Hasidic text about overcoming the body without hearing resonances of centuries of overt and subtle Jewish misogyny with such classic warnings as to stay away from women and their trifling concerns 233

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so as not to be distracted from what is of true importance: Torah. Can “escaping the body” not say as much in other terms? Shemu‘ah Tovah expresses it this way: The human body is always finite; it is the spirit that is boundless. Before you begin to pray, cast aside that which limits you and enter the world of Nothing. In prayer turn to God alone and have no thoughts of yourself at all. Nothing but God exists for you; you yourself have ceased to be. The true redemption of the soul can only happen as you step outside the body’s limits.17 There is a difference between “stepping outside the body” and developing a skillful relationship to embodied experience. For instance, simply watching physical sensations such as desire and aversion come and go can liberate the mind from reactive self-­concern. A concentrated mind that does not create a sense of self around any particular experience of holding on or pushing away can dissolve a fixed sense of “I, me, and mine” and so be freed to experience the selfless flow of Being, pure receptivity. One might also quiet and direct the mind in such a way and to such a degree that one experiences a “withdrawal of the senses,” familiar to all meditative traditions; such deep contemplation can open a door to awareness of awareness itself. Meditation masters from different traditions speak of working with the mind as the senses withdraw to touch the great “Nothing,” “Ayin,” “Nichts,” “the unborn,” “the deathless,” and so on. As a feminist, I want to extract the potentially valuable, life-­giving teachings about bittul so as to understand and train toward a dimension of mind that might lead integrally from its practice away from self-­preoccupation. This training that might lead to the realization and manifestation of truth, wisdom, compassion, and generosity—­but only by allowing the indigestible husk of patriarchy within which these teachings are encased to fall away. 234

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All You, No Me, All Me, No Me Interconnection I have had the pleasure of teaching and learning Hasidic texts for much of my rabbinic life. Arthur Green introduced them to me first, in print, through Your Word Is Fire and then in person, as we and others cocreated the Institute for Jewish Spirituality nearly two decades ago. My beloved friend and colleague Rabbi Jonathan Slater has continued to teach Hasidic texts through the institute, in consort with Jewish mindfulness-­ meditation teacher Rabbi Sheila Weinberg, another beloved friend and colleague. I was also honored to study weekly with Art for a few years around his dining room table, along with a few of his close students. Throughout this time I deepened both the ecstatic-­yearning and the contemplative-­nullification strains in my devotional life, supported by the study of these texts along with a dedicated-­mindfulness practice. However, the most important development for me in recent years has been studying Hasidic texts in havruta with another woman. Through an uncanny set of circumstances, I reconnected with my Jerusalem apartment-­mate of thirty years ago, Beth Huppin, with whom I had fallen out of touch. During the decades that I was involved in Jewish healing and spirituality leadership, Beth had dedicated herself to Jewish education of both children and adults in the Seattle area. She was deeply beloved by her local community and recognized nationally for her brilliance. We possessed radically different temperaments but shared a profound respect and admiration for each other. We decided to reconnect through study of Hasidic texts. By witnessing the thoughts, emotions, inspiration, and conversation that emerged as Beth and I studied together, and by comparing these experiences with my treasured but very different experiences of studying Hasidic texts in mixed groups or where I was the only woman, I have come to believe that woman-­only Neo-­Hasidic study groups and havrutot, and women-­led and -­fashioned mixed-­study groups are crucial to the development of the next stage of this “movement.”18 The texts 235

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have been written by and for men. By sheer dint of will, we women read ourselves into them (as we do all rabbinic texts). Sometimes we want to change all the (many, many, many) parables featuring kings and fathers, male ministers and sons to tales of mothers, aunts, sisters, and daughters. Different relationships surface different truths. Sometimes we wish the rabbis would speak less abstractly, and seemingly objectively and therefore authoritatively, even though we know that Jewish mysticism in general is characterized by a severe lack of personal confession, just as it is characterized by a severe lack of female voice, and not coincidentally.19 Women together speak differently among ourselves, often more personally, being curious and interested about the truth of our own and each other’s particular, felt experience. In my own havruta, the central question we ask is some version of, “How does this speak to you and your dedication to holiness based on your own lived experience intrapsychically and in the world?” And in the conversation that ensues, our very particular lives as women (and, in Beth’s and my case, as mothers especially) are inextricably bound up in the meaning we find; the fact of our living and reading as women is centrally valued rather than regarded as peripheral or irrelevant, or simply invisible. I believe that our lives and thinking as women that we bring to our study can deepen Neo-­Hasidic language and thought, enriching key understandings of such terms as bittul, shekhinah, and mohin de-­gadlut (expanded mind). I also believe that such creativity and boldness will emerge only in contexts of true safety, permission, valuation, and empowerment as women. In the spirit of the context provided for me by my havruta, I offer some reflections. The Hasidic worldview is built upon the mystical cosmogony of emanation, where the Divine Oneness chose to manifest itself through various olamot (worlds) and sefirot (dimensions)—­the One becoming Many. In the sefirotic structure, the tenth and final sefirah is that of malkhut, also known as shekhinah and kenesset yisrael (among other 236

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names). This realm is both an interface between the world we know and the “upper worlds” (or more hidden worlds), and the realm from which or through which manifestation as we know it occurs. Although it is common to think of the sefirot as flowing on a vertical from top to bottom (or sometimes in a circle), I like to think of emanation as a manifestation of inner to outer, like the layers of an onion growing from core to surface, the more recondite to the more experientially accessible. This means that all of manifestation, even the “skin” of the world we know through the senses, is but a manifestation of God; or as Arthur Green has commented on the popular Hasidic trope: The whole earth is full of God’s presence—­really! With this view, there is nowhere to go, no emotional bridge of longing needed to span the distance between one’s “self ” and God’s “self,” and no physical overcoming or nullification of the senses to reach the Divine. God is right here in every person, animal, plant, and stone; it simply takes training to recognize. In a teaching recorded by Meshullam Feibush Heller of Zbarazh: It is a high rung to always consider in your heart that you are close to the Blessed Creator, that God surrounds you from every side. Be so attached that you no longer have to keep settling with yourself that you are close to God. See the blessed Creator with your mind’s eye; [see] that God is “the place of the world” [Bereshit Rabbah 68:9]. This means that God was there before Creation and that the world stands with the Creator. Be so attached that the main thing you see is the blessed Creator, rather than looking first at the world and only secondarily at God. God should be the main thing you see. When you become such a person, you will merit to have the kelippot [shells] remove themselves from you. It is they that cause darkness and separate God from the person. They block the mind’s eye from looking at the Creator. Consider that the Creator is endless, surrounding all worlds. But God’s blessed 237

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influx reaches down through the channels and flows into all worlds. We are always walking in God.20 Surely such vision requires constant training in humility and self-­ effacement so that one might meet the world and not just endless projections of one’s own ego. But that ego-­effacement does not deny or reject physical reality. The spiritual does not displace the physical, or vice versa. Rather, in this outer layer of manifestation known as malkhut, or shekhinah, the spiritual is everywhere embodied. God manifests as the body of the world. Her name is shekhinah (indwelling) and kenesset yisrael (the gathering of the People of Israel). She is manifest creation. She is the physical imbued with divine energy, the “dwelling” of the Divine. According to Jewish mysticism, it is She who is poor, outcast, exiled, desecrated. Indeed, so much of the earth, creation, and so many women living under patriarchy have been and are impoverished, outcast, exiled, desecrated. It is She that postindustrial, self-­centered, rapacious humanity has defiled rather than beheld and loved with rapt wonder, honor, and humility. Kabbalistically speaking, the exiled shekhinah (originally banished from the Temple in Jerusalem, God’s “indwelling”) must reunite with her lover, tiferet, or ha-­Kadosh Baruch Hu (the blessed Holy One). Can we imagine what it might be to restore the Divine Feminine to wholeness? To read Hasidic texts, based as they are on Kabbalah, is to enter a gendered universe of God-­aspects created by and for men. As a woman, seeker, and lover of Hasidic texts, I have chosen to seriously “play” in this field of thought, language, insight, and practice. But how can I play skillfully, creatively, and honestly in a way that might contribute toward tikkun, wholeness, and restoration of the Divine Feminine and of our world, even as the very terms identify woman with body only, lack of agency, and poverty; and man with all the rest? My choice has been to embrace the language of shekhinah as Divine Feminine, and to identify Her with the divine body of the world; to 238

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address and connect with Her in Her fullness in and of Herself, a step that goes further than most Hasidic texts would signal. The great Jewish mystical project of working to connect shekhinah with tiferet, her male lover, indicates for me the work in vision, thought, speech, and action necessary to know, honor, and celebrate the archetypal (and actual) female as sacred. It is a unification of the power of valuing with that which has been without value or power; not only an active valuation of the body of the world, but the valuation of the radically receptive modalities of human being archetypally identified as female. I understand that shekhinah is downtrodden and grieving. Of course She needs to be uplifted, honored, restored. And while the correlation of the term shekhinah with kenesset yisrael has its own complicated history,21 I choose to identify the latter not as a hypostasized idea of “collective Israel,” and not even as embodied historical Jews, but as all people and indeed, all sentient beings everywhere, as creation itself. When I read Hasidic texts about shekhinah, I read “the body of the world, creation,” and in so doing, new Torah emerges, one of absolute interconnectivity, one that I believe speaks to our age of unprecedented environmental ruin, and violence everywhere born of delusion, disconnected self-­interest, and willful separation. Perhaps the most powerful way this reading of shekhinah opens newly for me is in the strange, central Hasidic idea that we should “pray for the needs of the shekhinah” rather than for ourselves. We have discussed the Hasidic ideal of ego-­effacement as critical to recognizing the Divine itself, whether in deep, sense-­withdrawn contemplation or in meeting the world in its embodied particulars. But ego-­effacement was also a Hasidic desideratum for normative, statutory prayer. As Louis Jacobs writes: The hasidic attitude to prayer as an exercise in self-­transcendence created for the Hasidim an especially acute problem. Prayers of adoration could effectively produce the desired aim; the Hasid 239

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could, by their aid, lose himself in reflection on the divine majesty. But what of petitionary prayer? In this type of prayer man entreats God to satisfy his needs, both spiritual and material. He prays for knowledge and wisdom, for bodily health and sustenance, for forgiveness of sin and redemption. This would seem to frustrate the whole purpose of prayer, since consciousness of need implies self-­awareness. If man’s aim in prayer is to see only the divine vitality, how can he petition God to attend to his own needs? Far from this type of prayer leading to the desired aim of loss of self, it encourages concentration on self. The logical conclusion of the hasidic doctrine would have been to reject all petitionary prayer as a hindrance to the attainment of self-­ annihilation. But such a solution was not open to the Hasidim who believed, like their contemporaries, that the traditional liturgy, which contains numerous petitionary prayers, was divinely inspired and divinely ordained. The quietistic and radical way out of the dilemma generally adopted by the early Hasidim is that petitionary prayer is not, in fact, a request to God to satisfy man’s needs but to satisfy His own needs. In the language of Hasidism, petitionary prayer is for the sake of the shekhinah (Divine Presence).22 Not all Hasidic masters agreed. Some taught that we should pray for each and every need we have, and to ask through faith in God above that the Holy One might respond to our cries below for every meal, every piece of clothing, and so on. We can understand this view as consistent with the first typology of Hasidism, wherein one’s “self ” relies in dependence and faith upon God’s “self.” But the second typology would have none of that, uninterested in the reification of separate selves dedicated to a different view of Being. The two perspectives are noted and reconciled in the following teaching by Moshe Hayim Efrayim of Sudilkov: 240

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There is a problem in the Zohar that needs to be solved, where it is written that [those who ask for their own needs] bark like dogs, “Give us food, etc.” [Tikkunei Zohar, fol. 22a]. But in a different teaching it is explained that those who do not pray for livelihood every day are among those of little faith. The solution is to understand that for every lack a person feels it is the vital force of life that feels the lack. So when he prays about some lack, for instance if he lacks livelihood, who feels the lack if not his vital force? And the vital force is from the shekhinah. Therefore he should pray about the pain of the life force, which is [itself] really the shekhinah, and in this way the problem is solved.23 Shekhinah flows through us. Our lack is shekhinah’s lack. An early midrash explains that when we behave in certain ways (e.g., studying Torah, interacting peacefully with our spouses, giving tzedakah, etc.) we become suitable resting places for shekhinah to dwell.24 But naughty or nice, shekhinah animates us as the life force, or hiyut, that runs through all. A midrash teaches that when Israel went into exile, shekhinah went into exile with them. Rabbi Ishmael said: “You find that whenever Israel is enslaved, shekhinah is with them, as it says, ‘In all their troubles, God is troubled’ [Isa. 63:9]. This refers only to communal suffering. Where do we learn about individual distress? From the verse, ‘When he calls on Me, I will answer him; I will be with him in distress’ [Ps. 91:15]. Thus, wherever Israel is exiled, shekhinah is with them.25 God is with us in our sufferings (communal and individual), feels our pain, and weeps along with us.26 Shekhinah is the great Jewish female archetypal figure of empathy and compassion, not entirely unlike Quan Yin and Mother Mary in other traditions.27 Her power lies in her fiercely receptive, intensely 241

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empathic, ceaselessly compassionate embrace of all who suffer. But the connection with shekhinah, also known as kenesset yisrael, goes beyond empathy into true identification. “When a person is in pain, what does the shekhinah say?: My head hurts, my arm hurts” (b. Hagigah 46b). We pray for shekhinah because we are all part of Her. We are shekhinah, the body of the world. Any need we experience is therefore Her need. A teaching in the name of the Ba‘al Shem Tov: A wise and intelligent person will pay attention and understand that the pain faced by the individual is actually the pain of the shekhinah, as was said [in b. Sanhedrin 46a]: “Said R. Me’ir, when a person is in pain, what does the shekhinah proclaim: ‘You have wounded me in my head, you have wounded me in my arm.’” Therefore, pray out of regard for the pain of the shekhinah and spontaneously the pain will be removed from you as well.28 The essential message I hear is one of radical interconnection. The body of the world—­all people, other animals, plants, and formations—­is entirely interconnected. The planet Earth itself is one organism, as the Gaia theorists maintain. And that organism is not separate from the stars that bore it, nor that which exploded them. Separation is an illusion, and one we can ill afford to maintain as inhabitants of a global village armed to the teeth and actively firing. And there is more. The Rabbis call God “ha-­tov ve-­ha-­meytiv,” “the One Who is good and makes for goodness.” I embrace the theology that claims that what God most “wants” is to share blessing, to shower goodness upon creation, and therefore God “grieves” when blessing cannot be received—­whether through illness, tragedy, poverty, selfishness, small-­mindedness, or injustice of any kind. Made in the image, we too desire and suffer in just this way. We are the parent whose child’s emotional or physical suffering is, through the experience of deep empathy and so in a very real way, our own. With the mohin de-­gadlut 242

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(expanded mind) of empathy, built on the archetypally feminine capacity for receptive, compassionate awareness, we know interconnection to be true. As I mother, I identify with the images recorded in a Hasidic teaching of shekhinah as a mother suffering because her child is in pain, and the child’s understanding that his mother’s pain, shekhinah’s pain, is in fact greater than his, so much does She love him; he prays for Her pain to be relieved, and we realize that for such to occur, his must ipso facto be relieved as well.29 As a flesh-­and-­blood mother, I identify with shekhinah Herself in my pain for my children and my sincere wish that all children, all beings, be well and free from pain; this is a highly resonant, female image of God through which I recognize myself as truly godly. This teaching reinforces, as well, that as a single person on the planet I know that I am but a limb of shekhinah, and that Her entire body is in pain. I must pray and work for Her need, which is that the needs of all creation be met. In these strange and wonderful teachings about praying for the needs of shekhinah, our Hasidic masters were teaching something extraordinary about empathy, interconnection, and compassion. However, with the overwhelming maleness of rabbinic and Hasidic tradition, I would not have dared read the sources so boldly through my own experience as a woman and mother had I not studied them with another like myself. And I would not have seen what my female havruta discovered in a contemporary account of praying for the needs of shekhinah through yet another woman’s voice: Rabbi Ruth Sohn’s experience of anticipating her husband’s open-­heart surgery, after many months of living with his serious illness: My spiritual mentor and friend, Sylvia Boorstein, a well-­known and gifted teacher of both Buddhist and Jewish mindfulness practice, gently suggested I might want to experiment with bringing my fear into my meditation practice. First settle in and sit with your breath, she suggested. “Then invite your fear, and just sit with it. 243

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Notice where you feel it in your body, and what it feels like, and see what happens.” A few days later I decided to try. . . . Breathing in . . . breathing out . . . feeling the breath in my body, feeling my body filling and emptying. I sat for a few minutes this way, allowing my awareness to be filled with the steady flow of my breath, noticing the way my body calmed to the steady flow of my breath. I felt ready. I invited into my awareness my love for Reuven and my fears for him, for our children and for me . . . I allowed myself to open to my fear, and I felt my chest immediately constrict with heaviness, closing off my breath. I tried to open again to my breath, and then to the feelings. Feel your breath . . . feel the fear, I said to myself . . . feel the pain. . . . Generally I don’t entertain dream-­like images in my meditation practice. Notice and return to the breath, was my usual process. But opening up to the fear and to the pain I had been carrying and thought I knew, but in reality had been holding at bay, I now found myself taken down deeper, opening up to the feelings themselves . . . and then I was standing before a large pool of water, surrounded by people of all different ethnicities and ages, all of us walking slowly to the pool, and squatting down, reaching into the pool of water with our hands, and bringing the water to our mouths to drink. We were all drinking from the universal pool of pain, I realized with a start. All of us. All of humanity. Some people were coming and some were going . . . we weren’t there all at once, but in time, all of us would drink from this pool. I was so moved by the slow and steady movement of the people around me, by their unsmiling but accepting faces, by the inevitability of each of us coming to drink from this pool. I drank in and allowed myself to open to the pool of pain—­my pain and the shared pool of pain, no longer just my own. Something shifted inside and in the next breath I felt myself filled . . . and realized that the pool of 244

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pain was no longer just that, but had transformed into something different. It had become a pool of compassion. Like water, like breath, I felt the flow of compassion coursing through me, around me, over and underneath me, opening my heart even more, and connecting me to all the other people drinking from this shared pool of pain, now a shared pool of compassion. I felt my heart expanding, opening to the flow of the waters of pain and compassion, of healing and love. Life-­giving waters that only a truly open heart can know. I felt so deeply connected, so deeply alive, in touch with the pulse of life connecting us all. And I felt my heart still expanding, opening to this flow, ever more deeply. It was infinite. It could hold us all, now and forever, in life and even in death.30 Ruth began from her own life-­situation of fear, constriction, and pain, but her prayerful meditation opened her up in recognition and compassion to the needs of all humanity. We can see the process like this: First, we enter our own pain; this is most immediate. From here, we either turn entirely inward to contemplate our own situation or we look up around the pool and see that others are in pain, too. Sometimes our minds are too constricted to open to others in pain. The Hasidic sources are clear that “not all hours are the same,” and we must accept our spiritual capacities and pray accordingly, with honesty. Various masters take slightly different views on the subject, but all are clear that we must know our state and be honest with ourselves, praying guilelessly, not pretending we are praying for the needs of the whole when in fact our identification with our own needs has coalesced our identity into a small sense of self (in which case we simply cry out for relief ourselves). If, however, we are able to look up and see that others are in pain and find that our hearts are open, we will likely have one of two reactions: we will experience either great fear or an overwhelming sense of compassion. If we are able to experience that opening 245

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into compassion, it turns out that the need itself changes. “Something shifts,” as Ruth wrote. Our need now becomes the need to stay, as much as possible, in that place of compassion for all beings. A shift of perspective can change everything. We might say that Ruth opened to the body of shekhinah’s pain, could pray for shekhinah’s need, and also through her sense of empathy embodied the flow of shekhinah’s compassion herself. When we receptively enter a flow of Being, not driven by the small self ’s incessant demands that life meet its particular desires, when we surrender our projections of a separate self around which the world “ought” to be organized, we can ride on the river of the life-­force itself, filling all of creation. This body-­positive, creation-­affirming sense of bittul doesn’t need to deny anything other than the delusion of separateness right here in this world, in this life. When we touch the truth of the radical interconnection of all creation, we can dwell for a time in an expanded empathic consciousness, mohin de-­gadlut, characterized by a vast inclusiveness and infinite compassion. This change of perspective, as Rivka Schatz-­Uffenheimer wrote about in her classic chapter on the subject, is one way in which our prayer itself may be answered.31

Conclusion Hasidism has provided me with various ways to work with consciousness, especially around this central paradox regarding separation and connection as living beings. First through longing, then through nullification, and finally through receptive empathy I have learned and continue to experiment with strategies for seeing, knowing, feeling, and acting in greatest alignment with the One. Hasidism is an inheritance for the entire Jewish people. But it is not always easy to claim, especially in liberal Jewish circles, whether because of a lack of general Jewish education, a lack of Hebrew knowl246

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edge, or a lack of understanding that the treasure is buried right at home, underneath the fireplace. Nor is every Jew a spiritual seeker. But it has much to offer to those seeking to live a Jewish life of depth and meaning, to train the mind and heart to see most clearly and act most lovingly, and to develop an ongoing sense of closeness to God that can then be expressed in the world. You might wonder, though, why I go to all the effort, as it were, to engage in esoteric Hasidic teachings with the intention, hope, and prayer that they speak to me and to our shared place and time on the planet. Why speak about “the needs of the shekhinah,” for instance, and not interconnection, empathy, and compassion, which are much more accessible concepts to most liberal Jews in our day? I can only say that the Jewish soul yearns for a rich and deep continuity, that this kind of “work” is indeed a sacred task of “‘avodah” (meaning both “work” and “religious devotion”), and that the Jewish civilizational project has always entailed the serious play of “creative betrayal” in reading the previous generations’ teachings so as to hear in them a new truth for our own. As Neo-­Hasidic seeker, I understand myself to be standing in the tradition of my Hasidic forebears. They, too, inherited a Judaism that needed profound renewal in order to stay relevant and inspiring to the Jews of their times. They too dared to “dwell upon a word” so that it might open into new and sacred meanings for their age. Notes

1. Different Hasidic masters might describe the “one thing” in various though related ways. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (quoting Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel of Zlotshev) described his one desire as not only striving to attain God-­awareness, but to know that there is always another level of refinement in awareness toward which to strive. See Kedushat Levi (Brooklyn: n.p., 1986), shemot, 31b. 2. Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Depth Theology,” in Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), 118–­19. 247

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3. Originally published by Paulist Press in 1977, the book has since been reprinted by Jewish Lights. All citations refer to the reprint: Arthur Green and Barry W. Holtz, Your Word Is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 1993). 4. Moshe Hayim Efrayim of Sudilkov, as translated in Your Word Is Fire, 71–­ 72. The comment to this teaching there reads: “The passage is a comment on the saying of Antigonus of Sokho in Avot 1:3. On the two versions in that source compare the commentary of R. Jonah Gerondi ad loc.” 5. Arnold Band, Nahman of Bratslav: The Tales (New York: Paulist, 1978), 268–­69. 6. See Imrei Pinhas ha-­Shalem, vol. 2 (Bnei Brak: Y. S. Frankel, 2003), nos. 6–­9, 287–­88. 7. Arthur Green, Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2003), 27–­33. 8. The character Zorba utters this line in Nikos Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Green in describing the full range of joy and sorrow one experiences through a worldly life of engaged relationship. It is just this “full catastrophe” that acclaimed mindfulness-­meditation teacher Jon Kabat-­Zinn refers to in his book Full Catastrophe Living: How to Cope with Stress, Pain, and Illness through Mindfulness Meditation (London: Piatkus, 1996). He teaches ways in which mindfulness meditation might help a person meet all moments of life with engaged, curious, nonjudgmental attention. 9. See Green, Seek My Face, 13–­14. 10. Joseph Weiss, “Contemplative Mysticism and ‘Faith’ in Hasidic Piety,” in David Goldstein, ed., Studies in Eastern European Mysticism (New York: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization and Oxford University Press, 1985), 43–­55. 11. This distinction echoes the two different portrayals of Hasidism offered by Martin Buber in the early and late periods of his career: first, Hasidism as mystical, self-­effacing ecstasy, and then as a dialogic encounter and part of a larger view of “religion as presence.” See Paul Mendes-­ Flohr, From Mysticism to Dialogue: Martin Buber’s Transformation of German Social Thought (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989), and the chapter on Martin Buber in Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, eds., A New Hasidism: Roots (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2019). 12. See, for example, Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon, 1967), 349. 13. Daniel Matt, “Beyond the Personal God,” Reconstructionist 59, no. 1 (1994): 44–­45. 248

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14. Or ha-­Emet, fol. 2b, as translated in Green and Holtz, Your Word Is Fire, 55. 15. Maggid Devarav le-­Yaakov 69a, as translated in Green and Holtz, Your Word Is Fire, 58. 16. Paul Ricoeur, “The Critique of Religion,” in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work, ed. Charles E. Regan and David Stewart (Boston: Beacon, 1978), 214ff. 17. Shemu‘ah Tovah, fol. 79b–­80a, as translated in Green and Holtz, Your Word Is Fire, 57. 18. The same holds true for queer and gender-­fluid havrutot and study groups. 19. See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1946), 37–­38: “One final observation should be made on the general character of Kabbalism as distinct from other, non-­Jewish, forms of mysticism. Both historically and metaphysically it is a masculine doctrine, made by and for men. The long history of Jewish mysticism shows no trace of feminine influence. There have been no women kabbalists; Rabia of early Islamic mysticism, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Juliana of Norwich, Theresa de Jesus, and the many other feminine representatives of Christian mysticism have no counterpart in the history of Kabbalism. . . . Mention has already been made of the dislike shown by the Kabbalist for any form of literary publicity in connection with mystical experience, and of their tendency towards the objectivization of mystical vision. These traits, too, would appear to be connected with the masculine character of the movement, for the history of mystical literature shows that women were among the outstanding representatives of the tendency towards mystical autobiography and subjectivism in expressing religious experience.” 20. Likuttim Yekarim (Jerusalem: n.p., 1981), no. 54, fol. 10b (emphasis added). 21. Arthur Green, “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs,” ajs Review 26, no. 1 (2002): 9–­20. 22. Louis Jacobs, Hasidic Prayer (New York: Schocken, 1972), 23 23. Moshe Hayim Efrayim of Sudilkov, Degel Mahaneh Efrayim (Brooklyn: Imrei Shefer, 2010), likkutim, 438. Emphasis added. 24. See the various parallels in b. Berakhot 6a, b. Sotah 17a, and b. Bava Batra 10a. 25. Sifre Be-­ha‘alotekha 84. 26. b. Berakhot 59a, and the parallel in Eikhah Rabbah. 27. Green, “Shekhinah,” 9–­20. 28. From ‘Amud Ha-­Tefillah, as translated in Menachem Kallus, ed., The Pillar of Prayer (Louisville ky: Fons Vitae, 2011), 173. 249

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29. Binyamin of Zalosze, Torey Zahav (Jerusalem: Mekhon Simhat Olam, 2013), derush le-­yom ha-­kippurim, 453. 30. Ruth H. Sohn, “Facing Pain, Facing My Fears,” in Sue Levi Elwell and Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, eds., Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives (Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 70–­71. 31. Rivka Schatz-­Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, Princeton Legacy Library, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), 165: “There seem to be two principal explanations of how a person’s prayers are answered, even though he prays only on behalf of the shekhinah. One explanation is rooted in that tradition which has a transcendent perception of the shekhinah: namely, that when a person, in the course of prayer, lifts the shekhinah to become connected with the upper worlds, the plentitude automatically descends (in accordance with the mechanistic laws governing the upper worlds). The second explanation is closer to an immanent, pantheistic perception of the world, in that it attributes to the shekhinah the significance of the inner life of the world: when a person prays on its behalf, he quickly comes to realize that all he is “lacking” and all of his troubles are meaningless, external “garments,” and his “lack” and pain are automatically fulfilled in the encounter with the all-­embracing, true, unique reality which is the shekhinah. According to this perception, prayer is a kind of psychological neutralization, both of the request itself and of the I” (emphasis added).

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9 Neo-­Hasidic Meditation Mindfulness as a Neo-­Hasidic Practice James Jacobson-­M aisels Every day I sit down and pay attention. I simply try to notice what is actually arising at this moment. This practice has no particular identity. It isn’t especially Jewish in any way, nor is it especially not-­ Jewish. It is profoundly influenced by Western mindfulness teaching, arising out of the Southeast Asian Theravadan Buddhist tradition. Yet, if asked to define it, I would call my own practice Neo-­Hasidic mindfulness, a mindfulness practice that is both rooted in and reinterpreting the Hasidic tradition. My practice takes place within a broader Jewish life committed to mitzvot and Torah. What follows is how I currently think about and understand this specific practice: its goals and its place in my Jewish life.

Neo-­Hasidic Mindfulness Why do I do sit silently and pay attention every day? What does it do for me and to me? The goals of my practice are fundamentally the goals of the early (and some later) Hasidic masters in their own spiritual practice. I aim to give up the illusion of dualism and see that I, the Divine, other humans, animals, plants, and the inanimate world are truly not separate, that 251

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“there is no separation” (ein perud bi-­khlal), that we are all interpenetrated with each other.1 I aim to realize self-­annihilation (bittul ha-­yesh), relinquishing my illusory sense of self that is grounded in my mistaken belief in separateness. I aim to touch the divine nothingness and radical openness (ayin) that is my true nature. I aim to wake up to the divinity of everything I encounter (ein ‘od milvado). I aim to be present in every moment, recognizing that I am where my mind is and holiness requires a mind that is present and stable rather than lost in the storms of the world.2 I aim to see myself clearly, to understand the nature of my heart, mind, body, and soul, to achieve insight (hasagah) and understanding. I aim to free myself from pain (tsara) and suffering, anxiety and depression (atsvut), and experience joy (simhah) and openhearted sorrow (shevirat ha-­lev): the fullness of my emotions (hitragshut as the Piaseczner understands it).3 I hope that, in the Besht’s language, “all workers of iniquity will scatter” (Ps. 92:10) and my suffering will be transformed into willed presence (tsarah to ratsah). I practice to transform myself, to free myself, to see and become these more expansive ways of being and living. The next category of goals my practice pursues is the cultivation of a host of dispositions and states of heart, mind, and soul taught by the Hasidic tradition and the Jewish tradition more broadly. I practice to be more virtuous, to more fully realize my human self. These include the important Hasidic trio of joy, love, and awe, but also compassion, gratitude, courage-­daring, wonder, humility, trust-­faith, equanimity, honesty, forgiveness, sensitivity, vulnerability, wisdom, understanding, and insight. I so deeply want these qualities in my life, both for my own benefit and the benefit of others. I have found that my meditation practice allows me to cultivate them. On the one hand, they arise from mindfulness itself, simply committing myself to paying attention, which requires, for instance, love, courage, and equanimity. On the other hand, they also arise from specific meditative practices that aim to cultivate these various dispo252

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sitions: for instance, by repeating phrases that express or request the particular disposition.4 Indeed, herein lies a crucial role for the meditative power of prayer to foster specific states of heart, mind, body, and soul. Classical Jewish prayer, as a practice of repeating phrases that express certain themes and emotional states (love, awe, gratitude), can be pursued as a meditative cultivation practice that nurtures these states of being. Although other often-­cited goals (nondualism, no-­self, presence, the divinity of all, no-­suffering, etc.) may be in some ways more foundational or inclusive, I notice that aiming toward the flourishing of these particular qualities in my practice helps me most to become the kind of person I want to be. There is a fundamental texture to the way these goals are pursued that is also a part of the goals themselves. The medium is the message. This constitutes the third category of what the practice aims to develop in ourselves. Indeed, one of the greatest innovations of the Besht and his students was their teaching of radical acceptance of everything that arises: the relinquishing of guilt and judgment, the refusal to be trapped in negative mind states, and equanimity and acceptance. They advocated softness rather than rigidity, creativity, openhearted passion, resiliency, the embrace of the body, and opposition to asceticism. Above all, they championed an approach of joy and the celebration of life.5 This soft opening to suffering, and the safety and joy that arise from it, struck me most strongly as I began my practice years ago. The fourth category, and perhaps the ultimate goal of all of this practice, the achievement of these dispositions as grounded in the kabbalistic origins of Hasidism, is tikkun (healing, transformation), on multiple levels. That tikkun includes my own healing, the healing of my communities and nation, the healing of all human beings, the healing of all creatures, and the healing of the Divine-­World-­All. It aims to bring the redemption, to bring the Messiah. Just as the Besht not only taught inner work but traveled the countryside healing those in distress 253

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and aiding those in need, so too our practice is not only incomplete, but flawed, if these qualities are not expressed in our actual behavior in the world—­in family, community, politics, work, and every other aspect of our lives. These goals, and not my meditation practice, are primary. Yet my Neo-­Hasidic mindfulness practice, and the accompanying cultivation practices, constitute the anchor or pillar of my attempts to realize these goals. I have seen it transform me. Indeed, it has been the most powerful tool I have discovered to enable me to move closer to these goals. If not for this practice, not only would many of these goals be unapproachable for me, but only through this practice have I been able to truly understand so many core Hasidic claims and beliefs—­not as intellectual concepts but as felt, embodied insights into the nature of how things are. Through my meditation practice I have seen that I am not separate; I have seen the illusion of the self. That doesn’t mean that insight is always present, or dominant, in me. It means that these Hasidic claims can be realized in me as part of my felt experience. Rather than simply considered as intellectual or theological claims, they can be tasted and recalled. Hasidic texts are not meant to be read as ideas but as generators of felt insights, and my meditation practice has enabled me to access that level of the text. Though there may be infinite work before me, and yet a great many failings, I can see where I have traveled and how different it is to be where I am now than where I once was. My Neo-­Hasidic mindfulness practice has been particularly influenced by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe, who is the most significant native teacher of mindfulness in the Jewish tradition. Rabbi Shapira (whom I will also refer to as the Piaseczner Rebbe or the Piaseczner), my rebbe though I never had the zekhut (merit) to meet him, presents a systematic and powerful path of Jewish mindfulness (mahshavah hazakah). His teachings form the core of my own understanding and practice. 254

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My own practice and teaching of his spiritual path is one attempt to reclaim lost or discarded meditative elements of the Hasidic and broader Jewish mystical tradition. The reasons for this loss include modernity and its antipathy to the mystical (especially for Jews trying to fit into and be accepted in a newly open Western world), the destruction of the Eastern European Jewish community—­the greatest center of the bearers of these traditions such as Rabbi Shapira—­in the Holocaust, and the transformation of the Hasidic world from a more open, experimental milieu to a more routinized, dynastic context. Indeed, in Rabbi Shapira’s case, for instance, though he mentions and discusses his mindfulness-­meditation practice at multiple places in his works, our only step-­by-­step guide to at least one way in which the practice was actually performed is from a letter by one student of his who, having fled the Nazis to Kobe, Japan, wrote down his recollections of the oral teaching he received from his rebbe.6 That oral teaching itself, direct from the master of the practice, is lost to us as a living tradition. We are lucky to have the remnant recorded by one of his students.7 The task I am engaged in, which I often term spiritual archaeology, is an unearthing of these practices and an attempt to give them new life in our contemporary context. For me, Rabbi Shapira’s teachings are the key to such an endeavor because he teaches a robust, effective, and relevant path of spiritual practice and transformation. Rabbi Shapira teaches mindfulness as the intentional, nonjudgmental observation of one’s experience. He describes how we flee our own experience due to our discomfort and fear, or our desire and craving, and how by doing so we numb ourselves, repress our emotions, stultify our experience, and miss hearing the cries of our souls telling us: There are many emotions whose opening is like a drip, weak and slight. But if one were to expand one of them and actualize it, it would become a great river and stream of water that would never dry up. And if one does not expand it, it will be lost without ever 255

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seeing the light of day. Sometimes, for example, a person feels some discomfort within and he doesn’t know if he needs to eat, sleep, or drink alcohol, and the feeling disappears just as it came. And in truth it was a kind of extension outward of one of the limbs of the soul that desired to be actualized and to be aware with pure consciousness. So too [is this the case] sometimes with a feeling of joy or something similar. Because this emotion was not grasped in its corporeal garment, for a limb of the pure soul was extended, a person therefore doesn’t know what it is and what he feels inside himself. It was a kind of rattling and convulsion of the soul. And he drinks alcohol, eats, or does some other worldly thing. It is not that through this he quiets the soul-­convulsions. It is only that he inflames and incites his bodily feelings to roar and thunder, and the voice of the soul is not heard.8 Rabbi Shapira then tells us how conscious attention and radical openness to everything that arises can allow those natural emotions and experiences, which themselves are divinity, to come forth and enable us to live our lives fully and discover the presence of God. Concerning this our fellowship adjures and declares to each one of our fellows: Know how to look [lehistakel]. Concerning everything that occurs within you and without, know how to look. . . . We bring forth and birth the form of the thing until there will be a form that we can gaze upon. . . . Perhaps you will find the hidden God and the holiness of His glory, and when you seek Him out you will find Him. Where will you find Him? In you and in all your surroundings.9 Just by paying close attention, that which is hidden is released and we become whole. Rabbi Shapira describes how awareness frees us from both aversion and harmful desire and allows beneficial passion and a 256

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full range of emotional states to come forth.10 For him, this emotional intensity, and the ecstasy it produces, are crucial to the practice of overcoming the false sense of self.11 In general, he sees emotion not as a hindrance but as essential to, and supportive of, mindfulness and awareness.12 Indeed, a kind of insight and knowledge is only accessible through heightened emotional states that are a vital part of the practice, for “through his happiness and joy, which widens his soul, he sees with his entire soul.”13 At the same time, Rabbi Shapira teaches how our balanced mindful attention can prevent us from being overcome by our emotions and desires, from being “an entranceway trampled by the events and ideas of the world.” It can enable us to develop equanimity, and emotional and psychological autonomy, often by dropping the surface story of the emotion and touching the felt-­sense of it directly instead.14 The body, and awareness of the body, are equally central to his teaching of a mindfulness practice of direct awareness of the body and its sensations. Like many early Hasidic masters, he speaks of the divinity of the body and corporeality, that “the body itself is divine light.”15 Moreover, he believes that some forms and levels of insight and holiness are only achievable through precisely the conjuncture of body and soul, that “the knowledge of holiness happens through being and vitality, and not with the intellect alone, but rather with the whole body as well,” and this is the profound gift of being human.16 But his particular emphasis, for our purposes, is the way in which he presents the early Hasidic practice of worship in corporeality (‘avodah begashmiyut) as a mindfulness practice of direct awareness of the body and its sensations. Through investigating such sensations there arises a nondual awareness, which is in fact our natural mode of seeing, impeded only by the various barriers, the fears and desires, we have created or succumbed to.17 This awareness, revealed through the body, then allows a perception of holiness and insight that would otherwise not be possible, an embodied knowing through meditative practice.18 257

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These approaches to the heart and body, and the championing of direct perception rather than mere analysis, also present a critique of the intellect and judgment as the primary and most significant aspect of the human being. Instead the intellect is considered a helpful but insufficient aspect of ourselves, which must be utilized carefully to be beneficial.19 Hence Rabbi Shapira advocates a practice that focuses on forgoing analysis, observing thought rather than producing thought (and especially disengaging from harmful thoughts), and quieting the mind.20 Altogether, this mindfulness practice allows the practitioner to reach the state of no-­self (bittul ha-­yesh) and nothingness (ayin) described above. Through this state of nonidentification, a profound love—­the purpose of being human for the Piaseczner—­flows into the world. For “what is true lovingkindness [hesed] that we grasp? It is the purpose for which God created the entire human being, the purpose that was in God’s mind according to which He created the human being. If a person grasps this purpose, then he grasps his soul and grasps the lovingkindness. And if not, he does not grasp his soul.”21 Here we see how this practice ends in tikkun, in making ourselves more loving beings and in bringing the healing of love to the world.

Neo-­Hasidic Mindfulness and Buddhism Those familiar with Buddhist-­based mindfulness teaching as transmitted in the West and its practice will notice that there are very few gaps between Western mindfulness teachings, the Hasidic goals, and the Piaseczner’s particular practice as I have presented it above. Perhaps this is why my mindfulness practice, which is profoundly based on Western Buddhist mindfulness practice and theory, has always felt so fully integrated with and supportive of my broader Jewish practice. I was transformed by the Piaseczner Rebbe and consider him my rebbe, but for me it is complicated and profoundly sad that I was not 258

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able to learn this material from a living rebbe. Nor did I have the opportunity to develop my path and practice by learning directly from Neo-­ Hasidic teachers such as Reb Zalman, who were reintroducing spiritual practices to Judaism. Instead I learned meditation as a living tradition and as part of an unbroken lineage from Western mindfulness teachers (though no particular Western mindfulness teacher has ever become my rebbe). Perhaps my explicit acknowledgment of the import and impact of these outside sources makes my practice Neo-­Hasidic: Neo-­Hasidism recognizes with gratitude wisdom from other spiritual traditions that enriches our own spiritual practice. Indeed, through the eyes of this training, I have been able to understand, adopt, and deepen into the contemplative practices taught, in our Jewish texts, by Rabbi Shapira and others. My secular mindfulness training has allowed me insight into the texts and the ability to take on practices in these texts that I might otherwise have found impossible. My work of spiritual archaeology, of uncovering and reclaiming Jewish spiritual practice, has been grounded in my contemplative training in the mindfulness tradition. It has combined the embodied teaching of mindfulness meditation received from living teachers with the textual teaching of Jewish spiritual practices from masters who are no longer with us. This living tradition of mindfulness practice, as transported to the West, has been crucial in providing me with an unprecedented level of technical expertise, acumen, and understanding of the nature of mindfulness from a tradition that has spent thousands of years refining its understanding. These include, on a technical level, such aspects as the five hindrances (sensory desire, ill will, sloth-­torpor, restlessness-­ worry, doubt) and how to work with them, and a host of other similar insights and instructions. Its Western guise has also incorporated Western psychology and cultural understandings in a way that allows mindfulness to speak to my psychological situation differently than the core Buddhist sources do. 259

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In addition, Buddhist psychology has profoundly influenced my understanding of myself, the world, and Judaism; it is another deep underlying structure to my practice. Buddhist insights, such as the three feeling tones (pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral) that characterize all experience, our three instinctive responses to them (craving, aversion, and ignorance), and the suffering they produce, have transformed how I understand my mind, emotions, and behavior. They have also transformed how I understand the mind, emotions, and behavior of others. The particularly Buddhist critique of the self and the importance of the truth of impermanence shape the way I think about existence in general and its nature in particular. These insights structure my life and practice, not only of mindfulness but more generally. Like my unconscious exposure to and absorption of popularized Western psychology, which leads me, for instance, to speak about the unconscious and repression as part of my religious life, understanding, and reading of texts, so too core Buddhist insights have become part of how I see the world, myself, and Torah. Yet my Jewish mindfulness is not merely Buddhist mindfulness in a tallit. Rather, Jewish, and particularly Hasidic, teachings shape my practice and its understanding sometimes in ways different from or in tension with Buddhist approaches. The Piaseczner Rebbe, for instance, has been profoundly influential in challenging me to open fully to my emotions, to use my mindfulness as a technique to hold my emotions with compassion, to allow emotional release, and to see my emotions as divine expressions of my soul, in contrast to some Buddhist approaches that focus more on equanimity in the face of emotion. Moreover, the Hasidic and Jewish tradition, and the Piaseczner in his mindfulness practice, celebrate the importance and centrality of desire (while recognizing its danger), rather than its expungement, as a healthy and crucial part of the spiritual life. They warn of the dangers of guilt, depression, and self-­hatred, a concept, Sharon Salzberg famously reports, the Dalai Lama was not familiar with and had 260

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trouble understanding.22 They champion awe, wonder, and the continual amazement at the divine grandeur of our experience. They teach that our practice must be part of the broader project of tikkun, which stretches from ourselves through the world and to God, teaching us to see the inseparable connection between contemplative practice, compassionate behavior, justice, and social action.23 In this way, in the interplay between core Hasidic teachings, Buddhist-­ rooted Western mindfulness practice, and the Piaseczner’s teachings, a Neo-­Hasidic meditation practice and theory has emerged. Classic Hasidic concepts have been transformed, expanded, or more deeply understood in light of both Buddhist ideas and the Piaseczner’s practice-­ rooted understandings of earlier conceptions. For example, consider the concept of bittul ha-­yesh (self-­annihilation) or, in its personal psychological meaning, ayin (nothingness). These two concepts are central to early Hasidic thought, especially for the Maggid of Mezritch and his students. They describe a relinquishing of the sense of self, an awareness of one’s divinity, a merging with Divine Presence, a letting go of self-­ importance and pride, a release of ego-­based desire. They emphasize the cultivation of radical openness and flexibility beyond our habits, qualities, or personal dispositions. Both Buddhist teachings and the Piaseczner, however, stress, in addition, the nonidentification with any particular aspect of yourself. For instance, the Piaseczner teaches that the “body is called by the name of the person, and soul is also called the soul of so-­and-­so. Therefore the person must be found [really existent] [le-himatsei] outside [beyond] his soul.”24 Similarly, my mindfulness teachers, such as Michelle McDonald, Amita Schmidt, Sylvia Boorstein, Pema Chodron, Tara Brach, and others, have stressed again and again that one of the foundational mistakes of what they call self-­ing is our mistaken identification with our body, emotions, thoughts, or some sense of solid identity or permanence, such as a soul. Here, the Piaseczner instructs us to drop any identification with any of those aspects of our self, as none of them are ultimate. 261

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In particular, the Piaseczner and my mindfulness teachers emphasize that letting go of the self has to do with detaching and untangling oneself from the thornbush of the mind, “for it is the way of thoughts to become entangled, one in the next, and so it is difficult for a person to separate himself from them.” But to do so is vital, for it is “the sense of self [yeshut] that constitutes a barrier to the heavenly influx.” Which is to say, “If one’s thoughts and intellect are awake, it is difficult for the heavenly flow to penetrate.” Therefore, the practice, as my mindfulness teachers taught, is to “watch his thoughts. . . . He will slowly feel that the mind is emptying; his thoughts are slowing a bit from their habitual flow.”25 One must observe one’s thoughts, not identify or get lost in them, nor analyze them. In such a way one is no longer trapped in and identified with them, and one can release the false sense of self they produce. Similarly, we might turn to one of the true Hasidic conceptual and practical revolutions, which is their approach to mahshavot zarot, the distracting thoughts and feelings that arise when one is engaged in spiritual practice, most classically in prayer. Here my own understanding has been derived from a synthesis of Hasidic texts, which were powerful but not sufficiently clear as to how I could accomplish what they described, and the oral Torah of Western mindfulness teachings. The distracting thoughts in question are often described as thoughts or feelings of improper desire, fear, anger, or pride, but can be one of an almost infinite variety of mental and emotional disturbances. The Hasidic revolution, taught by the Besht, was that instead of pushing such “distractions” aside, one must instead welcome them in and elevate them, for “through accepting [the pain] with joy, pain [ts.r.h] is transformed into willed acceptance [r.ts.h].”26 For if one does not welcome these distractions in, if instead the practitioner “rejects them,” then “more haters are made through thickness and corporeality.”27 Our very resistance to these distractions or psychic assaults strengthens and increases them. 262

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Many texts describe this alternate approach, but what does it really mean to “accept with joy” or to not reject the distractions that arise? What is the Maggid precisely instructing us to do when he tells us: The principle is that all that a person sees and hears and all the occurrences that happen to him, they all come to awaken him. Whether it is something concerning love [ahavah], fear [yir’ah], splendor [tiferet], endurance [netzah], beauty [hod], connection [yesod], or governance [malkhut], their principle is in two ways. Either there comes to him during prayer a bad deed that he did that comes before him in his thought in order to be healed and elevated. And this is like a parable of one who looks into a mirror who sees his visage reflected back, thus his deeds come to him in thought. . . . Or letters from the shattering [shevirah] come. And [he] needs to discern whether they are letters from love, fear, or the other attributes. This [occurs] both during prayer and at any time. Sometimes a person is scared of some thing or creature. Everything comes to him to be raised.28 How do we welcome in these distracting thoughts? How do we return them to their root? What does that mean precisely? How is one to accept, heal, and elevate these qualities? In these original texts the details of the practice are not precisely clear to me. But, through the experience of my own meditation practice, what is required is abundantly clear. First, instead of responding with aversion to these distracting thoughts, one turns to them with love. One literally welcomes them into one’s consciousness, observing them, loving them (with their discomfort and pain), and softening one’s mind, heart, and body in response to them. The softening is the dropping of resistance and the love is the welcoming with joy (if we understand joy as an openhearted embrace).29 This already, much of the time, provides a healing and elevation, as one is no longer trapped 263

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in the emotional or mental state but rather relating to it wisely and lovingly, like a mother holding a fussing child. Second, as we have mentioned in relation to the Piaseczner, one responds and relates to the root itself: the underlying feeling or texture, rather than the particular narrative of whatever thought pattern or emotion is arising. One doesn’t get trapped in the story, in one’s justification, let’s say, for one’s anger, but rather touches the actual felt experience of anger itself. Often, by simply turning one’s acceptance and love toward the felt-­sensation, it releases, like a small child who only needed our attention. Third, when one has truly released the unhelpful experience, when one is no longer caught in it, there can yet be a wise and helpful aspect to the experience, something left over to elevate to the Divine. Anger can become discerning wisdom, desire can become wise passion and caring, fear can become the sage recognition of our smallness and vulnerability and the experience of awe. This is another example of how a Neo-­Hasidic meditative approach understands core Hasidic concepts and utilizes them as part of contemplative practice. From the dialogue between classical Hasidic teachings, Western mindfulness, the Piaseczner Rebbe’s contemplative approach, and individual experience, a Neo-­Hasidic theory and practice emerges.

Neo-­Hasidism, Mindfulness, Buddhism, and Theology Yet in our exploration of the dialogue and synthesis of Hasidism and Buddhist-­influenced mindfulness there is, of course, still to discuss: God. We are monotheists; Buddhists are atheists. My practice, as described, brings me into more intimate relationship with the Divine, allowing me to see the divinity of all. Is this not a profound abyss between the two traditions? 264

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I’m not sure it is. In fact, in the context of my pragmatic, Hasidic-­ panentheistic, Maimonidean-­apophatic approach to theology, I’m not sure whether the distinction, in at least some cases, is more than semantic. This is especially true when considering notions such as “Buddha nature” and more metaphysical conceptions of emptiness in Buddhism. Yet even if there is some sort of philosophical tension, that is not my experience when actively engaging with the two traditions. In fact, in completely unexpected ways, mindfulness practice and three connected aspects of Jewish theology have resulted in my being opened to personal theistic imaginings of God in a way I never thought possible. The elements that brought this change have been the critique of language and reification in both mindfulness and Maimonidean-­apophatic theology, the pragmatic unsystematic nature of both midrashic and Hasidic descriptions of God, and kabbalistic theological pluralism (the many faces of divinity). The critique of reification is the resistance, in mindfulness, to turning experience into something conceptual by filtering it through language rather than relating to the bare nature of the experience itself. The critique of language in Maimonidean-­apophatic theology is the claim that no language can ever capture the Divine and that, if we must use language, we should use negative language, describing only what God is not. Together, by challenging the very nature of language and theology, these critiques have freed me to utilize images of the Divine that were previously unacceptable to me because of their philosophical untenability. These critiques have allowed me to see theological statements and images simply as language that helps me point to and cultivate certain types of experience, rather than some sort of scientific metaphysical statement about the nature of God. The pragmatic unsystematic nature of midrashic and Hasidic theology, the tendency in both midrash and Hasidism to work with multiple and even contradictory images of God without problematizing or being concerned with any tensions, has similarly freed me to play 265

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with images of God. This unsystematic nature of Rabbinic and Hasidic theology arises, in my view, from the pragmatic nature of the teachings, which seek to form a certain kind of person and a certain kind of relationship with the Divine rather than try to describe God in any scientific or philosophical sense. Here again, the tradition gives me permission to play with theological language and images to cultivate particular experiences and to shape the kind of person I want to be. Finally, kabbalistic theological pluralism, the way in which Kabbalah presents many different faces and aspects of divinity as coexisting both in harmony and tension with each other, again enables a pluralistic theology that welcomes many images and moments without having to commit to any particular one. In this way, I have found both my mindfulness practice and Buddhist-­based insights conducive to a deepening and broadening of my theology. If anything, they have enabled faith rather than undermined it. This, for me, is the real test, for genuine tension is not the tension of theory but the tension of life and practice.

Integrity and the Way Forward What, then, does this integration of Hasidic theology, psychology, and practice with Buddhist practice and psychology look like? In other words, what is Neo-­Hasidic mindfulness meditation and what are its conceptual underpinnings? In this essay I attempted to trace out the beginning of an answer to these questions, demonstrating how early Hasidic concepts are understood and realized through this practice and the Jewish-­mindfulness teaching of the Piaseczner. But we can’t fully know yet. Still, I think our tradition has an important model in Maimonides’ relationship to Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition. Maimonides makes no bones about his respect for and indebtedness to Aristotle (really a combination of Aristotle and Plotinus), and the Aristotelian 266

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philosophical tradition as transmitted and developed in the Arab world. He unabashedly incorporates Aristotelianism into his understanding of Judaism. In doing so, both Aristotelianism and Judaism are changed. With time, parts of Maimonides’ legacy have faded, but other parts (such as the incorporeal nature of God) became so centrally integrated into Judaism that they help to define our very understanding of it. This is not dissimilar to Kabbalah’s incorporation of Neoplatonism and its profound impact on subsequent Jewish thought, theology, and practice. It is also parallel to contemporary Judaism’s incorporation of Western psychology into the ways we think about ourselves, our texts, and our practice. We do so in radically different yet largely unacknowledged ways, due to Western psychology’s cultural dominance and hence assumptive-­ness. Maimonides is uniquely and profoundly modern in his explicit recognition of his indebtedness to non-­Jewish sources and his claim that these sources help us see the true, deep nature of Judaism and Torah. If we do this right, we will do the same. Like Maimonides, we can acknowledge our profound influence and indebtedness to a nonnative tradition, both in terms of ideas and practice. When integrating it into native aspects of the tradition (which themselves are never “pure”), inevitably both are molded and transformed. We can ground ourselves in our texts and the teachers of our lineage, pursuing the goals of spiritual practice they have set for us, while incorporating truth and wisdom from wherever we can find it, particularly when it helps us to better achieve those goals. There are no a priori guidelines for this. There is only the step-­by-­step attempt to live in accordance with divine will. In doing so we will reveal a deeper dimension of Torah, part of the ongoing process of revelation—­ recognizing the white fire that surrounds the black fire. In doing so we will create and receive a practice that allows Torah to respond to our most pressing needs, as it always has, and open a path of healing, repair, and redemption. That is my hope, and that is my practice. 267

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Notes 1. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Esh Kodesh (Jerusalem: Va’ad Hasidei Piaseczna, 1960), massa’ey 5741 (1941), 105–­8. 2. See Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh (Jerusalem: Va’ad Hasidei Piaseczna, 1995), hag ha-­pesah ‘al ha-­haggadah, s.v. be-­khol dor va-­dor, 357–­58. 3. Compare Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Likuttey Amarim-­Tanya, bilingual edition, rev. ed., trans. Nissan Mindel, with Nisen Mangel, Zalman I. Posner, and Jacob Immanuel Schochet (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), chap. 26; Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Beney Mahshavah Tovah (Jerusalem: Va’ad Hasidei Piaseczna, 1989), seder emtsa’ey ve-­yesod ha-­hevra, 12; Azriel Shohet, “On Joy in Hasidism,” Zion 16 (1951): 30–­43 (Hebrew); Rivka Schatz-­Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, Prince­ ton Legacy Library, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1993), 93–­95. 4. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, sod ha-­hashkatah, 450–­51. 5. James Jacobson-­Maisels, “Inviting the Demons In: A Hasidic Approach to Suffering, Conflict and Human Failings,” Kerem 11 (5768/2007–­08). 6. Nehemia Polen, The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (New York: Jason Aronson, 1999), 159–­60n14. 7. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, sod ha-­hashkatah, 450–­51. 8. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Hakhsharat ha-­Avrekhim (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2001), chap. 9, pt. 4. And compare Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, sod ha-­hashkatah, 450–­51. 9. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Beney Mahshavah Tovah, 27–­30. 10. Shapira, Hakhsharat ha-­Avrekhim, 122–­23; Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, sukkot 5690, ushpizat yitshak, 282. 11. This can be contrasted with Buddhist approaches. 12. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, ma’amar hinukhi, 458. 13. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, rosh ha-­shanah, second night 5690, 217. 14. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, hag ha-­pesah ‘al ha-­haggadah, s.v. be-­khol dor va-­dor, 357–­58; Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, Mevo ha-­She’arim (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2001), 23. 15. Shapira, Hakhsharat ha-­Avrekhim, 136–­38. 16. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, toledot 5690, 24–­25; and compare 440. 268

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17. Shapira, Mevo ha-­She‘arim, 224; Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, simhat torah 5690, 304–­5; Shapira, Beney Mahshavah Tovah, seder emtsa‘ey ve-­yesod ha-­ hevra, 12:30–­31 and 14:34. 18. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, 440. 19. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, va-­era, 5689, 94. 20. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, sod ha-­hashkatah, 450–­51; Shapira, Hovat ha-­Talmidim (Tel Aviv: Va’ad Hasidei Piaseczna, n.d.), 155–­57. 21. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, motsa’ey yom kippur, s.v. ki ba-­yom ha-­zeh yikhapper, 276–­77. 22. Schatz-­Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, 91–­110. See Sharon Salzberg, “Sit,” available at www​.sharonsalzberg​.com​/sit. 23. Western mindfulness teachers (many of them Jewish) have applied mindfulness to emotion and the other issues mentioned in similar ways. To what extent the Jewishness of these teachers has played a role in this process is an interesting question. 24. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, motsa’ey yom kippur, s.v. ki ba-­yom ha-­zeh yikhapper, 277. 25. Shapira, Derekh ha-­Melekh, sod ha-­hashkatah, 450–­51. 26. Keter Shem Tov ha-­Shalem (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2004), 87c:51. These same three letters may be recombined, yielding “willed acceptance” (ratsah) rather than “pain” (tsarah). 27. Keter Shem Tov ha-­Shalem, 75:40. 28. Maggid Devarav Le-­Ya‘akov, ed. Rivka Schatz-­Uffenheimer (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1976), 161:258–­59. 29. See the description of joy, which also includes broken-­heartedness, in Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Likuttey Amarim-­Tanya, chap. 26, 32b–­33b.

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10 Neo-­Hasidism for Today’s Jewish Seeker A Personal Reflection Jonathan P. Slater The Institute for Jewish Spirituality, founded, among others, by Arthur Green, Sylvia Boorstein (the noted Buddhist mindfulness-­meditation teacher, reclaiming her Jewish tradition), and Rabbi Jonathan Omer-­ Man, emerged from a desire to bring mindfulness meditation and Neo-­Hasidic spirituality to the mainstream of American Jewish life. For too long most modern Jews had ignored the rich mystical tradition within Judaism, despite its potential to offer an alternative to ethnic-­ tribal Jewish identity, and despite that its teachings and practices could serve as a powerful antidote to the stale intellectualized rationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (i.e., High Reform and the Wissenschaft approaches to study and practice). It was time to bring a practice-­based, spiritually informed orientation to the American Jewish community in a new form. The institute’s program has now served more than four hundred rabbis, cantors, educators, and lay leaders. These participants have been invited to shift from relating to their Jewish lives either as good ideas—­reflecting their favored ethical and aesthetic values—­or familial traditions to engaging in Jewish life as spiritual practice. The foundation of the practice is mindfulness meditation, which in turn grounds one in mindfulness in whatever one does. This shift leads the participants to know, feel, and honor their own experience 271

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in the moment. Rather than being told what to think, feel, or believe “because that is what Judaism says,” they come to know their experience directly. The sensation of gratitude is felt in the body; so, too, grief, anger, hope, love, compassion. When these and other similar feelings are known directly, they can be brought to the Jewish practices of prayer, ritual observances, and interpersonal responsibility. The Jewish act is now grounded in what is known directly, and filled with personal significance in turn. The significance of this shift is twofold. First, “knowing” is no longer an intellectual experience alone; it is rooted in the heart and sensations (feelings and bodily awareness) as well. Second, religious practice is no longer solely a Jewish obligation or ethnic identifier, but a means to cultivate spiritual and ethical dispositions, leading to personal (and ultimately global) transformation. For most participants this change in orientation was welcome, and refreshing. It offered new ways to engage congregants and community members in their Jewish lives, and a novel way of speaking about what it means to live a Jewish life. The experience of the individual Jew would now be honored; her or his experience in life would now inform the meaning of Jewish practice. And, all Jews would be invited to participate in Jewish observance and community for the sake of transformation. A more compassionate heart would be cultivated in order to ease the suffering of others. The isolating American model of the autonomous self would be overcome to connect with all of creation for the sake of justice and environmental healing. Introducing the study of Hasidic texts helped to ground the mindfulness practice in Jewish language. Here were teachers who were interested—­among other things—­in inviting the reader to sense his or her direct connection with God, in feeling the ebbs and flows of spiritual awareness, in seeing the whole of life as an arena for spiritual consciousness and engagement. Furthermore, the texts discussing the spiritual experiences of Hasidic teachers, the shifts in consciousness that 272

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led to deeper awareness of the Divine and connection to God, did not directly teach the practices by which readers could attain these shifts themselves. Readers were often left with the sense of “yes, but how?” Both mindfulness meditation and mindfulness practice can lead to these experiences. Thus the institute took the best of each form of study—­mindfulness as well as Hasidic texts and spirituality—­and invited each to reflect on the other, to illuminate each other, to make them more powerful together. A key element of this process is the focus on spiritual practice, as opposed to “religious observance” or “doing Jewish things because we are Jewish.” To the Hasidic teachers, this, too, was key. While observing the traditional mitzvot was of utmost concern to them, they recognized that there was also a realm of activity beyond that defined by the commandments deserving of spiritual attention. That which is neither prescribed nor proscribed is the domain of the permitted, which encompasses much of our daily lives. In addition to elevating the importance of performing the mitzvot with fervor and joy, these teachers taught that all of our mundane activities could become devotional, a form of serving God. Beyond that which is required or prohibited, in the dimensions of those activities where law did not apply directly, one could dedicate attention and intention to serving God. Any conscious act could be filled with meaning and importance. Practicing the cultivation of consciousness to support such a life became the core of Jewish life in the Hasidic world. This is the realm of ‘avodah, serving the Divine. Thus, for instance, the Ba‘al Shem Tov taught: We must serve God with all our power, for everything depends on this. God desires that we serve God in every possible manner. How so? Sometimes we may be walking along with other people, so that we are not able at the same time to be learning Torah. Nevertheless, we must still cleave to the Blessed One, and to bring about unifications. So also, when we are on the road, and we are 273

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not able to pray or study as we are accustomed, we must nevertheless serve God in the ways that present themselves, in other manners. And, do not take this too hard, because God wants us to serve God in all these different ways, sometimes this way, sometimes in a different manner. Indeed, it was for this very purpose that it came about that you set out to walk on the way, or to speak with other people—­to serve God in this very manner.1 The Ba‘al Shem Tov expanded the times and places when one might serve God, and so connect with God, to include all of human experience. Rather than limiting spiritual engagement to the classically honored Torah study and prayer, mundane activities such as work, conversation, travel—­even eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse—­become the domain of spiritual practice. All of life can thus be infused with a sense of purpose and meaning; each day can be filled with a sense of conscious connection to the Divine. By this understanding, the seeming distractions from traditional devotional practice—­prayer and Torah study—­are not to be treated as negative events. Rather, they serve as invitations to bring spiritual consciousness into ostensibly mundane experiences. The Ba‘al Shem Tov claims that even in these endeavors it is possible to perform “unifications.” This term has had a long and complex history. In general it refers to bringing about unification within the godhead (or of the letters of the Divine Name) within and through the thoughts of the practitioner. Quite possibly, this is what the Ba‘al Shem Tov had in mind. Yet Rabbi Moshe Hayim Efrayim of Sudilkov, his grandson, cites his teaching and deepens it: Anyone who serves God in all her ways, seeking to fulfill the injunction “know God in all your ways” [Prov. 3:6], will do everything mindfully [be-­da‘at]. Eating, drinking, sleeping, engaging in con274

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versation in order to bring others closer to God, or to help dispel their sadness, or to help them in their business to sustain them so that they may devote more time to serving God—­if even these [worldly] activities are done mindfully, then everything can constitute divine service [‘avodah].2 Here the activities in which one works to perform unifications are expanded to include turning one’s attention to helping others by lifting their spirits or helping them find work. Where the classical unifications took place internally, in the consciousness of the practitioner (and so then also in the cosmic/divine realm), they now take place in the human dimension, through interpersonal connections. Moreover, the unifications that take place in the divine realm are now realized through bringing people together in the mundane realm. Human unification brings about divine and cosmic wholeness. These two realms are not separate. We engage in spiritual practice in light of these teachings both to transform our consciousness—­to recognize and experience the unity and oneness of all existence as God—­and to transform our community or society—­to uplift those who have fallen emotionally, financially, morally—­and to make all whole. Jewish religious practice, in a Neo-­Hasidic light, is for the sake of such transformation. All of our life can become ‘avodah, divine service. Once we experience all of our endeavors, especially those outside of traditional Jewish religious practice, as means of serving God and making unifications in the world, it is possible to turn back to those specific Jewish religious observances to find in them their transformational power. Being Jewish can become the manner through which we serve others, transforming our lives and consciousness in turn. Embracing this holistic understanding of ‘avodah, where both religious practice as well as interpersonal interactions are the domain of divine service, may address those many Jews who claim to be “spiritual” but not “religious,” who willingly identify as Jews but 275

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who profess to have “no religion.” Being “spiritual” is not solely an inner experience. It is an inner orientation, a disposition, that orients us to the Divine, while also connecting us with all creation, with all beings. We satisfy our spiritual lives not in how we feel, but in how we treat and serve other people. This orientation is cultivated through the classical religious practices of Torah study and prayer (and the other ritual practices, as well), so that it may be extended into the rest of life.

Connecting with God At the same time, this orientation poses a significant challenge to those who hold that ritual practice is the whole of Jewish expression and the sole definition of religious life. Even as late as the twentieth century, Hasidic teachers challenged their followers to cultivate an orientation to hearing God’s voice so as to inspire and direct their religious activities. Consider, for example, this passage from Rabbi Shalom Noah Berzovsky, the Slonimer Rebbe, who died in 2000: Thus we understand the distinction in our verse where it says “If you walk in My statutes” [Lev. 26:3], rather than “if you fulfill” them. This demand is unlike that regarding the rest of the commandments, e.g., placing a mezuzah on the doorpost [(Deut. 6:9], or constructing a parapet for the roof of one’s house [Deut. 22:8] and the like, where one fulfills one’s obligation at the completion of the act. The quality called for here is all-­embracing, including all aspects of the life of a Jew in all their particulars, involving the qualities of the mind, the heart, and the limbs (as it is the eye that sees, the heart that desires, and the body that leads to sin). This demand applies both day and night; when we are alone and when we are with other people. Thus, “if you walk in My statutes,” 276

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conducting ourselves in a manner that befits the statutes of the Torah, then both our physical and spiritual lives will be in synch with the whole of the order of creation, all conducted through their statutes. In this manner we will merit the fulfillment of the blessing “I will grant peace to the land” [Lev. 26:6].3 Simple fulfillment of the commandments is insufficient. Our inner orientation toward our acts affects the world around us. We must be aware of our whole being—­mind, heart, body—­for our spiritual beings to reach their full expression. Without this, personal, interpersonal, and global transformation is not possible. An important aspect of this combination of mindfulness and Neo-­ Hasidic spirituality is that it makes a God-­centered mysticism accessible to more humanist-­oriented contemporary Jews. Over the course of several generations, particularly in the United States, belief in God has diminished among Jews. Many factors have contributed to that process: the German Jews who emigrated in the early nineteenth century came from communities that were not particularly strong in Jewish practice or belief; those Eastern European Jews who emigrated later in that century and in the early twentieth were more willing to give up connection with their tradition to find something new in a new land; those latter emigrants were also influenced by the rise of socialism and its antireligious arguments; American materialism and pragmatism, and its focus on technology, left little space for a supernatural God. By the early twentieth century, God, and God’s role in religion, had become conventional, something everyone agreed to but many doubted personally and ignored for the most part. This disaffection with God was only exacerbated after the Shoah, which raised serious theological challenges for Jews. Neo-­Hasidism offers an alternative approach to God. The early Hasidic teachers embraced a panentheistic, nondualistic relationship with God. This derives from the Ba‘al Shem Tov, who raised up the 277

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phrase “The whole earth is filled with God’s glory” (Isa. 6:3), reiterating its meaning by quoting the Tikkunei Zohar: “there is no place devoid of God.”4 While we may speak of God as Other, in fact there is no separation. God is present in all things, yet also beyond them, enlivening each individually while also connecting them, one to the other, in the intricate fabric of all existence. The Ba‘al Shem Tov also realized that this conception must be experienced. In the following brief passage, we are instructed to bring our attention to our very physicality (in our capacity to move) and our humanity (in our capacity to speak) as a means of sensing the immanent penetration of divinity in all existence: The blessed Creator is found in every movement, as it is impossible for us to move at all, or to speak any words without the power of the blessed Creator. This is what we learn from the verse “The whole earth is filled with God’s glory” [Isa. 6:3].5 Here we are offered a way to connect with God in an intimate manner. We sense God’s being in our bodies, and recognize that we are not separate from divinity. This orientation is meant to be empowering and inspiring. We have the capacity to do great things, to transform existence from merely material stuff, empty of significance, finite and ephemeral, to that which reveals God’s presence in the world. Rather than diminishing the value of the physical world, this view redeems it as the site where God can be met and made manifest. Consider the following: “The whole earth is filled with God’s glory”: “glory” here means a garment. In other words, it is as if God were garbed even in the most material dimensions of existence. Thus “The whole earth is filled with God’s glory”: even in the material dimension we find God’s “glory”, i.e., God’s garment.6 278

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This reflects what might be called a naturalistic mystical humanism. The natural world exists in itself, as itself, but it also reveals divinity hidden within it. That divinity can only be observed, experienced, and honored by human beings. Ultimately it is the power of the human as conscious observer of the natural world that can bring God into it. God’s presence in the world is indeed the product of our consciousness. This radical statement may not have been what the early Hasidic teachers had in mind. But how they spoke about God opens the way for an accessible contemporary Neo-­Hasidic spirituality. The elements of that spirituality complicate the theological conversation of the past century or more. First, as Abraham Joshua Heschel taught, God is known primarily through experience, rather than theory. Our Neo-­Hasidic spirituality grounds us in experience. Then, through mindfulness, we seek a direct connection with the world as it is, striving to perceive the world in its own subjectivity. In this manner we find each moment, each event, each experience full of life; we can sense God’s vitalizing presence in our bodies and in the world. We neither deny the world as it is to sense God’s presence, nor remove God from this world to have an experience of the Divine. Rather, we embrace a nondualistic awareness of both-­and: there is both the world as it is, and there is nothing but God; in witnessing the myriad forms of creation, their variety and mystery, we reveal God within creation. We see this dynamic in the following passage from Kedushat Levi: There are surely some occasions, times of favor, when God conducts God’s world with great love, changing the course of nature to pour out God’s goodness in a revealed manner, not in a natural way, to the Jewish people in whom God glories. This is a revelation of God’s glorious sovereignty over us. But, there are times when God’s countenance is hidden (heaven forbid), when the world is conducted in natural ways. Now, when God’s glorious sovereignty is revealed to us, and God conducts the world to raise up the fortune 279

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of the Jewish people in whom God glories, God does so outside the natural laws, performing miracles and wonders. Then God’s sovereignty is visible to one and all, and surely the hearts of all people will burn to serve Y-­H-­W-­H our God, the blessed Creator. They see the grandeur of God’s glorious sovereignty, and realize that it is fitting that they serve the blessed Creator since He is Master and Ruler [Zohar 1:11b]. However, when God’s sovereignty is concealed, and the world is conducted according to the ways of nature, it is less likely that hearts will burn to serve God. So, for instance, the Israelites in the wilderness observed the miracles and wonders: the well, the manna, the clouds of glory, and they were enflamed to serve the Sovereign, Master, and Ruler. They therefore responded, “All that Y-­H-­W-­H has spoken we will do and obey” [Ex. 24:7]. Nevertheless, God inverted the mountain over them like a tub [b. Shabbat 88a] so that even in those occasions when the world is conducted in natural ways—­when the three gifts of the well, the manna, and the clouds of glory depart, and they eat of the produce of the land [Josh. 5:11]—­they will still have faith that everything natural, all events great and small, all derive from God, and that God’s sovereignty rules in all places. They will realize that they must fulfill the Torah even when God’s sovereignty is concealed.7 One might be led to believe that this is a classical dualistic Rabbinic teaching. We might think that God’s true nature is solely the blessed Creator, Master, and Ruler, beyond the doings of the world. Yet we would be mistaken. While at times we experience God’s grandeur, the infinite greatness of creation and the Creator, and a sense of distance, that is not the whole story. God is also always present in the workings of nature as they are. We can meet God, know God, through the natural world and the unfolding of human endeavor. This also means that when God seems far away, separate, and uninvolved in 280

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our lives, we can connect directly to our experience in the world to sense God’s presence. A nondualistic, natural mystical humanism may be an appealing and accessible spirituality for contemporary seekers. It addresses the discomfort many Jews (and others) feel with the image of God as Other, distant from their lives and master of their destinies. Yeti an earlier passage God is referred to as “Master and Ruler,” thus seemingly reintroducing the dichotomous, dualistic concept of God. This is one of the challenges of communicating the full thrust of the classical Hasidic texts. The nondualistic (verging on monistic) spirituality is often obscured by the classical formulations. While one response might be to cherry-­pick those passages or sentences that seem appealing, that would not be fair to the texts, or ultimately to the seeker-­student. Instead, a response might be to engage the seeker in (mindfulness) practice, to connect with each of these two ways of experiencing life and existence, of connecting with divinity. Through experience, the theoretical can become real. Here is a text that invites just this sort of examination. Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, a student of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, reflects his master’s teachings in his lessons. Recognizing that spiritual awareness, inner well-­being, happiness, and balance are not always at a high point, he offers instruction for regaining a degree of hope and energy in the face of fallen spirits and discouragement: Your very awareness and your mental powers have been taken away from you! Nevertheless, you come to know that “the whole earth is filled with God’s glory”—­even a state that is wholly earthbound, nothing but coarse matter, is filled with the glory of God. Y-­H-­W-­H is called “the Life of life,” meaning that the vitality of all life in the world, including that of beasts, cattle, birds, and humans, is God’s own Self, the Life of life. God is the life-­force within all that lives. When you are in that fallen state, think of this: Am I not alive? 281

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Who is this life-­force in me? Is it not the blessed Creator? God is indeed present right here, but in this reduced form.8 Connecting directly to our sense of being alive is a way of awakening to the wonder of existence, and to our intimate connection with it. Recognizing that we are not alone, that we are directly woven into the web of all life, can be inspiring and consoling. Even in the midst of a dark emotional period, even in the grasp of sadness, it might be possible to connect with this awareness through sensation, and so begin to heal. In this manner one might come to feel an intimate connection with the Divine, through one’s own experience, and so begin to intuit nondualistic spirituality. This sort of spirituality can be appealing because of the intimacy it offers with God; or, expressed in mindfulness terms, the intimacy we experience with our own lives. Turning our attention to our experience, without prejudice and without elaboration, we discover that we can delight in our capacity to recognize what is true in the moment. We do not have to make things otherwise to make ourselves acceptable, to be in any way different than how we are. We can, in time, come to love our lives in whatever state we find them. Being acceptable and loved by God may seem difficult for those who have internalized a sense of guilt and failure. It may seem a fool’s journey to try to fulfill the commandments fully, for an imperfect being to live up to the expectations of a perfect God. Yet, throughout Hasidic teachings, starting with the Ba‘al Shem Tov, God’s relationship to us is characterized as that of a loving parent, accepting of mistakes and longing for connection. In the following passage, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev presents two different models of parents. There are those who love their child so much that they follow the child’s instructions; and there are those who love the child so much that they allow their instructions to supersede their child’s: 282

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“I am Y-­H-­W-­H your God” [Exod. 20:2]: consider Rashi’s comment here as well as the midrash, which teaches that God appeared to the Israelites as a young man at the Sea [of Reeds], but at the Giving of Torah God appeared to them as an elder. This is how we can understand it, by way of a parable of a parent who loves her child. When the parent does something, but the child says “Do it for me this way,” due to the love of the child the parent fulfills the child’s desire. In this manner the parent becomes like the child, doing as the child would do. But if the parent wishes to teach his child something, he must do so according to his own understanding, so that his child will understand it and not continue to think as a child would. This is true for the blessed Creator, who created all, including the Sea. But, at the Sea, the Israelites demanded that the Sea become dry land, and so the blessed Creator had to manifest (as if it could be so) in the manner of a child, acting as these children wished. Thus, according to their wishes God appeared to them as a young man, like a child. But, at Mount Sinai, where Israel stood to receive the Torah, and the Creator gave them the Torah, God had to do so as God wished (as above), as an older person. Thus God appeared to them as an elder, seated, giving instruction.9 Just as it is not a different father who does as the child asks and who also directs the child according to adult concerns, so God is not different when we sense God’s immanent presence in our lives and when we sense God’s distance. Similarly, we are able to perceive God in the oneness of all existence as well as in the infinite variety of all creation. Yet even more important, the thrust of this teaching, like so many others, is that we are invited to feel at home in the world, welcomed and loved. God’s intention is not to catch us in mistakes or cause us suffering for failure, but that we grow in wisdom and skill to live well. That does not mean we get to do whatever we wish. Just as God appeared as an 283

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elder at Sinai, God is still a parent who can—­and must—­sometimes, lovingly, say no. And as a child grows in knowledge and emotional awareness, she will intuit and internalize the limits of her choices. She may realize that while she has the capacity to do whatever she wishes, doing so may be harmful to herself and may also cause pain to her parents. Put in terms of mindfulness: whatever happens to us in the course of our lives is not unjust, but the end result of causes and conditions. Our challenge is to meet each moment—­good and bad—­with openness, acceptance, and love. Through this we may gain a degree of solace, and freedom to live life with compassion, happiness, and love.

Cultivating Equanimity This perspective invites us to practice both patience and compassion. Taken together, they help us to cultivate a degree of equanimity. When things go our way—­which is to say, when we get what we think we want—­we tend to be happy. When we are frustrated, we get angry or sad. The preceding text teaches us how to respond with equanimity. When all is going as we wish, we are reminded to be grateful, to recognize that it may not always be so. When things do not go as we wish, we are reminded to be grateful as well—­as often there is something we can learn from our circumstances (or, as Rabbi Levi Yitzhak would have it, we have been impeded in our ways by God, out of love). In such moments we can respond to our own anger, sadness, or frustration with compassion. Moreover, as the Me’or ‘Eynayim teaches, we are to practice patience as well. Holding fast in the moment, waiting patiently, allows us to investigate what is truly happening, and to sense when our circumstances are changing. Being patient allows us more easily to experience the phenomenon of “descent for the sake of ascent,” to flow with the ups and downs of life. Recognizing that every “up” will be followed by a “down”—­and that this is not bad or 284

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wrong or a flaw in creation—­allows us to respond to whatever is going on with a degree of equanimity. Equanimity is not a passive quality. It arises from acceptance, from openness to whatever is happening in the moment without resistance. It entails a degree of patience and compassion that help us to sustain openness and curiosity. In that moment of inner balance, neither averse to our situation nor embracing of it, all is potential. We are freed of bias and preference, opening the possibility that we will be able to choose what to do next skillfully, with wisdom and insight. Equanimity, then, is an affirmative stance toward the world: we affirm that it is as it is, and unflustered by that fact, we remain dedicated to acting within the world. Understanding that the quality of equanimity is dynamic, stillness in service of wise action, will help us understand an element of Hasidic theology as well. The Ba‘al Shem Tov taught that God only does good, and wishes only good for us and the world. Whatever we perceive as bad is misperception: the goodness is still there, only garbed in forms that we—­from our limited perspective—­call “bad.” An orientation of equanimity provides us with the inner balance to wait before judging and reacting to the conditions of our lives. It allows us to investigate what might be a skillful and wise response, one that might reveal greater goodness in the world.

The Flow of Good In the following passage from Me’or ‘Eynayim it is not equanimity but unification that brings goodness to the fore. The inner work of the Jewish people to cleave to God, to connect with the source of all existence, allows for the flow of good to all existence: The sages taught [b. Yevamot 63a]: “Punishment [i.e., suffering] only comes into the world for the sake of Israel,” and good only 285

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comes into the world for the sake of Israel. This is as we have taught elsewhere that the conduct of all the worlds has been given to the Jewish people, who are one complete form made up of 600,000 souls, all a portion of God. This is as Scripture says, “that I may dwell [ve-­shakhanti] within them” [Exod. 25:8]; and it says, “a tent for dwelling [shikken] in the human being” [Ps. 78:60]: God’s presence [shekhinah] is verily within the Jewish people, in their very hearts, as Scripture says, “Rock of my heart” [Ps. 73:26]. Each of us must make our heart a dwelling place for the blessed Creator, so that the emanated part will not be separated from its source. Thus, it is in their power to unify themselves with the whole world, with all creatures and with all the supernal worlds, even to the Infinite One. When they do so then effulgence, blessing, and goodness will flow from the Infinite One, from the cause to the consequence. They come chaining-­down from world to world to this very world, to all creatures, since there is no separation from the Infinite One, since they have unified all existence. It is then that the pathway of the flow is straight and unimpeded. The blessing and goodness descend by means of the straight pathway that the Jewish people made and made whole by cleaving to God, and unifying all with the totality, the Infinite One, from whom no evil comes. This is as Scripture says, “From the mouth of the Most High no evil emerges” [Lam. 3:38]. Now we understand the teaching of the sages: “Good only comes into the world for the sake [bishvil] of Israel,” that is “by the pathway [bi-­shevil]”: the path and means that they set up. This is a pathway [shevil] to transport the flow. The opposite is also true: imperfections in that pathway cause negative forces and suffering to come into the world because there is no unification. The Jewish people are not unified with, but rather separated from, their collective Source, the Infinite One. And when they are separated, then the whole world and all creatures are separated as well.10 286

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An implication of this and related teachings is that while God may have ultimate power—­the power to do good, to provide for the well-­being of all existence—­we have authority. Through our behavior we can facilitate, or impede, God’s interest and desire in the world. Ultimately God’s will shall be done; our acts cannot prevent it, and indeed, even our negative deeds are woven into the ultimate emergence of God’s goodness in the world. This aligns with mindfulness practice, through which we come to perceive that we sit at the nexus of causes and conditions beyond our control, while at the same time we have the power, through our acts, to create causes and conditions that affect all of existence. We are both subject to the unfolding of all creation since the beginning of time, and the authors of the unfolding of creation from this moment forth. In this sense, a Neo-­Hasidic reading of this sort of text allows us to understand God in a very different manner. All existence is in God, is made up of God, and is not separate from God. Yet that existence, this creation, is also not separate from us. Through our acts, informed by our consciousness, we move the world toward goodness or suffering. God is acting through us, as we could not move without God’s enlivening force, yet what is happening unfolds due to our choices and intentions. Nevertheless, whatever it is that we do, ultimately all will unfold within God toward goodness, love, and peace; toward unification and absorption in the Infinite.

Difficulties in Hasidic Spirituality All of the above notwithstanding, the movement from Hasidic to Neo-­ Hasidic spirituality is not without its difficulties. While Hasidic spirituality aims for the nondual, it retains an element of duality when it establishes two seemingly incompatible categories: Israel and the nations. This division within Hasidism is not surprising given its inher287

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itance of rabbinic spirituality. Still, the Hasidic impulse is to emphasize the Jewish people’s unique role in the process of redemption, almost to the point of excluding gentiles from that eventuality. From the Hasidic vantage point, holy sparks, scattered in this world waiting to be redeemed, are present in gentiles—­but once removed from them, they, like the “husks” or “shards” of the original Lurianic myth, will die off and disappear. Such exclusive and potentially dangerous ideas must be challenged. In my own practice of translation, I tend to diminish the forceful way in which the texts promote Jewish uniqueness, substituting “we” or “one” or “you” instead. Nevertheless, when speaking to a primarily Jewish audience, I leave the references to Israel and the Jewish people in place, hoping that these teachings will be attractive to them. However, there are passages that cannot so easily be massaged for a general audience. This will either limit the texts that can be used as inspiration for practice or spiritual growth or force us to explicitly reject the ideology of those texts and reinterpret Hasidic teachings as available for all seekers. The tension between promoting Neo-­Hasidism as a meaningful pathway for Jewish renaissance and using it to appeal to all spiritual seekers remains. For instance, this tension cannot be avoided or massaged with regard to the highly gendered nature of Kabbalah and Hasidic spirituality. To begin with, these teachings were originally offered to a male audience, speaking about men’s behavior, practice, and relationship to a “male” God. When describing the spiritual work of Jewish men, the language itself is couched in the third-­person masculine singular. Beyond this, too, are essentialist understandings of the roles, capacities, and symbolic standings of men and women in Jewish society. Thus these texts will speak of men as those who provide, women as those who receive; men as active, women as passive. The whole mythic structure of divine emanation, the sefirot, is aligned male-­female, right-­left, good-­bad, light-­dark, love-­rigor, generosity-­judgment. While it is possible to 288

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shift the language from third-­person masculine to first-­person plural, thus embracing and offering the teachings as inclusive of both men and women, we still have not addressed the other powerful gendered symbols of these texts. One way to deal with this, which may yet be unsatisfactory as it accepts the gendered structures of premodernity, is to bring to the fore the project of the Zohar to find balance between the male and female dimensions of the godhead. An unmarried man was considered incomplete, and unworthy. This is, at least in one regard, because of the Zohar’s pain at the alienation of shekhinah from her beloved, tiferet, the blessed Holy One. The devotion of the Zohar’s characters to reuniting these parts of divinity, and so to bringing balance to all creation, is an invitation to us to seek a similar balance. In this sense, then, we might say to men who read these Hasidic texts that they are called to identify with and experience in themselves those aspects of the world, and divinity, that are symbolically female. And, in turn, we would invite women to cultivate those elements of themselves that these texts identify as male. (My colleague Rabbi Nancy Flam proposes a different approach in her essay in this volume.) In the end, such a solution may not be satisfactory; these issues remain a challenge to a Neo-­Hasidic reading of these texts. In this light, consider the following text where the relationship of “provider-­recipient” (mashpia‘-­mekabel) serves to invert the male status of God, and to point to the “female” status of men as relative to the “male” God: “I rejoice, rejoice in Y-­H-­W-­H [my whole being exults in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of triumph, wrapped me with a robe of victory, like a bridegroom adorned with a turban], like a bride bedecks herself with her finery” [Isa. 61:10]. The sages taught [Zohar 3:7a]: Israel provide for their Heavenly Parent. This is similar to when a child brings ease of spirit to her father: the 289

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father is then in the position of recipient [mekabel], and the child is the one who provides [mashpia‘] for her father. This is the sense of “As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you” [Isa. 62:5]. This means that God will then be in the position of the bride, the recipient. When the blessed Holy One provides for Israel and they are able to receive that flow of blessing, the blessed Holy One is pleased with this. Together [the receipt of God’s blessing, and God’s joy that it is received], this constitutes one joy and rejoicing. Think of it this way: a bridegroom will send gifts to his bride, and he takes pleasure in his sending gifts to her. The joy will be complete, however, when she adorns herself with those gifts after the marriage. In a like manner, there is exceeding joy and rejoicing when Israel receives God’s flow of blessing and deck themselves out with it for the sake of the Creator, without glorifying themselves that such a flow of goodness came to them. Even when they then turn to serve God with that blessing they do not glorify themselves. After all, that which flowed with goodness is similar to a groom on his wedding day, when he is glorious in his delight. Yet that glory does not remain after his wedding. This is how it is for the one who receives glory directly from the Creator. But the one who receives glory from people is the Creator, who is like the bride (as if it could be said): she “bedecks herself with her finery,” and it is not the finery that bedecks her. After all, the garments on their own have no glory: it is only when the bride wears them.11 In this passage, we see that men receive the blessed flow from God. In this system, then, God is “male” and the men are “female.” Yet they give God joy and ease of spirit because they receive God’s blessed flow, and thereby invert the relationship. God becomes the recipient (and so “female”) and the men provide (as “male”). 290

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This line of reasoning and intuition about the God-­human (“male-­ female”) relationship appears frequently throughout Hasidic literature. Through it we might open up the possibility of breaking open these categories altogether, recognizing that men and women experience, in different ways and at different times, the qualities of “male” and “female” as presented in this literature. Neither is fixed in one or the other state, and both are invited to investigate and cultivate the quality of the other.

Quietism and Contemplation The contemplative spirituality of Hasidic teachings also has the potential to nurture a quietistic orientation. Again, if God’s glory fills all creation, and there is no place devoid of God; if there is nothing but God, and all that occurs takes place within God as the unfolding of divinity in its own self, then what role do we humans actually play? What more is there to do than to contemplate the undifferentiated oneness of all existence, to allow our individuality to diffuse, and to become nullified before God’s Allness? Moreover, the deterministic aspects of Hasidic spirituality noted above reinforce this quietistic stance. After all, if God’s ultimate desire is for our good, then our job is to align with that intention and to allow God’s goodness to come to us. Nonetheless, Hasidic teachers understood that there is an imperative to act in times of distress, to bring redemption and justice. In essence, they recognized that what appears in the moment as human initiative will be shown, ultimately, to be God’s will made manifest through human free will. Consider the following passage from Netivot Shalom concerning the moment preceding the splitting of the Sea. Having arrived at the shore, the Israelites see the Egyptians pursuing them. Fearing that 291

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they have no way out of their predicament, the people complain to Moses; Moses replies: “Do not be afraid! Stand fast and see Y-­H-­W-­H’s deliverance” [Exod. 14:13]. “Stand fast”: Hold still, maintain your stance. After all, had it not been by virtue of their [passive] faith [that] they had earlier been redeemed from Egypt [on the eve of the Exodus]? Moses instructed them to stand with the power of faith “and see Y-­H-­W-­H’s deliverance.” But the blessed Holy One said to him “Why do you cry out to Me?” In these circumstances it is not enough for them to maintain their stance. “Speak to the Israelites and get going!” Let them jump into the Sea through their trust in God’s deliverance. When a supernatural force arises and grows in power, there must be a supernatural act to bring salvation. In such circumstances the normal way of prayer and seeking compassion is not effective, for that is when “My God, I call out by day and You do not answer [by night—­no stillness for me]” [Ps. 22:3]. The normal cry of prayer no longer will be effective. The only response should be “Speak to the Israelites” that they employ their supernatural power “and get going” with faith and trust.12 Here the Slonimer identifies the act of stepping forward into the Sea, even before it has parted, as an act of trust (bitahon) in God. It is a necessary act, for the sake of life and redemption; it cannot wait for God’s intervention. He calls this sort of deed “supernatural” in that it demands facing the fear of death and failure for the sake of life. But, in that it is “supernatural,” it also partakes of divine intention. Thus, here we may see how Hasidic spirituality counterbalances the passivity and quietism that otherwise seem its predominant thrust. Still, it must be said that any spirituality in the twenty-­first century that does not also lead its practitioners to engage in society, to participate in easing the suffering of others and in healing the planet, is not 292

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worthy of our attention. However we engage in Neo-­Hasidic spirituality, we must address these issues. These issues are clearly the issues of our era. Yet the Hasidic impulse to respond to human suffering, to make connections that both participate in and make manifest the interconnectedness of all existence, to delight in the world as it is (in this moment) while also conducting God’s flow of blessing to bring greater joy, freedom, righteousness, justice, and well-­being to the world, are also twenty-­first-­century concerns. The work of creating and enacting a contemporary Neo-­Hasidic practice addresses the human and Jewish concerns of this moment. Our ability to translate these classical texts—­into English, yes, but in terms that speak to our life in this world—­has the potential to enrich, enliven, and inspire a new Jewish revival. Notes

1. Tsava’at ha-­rivash (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), 3:2. 2. Degel Mahaneh Efrayim (Jerusalem: Mir, 1995), kedoshim, 162. 3. Netivot Shalom, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Mekhon Emunah Ve-­da’at, 1996), 133. 4. Tikkunei Zohar, ed. Reuven Margoliot (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978), 57:91b. 5. Keter Shem Tov (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2004), 273a:159; and compare Maggid Devarav le-­Ya‘akov, ed. Rivka Schatz-­Uffenheimer (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1976), 26:44. 6. Likkutim Yekarim (Jerusalem: n.p., 1998), 222:66a. 7. Kedushat Levi, vol. 2 (Brooklyn: n.p., 1998), kedushah rishonah–­purim, 505. 8. Me’or ‘Eynayim, vol. 1 (New York: Machon Me’or ha-­torah, 1997), yitro, 172; translated in Arthur Green, Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table, with Ebn Leader, Ariel Evan Mayse, and Or N. Rose, vol. 1 (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2013), 211. 9. Kedushat Levi (Brooklyn: n.p.,1998), vol. 1, yitro, 205. 10. Me’or ‘Eynayim, vol. 1, pinhas, 272. 11. Me’or ‘Eynayim, vol. 2, likkutim, 445. 12. Shalom Noah Berzovsky, Netivot Shalom, vol. 2 (Exodus) (Jerusalem: Mekhon Emunah Ve-­da’at, 1998), 104. 293

11 Sacred Narrative Therapy Hasidism, Storytelling, and Healing Estelle Frankel Upon graduating from high school in the spring of 1970, I went to Israel for what I thought would be a six-­month interlude before starting college. Instead I ended up spending the next eight-­and-­a-­half years in Jerusalem immersed in the study and practice of Orthodox Judaism. During that time I was blessed to study with many Hasidic rebbes and Torah scholars, including Reb Gedalia Koenig, zt”l, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Rabbi Meir Fund, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, z”l, and my havruta, Rebbetzin Esther Kee Tov. I was also fortunate to study Hasidic texts with several of my teachers at the Michlalah Yerushalayim, where I was a student. The seventies marked the beginning of the ba’al teshuvah movement in Jerusalem, a movement attracting thousands of young seekers who, after exploring other spiritual traditions, are eager to look into Judaism as a viable spiritual path. Reb Shlomo Carlebach’s soulful music and Hasidic storytelling provided the initial inspiration for many of us to explore our Jewish roots. For me this exploration was truly a “roots” experience, as both of my parents grew up in Hasidic households in prewar Poland, though they moved away from Orthodox practice after the war. My own love affair with Orthodoxy eventually came to an end, but I continued to study and find meaning in Hasidic teachings. Today, in my work as a psychotherapist and spiritual director, I con295

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tinue to draw inspiration from Hasidic (and Neo-­Hasidic) teachings and spiritual practices. In this essay I would like to share some of the ways Hasidic thought informs my work as a healer. Hasidism’s relevance to the field of psychotherapy derives from the fact that many of the Hasidic masters were soul healers. In addition to providing spiritual leadership, the rebbes offered psychological, emotional, and physical counseling to their followers. Hasidism emerged as a movement at a time in history when many Ashkenazic Jews were suffering from depression, anxiety, and feelings of despair over their dire circumstances. The devastating pogroms and failed messianic movements of the seventeenth century left the Jews of Eastern Europe not only impoverished and grief-­stricken but also spiritually bankrupt. As a result, the Hasidic masters were often called upon to provide spiritual healing for their followers in much the same way that contemporary psychotherapists do for their patients. The rebbes made use of an array of conventional and unconventional healing practices that included: herbal medicine, storytelling, prayer, berakhot (blessings), etsot (spiritual advice), and segullot (Jewish shamanics). The Besht used his clairvoyant and intuitive powers to diagnose the spiritual roots of a person’s illness. He would then devise a “treatment” aimed at healing the whole person—­body, mind, heart, and spirit. Sometimes the Besht would simply encourage the seeker to repent and realign his life with the Torah’s precepts. At times, following a brief encounter with the Besht, the seeker would experience a spontaneous remission of symptoms. It was as if the Besht’s holy presence was enough to bring about the necessary inner change for healing to take place. Typically, the Besht would also pray on behalf of the seeker. Through prayer he was able to reach beyond the world of form to draw down new life and healing energy from Ein Sof, the infinite and singular Source of all being. Among Chabad Hasidim, the intimate encounter between tsaddik and Hasid known as yehidut became institutionalized.1 In his ground296

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breaking book Spiritual Intimacy: A Study of Counseling in Hassidism, Reb Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi describes the unique aspects of the yechidut encounter, comparing and contrasting the relationship between the tsaddik and Hasid to that of therapist and patient in contemporary society. He also personally encouraged me to make use of Hasidic spiritual technologies in my work as a therapist. His guidance and mentorship over the course of thirty years helped me develop my own Neo-­Hasidic approach to counseling.

Hasidic Storytelling One of the primary therapeutic tools I borrow from Hasidism is sacred storytelling. Among Hasidim, as is true in many traditional cultures, storytelling serves an important role in healing and pedagogy. My own work, which I have come to refer to as “sacred narrative therapy,” borrows from this storytelling tradition. Over the years I have amassed an extensive collection of tales and teaching stories from a wide variety of sources. As the English word suggests, stories “store” and transmit a culture’s most important ideas and values. This transmission takes place indirectly, through allegory and metaphor. When people listen to a story, they relax, making it possible for the message to bypass the listeners’ psychological defenses. By the time a listener realizes that the story is actually about him, it’s too late; its message has already penetrated his heart and mind. If not consciously, this process happens at least unconsciously, as illustrated by the following tale: Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the rabbi of Shargorod, was known for his austere and ascetic lifestyle and for his bad temper. His practice of fasting from the end of each Sabbath until the beginning of the next Sabbath was taking a toll on his physical and emotional health. One morning Yaakov Yosef arrived at the synagogue for 297

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the traditional Shacharit [morning] prayers to find the building empty; not one of his congregants was present. Upon learning that they were in the marketplace listening to an itinerant storyteller, he flew into a rage and went ahead and prayed alone. Later that day, the storyteller paid Yaakov Yosef a visit and proceeded to tell him a tale about a journey he once took with his three horses. The strange storyteller, of course, was none other than the Ba‘al Shem Tov or Besht, who went on to describe his horses in great detail, praising them, but adding, sadly, that none of them could neigh; that is, until he met a peasant who advised him to slacken the reins. The Besht followed the peasant’s advice and found that, indeed, the horses could neigh just fine. When he finished telling his strange tale the Besht looked into Yaakov Yosef ’s eyes and said, “The peasant gave good advice. . . . Do you understand?” In that moment Yaakov Yosef intuited the deeper meaning of the story and burst into tears, weeping like he had never wept before in his entire life. He understood that the Besht was teaching him a lesson about his own approach to divine service. Holding the reigns too tightly—­an allusion to his ascetic practices—­was interfering with his worship. By means of the allegory of slackening the reins, the Besht was teaching Yaakov Yosef to let go of his austere practices and begin to serve God from joy rather than fear and sorrow. Shortly thereafter Yaakov Yosef abandoned his ascetic ways to become a Hasid and loyal follower of the Besht.2 Another famous tale describes how storytelling eventually came to be a core spiritual healing practice among the later rebbes who no longer possessed all the shamanic powers of earlier generations: When the Ba‘al Shem Tov was confronted with a difficult situation or a person in need of healing, he would go into the forest, light a fire, and utter sacred words of prayer, and the situation would 298

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resolve. When the Maggid of Mezritch, a generation later, was faced with a similar challenge, he would go to the same place in the forest and though he no longer knew how to light the fire, he could pray, and somehow this was enough. The danger would be averted. A generation later, Reb Moshe Leib of Sassov no longer knew how to light the fire or pray, but he still knew the secret place in the forest and this was enough. A generation later, Reb Yisrael of Ruzhin no longer knew the secret place in the forest, how to light the fire, or pray, but he knew how to tell stories and by telling the story, the needed help or healing was achieved.3 Inspired by the Hasidic tradition of storytelling, I often use stories in my work. To be therapeutically useful, a story has to be carefully chosen and its delivery must be impeccably timed. Recently I was inspired to use a biblical story in therapy with a Catholic patient of mine who was embroiled in a feud with his siblings. Though my patient was upset about his situation, he seemed to be resistant to any suggestions I made of ways he could mend the rift. As he continued to talk about his painful situation, I found myself thinking about the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. I had a hunch that this story might be helpful, so I asked him if he would be willing to study the story with me, which he was. When we got to the part where Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers and reconciles with them, my patient burst into tears and admitted how much he loved and missed his siblings. At our next meeting, he told me how helpful the story had been and proceeded to relate that he reached out to his siblings that week and had resolved the conflict. My patient was able to receive guidance from the story when he was resistant to receiving it directly from me. One year, around the time of Purim, I was working with a Jewish woman who was struggling to find her voice. She had trouble asserting herself at home and at work, and felt pushed around and taken 299

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advantage of as a result. As she described her struggles in a tentative, timid voice, I found myself thinking about my favorite Hasidic Purim story, one I originally heard from Reb Shlomo Carlebach. Intuitively, I realized that I wasn’t just being distracted by my own inner life; that story was asking to be told. The protagonist in the story is a poor shlepper and nebbish named Pinhas who finds his voice by learning to say “Good Purim” with gusto to his rebbe, the Kozhenitser Maggid. In this tale, when Pinhas arrives at the Kozhenitser Maggid’s Purim tish (a festive party around the table), he says “Good Purim” in a meek voice to the rebbe. Turning to Pinhas, the Kozhenitser Maggid proceeds to teach him to say “Good Purim” properly, in a loud voice with full intention. Afterward the rebbe sends Pinhas to buy mishloach manot, a Purim gift basket. Though he has no money to make the purchase, thanks to his newly acquired oratory power Pinhas is able to persuade the grocer to give him supplies on credit. By the time Pinhas returns to the Kozhenitser Maggid, he is a changed man. The rebbe’s intervention sets in motion a series of behavioral changes that transform Pinhas into a successful businessman. As I told the story to my patient, who is strongly Jewish-­identified and a student of Hasidic teachings, I sensed something light up inside her. A certain twinkle in her eyes indicated to me that she got the deeper meaning of the story and took its message to heart. She knew that, like Pinhas, she had to find her own powerful voice. Over the next few weeks I began to witness certain subtle changes in my patient’s behavior. She began speaking up at home and at work and started acting as if she deserved to exist and take up space in the world. She also became more expressive in therapy, sharing stories about childhood trauma—­experiences she had never disclosed to another human being. I had taken a calculated risk by telling this story to my patient, and in this instance my intuition was right on target. The story had worked its magic, planting desperately needed seeds of growth. 300

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In addition to the stories I share with my patients, I see psychotherapy itself as a storytelling ritual. All verbal therapies are, in effect, “narrative therapies,” focused on altering the problematic stories people tell themselves.4 Psychotherapy offers the patient a chance to edit or rewrite his story by framing it within a larger context or by making room for alternative story lines. And by telling his story to a sympathetic listener, namely, the therapist, the patient can begin to discover a new inner voice—­that of a “sympathetic narrator.” This simple change in voice transforms the story. Events from the past are not just relived but recast in a new light. The past is recontextualized by the compassionate awareness and insight therapist and patient bring to it in the present moment. Another narrative tool I borrow from Hasidism involves helping people see their own lives as “sacred narratives” or living embodiments of Torah. Reb Tsaddok ha-­Kohen of Lublin (1823–­1900) writes that the human soul “contains within it the entire Torah, only it is inaccessible [satum] and the [written Torah] is its interpretation.”5 This radical teaching suggests that our lives are the true site of divine revelation, while the Torah is simply a tool for understanding our own infinite depths. The Hasidic masters also read the stories in the Torah as archetypal tales describing universal human experiences. A popular Hasidic refrain, ve-­khen be-­khol adam (“and so it is, in all people”), suggests that every story in the Torah also exists within every person; as the Maggid of Mezritch said: “Man is a microcosm; therefore, each story [in the Torah] also exists in man.”6 When we see our lives as living embodiments of Torah, we come to appreciate the sacred dimension of our existence; we realize we are not alone in our experience and that our story reflects a larger story all people share. We also come to experience our lives as resonant with a much greater matrix of meaning in which every transition we undergo initiates us into the larger mysteries of life. “And, by locating ourselves within the larger story, we are guided on our journey of transformation by the archetypal forces embedded within it.”7 301

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The practice of seeing one’s life as revelatory is reflected in the following short tale: When Reb Dovid of Lelov (1746–­1814) was asked what tractate of Torah he would study in Gan Eden (i.e., in the afterlife), he replied that he would undoubtedly study the Torah of the life of Reb Dovid of Lelov. This story underscores the importance of seeing our lives as living embodiments of Torah. For this reason I listen to people’s stories in much the same way that I study Torah, where every gesture and every word spoken (and unspoken) conveys multiple levels of meaning. In the same way that there are seventy faces to Torah, every one of us embodies infinite depths. Transformational healing becomes possible as we uncover and give expression to this inner depth. When people discover God’s presence in their lives, events from the past acquire new meaning. There is a sense that one’s life has unfolded exactly as it was meant to unfold. Even those events that seemed to be random bad luck become part of a “sacred narrative.” The newfound “sense of coherence” that emerges enables people to accept both the blessings and hardships they have faced. A classic example of this can be found in the biblical tale of Joseph mentioned previously. Joseph is able to forgive his brothers when he perceives the hidden hand of the Divine, or of destiny, even in the unfortunate circumstances of his life. As he reveals himself to his brothers, Joseph says: “And now do not be sad or angry at yourselves for selling me [as a slave] for it was the will of Elohim to send me here so as to provide sustenance for you” (Gen. 45:5). By acknowledging the role of destiny in his life, Joseph is able to rise above the hurt and betrayal he experienced at the hands of his brothers. People can more easily make peace with their pasts when they find meaning and a sense of coherence in their lives. More than any other Hasidic masters, Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (1772–­1810) made use of stories to heal the soul. He believed that stories have the power to arouse even the most unconscious or wicked individual from his spiritual slumber. On the surface many of his tales 302

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resemble popular fairy-­tables and fables, though at a deeper level they are infused with ethical and mystical teachings from the Kabbalah aimed at awakening the listener’s soul. Rabbi Nahman’s tales operate like time-­released medications, offering immediate comfort and enjoyment while planting seeds of insight and yearning that continue to influence the soul of the listener over time. I remember how deeply affected I was at age seventeen when I read the first of his Sippurey Ma‘asiyot (Tales), “The Lost Princess.” In this mystical tale of exile and redemption, a princess is captured by evil forces. A wise man is enlisted to search for her and restore her to the king and the palace. Despite many inner and outer obstacles, he eventually succeeds in his mission. Though at the time I did not understand all the mystical references embedded in the tale, still it had (and continues to have) a profound effect on me. Looking back, I realize I intuitively understood that I am both the captive princess and the loyal servant entrusted with the task of freeing her. Like the princess, my soul is in exile, and like the servant, it is my responsibility to free myself from the forces that obscure my light. This is part of the daily inner work of personal redemption or ge’ulat ha-­nefesh taught by the Hasidic masters.8

Awakening from Our Spiritual Amnesia Presaging Freud’s discovery of the unconscious and the role of memory in healing, the Ba‘al Shem Tov once said that remembering is the source of redemption. For the Besht, though, what we need to remember is our divine nature rather than our repressed desires and memories. When we forget our godly essence we enter a state of spiritual exile—­of self-­alienation. By tuning in to the soul’s yearning for God, we are redeemed. Sacred storytelling, for Rabbi Nahman, was a means of helping people awaken from their spiritual amnesia, as illustrated by the following tale: 303

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There was once a prince who forgot his royal origins and came to believe he was a turkey. Instead of sitting at the royal table with his father, the king, he paraded around the palace naked, squawking like a turkey and eating crumbs from the ground. The king sought help for his son but none of the royal physicians were able to reach the prince. Finally, a wise man appeared who approached the mad prince using an unconventional approach. He, too, undressed and got down on the ground and began squawking like a turkey and eating crumbs from the ground. After slowly gaining the prince’s trust he begins to intervene by suggesting that they could still be turkeys even if they wear clothing. The wise man then gets dressed and gives the turkey prince his royal clothing to don, while continuing to peck and squawk and pretend he is a turkey. Once the prince is fully dressed, the wise man suggests that they could still be turkeys even if they eat human food. He then signals to the servants to bring them some food, which the wise man shares with the turkey prince. Step by step, the wise man helps the prince remember who he is and eventually return to dine at the royal table.9 The story, of course, is an allegory describing how people settle for a diminished version of themselves. Eating leftover crumbs suggests settling for a life focused on survival and meeting one’s physical needs and desires rather than living in joy and full awareness of God’s presence. Rabbi Nahman portrays this kind of unconscious living as a form of madness, for it is missing the whole point of existence: the opportunity to awaken to the divine nature of reality. The story also illustrates a powerful therapeutic strategy. In order to serve as a catalyst for growth and change, the healer must be willing to “get down” with the patient and empathize with his subjective inner world. Then, and only then, can he help the patient slowly “remember” who he is. Empathy and mirroring are essential for healing, as people 304

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need to feel understood before they can change. For the healer, this means balancing the desire to help the patient move on with the need to understand his anxieties, obsessions, and delusions. In this tale, Rabbi Nahman describes a therapeutic strategy in which the healer slowly shows the patient a way forward without directly challenging his fiercely held delusions. On those occasions when I become impatient in my work, I reflect on this story and remember to appreciate each small step toward growth and healing. Rabbi Nahman revisits the theme of mistaken identity in another tale in which a mischievous midwife switches the king’s newborn son with the servant’s newborn son at birth.10 In this mystical adaptation of the classic fairy tale theme visible also in The Prince and the Pauper, certain characters are driven solely by their worldly desires rather than by a higher sense of purpose or meaning. The story reaches its resolution when the real prince, who had been banished from the kingdom, remembers who he is and returns to claim his rightful place as the leader, while the impostor relinquishes control and devotes himself to serving the true king. In essence, this tale is an allegory about the way the ego or animal soul (nefesh behamit) misappropriates power that rightfully belongs to the godly soul or neshamah. Instead of assuming its rightful place as the loyal servant of the neshamah, the overly inflated ego will enlist the soul to serve its needs rather than the other way around.

Soulful Therapeutic Techniques People often enter into therapy because they feel a lack of authenticity in their lives. Many of the people I work with suffer mental anguish because they have bought into a distorted or diminished view of themselves. Some have come to see themselves as “damaged goods”—­ irrevocably broken and defective. Others find they are living their 305

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lives to serve the needs and desires of others rather than their soul’s true calling. Instead of seeing themselves through God’s eyes, they have come to view themselves through the eyes of those who judge and misperceive them. My work is to help them have a new experience of themselves—­one that allows them to see their authentic Self with clarity. Insight, combined with new experience, allows growth and healing to take place. Ultimately, healing involves helping individuals reclaim their true Self and establish a healthy and balanced relationship between their ego and their soul.11 One of the techniques I use to create a transformative experience in therapy involves seeing oneself through God’s eyes—­as the precious, luminous, and holy being we are. This practice draws upon an exercise the Piaseczner Rebbe used with his students to accelerate their spiritual development. In his spiritual journal, Tzav ve-­Zeruz, the rebbe instructs his students to visualize their “ideal spiritual self ”—­to imagine in detail the greatness and loftiness of their divine soul and how it shines in God’s presence in the Garden of Eden.12 Seeing ourselves this way makes it possible to reclaim our wholeness and “become” the person we are meant to be. In addition to altering the way patients see and experience themselves, I am convinced that the way I see and think about my patients has a profound effect on them. I deliberately refrain from attaching diagnostic labels to my patients and try, instead, to see their strengths and gifts alongside their vulnerabilities. I also make an effort to highlight their soul’s inner wholeness and potential for holiness. This positive psychological approach is aligned with Rabbi Nahman’s teaching that we have the power to uplift people by focusing on their virtues rather than their flaws.13 In Likkutey Moharan he refers to his practice of deliberately searching for the “little bits of good” that exist within each person, even when the bad far outweighs the good. By focusing on a person’s goodness, we enable that spark to grow. 306

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This does not mean that one should avoid dealing with problematic patterns and behaviors in therapy. Rather, the approach to dealing with problems must not become overly focused on a person’s deficits. Instead the problematic behaviors can be addressed by highlighting and strengthening the positive qualities that are in fact resources in dealing with the problem. For instance, a patient of mine who struggled with impulsivity found that this problem was helped by focusing on her capacity for patience. Rabbi Nahman’s strategy of “seeing the little bits of good” is especially effective in the treatment of depression. As someone who suffered from bouts of depression himself, Rabbi Nahman understood how it causes people to see things in all-­or-­nothing terms and become overly focused on the negative. This kind of black-­or-­white thinking involves the psychological defense mechanism known as splitting. Rabbi Nahman recognized how important it is to challenge the distortions created by splitting by selectively focusing on the patient’s strengths. One of my favorite Hasidic tales illustrates this practice. Reb Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–­1812) and two other aspiring young rebbes set out to free a young man who is being held for ransom by unscrupulous Russian policemen. Shneur Zalman realizes that the only person in town who might have the necessary ten thousand rubles to free the young man is Ze’ev, the town miser. When Shneur Zalman first asks Ze’ev if he would be willing to help out, Ze’ev solely bequeaths a dirty kopek, the equivalent of a penny. But as Shneur Zalman repeatedly praises and thanks him for his generosity, Ze’ev begins to soften and open up his heart. By seeing and appreciating the little bits of goodness within this seemingly wicked man, Shneur Zalman is able to slowly bring forth his goodness. Similarly, when therapists see and acknowledge their patients’ inner strengths and potential for holiness, they help nurture these latent qualities. 307

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Knowing and “Not Knowing” Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk (1717–­1787) taught that it is not possible to know God unless we know ourselves.14 Since the human soul is a helek eloha mi-­ma‘al, a chip off the divine block, we can come to know our Maker by looking within. At the same time, that self-­knowledge opens up the gates of God consciousness, which enables us to know ourselves as unique expressions of a vast and Infinite Source. There is a paradox, however, at the heart of this endeavor: despite our best efforts to know ourselves or God, we inevitably discover that we are part of an infinite and unknowable Mystery. In fact, the more we learn and know, the more we realize how much we do not know.15 According to the Besht, “the very purpose of all knowledge is to know that we do not know.”16 Yet, by embracing our ignorance, by “not knowing,” we make it possible for wisdom, understanding, and knowledge to continuously pour into us from the infinite source of all, the Ein Sof (literally, without end). As it says in Scripture, “Wisdom emerges from Nothingness [ayin; Job 28:12].”17 The power of ayin, or “not knowing,” is something therapist and patient alike can use. For the patient, it makes room for new and unknown aspects of the Self to emerge. For the therapist, ayin is the ultimate source of all deep insights and intuitive knowledge.18 Notably, the Besht refers to ayin, the infinite divine Naught, as the source of his healing power. In the Heikhal ha-­Berakhah, Rabbi Yitzhak Ayzik of Komarno (1806–­1874) quotes the Besht as saying that he learned everything he knew about healing from the miniature letter alef in the first word of the book of Leviticus, or Va-­yikra.19 The miniature alef here represents ayin, the source of all being in divine nothingness. The midrash links the miniature alef with the practice of radical humility or self-­tsimtsum. Va-­yikra means “and He [God] called. . . .” God calls Moses, singling him out to enter Ohel Mo‘ed (the tent of meeting) to hear the word of God. Embarrassed by the highlighting 308

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of his special status, Moses attempts to conceal it by diminishing the letter alef so that the word va-­yikra appears as va-­yiker (from the root K-­R-­H, as in mikreh), implying chance and happenstance.20 Like Moses, the Besht was extremely humble. He knew how to make himself small, like the miniature alef, in order to become a channel for divine wisdom and healing. The miniature alef also hints at the mystery of tsimtsum, the primordial act of divine withdrawal that created an empty space within which the worlds came into being. Healing involves a similar process. By resting in divine nothingness (not knowing), the therapist becomes a catalyst for healing and transformation. His or her act of tsimtsum or self-­containment makes room for others to grow and “become” more fully themselves. This lesson is one of the most powerful healing practices we can learn from the Hasidic tradition.

Tikkun Ha-­Middot in Therapy In recent years the Jewish world has become increasingly interested in the study and practice of the moral and ethical teachings of Judaism known as Mussar and tikkun ha-­middot (character refinement). While often associated with Rabbi Israel Salanter’s Mussar movement that flourished in Lithuania in the nineteenth century, the study and practice of Mussar and tikkun ha-­middot constituted an integral part of personal spiritual development among the kabbalists and pietists living in Safed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A careful reading of Hasidic texts suggests that Mussar was also an important part of spiritual formation work among the early Hasidim. The very first teaching of the Besht mentioned in Tsava’at ha-­rivash emphasizes the importance of studying Mussar each day and developing middot tovot (the virtues).21 309

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The study and practice of tikkun ha-­middot provides a direct means of getting to know ourselves and God. While we cannot possibly know the Infinite God through our minds, we can embody our tselem Elohim (divine image) by perfecting the divine middot that comprise the human soul. The Besht taught that everything Isaac Luria revealed about the divine life has its parallel in the human soul: “man is a microcosm and therefore, the ten sefirot [emanations] exist in man.”22 The same divine attributes that describe the shefa‘, or flow of divine energy from Ein Sof through all the worlds, exist within the human soul as middot ha-­nefesh, or soul traits. The Tanya describes the upper three sefirot (hokhmah, binah, and da‘at) as the soul’s intellectual capacities, while the lower seven sefirot (hesed through malkhut) correspond to the emotions.23 In addition to providing a topography of the soul and a tool for character refinement, the sefirot can be used as a diagnostic tool for understanding and treating imbalances in the personality. Mental illness often boils down to an imbalance of middot. Too much or too little of any middah can spell trouble. An individual with abundant hesed (love) but who lacks gevurah (restraint) may find it difficult to establish healthy boundaries in loving relationships. Such individuals must develop a healthy measure of gevurah to balance out their excess hesed. Similarly, individuals with too much gevurah may find themselves plagued by anger and austerity, or social isolation, unless they learn to balance their gevurah with a healthy measure of hesed. In the healthy personality, these two middot operate in harmony, balancing one another. The practice of tikkun ha-­middot is compatible with a positive-­ psychology approach to treatment that focuses on the individual’s innate strengths and capacity for wholeness. As an adjunct to therapy, this practice has the potential to activate and accelerate the soul’s capacity for self-­healing. 310

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Working with Emotion One of psychotherapy’s central aims involves helping people to understand and regulate their emotions. Being able to identify and express one’s own feelings and, at the same time, accurately perceive the feelings of others is part of psychological development and emotional maturity. The Besht had a very different approach to working with the emotions. He instructed his followers to make use of their emotions to understand the divine middot. Every human emotion, he taught, has its supernal counterpart.24 Love and fear, for example, can serve as portals to the experience of loving and fearing God. Applying this Hasidic practice to therapy is not simple. Most people first need to get in touch with and learn to express their feelings and emotions before they can benefit from this spiritual practice. To do so prematurely leads to what psychologist John Wellwood calls “spiritual bypassing”—­using spirituality to avoid dealing with emotional challenges. There are times, however, when this practice can be very helpful. For instance, when people become overly attached to their emotions, this practice can help free them from their obsessions and aversions. When a patient of mine became obsessed by her love for a man who was treating her poorly, I suggested that she reclaim her “love” and keep it for herself and for God rather than waste it on an addictive and counterfeit form of love. In my own life, the practice of elevating fallen emotions has helped me deal with my own irrational fears, such as the fear of flying. When I get anxious on board an airplane, I use my fear to practice yir’at ha-­romemut—­awe in the presence of the divine majesty. By reflecting on the vastness of Ein Sof and my own smallness and insignificance in comparison, I am able to let go of my senseless anxieties. While this practice may not be appropriate for all patients 311

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in therapy, it is a spiritual tool we can all use selectively in our lives. If I think about it in musical terms, it is a way of hearing the music of life at multiple octaves.

Conclusion My drawing upon Hasidic teachings and practices in my work as a therapist is one expression of the Neo-­Hasidic tradition of applying Hasidic wisdom to all arenas of our lives. The Besht taught that we should use every possible situation in life as a way to know and serve God: As it says in Proverbs 3:6: “Be-­khol derakhekha da‘ehu”—­“Know God through all your pathways.”25 Hopefully, by my sharing the idiosyncratic ways I bring Hasidic wisdom into the therapeutic setting, others will be similarly inspired to experiment with creative adaptations of this rich spiritual tradition. Notes

1. In his Spiritual Intimacy: A Study of Counseling in Hasidism (Northvale nj: Jason Aronson, 1991), Reb Zalman M. Schachter-­Shalomi compares the yechidut encounter between rebbe and Hasid to that of therapist and patient. 2. Based on Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim (New York: Schocken, 1991), 56. 3. Based on Rami Shapiro, Hasidic Tales: Annotated & Explained (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2004), xxi. 4. A special school of therapy called narrative therapy focuses entirely on the narrative dimension of treatment. 5. Tsaddok Ha-­Cohen of Lublin, Tsidkat ha-­Tsaddik (Jerusalem: “A” Publishers, 1968), 196:132. Unless noted otherwise, all translations are the present author’s. 6. From Imrey Tsaddikim, quoted in Torat ha-­Maggid, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Pe’er Ha-­Seferr, 1969), va-­yetse, 87. 7. Estelle Frankel, Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness (Boulder co: Shambhala, 2003), 2. 312

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8. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi suggests that we are freed from our personal Mitzrayim each day, as we move from constricted to expansive consciousness and experience ourselves as inclusive within the oneness of God’s infinite being. See Likuttey Amarim-­Tanya, bilingual edition, trans. Nissan Mindel, with Nisen Mangel, Zalman I. Posner, and Jacob Immanuel Schochet (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1984), 247–­49. 9. Translated under the title “The Turkey Prince” in Aryeh Kaplan, Rabbi Nachman’s Stories (Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1983), 479–­80. This story was first published in Shmuel Horowitz, Sippurim Niflayim (Jerusalem: n.p., 1935), ma‘asiyot u’meshallim, 61–­62, a work subsequently printed together with Abraham Hazan’s Kokhevei Or (Jerusalem: Agudat Meshekh ha-­Nahal, 1972). 10. “The King’s Son and the Maidservant’s Son Who Were Switched” is the eleventh tale in Rabbi Nahman’s famous collection of stories Sippurey Ma’asiyot (Ostroh: n.p., 1815) (Hebrew and Yiddish). 11. In Jungian psychology the word Self with a capital S refers to the totality of the Self—­the Soul in all its dimensions, while the self with a lowercase s refers to the small self or ego. Individuation is the process whereby the individual grows into this larger Self. 12. Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, To Heal the Soul: The Spiritual Journal of a Chasidic Rebbe, trans. and ed. Yehoshua Starrett (Northvale nj: Jason Aronson, 1995), 57–­58. 13. In Likkutey Moharan 1:282, Rabbi Nahman creatively reinterprets the following passage from Psalms: “In just a little bit there is no wicked person; you will look at the very place where he once stood and he will no longer be there” (Ps. 37). Instead of the “little bit” (‘od me‘at) referring to the passage of time, Rabbi Nahman interprets it as referring to the little bit of goodness that exists even in the most wicked individual. The evil person disappears the moment we find the little bits of good that exist within him. 14. See his teachings in No‘am Elimelekh, ed. Gedalyah Nigal (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-­Rav Kook, 1978), va-­ethanan. 15. In Sihot ha-­Ran, Rabbi Nahman says: “The ultimate goal of all knowledge of God is to realize that one knows nothing. Yet even this is unattainable. A person may come to realize his own ignorance, but only in a certain area on a particular level. There is still the next level, which he has not even touched. He does not know enough about the next level 313

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to begin to realize his ignorance. No matter how high he climbs, there is always the next step. A person therefore knows nothing: he cannot even understand his own ignorance. For there will always be a level of ignorance beyond his present level of perception.” See Sihot ha-­Ran, no. 3, trans. Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum, www​.azamra​.org​/Essential​ /knowing​.htm. 16. Ben Porat Yosef, as quoted in Keter Shem Tov ha-­Shalem (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2004), 3:7–­8. 17. On this theme see Estelle Frankel, The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty (Boulder co: Shambhala, 2017). 18. See Daniel C. Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism,” in Lawrence Fine, ed., Essential Papers on Kabbalah (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 67–­108. 19. This teaching is quoted in Sefer Ba‘al Shem Tov: Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy, trans. Eliezer Shore (Cleveland: bst, 2012), 8. 20. Va-­yiker is the word used when God speaks (“by chance”) to Balaam in Numbers 22:9. 21. Tsava’at ha-­rivash (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998), 1:1. 22. Toledot Yaakov Yosef, lekh lekha, as quoted in Sefer Ba‘al Shem Tov, bereshit, no. 58. 23. Likuttey Amarim-­Tanya, 465–­77. 24. Likuttey Amarim-­Tanya, 60. 25. Based on Tsava’at ha-­rivash, 3:2.

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Part 3

Ahavat Yisra’el, the Love of Israel Leaders and Communities

12 Does a New Hasidism Need Rebbes? Ebn Leader One of the great challenges facing a North American non-­Orthodox Neo-­Hasidism is to find ways to translate a literary tradition into structures and forms of communal and individual life. As members of this community, we must acknowledge that the Hasidic teachings that inspire us were offered to a community grounded in the halakhic practice and social structures of eighteenth-­century Eastern Europe. While we may be inspired by these teachings, we have yet to achieve clarity regarding our own version of a living Neo-­Hasidic community. What are this community’s practices? What are the commitments of individuals and of the community as a whole? What is the nature of the relationship internally, between the members of this community, and externally, with Jews and non-­Jews who are not members? Furthermore—­my main focus in this essay—­what is the nature of the relationship between members of this Neo-­Hasidic community and its spiritual leaders? The relationship between the Hasidim and their rebbe, or the tsaddik, has historically been a defining element of Hasidism. My teacher, Arthur Green, writes: The phenomenon that was to be called Hasidism bore at its very heart the image of master and disciples. . . . It was in fact participation in such a relationship that defined one’s sense of belonging to the Hasidic movement. . . . The term hasid (unlike all of its 317

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many previous usages) implies the question: “Hasid of whom?” The term here functionally means “disciple” in addition to the usual and literal “pious one” or “lover of God.” The disciple stood in relation to the rebbe, or master, a relationship that is the subject of much discussion in both the early theoretical literature of Hasidism and the later tales.1 As we attempt to create Neo-­Hasidic communities living and practicing together, we must ask: Does “Whose Hasid are you?” remain an important question for us? In other words, is the individual’s relationship to a rebbe a crucial part of Neo-­Hasidism? Does this relationship need to be redefined, or is it merely a form that can be left behind as we focus on other, seemingly more essential parts of the Hasidic tradition? Scholars of Hasidism have noted that two forms of spiritual leadership were present at the early stages of the Hasidic movement.2 Hasidism began with the Besht and a circle of scholars-­practitioners, not all of whom thought of the Besht as their leader. In the following generation, the Maggid Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritch was recognized as teacher in his own circle of fellow-­practitioners; its other members identified as his disciples. The spiritual leadership of the Maggid appeared to be that of a master and teacher who shared his practices and knowledge with his disciples with the expectation that they would agree on the same personal goals and follow the same path. Yet, even at its early stages, the Maggid's movement was larger than these circles of disciples. Some contemporaries of the Maggid and most of the Maggid’s disciples attracted and served large Jewish populations that would not take on the intensity of spiritual practice modeled by the Besht and the Maggid. It was in this context that the model of the Hasidic tsaddik developed. While different teachers would articulate and emphasize different aspects of spiritual leadership, the concept of the tsaddik is defined by recognition of the distinction between the spiritual practice of the 318

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leader and the followers. In theory, then, the spiritual attainments of the tsaddik are available to anyone who is willing to devote the effort to achieving them (though in some versions this also requires a particular talent set). Practically speaking, however, this model of spiritual leadership assumes that the tsaddik is serving a broader community of those who are not on the path to becoming tsaddikim themselves. In this context the relationship between the Hasid and the tsaddik is given much more weight, and in some articulations the intensity of the relationship can replace the intensity of the individual’s practice. This aspect of the Hasidic tsaddik shares a great deal with Peter Brown’s well-­known description of the holy man as stranger.3 The powerful, religious impact of these spiritual figures is dependent on their otherness, on having devoted themselves to God and practice in such a way that has moved them beyond the common frame of reference. In the history and development of Hasidism, the model of tsaddik as stranger interacts with the model of teacher as friend, with the rebbe often serving as both. The rebbe could be a tsaddik for some people and a teacher for others, or a relationship could begin in one mode and shift to the other. What of this can our contemporary Neo-­Hasidism adopt? Both models of leadership reflect and respond to deep religious desires. Indeed, in Hasidism our relationship with God is often described as embodying a similar tension. We serve a God who “fills the entire universe” and is thus with us wherever we are. The same God, however, “transcends the entire universe” and is the ultimate “other” or stranger, always just beyond what we can comprehend and find comfortable. With this tension so deeply rooted in our religious psyche, shouldn’t it find expression in our religious relations? Early teachers of Neo-­Hasidism in America, particularly Rabbis Shlomo Carlebach and Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, of blessed memory, created their own mixed versions of these models. Much of their power and impact derived from their willingness and ability to join 319

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the people they were serving, to merge with and become part of the counterculture of their time. Yet at the same time they came from a different world, from ultra-­Orthodox Chabad, and perhaps even more significantly from prewar Hasidic Europe, where they had both been children. Embodying the traditional image of tsaddik as channel,4 their lives served as a bridge between the Hasidism that was and a possibility of what it could be in North America. But their “otherness” went beyond their background. While their Hasidim often addressed them by their given names and knew them as people with strengths and weaknesses,5 they were often simultaneously treated as holy people, totally unique and connected to a spiritual level that others could not access. The fact that neither one had an individual successor is at least partially a reflection of the Hasidim’s deep conviction that nobody else was like Shlomo or Zalman. But, more significantly, this fact reflects a cultural shift in these particular Jewish communities. As feminism and egalitarianism strike deeper roots in our consciousness, we have become less comfortable with religious leaders in the role of “stranger.” We have become more sensitive to the dangers of extolling an individual who lives by different standards than the rest of the community. In all religions, including our own, we have seen charismatic spiritual leaders abuse their power, sexually, financially, or emotionally. We have, in my own opinion, become rightfully suspicious of constructs in which unique spiritual expectations or achievements of individuals merge with the powers of leadership. Because of this, I think that the decision (to the extent that it was a decision) not to choose a successor to Shlomo or Zalman was a good decision. I do not think that as a community we need rebbes who are “holy men” or “holy women.” But I do think that both models of religious leadership as previously described are still important to us. We need to be challenged by teachers who are our friends and share the same path with us, and we need to be challenged by models of religious choices that result in a life very different from the one we are living. 320

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I am, however, convinced that those roles should not be played by any single individual. In the following sections I will describe the ways in which I think the model of teacher as friend can be realized in our communities, and how the model of the holy stranger can be upheld separately, by small communal groups rather than by individuals.

Teacher as Friend—­Commonality and Vulnerability The well-­known twentieth-­century theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, a descendent of Hasidic leaders on both sides of his family, was fiercely critical of scholars who explored Hasidism only through its written literature. In Kotsk: In Gerangl far Emesdikeyt (Kotsk: The Struggle for Integrity), his two-­volume Yiddish work written near the end of his life, Heschel argued: Whoever tries to study Hasidism relying only on the written sources without drawing from the “oral torah” is relying on artificial material and the living springs are hidden from his eyes. Without the “oral torah” and without serving the scholars it is almost impossible to study Hasidism. The essence of the teaching, the real point, was rarely written down. Even what was written down was translated into loshen-­koydesh [leshon ha-­kodesh, i.e., Hebrew] and only rarely was anything written in the language in which the thought lived on the lips of the tsaddikim and their followers. Hasidic literature is a translation, and not always a successful one. In order to understand Hasidism you have to learn how to listen, you have to be around people who live Hasidism.6 Notably, while for many moderns Hasidism is first and primarily a literary tradition, and indeed there are many books of Hasidic teachings, the tradition itself is very critical of any attempt to make 321

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the books themselves the main purveyor of the tradition. One of my favorite stories to make this point comes from the Chabad Lubavitch tradition: It is told that the rabbi from Wolpe [his name is lost to us] was the greatest among the disciples of the great Maggid. In the early days, they would all go to hear him review the words of the Maggid, for he could repeat the teachings precisely and explain them well. But over time the disciples saw that he was being consumed from within and he could not stay there. He fell into drunkenness, may the merciful One save us. And he became a wanderer going from place to place with only his staff and pack. . . . R. Barukh Mordechai of Bobruysk once ran into him at an inn and recognized him by his behavior. When the Wolper went outside, R. Barukh searched his pack, hoping to find texts of the teachings. But the Wolper came back and caught him and said, “Why are you going through my things? Have I stolen from you?” and R. Barukh said that he was hoping to find written teachings. The Wolper said to him, “With you people the Hasidim are one thing and the teacher and the teachings are another. That is why you need written texts. We, our teacher, and the teachings were all truly one. We had no need for written texts.” He took his staff and pack and left.7 Much of the power of this story comes from its portrayal of the extremes to which Rabbi Barukh is driven in his search for the insights of Hasidism: in hopes of finding a text, he is caught at a bar snooping through the belongings of a homeless alcoholic. It is hard not to read contempt (perhaps with some pity mixed in) in the Wolper’s response. Really, the Wolper says, your notion of Hasidism is so alienated that you actually believe you can get something from a piece of paper you would steal from me? 322

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As the Wolper so emphatically states, the teaching of Hasidism does not exist outside of the living relationship between master and disciples. While many books of Hasidic teachings were ultimately both written and published, they often reflect a sense of ambivalence about the undertaking, a strong sense of what is being lost. When the first book of the Chabad tradition itself, the Tanya, was published in the late eighteenth century, it was accompanied by a letter from its author, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, pointing out the limitations of learning from a book and requesting that one read the book in the context of a relationship with a teacher, or at least with more advanced practitioners. Thus, when Heschel writes that Hasidism must be learned from people who “live Hasidism,” he is not just offering a way to achieve better understanding of the Hasidic texts. I understand Heschel to be saying that the lived experience is part of the text and vice versa, so that neither can be taught in isolation. The words only acquire their full meaning when presented in the context of a life. It therefore follows that if Neo-­Hasidism is to be a living tradition, it must be transmitted through and in the context of the lives of people who are living it. We therefore need teachers who are willing to set forth their lives as the material of their teaching rather than just offering their knowledge, and we need students who desire to learn through this medium. In the traditional Hasidic model of learning, watching, imitating, rebelling, and just being in the presence of a teacher are as important or even more important than whatever words the teacher might say. This is what Heschel is referring to when he mentions shimush talmidei hakhamim—­serving the disciples of the wise. Importantly, this is not the standard way today’s Jewish communities usually approach adult learning. In our contemporary culture, once we step beyond early childhood and outside of the arts, we are mostly oriented toward learning with our intellectual capacities. This 323

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process of learning is mediated by words—­the great tools of the intellect. Admittedly, for a person who is used to learning primarily through words, being asked to step back into other modes of learning may feel infantilizing and evoke a seeming loss of control. In this traditionalist mode, however, learning is not always channeled through intellectual understanding and is not easily susceptible to study programs, deadlines, or planned and defined achievements. The master-­disciple relationship has both intellectual and nonintellectual aspects. As students in this relationship, we are asked to relinquish some measure of (the fantasy of ) control and trust our teacher and our own learning. Consequentially, this type of relationship also requires more vulnerability from the student than what is usually the case in a relationship with an academic teacher. This model also demands great vulnerability from the teachers. Our teachers and rabbis are generally well protected by the enactment of boundaries, not just in relation to particular inappropriate teacher-­ student behaviors but also in defining what parts of their lives are relevant to their teaching. It is this boundary of relevance that teachers of Hasidism are here being asked to relinquish. This model requires both us and our teachers to accept that we learn not only from their knowledge, and not only from their best and most controlled sides. We learn also from the way their beautiful teachings are actually lived out day by day, and from the ways they may fail to live up to them. An old Rabbinic story tells of a student who hides under his master’s marital bed to learn the Torah of his teacher’s behavior even there (b. Berakhot 62a). While the tale is often told as an example of improper excess, and I must say that I do not recommend students sneaking into their teacher’s bedroom, the story still makes a strong statement regarding the boundaries of a teacher’s teaching. There is a particular theological resonance to the claim that nothing is too trivial, and all of life is the context within which we 324

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learn to live in the presence of God. After all, in Hasidic teachings the God in whose presence we wish to live, the God to whom we raise our awareness, both transcends the universe and is manifest within all of it. There is no place, moment, or idea in which God is not present, so how could there be a place that is out of bounds for my learning? Heschel taught that a human life is the image of God, but in fullness that description applies to nothing less than a human life in its entirety.8 If the core of what I desire to learn is how to live before God, how could I learn that from isolated parts of a person? The teacher from whom I learn Hasidic devotion must be fully present as him or herself. Of course, as we are all human, this scope of exposure will also expose our teachers’ shortcomings—­yet another great challenge posed by this model. As students, we must be willing to surrender the fantasy of our spiritual teacher as a perfect being, and perforce our teachers will have to surrender that fantasy about themselves. This yielding acceptance, however, can also give rise to new bounty. Giving up the fantasy of the teacher as a person who has “gotten there” allows for an expanded sense of commonality, the feeling that we really are walking on the same path. This sense of partnership also entails mutual responsibility. And so, once we abandon the fantasy of the perfect teacher, we can no longer use the metaphor of an all-­powerful parent and a young child to describe our relationship. Also, accepting the master-­disciple relation as happening between independent and responsible adults limits certain aspects of the control exercised by teachers in some traditional contexts. In many such models of master-­disciple relationship, obedience is presented as one of the disciple’s prime responsibilities toward the master. For me, insofar as this implies absolute adherence to my teacher’s instructions without challenge, it may no longer be appropriate in our cultural context. But, I believe, the willingness to humbly set my 325

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opinion aside in order to allow myself to be taken beyond my current boundaries and capacities still should be viable. I therefore think that the practice of obedience should perhaps be replaced with the practice of radical trust. The subtle differences between these two practices would have to be played out in actual lived relationships. This model also introduces new areas of responsibility—­particularly for the student. The student must now carry some of the responsibilities of the friend in relation to the teacher. Most notably, as students we must accept the mitzvah of tokhehah—­responding to our teachers and helping them when they are not manifesting their best selves. And yet, along with the sense of partnership and friendship, I think it is important to preserve the sense of looking up to a teacher as we engage in ‘avodat ha-­Shem and spiritual development. Even when we do not imagine our teachers as perfect, we should still be able to address what is most important to us from a position of humility that has concrete expression in the world, beyond our internal humility before God. It is told that Reb Moshe Kobriner was once stopped by an old companion from his childhood. “Reb Moshe,” said the man, “I know you from way back; what do I have to believe about you in order to be your Hasid and you to be my rebbe?” Reb Moshe responded: “All you have to believe is that I’m a klets’l hekher fun dir—­like a tree stump, that I’m just that much higher than you.”9 More than anything else, what I would like us to take from the story is its simplicity and inclusiveness. One does not have to be an accomplished spiritual master to be a teacher; nor does a student need to be a unique or exceptional individual. The relationship is possible, and I would even say necessary, wherever you are on the spiritual journey. I say necessary because I think it is essential that all of us in the Neo-­ Hasidic community see ourselves as practitioners on the journey of spiritual development. Different people may be invested at different levels of intensity at different stages of their lives, but we are all on the 326

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journey, and we should all seek out teachers who are “just that much” ahead of us. Of course, unlike content-­based teaching, a person cannot have a teaching relationship of the sort I have described with hundreds of people simultaneously. A teacher can have such a relationship of intimacy with a few people who are close to her. As a result, for this to work at a communal level, many people will have to take on the role of teacher. One Jewish model for this might be the contemporary role of the mashpia‘ in Chabad Hasidism, whereby the mashpia‘ is responsible for the student’s spiritual development. Traditionally this was an educational position in the Chabad yeshivot.10 However, the last Chabad rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, recognized the importance of such a relationship for Jews who were not yeshiva students and called upon every person to have a mashpia‘ throughout his or her entire life. In this context, the mashpia‘ is not necessarily someone who has been trained for a particular job but rather someone the individual looks up to for help and advice, someone who, as in the story, is “just that much” ahead of me on the road. It is also clear that in such a setting, a person can, and many people probably should, be a teacher in one relationship and a disciple in another.11 As we begin to look around our Neo-­Hasidic communities to find people we could take as teachers, those with whom we share a path and values, we will notice that not many of our teachers have had this sort of relationship with their own teachers. We will be forced yet again to recognize that we do not have an unbroken lineage.12 We will have to accept that regarding this spiritual tradition of Hasidism, rather than receiving a tradition ensconced in the practice of community, all we have are sparks gathered from the vessels shattered by the Enlightenment, Emancipation, and the Holocaust. It is up to us to do the best we can to be the living books of Hasidism from which the next generation can learn. 327

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Holy Strangers—­Difference and Inspiration The teacher-­student relationship described in the previous paragraphs is close to my heart. Part of my attraction to Hasidism is the framework it offers for the relationship of students to a teacher who leads them on the very same road that he or she is walking on. Personally, I have sought out such teachers and have been fortunate to have had them (particularly Rabbi Avraham Yitshak Yisrael Green, my teacher of more than fifteen years) in my life. There is, however, another side to the traditional role of rebbe: the aspect of the tsaddik who is on a significantly different path than the people inspired by him or her. While I do not think our communities need holy individuals serving people whose priorities are different from their own, it is nonetheless a well-­attested fact that such figures have played an important role in the religious lives of their communities. Here is a short example from the teachings of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye: The body of every person consists of 248 sections and 365 connectors that constitute the person’s flesh. But it is the nefesh, ruah, and neshamah [aspects of the soul] that make the person a person. So also, the Israelite people as a whole contains a body of 248 sections and 365 connectors. But it is the tsaddikim of the generation who are the soul and the vitality of the entire generation. . . . A person consists of two opposites: matter and form. The matter part follows the power of material physicality . . . while the form’s longings and desires are spiritual. Humanity was created to transform matter into form, to unite the two and overcome the separation between them. The masses are known as “people of the earth” [Am ha-­Aretz], for they engage mostly in earthly matters, so they are the “matter” of the nation. But the tsaddikim who engage in the study of Torah and service of God are the spiritual “form” of the nation.13 328

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The soul should not treat the body arrogantly. . . . It is only through the body that the soul can fulfill the commandments that are required for its own perfection. . . . The body likewise should not treat the soul with arrogance even though the body sustains the soul, for when the soul departs the body will be left inert. They both need each other. So also at the communal level, the scholars and the tsaddikim should not say there is no use for the masses. These people support Torah and realize many mitzvot. Certainly, the masses should not say there is no use for the scholars or treat them arrogantly just because they are financially dependent on the community. Each side is only half of a “complete person.”14 It is easy to dismiss these teachings as offensive to our egalitarian sensibilities. There is much in this text that is difficult for me personally, in particular the radical separation between physical and spiritual aspirations at both the personal and social levels. I am glad Rabbi Yaakov Yosef calls for mutual respect between the two social groups, but ultimately the masses seem to be respected mostly for their usefulness to the tsaddikim. Still, if the distinction he proposes were presented in less absolute terms, it might not seem so foreign to our own communities. I daresay that, practically speaking, most of us do not set our relationship with God and our spiritual development at the top of our daily agenda. We are invested in our families, in making a living, and in many other things, all of which could be spiritual practices but somehow most often are not. I want to be clear that I am not attempting to reject or ignore the Hasidic notion of ‘avodah be-­gashmiyut—­that any aspect of life can be a service to God. I am only observing that even with the best intentions, most of us do not regularly function this way. In the tradition of Hasidism and Kabbalah, many Jewish practices are accepted as responses to the inevitable gap between our vision and our daily life. The practice of Shabbat, for example, is not to be under329

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stood as teaching us that holiness is impossible when engaged in the work of the six days. Rather, it acknowledges how difficult it can be for us to make room for holiness when preoccupied with the myriad callings of life. Shabbat stops all regular activity for twenty-­four hours to allow something else to emerge. All the Hasidic masters teach us that the point of Shabbat is not that it remain forever separate and different from the rest of the week. It is, rather, through the ongoing immersion in the alternative reality created by the cessation of work that we learn how to make space for that which the world is becoming (‘olam ha-­ba). Hence Shabbat is me-‘ein ‘olam ha-­ba (a sort of world to come), in the midst of our ongoing engagements. In terms of spiritual development, this dynamic is called ratso va-­ shov—­rushing ahead and retreating.15 Rather than seeing spiritual growth as a linear process, this understanding sees spiritual growth as repeated peak moments followed by return to regular practice, which has hopefully been advanced by the exposure to these peaks. Such moments can be facilitated through our own efforts (it‘aruta de-­ letata—­arousal from below) or through an unmerited act of divine grace (it‘aruta de-­leila—­arousal from above). They appear in all realms of life—­time, space, relationships, and more. The role of the tsaddikim in the community may be seen as an expression of the same dynamic played out in the interpersonal social arena. Because most of us wish that God, spirituality, and awareness were more present in our lives than they actually are, it is beneficial for us to have people in our society whose primary commitment is to serve God through Torah and tefillah (prayer). Like the week in relation to Shabbat, we can be revitalized and reoriented in our spiritual lives by living and interacting with a person who has set aside all other aspirations for the sake of pursuing God. Interacting with such people whose practical priorities are different from our own can be beneficial to our own religious growth, even if we do not totally transform our lives as a result. 330

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Maimonides understood this social pattern to be a regular feature of Jewish life beginning in biblical times. He wrote: The tribe of Levi did not get a portion in the Land [of Israel] and the property in it because it was designated to serve and worship God and to instruct all in God’s straight ways and righteous judgments. . . . For this purpose they are separated from the world’s ways. . . . And not only the tribe of Levi, rather any person in the entire world whose spirit is moved and whose understanding leads him to stand apart, to stand before God to serve and to worship. One who strives to know God and follows a straight path, fulfilling God’s purpose for us and rejecting the many schemes that people seek out, is sanctified, a holy of holies. God is the portion of such a person.16 The description of the Hasidic tsaddikim as a link connecting heaven and earth positions the rebbe as upholding this tension for his community. This tension is important to the vitality of religious life; almost every traditional form of religion preserves it. It is part of the socioreligious role played by Catholic priests, monastics of different religions, and any other role that calls for setting aside the “worldly pursuits” in favor of a religious vocation. It is not clear to me that any accessible figures in contemporary liberal Judaism play such a role, and this lack may well affect the religious vitality of our communities.17 To return to the example of Shabbat: Shabbat in its ideal form upholds the tension between how we could live our lives and how we actually do throughout the six days of the week. That tension breathes vitality into our daily work. At the same time, in blessing the distinction between Shabbat and the week during the Havdalah ritual, Shabbat affirms our weekly life as a meaningful part of our existence. At the communal level, a community without models of what total devotion to God might look like lacks both the vitalizing tension and the affirmation. 331

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Yet, given that our society is sensitive to the dangers of setting up individuals as “strangers” in their own communities, I think that within the Jewish community this affirming tension should not be propped up by individuals but upheld by small communal groups within the larger community. I propose to call such groups Agudot (sing. Agudah)18—­ small groups spread throughout the United States for whom a life of prayer, Torah study, and spiritual development is their first priority, who dedicate themselves to God and spiritual practice in ways that most of us will not, and who engage in this work in service of the broader Jewish community. The consciousness of service is very important, for while the Agudah creates its own social context and is thus separated from the larger community, it must always interact with the larger community and be supported by it. As individuals, members of the Agudah should have a teacher with whom they share a path, but as a group they would serve the function of tsaddik for the entire community. This is not a new idea in the Jewish community, and not even within Neo-­Hasidism. This book’s companion volume, A New Hasidism: Roots,19 includes two calls for the creation of such groups in the twentieth century, from Hillel Zeitlin and Reb Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi. The lifestyle of a contemporary Agudah could certainly be based on those proposals. But while much in those calls may speak to the contemporary seeker who desires to be a member of such a group, in this proposal I want to emphasize the importance of such groups for the broader Jewish community, for those of us who will not be members. The path of full dedication is not meant to be followed by the majority of people. For most of us, its importance is in the challenge its very existence poses, and in the interactions we have with it. A person may choose to spend a weekend, or a week, with such a small community, to be refreshed and reoriented. Another person may choose to join this community for a longer retreat measured in weeks or months. New teachings of 332

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spiritual practice may originate from such communities and be shared more broadly. Thus, even while the Agudah poses significant challenges to the broader community, in these ways and others the Agudah constantly affirms the life of the community. Its members merge Torah with the worldly path; they plant in the season of planting and reap in the season of reaping. The existence of such a group does not negate other forms of Jewish life and is not intended as a model for the entire Jewish community.20 Like the individual tsaddik described by Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye and other Hasidic teachers, the Agudah is also susceptible to arrogance, and to the notion that its own level of dedication is the only way to live a truly meaningful Jewish life. Members of the Agudah must always remember the raison d’être of the Agudah: to serve and enhance the life of the broader Jewish community, and not to take its place. The divine awareness cultivated in the Agudah must be integrated into the life of the entire community. Only when the Agudah and the larger community affirm each other’s way of life—­ when we make a blessing of Havdalah, so to speak—­can a productive and useful tension be sustained. The ultimate test of any spiritual achievement of the Agudah is its long-­term usefulness to engagement with the world. Here we have a great deal to learn from traditions that have centuries of experience with creating this sort of structure, and particularly from those that, like American Zen communities, have struggled with finding correct forms for these traditions in contemporary Western society. John Daido Loori Roshi, the late abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, once described the role of the monastery as follows: Zen training is very demanding. Monasticism is the core of this practice tradition. It shows that it’s possible to do this all-­out. The monastics here dedicate their lives to the Dharma: seven-­ day sessions every month, sitting every morning and night, year 333

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after year after year. They maintain the archive of sanity and serve the sangha. The rest of our sangha comes into the monastery to recreate themselves and then brings their practice back out into the world. And it definitely affects their lives and how they do the things that they do, the ten thousand things they do—­teaching, mothering, doctoring, loving, working. There is an interdependent relationship between lay practice and monastic practice. The monastic role will always be important.21 While it is true that Jewish tradition does not generally uphold formal structures of monasticism, these tensions and structures are not totally absent in our tradition. As is implied by the passage from Maimonides, we have always had people who “separated” and lived with a dedication different from the rest. Much of the traditional discussion of this phenomenon centers on the value of study—­Talmud Torah, and the importance to the community of people who are totally devoted to this practice. The community-­supported scholars of the Eastern European kloyz, including the Besht himself, could serve as a good example of such a construct. Of course, once we look to monastic traditions in other religions, the issue of celibacy arises. There is much to be said for the usefulness of celibacy in allowing the practitioner to set aside the obligations of intimate relationship and family, and much to argue against it. Personally, I feel that if we create structures to support families in the Agudah, celibacy is not necessary. Jewish tradition does not have a formal tradition of celibacy, although celibate marriages, particularly after having children, are not unknown. It is, however, important to acknowledge that the ability to devote oneself fully to Torah and tefillah was with few exceptions a male prerogative, supported by the women of the household, who took care of the home and children and at times supported the family financially as well. It should be self-­evident that we can no longer support a system in which the 334

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community’s need for total dedication to God is upheld by wives’ total dedication to their husbands. Yet feminist awareness requires more of us than just making such dedication to God accessible to women. It also requires us to reject the notion of a marriage that is constructed entirely around the self-­realization of only one partner. Instead we must create other social structures to enable it. Hence the Agudah: a small group of people living in relative proximity to each other (there may be differences between an urban and a rural group), and communally responsible for each other’s practice and material well-­being. If we can imagine the participation of both individuals and families in such an endeavor, there is much to learn from those who have created such noncelibate structures in other religions, as well as from the creation of havurot in the North American Jewish community in the 1960s and 1970s.22 The Hasidic movement began as small, very intense groups of disciples at the table of a master. But against the voices that would have preferred it preserve that form,23 it quickly became a mass movement encompassing large parts of Eastern European Jewry. My call for the creation of Agudot is not an attempt to take Hasidism back to the small groups from which it came. It is, rather, a recognition that the role of rebbe was shaped at least in part as a way to keep Hasidism alive for the people who would never experience the sort of dedication that the few disciples did. This necessity is no less pressing in our own time. My hope is that within liberal Judaism, a Neo-­Hasidic community would renew the emphasis on our being a community of practitioners, a community in which every individual is on the path of spiritual growth and the community supports this process for every individual, wherever each is on this journey. Rather than inspiring tsaddikim to do this, I believe we will need many teachers in vulnerable relations with their students, and many Agudot as well, to keep the tension in our ‘avodah alive. 335

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Notes

1. Arthur Green, “Typologies of Leadership and the Hasidic Zaddiq,” in Arthur Green, ed., Jewish Spirituality: From the Sixteenth-­Century Revival to the Present, vol. 2 (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 127. 2. See particularly Ada Rapoport-­Albert, “God and the Tzaddik as the Two Focal Points of Hasidic Worship,” History of Religions 18, no. 4 (1979): 296–­325; and Miles Krassen, Uniter of Heaven and Earth: Rabbi Meshullam Feibush Heller and the Rise of Hasidism in Eastern Galicia (Albany ny: suny Press, 1998), 187–­202. 3. Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80–­101. Reprinted in Peter Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), esp. 130–­32. 4. For an explanation of the sefirah of yesod and the tsaddik as channel, see Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 48–­50. 5. A striking example would be the attempts by Shlomo Carlebach’s students to help him stop crossing boundaries in his relationships with women, a struggle that became more public after Shlomo’s death. 6. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Kotsk: The Struggle for Integrity, ed. Dror Bondi, trans. Daniel Reiser and Itiel Beeri (Jerusalem: Maggid, 2015), introduction (Hebrew). On Heschel, see also chapter 3 of Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, eds., A New Hasidism: Roots (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2019). 7. Hayyim Meir Heilman, Beit Rabbi (Jerusalem: n.p., 2014), 189–­90, translated in Arthur Green, Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table, vol. 1, with Ebn Leader, Ariel Evan Mayse, and Or N. Rose (Woodstock vt: Jewish Lights, 2013), vii. 8. Arthur Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 121. 9. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, The Geologist of the Soul (Boulder co: Albion-­Adalus, 2012), 8. 10. The Chabad yeshiva education system is built around two sets of educators. Each class has a rav, responsible for the students’ growth in rabbinic studies and halakhah, and a mashpia‘, responsible for the students’ growth in spirituality and Hasidism. 336

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11. This author cannot imagine trying to take on the role of teacher without that being balanced by his own discipleship. But this is still distinct from the radical position that the teacher posture is only a role that anyone can step in and out of, if the community creates the right setting. The disciples of Reb Zalman, of blessed memory, often tell of the round table at which he would ask everyone to move one seat to the right and then say to the person at the head of the table, “Now you are rebbe.” Even without using the term “teacher” in the same way Reb Zalman used rebbe, the connection between the person and the role of spiritual teacher is and must be much deeper than that expressed in this story. Indeed, Reb Zalman himself said to this author twice in the last years of his life that of course it doesn’t really work that way, but it was important for that time so that people got a sense of the possibilities. 12. The story of a broken lineage is actually incorporated into the Jewish people’s contemporary ritual of semikhah—­rabbinic ordination. While this tradition evokes the story of a lineage going back to Sinai, it simultaneously acknowledges that through the vagaries of history and the tragedies of persecution the chain has been broken and we can no longer trace a direct line that far back in history. 13. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye, Toledot Yaakov Yosef, vol. 1 (New York: n.p., 2001), introduction, 35–­36. 14. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye, Toledot Yaakov Yosef, vol. 2 (New York: n.p, 2001), ki tissa, 323. 15. The phrase is based on the behavior of the “living beings” in Ezekiel’s vision of the divine chariot (Ezek. 1:14). 16. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, hilkhot shemittah ve-­yovel, 13:12–­13. 17. The North American rabbinate, as a rule, does not fulfill that function. Mostly this rabbinate has become a profession that fits nicely within the world of middle-­class aspirations. Rabbis expect to be compensated in such a way that they can maintain the same middle-­class lifestyle as their communities, send their children to the same colleges, have private and leisure time away from work, and essentially aspire toward the same “good life” as their congregants. This analysis is not intended to belittle the North American rabbinate. It has proved over generations that it has an extremely important role to play in congregations as it is. However, this rabbinic model is not intended to uphold the vital tension between our lives as they are and a life dedicated to God. Perhaps some

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liberal Jews’ (and philanthropists’) fascination with ultra-­Orthodox Jews is a response to the lack of such a model in liberal communities, based on the perception (true or not) that the ultra-­Orthodox community models a life dedicated to God. 18. This proposal is inspired by the way Rabbi Yitzhak Ayzik of Komarno explains the term Agudah. The Komarner Rebbe uses the term to describe a group of people dedicated to the service of God and benefiting the broader community. See his Notser Hesed on Avot 3:6. 19. Green and Mayse, A New Hasidism: Roots. 20. The intent of this statement is to create a contrast with the world of ultra-­Orthodox yeshivot, particularly as it developed in Israel in the latter part of the twentieth century. By positing a way of life for the entire community, the ultra-­Orthodox perforce turned themselves into a parasite community on another Jewish community that does not share their ideals (i.e., the secular Israeli society) and supports them mostly through ongoing forms of political coercion. Some recent signs indicate that they may be moving away from that model. 21. See Jeff Zaleski, “Straight Ahead: An Interview with John Daido Loori,” Tricycle (Winter 1999), terebess​.hu​/zen​/mesterek​/daido​-­­loori​-­­interview​ -­­tricycle​.pdf. 22. Of the various havurah models experimented with, this project is probably closest in nature to what the religious historian Jacob Neusner called the “Commune Havurah,” specifically to Havurat Shalom of Somerville. It is very different from the Synagogue Havurah model created by Rabbi Harold Schulweis that intended to transform the entire community of Encino, California, into a series of small havurot. For a discussion of the different models of havurot, see Jacob Neusner, Contemporary Judaic Fellowship in Theory and in Practice (New York: Ktav, 1972). For more focus on the Schulweis model, see Harry Wasserman et al., “The Concept of Havurah: An Analysis,” Journal of Reform Judaism (Winter 1979): 35–­50. 23. See an articulation of this tension in the Sefat Emet, va-­yeshev 5631 (1871).

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13 Shlomo Carlebach A Transnational Jew in Search of Himself Shaul Magid Shlomo Carlebach (1925–­1994) was a ubiquitous figure in postwar Judaism, a transnational figure who hardly wrote anything, did not actively participate in the many debates about Jewish life and identity, did not publicly weigh in on the relevant issues of the day, and yet his music, his teaching, and his presence had a transformative effect on hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-­Jews worldwide.1 He certainly had a tremendous impact on me, a late-­1970s ba‘al teshuvah who moved deeply inside and then decidedly outside his circle of influence. In this essay I describe some of my reflections on his life, as one among many travelers who reaped benefit from his words, his song, his Torah, and his dark yet ever-­hopeful imagination. Shlomo began his career as America’s Jewish itinerant preacher together with Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi in 1949 when the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, sent them both to a Hanukkah party at the newly opened Brandeis University to engage in acts of kiruv rehokim (proselytizing to the wayward Jews). It may have been the first formal act of shlichut (inter-­Jewish missionizing) that came to define Chabad Hasidism in subsequent decades. Soon after that event, he and Schachter-­Shalomi (then known simply as Schachter) went their separate ways but remained friends, often collaborating in Jewish Renewal gatherings, ecumenical meetings, and spiritual retreats. 339

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I first met both of them when they led a retreat at the Freedom Farm outside Philadelphia in 1979. I had come directly from a short visit to the Chabad yeshiva in Morristown, New Jersey, which I was contemplating attending (I decided against it and moved to Boro Park, Brooklyn, instead). Both Zalman and Shlomo were leading the retreat, even as Zalman seemed to be the ringleader and Shlomo the accompanist. The retreat convinced me not to go to Morristown mostly because Shlomo and Zalman conveyed to me a sense of symmetry between the countercultural world I was coming from and a vision of Judaism as “counterculture.” The haredi world, which I eventually entered through the portal of an enigmatic rabbi named Dovid Din, a student of Zalman, was envisioned that way as well. I liked Chabad but felt it was more conformist than I wanted to be.2 One of Shlomo’s greatest talents was his ability to create worlds through storytelling. On this Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi wrote: “Shlomo was also known as a great storyteller, and I like to say of him that he was a ‘genius’ of ‘virtuous reality.’ Not virtual but virtuous reality. When he would tell the stories, they would come out in such a way that they would give you a great longing to live the life of the person whose great virtues were being talked about.”3 His stories were as much about his own self-­fashioning as the stories themselves. A well-­known American-­born Rosh Yeshiva (the head of a talmudic academy) in Jerusalem told me this anecdote. He was there when Shlomo told one of his long-­winded stories. Afterward Shlomo asked him, “Nu, Reb Chaim, what did you think of the story?” to which the Rosh Yeshiva replied, “Shlomo, that was the worst story I have ever heard!” Shlomo retorted, “Yes, sure, I know, but how did you like the way I told it!?”4 What was compelling about Shlomo was the telling and not what was being told. Therein lies the genius of a troubadour, an itinerant, someone who can make you not only think but feel. Shlomo’s life was a performative Judaism in the best sense, not a staged performance but rather the lift340

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ing of a veil that exposes for a brief moment a contradictory, tortured, and complex personality—­a merging of comedy and tragedy that is the Jewish experience. In the next moment the veil is lowered once again and one was never sure if what was witnessed, what was seen, what was felt, was a hidden part of the storyteller or a hidden part of oneself. Elsewhere I referred to this experience as a broken mirror, and it was this broken mirror that drew me into his orbit.5 And it was this same broken mirror that compelled me to leave it. His flaw was, in the end, his greatness. For that insight I remain grateful. Here I offer a brief personal assessment of his contribution, a tribute to an individual whose vision helped form my views on Judaism even as I eventually could not continue to follow him on his path.

Shlomo the Troubadour Shlomo’s contribution to contemporary Jewish life was not as an intellectual. He had no grand theological project and was not well-­read in the modern philosophical and theological attempts to wed religion and modernity. He functioned primarily as an itinerant preacher, teacher, storyteller, and musician, one who lived simultaneously in the vanished world of prewar Europe and the countercultural world of 1960s America, serving as a much-­needed bridge to heal the wounds of the past and inspire the minds and hearts of the future. At a previous time in Jewish history, Shlomo would not have been uncommon. Hundreds of such troubadours roamed the back roads of Eastern Europe telling stories to the villagers for a few rubles. But in our institutional world he was an anomaly. He spoke to the hearts of traumatized Jews of a generation that preceded him and disenfranchised Jews of a generation that followed him. In some inexplicable way, he was able to communicate in the breach between two generations that could not communicate with each other. Through the fantastical world of a 341

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Hasidism that was largely the product of his own imagination, he built a bridge over the corpses of history and the youthful angst of protest. For most of his career Shlomo made his living composing and performing original music based on traditional nusah (liturgical form) and Hasidic nigunim (wordless melodies).6 He was arguably the most influential and prolific composer of Jewish music in the second half of the twentieth century.7 In this regard he is perhaps best captured as the Woody Guthrie of postwar Judaism. Like Woody, his songs captured the tragedy and also the joy of a hardscrabble life—­in Shlomo’s case, the life that accompanied collective Jewish trauma. Like Woody, he captured in song a fleeting yet palpable experience of this imagined life and simultaneously the utopian optimism of his listeners. Shlomo never lived in a shtetl and Woody never really rode freight trains as a destitute vagabond. Each experienced the world they sang about as interlopers. Like Woody, Shlomo was able to produce light without dispelling darkness. And like Woody he carried with him the burdens of his own human failings, never apologizing for them—­also never denying them—­but never overcoming them either. Woody changed the way Americans viewed themselves and how America as a country came to terms with its disenfranchised. Shlomo changed the way Jews viewed themselves and how they viewed others. As a transnational Jew, he enabled more rooted Jewish souls to understand the countries they lived in.

Breathing New Life into the Diaspora Much of what we know about Shlomo is hopelessly hagiographic and anecdotal.8 The stories he told of his own life and meetings with people around the world became interchangeable with the fantastical stories he told of old-­world Hasidim. Often a story of the students of the Ba‘al Shem Tov ended with a coda about Shlomo meeting a 342

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poor shlepper in the streets of Jerusalem. He captured the imaginative spirit of Nahman of Bratslav, a Hasidic figure who would become prominent in my life in part, perhaps, because Shlomo introduced us to the Jewish imagination in ways that were not operative in the formal yeshivot many of us attended. In this sense he took his listeners back to a very early instantiation of Hasidism (whether it ever actually existed is irrelevant), a moment in Jewish imaginative history where the people became as important as the page of Talmud set before us. And this may be his greatest contribution; the book could help the Jews survive yet smother the heart. And surviving without a heart is not worth a brilliant casuistic inference in a talmudic sugya. And it is here where his post-­Holocaust context is put into sharper focus: the Jews survived the Holocaust but did so on life support. Israel may have indeed breathed new life into a comatose people; but everyone did not choose Israel. In this sense Shlomo gave new life to the Diaspora by giving Jews their hearts back, by making them feel again, walk again, pray again. It is not at all clear that there is a consistent thread in Shlomo’s thought. By the late 1960s people began taping his concerts and informal gatherings where he taught in synagogues, living rooms, and backyards. As a result, there are literally tens of thousands of tapes in circulation and many who own them are not always forthcoming in sharing them. For some the tapes became sacred objects, even talismanic of their personal relationship with him. And this is appropriate. For Shlomo, the sacred book, or the sefer, was not the message or even the medium; it was the occasion. I recall numerous gatherings where he would gaze into one book only to put it down and pick up another, and then another, until he found something that grabbed him, something that sparked an image, a memory, something that made the teaching a usable referent for a human encounter, with another human, with God, and with oneself. The broken mirror 343

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that was Shlomo made the Torah he taught a mirror that refracts light in the broken shards in infinite directions. In these ways Shlomo resembled such charismatic figures as the Ba‘al Shem Tov, whom he emulated consciously and unconsciously throughout his life. Shlomo represented a postwar remnant of a lost world of oral culture, of bygone days when inspirational teachers traveled the dirt roads to preach in synagogues across the Pale of Settlement . . . which, of course, were now the suburbs and inner cities of America. While he took jumbo jets instead of horse-­drawn carriages or trains (he often spoke proudly of flying the Concord), he nonetheless largely lived and died the life of those lost itinerants.

Uniting Disparate Worlds But Shlomo was more than simply a preacher. He changed the way many Jews related to their tradition and their world, arguably something that only an itinerant—­whose fleeting influence carries its own power—­can accomplish. He seemed unable, or unwilling, to remain in one place; he was lost as easily as discovered; he passionately advocated a strong commitment to tradition and just as easily advocated a passionate call for change. This fleeting quality also marked the inconsistency of his thought. He was a defender of tradition and also iconoclastic, someone who took two seemingly disparate worlds (Eastern European Hasidism and the American counterculture) and made them one, so much so that today we unconsciously view one through the lens of the other. He created a “virtuous” reality through storytelling, recreating a world that never existed but doing so in such a way that it appears to have always existed. His accented English, an odd combination of Viennese German and Eastern European Yiddish (which he used masterfully as a tool of his trade), charming and self-­deprecating manner, rebellious 344

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persona, ungrammatical turn of phrase, and broad knowledge of the classical Jewish tradition and the yeshiva world of his youth made him distinctly situated to be the consummate Jewish cultural translator of the late twentieth century. Shlomo gave his listeners a vision of old-­world Hasidism that was unapologetic yet inoffensive, a Hasidism that could not stand the test of historical scrutiny (about which he cared very little), a fantastical world he constructed in his fertile imagination. Born in prewar Berlin to an aristocratic German rabbinic family and raised in an Austrian suburb where his father served as the city’s rabbi until the Second World War, he was not fully at home in either old-­world Orthodoxy or American Judaism, yet seemed comfortable in both. In many ways he was also an outsider to Hasidism, but absorbed it as if he had been raised in its bosom. This homelessness enabled him to construct a new spiritual home in which at least two generations of Jews have found a comforting, and comfortable, residence. People like myself who only came to Judaism by rejecting the world of their youth felt that Shlomo offered solace for the spiritually homeless. The traditional world often views new returnees (ba‘alei teshuvah) as those who are “coming home.” But that is an error. It is not coming home. Or perhaps it is so in some impersonal, metaphysical, or ideological way, but not in the way of human experience. Returning to tradition from the outside is like going on the road, away from one’s family, one’s upbringing, the familiarity of one’s surroundings. Returning is a lonely choice, only made less so by meeting fellow-­travelers on the path. And on that path there was no one I met as lonely as Shlomo. He was not a returnee, he came from the depths of the tradition, but he too had left that world behind, not for some other “prepared table” but for the life of an itinerant, in order to enable others to create a new world. The seedlings of that new world, sprouting forth from his broken heart, were a world I entered, not to be comforted as much as to feel that the loneliness was a price worth paying. 345

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Shlomo brought many souls back to “traditional” Judaism by making it untraditional. And he expanded the minds of many traditional Jews by showing them how “untraditional” Hasidism really was. He tricked us in a way, but he also tricked the traditional world. He was a holy trickster, even to himself.

Tearing Down Walls The Holocaust played such a central role in Shlomo’s life and teaching that I do not think we can understand Shlomo as an individual or public figure without the Holocaust. It is not that he talked about it very much, or that he had any coherent rendering of its meaning (he escaped from Brussels on a ship to the United States only days before the Nazis occupied Belgium). Rather, the Holocaust was for him a divine sign of a seismic change in Jewish history that required a paradigmatic shift in Judaism’s relationship to the world. In this sense he and Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi seemed to be in agreement.9 For Shlomo, the evil of the Holocaust was not a sign that the world hates the Jews—­and not a justification for the Jews blaming the world—­but a sign that human hatred can only be conquered by human compassion, not by revenge or retribution. Thus he desired for Jews to become more a part of the world and less insular in response to the Holocaust. He lived this transnational ideology, performing for non-­Jewish audiences, at ashrams and ecumenical conferences, in Germany, England, France, Austria, and South Africa, always preaching Jewish love for humanity. His decision at the beginning of his career, in the early 1960s, to perform to gender-mixed audiences met with sharp consternation from the Orthodox community—­it even served as the subject of a halakhic responsum by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the most celebrated American haredi legal authority in postwar America. While Shlomo was reluctant to sign on to the egalitarianism that would became popular in 346

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non-­Orthodox American Judaisms in the early 1970s, he was just as reluctant to defend the gender exclusion of his Orthodox upbringing. In the early years of the House of Love and Prayer, which he founded in San Francisco in the late 1960s, heated discussion arose about whether the prayer space should have a mechitzah, a barrier separating men and women required in Orthodox Judaism. Aryae Coopersmith, cofounder of the House, recounts: “When I called Shlomo to tell him that I rented a house for the House of Love and Prayer, I asked him if he wanted a mehitzah in the prayer room. He laughed and said, ‘There are enough walls in this world between people. What we’re here to do is tear them down.’”10 He looked at the landscape of American Judaism in the 1960s and saw a world strewn with walls: between Jew and non-­Jew, between one Jewish denomination and another, between European Holocaust survivors and their children who could never understand the parents’ experiences, between the rabbis intent on reproducing a Judaism of the past and a generation just as intent on subverting it, between an older generation of Jews not quite comfortable in America and a younger generation that was fully American. His ability to subvert the very thing he was defending drew me into his orbit. A classic example of Shlomo’s post-­Holocaust humanism is the story he often told about the twentieth-­century Hasidic master Rabbi Chaim Shapira of Munkatch (d. 1936), who (as the story goes) gives his disciple a blank piece of paper soaked in his tears to serve as his “passport” to travel from Poland to Germany just before World War II. When the Munkatcher disciple hands a Nazi border guard this blank piece of paper, the guard salutes him and sends for a car to escort him to his destination in Germany. Fantasy? Insanity? Certainly. But what would it take to do such a thing—­to stare hatred in the face with the belief that hatred can (always) be erased, even the hatred of a Nazi border guard? In some ways Shlomo naively believed that hatred between people was the result of a wall constructed out of fear. If we could tear down 347

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“the walls” or make believe they do not exist, people’s humanity would shine through. The story of the Munkatcher passport is about traversing borders and erasing them, about how we create borders, between peoples, between communities, within families, and in doing so foment hatred and alienation. He taught that national hatred is an extension of the hatred of the ones closest to you. Human history is refracted through the sibling and family hatred that stands at the center of the Hebrew Bible: from Cain and Abel to Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Moses and Korah. And in some way this hatred, different in degree but not in kind, is the hatred that surfaced in the Holocaust—­and is potentially the hatred and fear Jews could have of the world because of the Holocaust. For Shlomo, to perpetuate this fear would accomplish nothing. Yet other times he could be heard espousing just the opposite positions; sometimes he spoke of the militant rabbi Meir Kahane and the radical settlers as Jewish heroes.11 He was literally torn inside. As a result, each of his followers heard what he or she wanted and constructed him in that individual image. Each group he touched deeply became zealously convinced that “their Shlomo” was the real one. Yet that very certainty undermined exactly what he had to offer.12 Shlomo’s tools were Hasidic stories and teachings. Yet he did not merely transmit them as written. He sought to transcend the complex vicissitudes of Hasidic writing and make his case that Hasidism is ultimately about relation—­to God, to other humans, to oneself. It would be interesting to compare his rendering to that of Martin Buber (with whom he was only nominally familiar), who also focused on Polish Hasidism as an expression of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s message of “meeting” as ultimate meaning.13 For Shlomo, Hasidism was mostly about how we misunderstand our fellow human being. It is about human doubt and compassion, recognizing the brokenness of all human experience—­very much including his own. No sketch of Shlomo’s impact on contemporary Judaism can avoid the fact that he led a checkered and, in many ways, problematic life, 348

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much of it on the road. Allegations of sexual misbehavior followed him through much of his adult life. Many people claim to have been hurt by his affection and his distance. These claims should not be denied nor reflexively confirmed.14 They should be taken seriously and considered carefully. They are part of a complex fabric of who he was: inspiring, charismatic, broken, and perhaps most of all, lonely. He landed in the Haight-­Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco in the 1960s as a Chabad emissary, but soon realized it was Hasidism, and not the hippies, that was in need of repair. Though his expertise in his favorite Hasidic masters—­Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbica, known for his unorthodox and perhaps even antinomian views, and Nahman of Bratslav, the enigmatic and tortured Hasidic genius—­greatly predated his encounter with the American counterculture, these iconoclastic figures affirmed the intuitive distaste of the “holy hippies” for convention and the materialism of postwar American consumerism. Shlomo’s countercultural Hasidism was reconstructed through the prism of the Izbica and Bratslav traditions, freed of the apologetic readings of mainstream Hasidic society. Later on he extended his romantic view of the hippies’ redemptive role to radical settlers, which is somewhat ironic as the latter do not exude the progressive and pacifist sentiment of the former. Even more ironic is that some of the former eventually became the latter. If Hasidism was only for, and about, Hasidim, it could not and, for him, perhaps should not survive. For Shlomo Hasidism was about rebellion for the sake of heaven (le-­shem shamayim), even if that was a distorted vision of the Hasidic movement. Sarah Imhoff, a scholar of religion, music, and the body, is correct in her assertion that breaking boundaries as a spiritual exercise can also have deleterious effects when it comes to human relationships.15 And in my view it is mistaken to argue for a squeaky-­clean Shlomo, because Shlomo’s entire message was about the messiness of human existence. This is not to exonerate any wrongdoing but to see him outside the confines of any world he inhabited. What he did believe in, 349

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above all, was the power of compassion and the power of repentance. Whether he ever repented for his deeds, to himself or to others, I do not know. I have never felt so enamored with and so sorry for a single individual simultaneously. To evoke that in me and any others who lived in his orbit is itself a testament to his contribution. He shattered an old-­world notion of the tsaddik as an exemplar of perfection. The tsaddik, for him, was the most broken of figures, irredeemably so, and one who walked with that brokenness through the shattered hearts of those he encountered. In the final years before his untimely death, Shlomo used to come every few months to Waban, a suburb of Boston, to teach and sing to a small group of us at the home of a gracious host. A good friend and I used to tape all these sessions. In the autumn of 1994, just a few weeks before his death, Shlomo was strapping on his guitar and taking his seat while I was kneeling next to him, taping our microphone to the microphone being used for amplification. As he sat down, characteristically tired yet uncharacteristically weak, he said to no one in particular, “Okay, hevre, let’s pretend we’re happy.” I may have been the only one who heard it. It struck me as the quintessence of his life, the narrows between utter brokenness and the unwillingness to give in to despair, where pretending and living become indistinguishable. My sense is that while Shlomo lived a life more or less in accordance with Orthodox halakhah, he did not believe that Jewish law was ultimately the glue to heal a broken people or a broken world. After all, for him it was not only the Jews who were broken after the Holocaust; humanity was broken. Here his emotive reaction seems to reflect Hannah Arendt when she argues in Eichmann in Jerusalem that the Holocaust was not a crime “against the Jewish people” but a crime against humanity “committed on the body of the Jewish people.”16 While Shlomo may not have openly agreed with this locution, he did believe that the world, and not only the Jews, was 350

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shattered by this event. Law may keep a people together but it will not heal them, and it will certainly not heal the world. Law, too, is a wall. Infused with a universal spirit it could be otherwise, but in most cases walls, and laws, separate; they do not unite. What mattered to him was human relation, the ability of one human being to see the other, the recognition of the other’s humanity. And those human relations sometimes blurred boundaries that the law was created to protect. In this sense, I think he did have a true antinomian streak; if the law prevented human connection, the law was a barrier and not a catalyst for divine will. The price one pays for this is high, not only with regard to acceptance in a normative community but also—­even more so—­in negotiating the wellsprings of human need and desire and the hazard of erasing boundaries that keep those desires intact.

Exiting Shlomo’s Path Shlomo espoused a “Judaism of uncertainty.” For him, any religion, all religion (albeit not all of its manifestations) reflects the sacred nature of human existence. For this reason I view him as the itinerant preacher for a post-­Judaism age. The Judaism of the old world, the Judaism Shlomo conveyed in his stories, is not only no longer possible, it is no longer preferable. The Judaism that cares only about its own people, its own survival, its exceptionalist relation to God, is not the Judaism I believe Shlomo preached. I absorbed this message from him in a deep way. Others will certainly disagree. Admittedly he was torn, conflicted; he led a public and private life full of contradictions. But in the end he dreamed of a “Judaism without walls.” That was his messianic fantasy. So why then did I take an exit off his path? This is indeed a good question that I have asked myself often. I can offer several answers. I 351

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first said farewell when I needed, or wanted, a more intense and direct route to the belly of the beast, to the haredi world he only talked about. I did not want to leave one world behind only to live on the margins of another. I needed a potent dose of full absorption. After years of that in the haredi world I got over the romanticized vision of a world that offered much but one that was, in my view, mired in the diseases of enclavism. On my way out of that world I met him again, this time while I was living on Moshav Mevo Modi’im in Israel, in those days a beautiful, almost bucolic hamlet of Shlomo acolytes built on the site of some Maccabean ruins. During the three years I lived there, I developed close relationships with many of his early followers. Many of them viewed Shlomo differently than I did. For them he was their rebbe; he was never that for me. They loved Shlomo the tsaddik; I loved Shlomo the heretic. His was not a heresy of ideology but a heresy of feeling, a heresy of the broken heart. He created a space for the broken human heart, not by healing it but by letting its brokenness breathe. What inspired me was not his righteousness but his dark optimism, his belief in the good that seeped out of the cracks of a very dark vessel of Jewish history. I could never communicate that to him, and he did not invite such theorizing. Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Mussar movement, once said that Mussar provided the most important defense of the spiritual life: to heal the solitary human heart.17 From that very same tradition and with a similar sentiment, Rabbi Elya Lopian once said, “[Mussar] makes the heart feel what the intellect understands.”18 I cite these Mussar sources because in a way they capture more succinctly what I learned from Shlomo than the Hasidic sources he lived in. Shlomo was not interested in transcendence; he was interested, I think, in what the French theorist Jean-­Luc Nancy described as “penetrating into pure immanence,” a deep engagement with the real that lies beneath the mask, not beyond it but behind it. 352

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How Elliot Wolfson, the noted scholar of Kabbalah, reads the notion of rending the veil seems apt here.19 What we find when the veil is lifted is not the truth, but the secret (and the secret may be that there is no truth, but we can never know for sure as long as the secret remains, as it always does). What one finds in Shlomo’s life and teaching when peeking through the lattice is not the beautiful maiden but the secret pain that permeates all beauty. What was so compelling for me was his blessed state of contradiction. I once heard Shlomo say that anyone who doesn’t contradict himself is really not worth listening to, an interesting inversion of a linear approach to the pursuit of truth. Noncontradiction was for him the severing of the mind from the heart as the heart houses the unpredictability of human desire. A person who never contradicts him or herself does not speak from the heart. Sadly, though, I found that I was destined to see him in a way that I could never communicate to him. He could perform the complexity of such contradiction brilliantly, but he could not easily accept it being reflected back on him. And most of those I knew who viewed him as their rebbe did not see the same man I did, or they saw him differently. My view was often considered inaccurate and even outrageous. They saw a tsaddik and I saw an anti-­tsaddik. They saw righteousness and I saw heresy. They saw joy and I saw deep sadness. It is certainly the case that these binaries reflect one another, and thus my anti-­tsaddik was itself a depiction of piety and sadness and joy lived in full dialectical tension in his persona. But in the end, perhaps, I could not stay because I could not get close enough, or communicate in a way that he could understand how I saw him. I made many of those in the close circle around him uncomfortable, which led me to believe that this was the way he wanted it. To choose the life of a scholar is to choose to be a critic.20 This does not obviate the possibility of strong and deep emotional and spiritual commitments, but it does require, in my view, the willingness to see 353

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things outside of those commitments and to deconstruct, and not merely describe, the very things held sacred by you or others. I see years later that some of what he taught me remains: a way to take things very seriously and still know how to laugh, a sense of mischief that I have tried to incorporate into my scholarship, an appreciation for the aesthetic as a condition of devotion, and an ability to hope when there is nothing to hope for. Shlomo was a man who was “close” to multitudes but had very few friends. I imagine that the depth of his sadness may have been too profound for him to share. In this sense he sacrificed himself for others, not as a righteous person or as a martyr but in the very difficult task of trying to be an extraordinary ordinary person. A mensch. I don’t know if he succeeded. But I think he really tried. Notes

1. Carlebach and his influence are discussed briefly in Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven ct Yale University Press, 2004), 345–­50; and Dana Evan Kaplan, Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 279–­84. Most recently, see Aryae Coopersmith, Holy Beggars: A Journey from Haight Street to Jerusalem (El Granada ca: One World Light, 2011); and Natan Ophir (Offenbacher), Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission, and Legacy (Jerusalem: Urim, 2014). Compare Shaul Magid, “Carlebach’s Broken Mirror,” Tablet, November 1, 2012, www​.tabletmag​.com​/jewish​ -­­arts​-­­and​-­­culture​/music​/115376​/carlebach​-­­broken​-­­mirror, and the essays collected in American Jewish History 100, no. 4 (2016). 2. On Dovid Din, see Shaul Magid, “My Teacher’s Son: A Memoir of Heresy Is Marked by His Father’s Unnerving Piety,” Tablet, April 15, 2015, www​ .tabletmag​.com​/jewish​-­­arts​-­­and​-­­culture​/ books​/190205​/shulem​-­­deen​ -­­dovid​-­­din. 3. Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, Wrapped in a Holy Flame (San Francisco: Jossey-­Bass, 2003), 291. 4. As told to this author by Rabbi Chaim Brovender, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Hamivtar, in the mid-­1980s. 354

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5. See Magid, “Carlebach’s Broken Mirror.” 6. See Ari Kelman and Shaul Magid, “The Gate to the Village: Shlomo Carlebach and the Creation of American Jewish ‘Folk,’” American Jewish History 100, no. 4 (2016): 511–­40. 7. For a music review of some posthumous work, see Shaul Magid, “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and His Interpreters: A Review Essay of Two New Musical Releases,” Musica Judaica, September 2010. Compare Natan Ophir, “Shlomo Carlebach’s Innovations in Hasidic Music,” published privately, 1–­8. 8. Numerous hagiographic works recount Shlomo’s life. For example, see Yitta Halberstam Mandelbaum, Holy Brother (Northvale nj: Jason Aronson, 2002); and M. H. Brand, R. Sheloimel’eh: Masekhet Hayyav ve-­Olamo shel R. Shelomoh Karlibakh (Efrat, Israel: n.p., 1996). Some of his written work can be found in the multivolume Kol Chevra published by the Shlomo Carlebach Foundation. The best study by far is Ophir (Offenbacher), Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. 9. On Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi on the Holocaust, see Shaul Magid, American Post-­Judaism (Bloomington in: Indiana University Press, 2013), 186–­232. 10. Coopersmith, Holy Beggars, 161. 11. This author explored the complexity and incongruity of Shlomo with regard to politics in Shaul Magid, “Between Romantic and Materialist Politics: Meir Kahane and Shlomo Carlebach,” American Jewish History 100, no. 4 (2016): 461–­84. 12. See, for example, the quite provocative and somewhat audacious title of Chaim Dalfin’s book The Real Shlomo (New York: Gaon, 2015). 13. See, for example, Martin Buber’s Hasidism and Modern Man, trans. Maurice Friedman, with a new introduction by David Biale (Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 2015); Martin Buber, Meetings, ed. Maurice Friedman (LaSalle il: Open Court, 1973); and Martina Urban, Aesthetics of Renewal: Martin Buber’s Early Representation of Hasidism as Kulturkritik (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 116–­55. 14. Most recently see Sarah Imhoff, “Carlebach and Unheard Stories,” American Jewish History 100, no. 4 (2016): 555–­60. 15. Imhoff, “Carlebach and Unheard Stories,” 555–­60. 16. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 2006), 7. 17. See Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness (New York: Trumpeter, 2008), 9. 355

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18. See Alan Morinis, With Heart and Mind (New York: Trumpeter, 2014), 6. 19. See Elliot R. Wolfson, Rending the Veil: Concealment of Secrecy in the History of Religions (New York: Seven Bridges, 1999). 20. See Russell McCutcheon, Critics Not Caretakers (Albany ny: suny Press, 2001); Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Jonathan Z. Smith, Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 179–­96.

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14 A Rebbe for Our Age? Bratslav and Neo-­Bratslav in Israel Today Arthur Green Among the most amazing phenomena in the Hasidic—­and Neo-­ Hasidic—­world today is the tremendous growth of Bratslav Hasidism, which builds on interest in its founder and key figure, Rabbi Nahman (1772–­1810), in Israel.1 Rabbi Nahman is the single rebbe of the Bratslav community; his devotees remained faithful to him after his death, refusing to replace him with a successor figure. For this reason, for generations other Hasidim referred to these devotees as “the dead Hasidim,” teasing them for venerating a rebbe who was no longer alive. The Bratslav Hasidim’s alleged retort, “Better a dead rebbe who is alive than a living rebbe who is dead,” seems now to have been vindicated by history. Reduced in the postwar decades by the ravages of modernity, Soviet oppression, and the Holocaust to a small community of just a few hundred hardy survivors (almost all in Israel), today Bratslavers, semi-­Bratslavers, and Neo-­Bratslavers number in the tens, perhaps even the hundreds, of thousands. Rabbi Nahman is the best-­known figure of Hasidism after the Ba‘al Shem Tov. He is also a major culture hero among Israelis old and young, a surprisingly unifying figure between the Jews of Eastern European and those of Middle Eastern heritage, as well as between the very strictly Hasidic-­style observant Jews of the original Bratslav community and a great many self-­styled “secular” Jews who nevertheless venerate this rebbe, study his teachings, and join 357

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the great annual pilgrimage to his grave in Uman, Ukraine. And even though Bratslav as an outreach movement began only in the 1970s, it now stands at the very center of the ba‘al teshuvah or “return to Judaism” movement in Israel, with Nahman’s teachings widely studied in the yeshivot of the national-­religious movement.

The History of Rabbi Nahman What is it about Rabbi Nahman and his unique heritage that has allowed for this tremendous growth? Why are his teachings widely studied in the national-­religious yeshivot of Israel, where once Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook was the singular figure of all non-­talmudic discourse?2 In order to understand the both utterly surprising and entirely predictable popularity of Bratslav, we need to begin with a bit of history. Nahman ben Simha was the great-­grandson of the Ba‘al Shem Tov.3 That places him in the “fourth generation” of Hasidic lineage, making him a generation younger than the great preachers in the school of Dov Baer of Mezritch, who essentially founded the Hasidic movement. Nahman saw himself as heir to his great-­grandfather’s legacy, inheriting from him a richness of imagination, a love of storytelling, and an attraction to visions of mysterious realms both within and beyond. He was essentially an autodidact of tremendous knowledge, but, more significantly, one who was able to transpose that knowledge into new and original constructs of spiritual creativity, embracing both the genres of Hasidic homiletics and original literary creativity of the highest order. From his earliest years, Nahman was a tortured soul. While he embraced his own emerging spiritual potential and was drawn toward a role of charismatic leadership within the growing Hasidic community, at the same time he felt himself to be utterly inadequate to the task that lay before him: reasserting the mantle of his family’s dynastic claim 358

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to lead the movement. Both an experiential mystic and a profound questioner , he seemed to embrace the tremendous joy of God’s presence within the heart as well as the painful reality of moments when God seemed absent, even distant.4 Then he would be filled with longing and desperation, emotions he was able to describe with a unique poetic sensibility. Nahman lived at the very edge of the emergence of modernity within the world of Eastern European Jewry. The final years of his short life span correspond to the era of Napoleon’s invasion of the former Polish territories; Nahman died before Napoleon’s defeat at the gates of Moscow in 1812. Napoleon, the great betrayer of the French Revolution, nevertheless brought its earthshaking message with him across Europe. Rabbi Nahman moved from Bratslav to Uman (in modern Ukraine) in 1810, essentially preparing himself to be buried among the martyrs who lay in the Uman cemetery. There, in Uman, he encountered Jews who had begun to live outside the parameters of halakhah, the traditional Jewish way of life. Ever seeking new challenges to growth and learning, Nahman found himself drawn to these freethinkers. He even suggestively told his faithful disciples that these heretics understood him better than they did.5 Drawing from the kabbalistic legacy on which Hasidism was based, Nahman began to explore those realms and moments from which God was absent, and to legitimate them as representing a secondary sort of truth. Ultimately, of course, Nahman understood that God is to be found everywhere, as the Ba‘al Shem Tov had insisted. In the throes of mystical experience, all minds can become one with the mind of God. But Nahman, both in his teachings and especially in his wonderfully creative and elusive tales, was also willing to explore moments of doubt and emptiness that are part of the journey of many a religious soul, topics considered taboo by the Hasidic world that had come before him.6 He seemed to foresee the modern world, sometimes characterizing and even caricaturing it in ways that shock the contemporary reader. 359

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Nahman’s Writings: A Unique Combination Rabbi Nahman’s writings include a unique combination of genres. His collected teachings (Likkutey Moharan)7 are often deeply profound treatments of Jewish mystical themes, strung together by a highly associative network of quotations from the classical sources. Amid these are strewn some beautifully poetic and deeply personal insights. His tales (Sippurey Ma‘asiyot)—­fantastic yarns of kings, princesses, beggars, and mysterious realms—­are completely unique within Hasidic literature and as such the subject of endless commentary and speculation, both within and beyond the Bratslav community, ever since their original publication in 1815.8 Often ignored are the third group of Bratslav texts, the ‘Etsot, “counsels,” or brief and directly accessible instructions for the development of one’s spiritual life.9 These ‘Etsot take a highly emotional religious path, filled with direct outcry to God, the baring of one’s soul, calls for joy amid struggle, and a quest for simplicity and wholeness of faith. Unlike the other writings, the genre of Nahman’s ‘Etsot was imitated and expanded by his disciples in succeeding generations, together creating a vast literature of short treatises and letters that offer counsel and reassurance to followers of the Bratslav path. Each of these forms of writing, but perhaps especially the unique combination they offer when taken as a whole, plays a key role in our understanding of the place Nahman has found in the lives and hearts of contemporary seekers. The teachings in Likkutey Moharan are the main subject of study among Rabbi Nahman’s disciples, both old and new. In them Nahman treats the entire tradition that came before him as a vast corpus mysterium (a body of mystical knowledge). The meaning of a word or phrase is never what it appears to be; the plasticity of the sources in the face of reinterpretation seems to be pushed farther than anywhere else in Hasidic literature. Opening with a biblical verse, a talmudic story, or an odd-­sounding phrase from the Zohar, he will 360

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meander in completely unpredictable ways through a thicket of associations. The perceptive hearer or reader comes to feel that he is being taken along on an intellectual journey that remains quite undefined until its end, a point that is sometimes never even reached. Along the way, however, Nahman will have offered deep and original insights into any number of sources that seem to have popped into his ever-­creative mind. The first thirty-­some teachings in his collection are comments on the most obscure wonder-­tales of the Talmud—­stories that had already called forth a long tradition of exegesis, but Nahman twists and turns them in unique and ever-­surprising ways. Recent studies have shown that some of these interpretations are actually woven around his own dreams and visions, making him a unique combination of mystic and explicator of tradition.10 It is in the Sippurey Ma‘asiyot that Nahman most reveals himself as a seeker. Here his imagination wanders through endless fields and forests, twists of plot and digressions within digressions, very much like his interpretive mind had wandered amid the talmudic sources of his teachings. But there is a surprising modernity about Nahman the storyteller. He seems to have captured an aura of surrealism that predicts (and likely served as an inspiration for) such writers as Kafka and Borges in the following century. The theme of the stories often revolves around a quest for true self and personal redemption, motifs that have come into their own in the era since they were first told. Contemporary readers have little difficulty in identifying with the lost souls who people Nahman’s tales, and through them with the soulful figure of the storyteller himself. It is the ‘Etsot, however, both those of Nahman himself and those written in his spirit long after him, that are most generative of the spiritual life of the Bratslav community. This genre in particular speaks directly to the less intellectual of the new disciples, allowing for the growth of a mass movement. Among the offerings are instructions for personal prayer (hitbodedut; see below), much discussion of sexual sin 361

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and how to be relieved of its burden (Tikkun ha-­Kelali, based on daily recital of ten particular psalms), and a great deal of advice on how to deal with moments of doubt, depression, and loneliness. Here Nahman and the tradition that follows him seem to draw on the depth of the master’s own experience with all these matters. Nahman’s unique view of the Hasidic rebbe as wounded healer is clearly displayed. The great emotional power of Bratslav lies in the claim that whatever pain you face in life may be relieved by your knowing that the rebbe too faced this and even more, but overcame it all in the intensity of his faith. This trust allows you to place yourself in the rebbe’s loving and accepting hands, making him your guide through the course of life. In that relationship lies the very attractive core experience of being a Bratslaver.

Opposition to Bratslav Growing up in the heartland of emerging Hasidism, Nahman was not exposed to the fierce opposition that its revivalist spirit had encountered only a decade earlier and was still confronting in regions far to the north, where Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad Hasidism, was struggling to assert his power against strong rabbinic denunciation. But as Nahman began to proclaim himself the only tsaddik worth following, attacking others as shallow betrayers of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s truth, he found himself confronting serious opposition from within Hasidic ranks. Followers of other rebbes, who enjoyed the simpler messages of their own masters, began to look askance at Nahman and his very passionately devoted little band of disciples. This opposition to Bratslav only increased in the years following Nahman’s passing. Rabbi Moshe Tzvi of Savran, who led a crusade against the Bratslav Hasidim in the second quarter of the nineteenth century,11 was once asked: “What do you want of Rabbi Nathan [Sternharz, Rabbi 362

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Nahman’s disciple, scribe, and leader of the Bratslav community until 1844]? When you sit down at your Shabbat table, you have five hundred disciples around you. He has only eighty. Why don’t you leave him alone?” The Savraner responded: “Yes, I have five hundred disciples. But he has eighty rebbes.”12 This reflects an understanding that Bratslav was something of an elitist sect—­more demanding, more passionate, more thoughtful than most Hasidic circles. This perception aroused a certain jealousy within the spiritual realm, but ultimately it led to a questioning of Bratslav’s legitimacy and even of Rabbi Nahman’s own mental stability. And so, other Hasidic groups continued to look down upon the Bratslavers, a small and particularly impoverished sect that would exist for a century and a half on the fringes of Hasidic life. Within that little band of the faithful, a profound spiritual life continued to flourish. As in Chabad, study and dissemination of the original master’s teachings took a central role. So did faith in the master himself, demonstrated particularly by the great efforts (in Soviet times, even mortal dangers) undertaken in making the pilgrimage to his grave. Nahman’s assurance that “anyone who comes to my grave on Rosh Hashanah, I will pluck from the clutches of hell, even pulling him out by his payes [forelocks]” brought many a sinner to the gatherings at Uman.13 He also had assured his followers that “my little fire will continue to burn until messiah arrives,” creating a faith tinged with messianism, containing a usually unspoken hint that the rebbe might himself return one day—­or that his soul might be reborn—­in the person of Messiah.14 The original Bratslav community, scattered through small towns in southwestern Ukraine, was fiercely persecuted during the Soviet era. Whatever was left was almost totally wiped out by the Nazis. Surprisingly, however, a tiny band of Bratslavers in the Ukraine survived the Holocaust. In the postwar Soviet era, they engaged in great efforts to prevent the total razing of Rabbi Nahman’s grave.15 A significant revival of Bratslav, complete with a large-­scale publication and educational 363

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effort, had also emerged in Poland, centered in Warsaw, during the interwar era—­but those communities were destroyed, nearly without a trace, in the course of the Holocaust.

The Revival of Bratslav Ultimately, Bratslav survived, thanks solely to a small group of the faithful, perhaps a few hundred families, who immigrated to the Land of Israel beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and settled in the traditional holy cities of Jerusalem, Tiberias, and Safed. There they lived quietly until the decision in the 1970s to spread forth and seek converts, especially among the newly religious, to the cause. Meanwhile, in the postwar years, a small number of Holocaust survivors from Poland and the Ukraine had found their way to Israel, joining the already-­existing Jerusalem community. An even smaller number came to the United States, combining forces with a few isolated Bratslavers who had already arrived in the interwar period to create a single Bratslav prayer room in New York City. Here the story has to turn from the inner history of the Bratslav community to the fascination with Rabbi Nahman in the Neo-­Hasidic world. The current revival of Bratslav needs to be understood as a unique coming together of these two forces. From the very beginning of Neo-­Hasidic stirrings in the early twentieth century, Rabbi Nahman exercised a particular fascination. Both of the earliest Neo-­Hasidic seekers treated in A New Hasidism: Roots (this book’s companion volume), Hillel Zeitlin and Martin Buber, were deeply attracted to him.16 Buber published his German-­adapted translation of Nahman’s tales in 1906, at the very beginning of his career. Zeitlin’s original work on Nahman in Hebrew appeared in 1910, but he continued writing and teaching about him throughout his life. His son, Aaron Zeitlin, published a collection of those teachings, in Yiddish, after his father died on the forced march to Treblinka in 1942. 364

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This continued fascination with Nahman is also visible among Israelis in the post-­Holocaust era. Historical studies by the scholars Joseph Weiss and Mendel Piekarz, among others, accompanied by the writings of such popularizers as Yehuda Yaari, Pinhas Sadeh, and Adin Steinsaltz, were very widely read in Israel, bringing many to take further interest in Nahman. Generally this began with his tales, which came to be taught as part of the Hebrew-­literature curriculum in Israeli secondary schools. When the present writer’s biography of Rabbi Nahman, Tormented Master, was published in Hebrew as Ba’al ha-­Yissurim in 1981, it became something of a best seller, further raising Bratslav’s profile. The Bratslav communities in Israel had always attracted and absorbed a small number of religious seekers from without. Unlike some other Hasidic communities, they did not shun such newcomers. Thus the Bratslavers’ turn toward outreach, beginning in the 1970s with Rabbi Levi Yitzhak Bender (1897–­1989) and Rabbi Gedalia Koenig (1921–­1980) in Jerusalem, was not entirely an innovation. Probably surprised by their initial success, they continued to press forward. Publishing the rebbe’s teachings had always been an important part of Bratslav devotion, so even in that very conservative community, making them accessible in new Hebrew, English, and eventually Russian and French editions did not seem like too radical a step. By the turn of the twenty-­first century, multiple groups of Bratslav devotees were on the scene. Alongside the original Jerusalem-­ based traditionalists, to which the Koenigs (Rabbi Gedalia’s son Elazar Mordechai founded the now-­thriving Bratslav community in Safed) and other original outreach leaders had belonged, three other groups require special mention. Rabbi Eliezer Berland (b. 1937) and others started bringing the figure of Rabbi Nahman to Jews of Sephardic (especially North African) heritage. Moroccan Jews in particular had always venerated holy men and visited their graves, so the cultural leap was not as great as it might seem. Those attracted to this version of Bratslav included a number 365

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of former criminals and drug addicts who turned to Rabbi Nahman in quest for redemption. Here the Nahman of the ‘Etsot was particularly helpful, especially the sense that faith in the rebbe, accompanied by a return to a life of religious observance, could save one from the depths. Another group developed around Rabbi Eliezer Shlomo Schick (1940–­ 2015), first in New York and later in Israel, where devotees created the unique community of Yavne’el. Schick, a prolific author of religious treatises of his own, sought to become a new Bratslaver rebbe. His followers considered him to be a reincarnation of Rabbi Nahman, a claim that deeply disturbed the Jerusalem Hasidim. The last group were followers of Rabbi Yisrael Odesser (1888–­ 1994), a Bratslav Hasid from Tiberias who claimed to have received a mysterious slip of paper from heaven upon which were written the letters na nah nahma nahman of uman. He preached the chanting of this formula as the key to messianic salvation. His followers today, almost all of whom are newly religious, inscribe these letters in public places throughout Israel and are especially known for traffic-­ stopping spontaneous outbursts of religious enthusiasm, singing and dancing in the streets. A very important part of the backstory behind the rapid spread of Bratslav in Israel, especially within these last-­described groups, is the significant role that the Land of Israel has played in Rabbi Nahman’s own story. The tale of his pilgrimage there in 1798 is told with a great aura of mystery in the Bratslav sources.17 The fact that this very Eastern European figure longed to go to the Land of Israel, that he once said (however it is to be understood), “Wherever I walk, I am walking in the Land of Israel,”18 and other such statements, allows him to be drawn into a Zionist narrative that makes him a more comfortable figure for Israeli seekers. The fact that Bratslav itself was saved from destruction only by immigration to the Holy Land also fits into this narrative. There are thus grounds for Bratslav to be seen as the most “Israeli” of any possible Hasidism. Zionist authors and Israelis attracted 366

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to Hasidism have long favored |Rabbi Nahman for this reason, placing him in opposition to the well-­known anti-­Zionism of many latter-­day Hasidic leaders. On the other hand, Bratslav’s growth also has much to do with a certain journey out of the Land of Israel. Here I refer to the very widespread habit of young Israelis’ travels to India, usually immediately following their period of army service. Among the hundreds of thousands who have done this over the past several decades, quite a few have returned home imbued with a Hindu or Tibetan Buddhist-­inspired quest for piety. Some of these young people simply engage in Eastern forms of meditation or open yoga studios in Tel Aviv. But quite a few come back inspired by what they have seen in India (for many from secular homes, it is their first encounter with religion unencumbered by prior hostility) and seeking to transfer it to some sort of Jewish context. Bratslav has been a perfect fit for many of these seekers. Indeed it could be argued that, for some, Nahman has been partially made over into an Indian-­type saint, with the Uman pilgrimage as his great annual festival. Some Bratslav groups welcome countercultural or New Age styles of life, dress, and music, and perhaps even tolerate some degree of Jewish-­Hindu syncretism (without naming it as such, and avoiding clear prohibitions against idolatry), making these young people feel particularly welcome. Another factor underlying Bratslav’s popularity in Israel is the influence of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (also treated in the accompanying A New Hasidism: Roots volume) as well as that of his disciples. Since his own death in 1994, Carlebach has, like Rabbi Nahman, been made over into something of a saint figure in some circles.19 Indeed, Rabbi Shlomo had a great devotion to Rabbi Nahman and often taught from his works. Carlebach also called for a life of great simplicity and faith, a message that leads one directly to Bratslav. Carlebach’s music and storytelling are filled with a passionate longing, reflecting Rabbi Shlomo’s own soul-­connection to Rabbi Nahman. The popularity of Carlebach’s 367

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music and the great enthusiasm with which it is sung is also a natural bridge to the world of na nah nahman Hasidism. These reflections, in turn, compel us to push more deeply into the figure of Rabbi Nahman. Like Shlomo Carlebach (and the types of “holy beggars” to whom he was attracted), Nahman was a marginal personality. Both he and the characters in his stories, most of them projections of his own self, dwelt on the edges of human society. The movement that emerged was cast in his image; Bratslav Hasidim represented the marginal edge, one often suspected and despised in the Hasidic world. Much of the attraction to him today is by Jews who themselves feel marginal in one way or another. These souls sense that they belong with such a figure; he alone is the rebbe who can understand and uplift their wandering and often even unstable souls. It is this element within Israel, perhaps the prophetic edge of Israeli society, itself frightened, insecure, and even unstable, that has been so attracted to Rabbi Nahman. What a contrast to the official political line of the country, where the settlement project, originally inspired by the messianic positivism of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, continues to dominate. Ever since the Yom Kippur War, and especially following the evacuation of Gaza, the air has gone out of the Kookist balloon for many in the national-­religious camp. They see an Israel facing chaos, confusion, and an unstable future. Only Nahman can be the rebbe for such an hour. Here we see an important distinction between attraction to Rabbi Nahman and attraction to Bratslav. These are not the same, not by a long shot. Nahman is a very revealing speaker. In his teachings, especially in his tales, he lets the reader into his own broken heart. Not for naught did this author call him Tormented Master. Yes, he finds moments of great inward beauty, even majesty. But he seems to know that the brokenness will return; it too must be pursued and transformed into joy, and a soul like his must work on such a job constantly, every day of his life. He is a person who goes through life bearing a broken heart. The tablets on which his Torah is inscribed are also the bro368

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ken ones. He holds them close, treasures them, and constantly tries to put the fragments together in an endless quest for meaning—­yet they remain broken.20 The Bratslav Hasidim—­at least officially—­recognize this, but insist upon their master’s ultimate triumph over all his struggles. Yes, he has suffered everything you can imagine. But it is precisely because he was victorious over it all that he can show you the way, pulling you out of the hell of your despair, saving you from moral, psychological, or spiritual perdition. The larger group of Rabbi Nahman’s followers today are of this camp, a much easier and more hopeful message to imbibe. Given the natural state of chaos within the Bratslav universe, however, even this seemingly very basic distinction is often sloughed over. In Bratslav nowadays it seems possible to be attracted at once to the marginality of Rabbi Nahman and to the dream that one might, with his help, overcome it. That might be the very message needed for the Israel of today.

Diversity within Bratslav Among these new Bratslav devotees there exists a very wide range of religious practice. All of the groups described above formally describe themselves as “Orthodox” and Hasidic; they do not see themselves as belonging to the Neo-­Hasidic spectrum. At the same time, they are all (in varying degrees) rather tolerant of a wide range of religious behavior, seeing many of their followers as being “on their way” toward full halakhic observance. In many cases they are proven right, but not always. Certainly, for example, some people in these groups are more devoted to Bratslav-­style hitbodedut, spontaneous private prayer, than they are to the prescribed three daily liturgical prayer services. Such typically Bratslav practices as immersion in the mikveh (especially at an outdoor spring) or reciting psalms may take precedence over more 369

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conventional but halakhically important aspects of Jewish observance. The highly disorganized character of Bratslav amid all these groups (which was historically true as well) leaves ample room for people on the edge to slip in and out of the community as they desire and to privately deviate from communal norms of behavior at their will. From the Bratslavers’ perspective, such matters of conscience belong to the seeker in his relationship with God, and, of course, with the rebbe. These are surely matters for outcry during hitbodedut (solitary prayer), but rarely are Bratslavers given the defined role of enforcing or regulating behavior. Thus the line between being “a Bratslaver,” “semi-­Bratslav,” and “just interested in learning about Rabbi Nahman” is never one that needs to be clearly defined. It is interesting in this regard to contrast Bratslav with Chabad, the other unique Hasidic movement that is actively engaged in outreach and has grown tremendously in the course of recent decades. Whereas Bratslav exists almost exclusively in Israel and may be seen to be deeply imprinted with the culture of Israel, Chabad is a worldwide movement centered in the United States, with increasingly important operations in Russia (its original home) and elsewhere in Europe. From its very beginnings Chabad has been a highly disciplined movement, the best-­ organized of any Hasidic group. Already in the 1790s its founder Rabbi Shneur Zalman was issuing decrees to regulate the prayer practices of his disciples’ minyanim, schedules of who may visit the rebbe how often, the organization of support for his court, and other matters.21 A faithful subject of the czar, he seemed to learn a great deal from the imperial model of governing his troops. One could hardly imagine referring to young Bratslav Hasidim as “God’s army,” as Chabad proudly does. Bratslavers are defiantly disheveled and disorganized. For some new devotees this is a great relief. Spontaneity is also highly valued in Bratslav; no one tells anyone else which teachings should be studied or in what order. Rather than the highly organized and franchise-­driven system of Chabad sheluhim (emissaries), a Bratslaver begins his own 370

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work of outreach quite accidentally, perhaps by inviting friends for Shabbat dinner and teaching them a passage from Likkutey Moharan that he himself only learned the week before. Because Chabad is so marked by discipline and a degree of hierarchical control, there is much less room for a “Neo-­Chabad” phenomenon to develop. There are the Chabad rabbis, controlled from within and fully committed to the cause, and there are the Jews who attend their services and classes, whom nobody would call Chabad or Lubavitchers. The lines are much more clearly drawn.

The Rebbe in Bratslav and Chabad Chabad has now joined Bratslav as a Hasidic community without a living leader. It is interesting, and perhaps not entirely coincidental, that the two Hasidic communities attracting—­and by now even constituted by—­large numbers of outsiders are those without living rebbes. In fact, in some ways Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson is being treated a bit like Rabbi Nahman, such as the importance given to visits to his grave and the delivery of petitions there. The role of the departed rebbe in the lives of his disciples is also quite different in these two movements. In contrast to onetime typologies applied to Hasidism, today Chabad is the more self-­consciously messianic movement. A good Chabad shaliach (emissary) does the rebbe’s work, building the movement, because the growth of Chabad will bring Messiah closer. Whether or not a disciple exactly believes that the rebbe will still come back as Messiah, he still sees himself as engaging in world-­saving messianic activity. In Bratslav the rebbe’s salvific role is much more personal and individual. The rebbe will save those who have faith in him, who pray as he has taught, who make the pilgrimage. His salvation applies first and foremost to each individual, in the present, rather than to the world and its future. 371

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An Eternal Fire The popularity of Bratslav continues to be on the rise in Israel, especially influencing yeshiva youth in quests for a more impassioned Jewish spirituality (see the following interview with Haviva Pedaya and essay by Elhanan Nir). While the fickleness of contemporary trendsetters, including those of the spiritual sort, leaves everything unpredictable, it does seem likely that an ever-­growing interest in Rabbi Nahman will be a major part of the Neo-­Hasidic scene. It will be interesting to see whether this form of Neo-­Hasidism will take root among North American Jews as well. The Nahman one now encounters in Israel is increasingly a Middle Eastern saint figure, with elements of both Moroccan and Indian piety overlaid upon the original Eastern European Hasidic model. It is unclear whether such a figure will appeal to seekers in the New World. One also wonders whether the image of the Hasidic rebbe as personal savior of those who place their faith in him will attract or repel Jews who live as a minority in a society where a similar figure stands at the center of the dominant religious culture. The rebbe for American Jews may have to be a different Nahman than the one who works so well for Israelis. Such a Nahman has not yet emerged. Here I permit myself a moment of personal reflection. The years I spent in writing Tormented Master were my attempt to stand in close proximity to Rabbi Nahman without becoming his disciple, a relationship for which I was not prepared. I was certainly not ready to become a Bratslaver in any form that existed then. Yet I sensed strongly that he was indeed the only Hasidic master who might know my soul, riddled with a complex and ambivalent relationship both to the tradition and toward life itself. The role of biographer felt like a good vantage point from which to enter into conversation with this rebbe. There were more than a few times when I felt sympathy for the Bratslav notion that he has never died. Through studying his works and the 372

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accounts of his life, I sometimes felt as though I were interviewing a living human being. More than once I felt him stretching forth to reveal something of himself to me, helping me in the process of writing about him. He was doing this, of course, because he understood that as long as I was working so hard on him, he would have a chance to work on me as well. And he did. I accepted the gift of that closeness with silent gratitude; it has helped to sustain me over many years. What I did not understand then, however, was that he was also using me. The fire of Bratslav was burning pretty low in those days, and the rebbe was in search of a wandering biographer to help stir up its ashes. I helped him to keep his fire going at a certain point. “An eternal fire is to be lit upon the altar; it may not go out.” Notes

1. The prominence of Rabbi Nahman and the Bratslav tradition within contemporary Israeli life was a major topic of discussion at a Van Leer Institute conference on Bratslav in January 2017. It has been written about in Yair Sheleg, Ha­Dati’im ha­Hadashim (Jerusalem: Keter, 2000), and by Zvi Mark, “Contemporary Renaissance of Braslav Hasidism: Ritual, Tiqqun and Messianism,” in Boaz Huss, ed., Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival (Beersheba, Israel: Ben-­Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2011), 101–­16. 2. See Smadar Sherlow, Who Moved My Judaism (Tel Aviv: Resling, 2016), 171–­97 (Hebrew), as well as the interview with Haviva Pedaya and the essay by Elhanan Nir in this volume. 3. On Nahman’s life and the surrounding history, see Arthur Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Tuscaloosa al: University of Alabama Press, 1979). 4. On the place of mystical experience and vision in Nahman’s life, underestimated by prior scholarship (including this author’s own), see the numerous studies by Zvi Mark beginning with his Mysticism and Madness: The Religious Thought of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (London: Continuum, 2009), based on his earlier 2003 Hebrew work. 5. See the sources quoted in Green, Tormented Master, 251–­62, based on the work of Mendel Piekarz in Hasidut Braslav (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1995). 373

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6. On the complexity of Nahman’s thought concerning these matters, see this author’s Excursus 1: “Faith, Doubt, and Reason in the Thought of Rabbi Nahman,” in Green, Tormented Master, 285–­336. 7. Available in English through translations by the Breslov Research Institute. 8. The best of several translations remains that of Arnold Band in Nahman of Bratslav: The Tales (New York: Paulist, 1978). 9. The ‘Etsot, actually written by Rabbi Nathan Sternharz, are translated in Avraham Greenbaum, ed., Advice (Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1983). 10. See Mark, Mysticism and Madness, esp. 1, 5–­7, 15–­32. 11. See the treatment by David Assaf, “‘Happy Are the Persecuted’: The Opposition to Bratslav Hasidism,” in his Untold Tales of the Hasidim: Crisis and Discontent in the History of Hasidism, trans. Dena Ordan (Waltham ma: Brandeis University Press, 2010), 120–­53; and Zvi Mark, “Why Did R. Moses of Savran Pursue R. Nathan of Nemirov and the Bratslav Hasidim?” Zion 69 (2004): 487–­500 (Hebrew). 12. Heard orally. Compare Abraham Hazzan, Yemei ha-­Tela’ot (Jerusalem: n.p., 1933), 138. 13. According to Bratslav tradition, Nahman designated two of his followers to serve as witnesses to his formal promise, which also encourages the visitors to his grave to give tzedakah and recite the ten psalms of the Tikkun ha-­Kelali. See Nathan Sternharz, Hayyei Moharan (Jerusalem: Makhon Torat ha-­Netzah Breslov, 1996), 225–­73, available in English as Tzaddik: A Portrait of Rabbi Nachman, ed. Moshe Mykoff, trans. Avraham Greenbaum (Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 1987), 123. 14. Rabbi Nahman’s messianic speculations, kept as a closely guarded secret throughout the history of Bratslav, are especially contained in an esoteric manuscript entitled Megilat Setarim, handed down from one Bratslav leader to the next in each generation. That text has now been published in Zvi Mark, The Scroll of Secrets: The Hidden Messianic Vision of R. Nachman of Breslav, trans. Naftali Moses (Brighton ma: Academic Studies, 2010). 15. This information is partially based on material found in Gedaliah Fleer, Against All Odds (Jerusalem: Breslov Research Institute, 2005), esp. 31–­35. 16. See Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, eds., A New Hasidism: Roots (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2019). 374

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17. The account in Shivhey ha-­Ran has been translated, albeit loosely, in Rabbi Nachman’s Wisdom: Shevachay haRan, Sichos haRan, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (New York: Sepher-­Hermon, 1973). Scholarly discussion of it goes back as far as Martin Buber’s “Israel’s Land: Habitation of God: The Zionism of Rabbi Nahman,” Commentary 12 (1951): 345–­53. See discussion of it in Green, Tormented Master, 63–­93, as well as Ada Rapoport, “Two Sources Describing R. Nahman of Bratslav’s Journey to the Land of Israel,” Kiryat Sefer 46 (1971): 147–­53; Eliezer Schweid, “The Return to the Physicality of the Land of Israel: The Land of Israel in the Teachings of R. Nahman of Bratslav,” in Eliezer Schweid, Moledet ve­Eretz Ye‘udah: Eretz Yisrael ba­Hagut shel Am Yisrael (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1979), 93–­105; Alon Goshen-­Gottstein, “Eretz Yisrael in the Thought of Rabbi Nahman of Breslav,” in Nathan Lopes Cardozo, ed., The Tent of Avraham: Gleanings from the David Cardozo Academy (Jerusalem: Urim and the David Cardozo Academy, 2012), 88–­126. 18. This common saying, originally in Yiddish, attributed to Rabbi Nahman, is based on Sternharz, Hayyei Moharan, 156–­205. 19. This process has received a significant setback recently because of rumors of sexual misdeeds. But this, too, is not unknown among recent New Age gurus, including various Eastern teachers representing ancient saintly and ascetic traditions. 20. The attraction of Rabbi Shimon Gershon Rosenberg (1949–­2007), called “Rav Shagar” (author of The Whole and Broken Tablets), as well as the insights of Smadar Sherlow are reflected here. See Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, Luhot ve-­Shivrey Luhot (Tel Aviv: Yediot Sefarim, 2013); and Sherlow, Who Moved My Judaism, 171–­97. 21. See the discussion in Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady: The Origins of Chabad Hasidism (Waltham ma: Brandeis University Press, 2015).

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15 Spiritual Awakenings An Interview with Haviva Pedaya Naama Zifroni, Bambi Sheleg, Arthur Green, and Ariel Horowitz The following text is based on an interview with Haviva Pedaya conducted by the Israeli journalists Naama Zifroni and Bambi Sheleg and first published in the magazine Eretz Acheret in 2009. In preparing the text for publication in English, Arthur Green, one of the editors of the present volume, and Ariel Horowitz, also an Israeli journalist, asked Pedaya to update and expand her comments in light of more recent events. Green and Horowitz: Can you begin with some background about your own discovery of Hasidism and its importance? As a person proud of her eastern Jewish heritage, how hard was it to enter the Yiddish-­inflected spiritual world of Hasidism? Pedaya: My discovery of Hasidism? I come from a long line of Baghdadi mystics. On arriving in Israel, we lived in Makor Baruch with lots of other Mizrachi immigrant children and Ashkenazi Hasidim and Mitnagdim [the opponents of Hasidism]. It was a very colorful, vibrant atmosphere suffused with synagogue prayers, dreams, and Kabbalah. I started my university studies at age seventeen, choosing the Chinese department. The Eastern books translated at that time—­the Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi, and the Analects of Confucius—­ were our staples. That was where my heart drew me. 377

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While the intense mystical atmosphere at home was passed on wordlessly by osmosis, the verbal aspects were passed down through the stories of my great-­grandfather Yehuda Pedaya, his Minhat Yehuda, and his exegesis of the Etz Hayyim and the Zohar. I wasn’t exposed very much to Rav Kook’s teachings at home. My first direct acquaintance with Hasidism thus occurred during my university studies. Encountering two Hasidic works that I still regard as great today—­Dov Ber of Mezritch’s Likkutey Amarim and Tsava’at ha-­rivash [The Testament of Rabbi Israel Ba‘al Shem Tov]—­sent a huge wave of shock and excitement through me. The principles of self-­negation, equanimity, and meditation moved me personally, mystically, and spiritually, answering what I had been looking for. The Eastern European Hasidic tradition articulated in written words closely corresponded to the mystical experience I imbibed by osmosis at home. During these two intense years, I also became familiar with In Praise of the Ba‘al Shem Tov [Shivhei ha-­Besht]. This prompted my first thoughts about the two forms of Jewish mysticism—­ equanimity, absorption, and unification on one hand, and shamanism on the other. What I knew from home was, of course, more directly shamanism. It turns out that my tendency to distinguish between two mystical types—­active and passive—­in Hasidism was quite fundamental to my approach to mystical literature in general. It appeared also in my research of early Kabbalah, where I distinguished between the ecstatic kind (those striving for mystical vision and sound—­ exemplified in the Zohar), and the unio-­mystica type (seeking immediate communion with the Divine, such as practiced by the thirteenth-­century Abraham Abulafia). I did not accept the notion that unio mystica is at the top of the pyramid of mystical experience. The meeting of pure mystical life with academia was a shock, its echoes eventually making themselves felt in the academic 378

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choices I made. Struggling to be accepted and develop my career, particularly as a female academic, I devoted myself first to publishing a book and achieving tenure. When Professor Jacob Katz invited me to write an article on religion and economics, I began to explore Hasidism and returned to its spiritual riches once more. Zifroni and Sheleg: If we look at the religious revival the state of Israel has experienced in the last twenty-­five years, we see a significant turn to Hasidism and mysticism-­Kabbalah. How do you view this trend? Do you think it is somehow related to the aftermath of the Holocaust? Might it be associated with the destruction of Eastern European Jewry? Pedaya: This subject has troubled me since I began studying Jewish mysticism, and I’ve recently readdressed it. The moment you come into contact with the treasures of Hasidism that have been confined for so long to an esoteric mysticism bound between the covers of books, you cannot help ask what would have happened if we could have actually met groups [as they were prior to the destruction] and discovered more and more texts. Gradually you come to understand that lots of things haven’t been preserved in writing, and you’re amazed to think about all the things that didn’t survive. It’s painful to imagine that a journey to Poland might have been even greater than one to India, because there you could have encountered a very high mystical realm on all sides. What I would give to have been there! When I studied the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s letter, I sought to understand the reality of these vistas. The idea of collecting and documenting the material culture of Eastern European Jewry had begun already in the early twentieth century. Then it still seemed possible to find letters and other such treasures, and to lend reality to the life of earlier generations. After the Second World War we found missives and hidden treasures in milk churns buried in the ground—­no less amazing than the unearthing of the Dead 379

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Sea Scrolls at Qumran.1 In both cases the discovery was bound up with a sense of pain and catastrophe. This feeling accompanied me as I took my first steps into the world of Jewish mysticism. Although I later turned in other directions, today I believe that modern Jewish mysticism cannot be grasped without an understanding of Hasidism. We have to fully realize its historical weight—­and its absence when it disappeared—­in order to comprehend what’s happening today. Green and Horowitz: It is a bit strange to say “when it disappeared,” given the existence of a thriving Hasidic community today. Why is this not an authentic representation of what came before? Pedaya: When I say that we have to understand what Hasidism was before it disappeared, I’m referring to the Holocaust, inscribed on Israeli national memory as the destruction of six million Jews. Together with other turbulent forces, the Holocaust destroyed the Jewish world in Europe, turning it into a world that was and is no more. From the perspective of continued Hasidic existence, it had an immense impact. Just imagine a vibrant Poland and Hungary full of mystical circles and groups. The living tradition was cut off, and hundreds of people who formed rare channels of knowledge and mystical experience and tradition were lost, together with much written material. The intoxicating heterogeneity of Hasidism and the link to the living channel were lost forever. Whole Hasidic dynasties have survived only in books. We have to remember this disappearance before we speak about growth and renewal because it is vital for understanding the rejuvenation of Hasidism in Israel and the United States. Satmar, and the establishment of the story of the escape from Hungary, the “last million,” and the problematic aspect of the Zionist attitude to Hungarian Jewry, where the latter sees itself as a sliver from a great house, actively abandoned by the former to be destroyed. 380

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Zifroni and Sheleg: In your article in Hasidism: The Latest Stage, which includes Gershom Scholem’s work on Hasidism and critical pieces by contemporary scholars, you refer to Scholem’s belief that Hasidic thought only partially (rather than systematically) translates or transfers the terminology and structures Kabbalah used to describe the divine realm to the human sphere.2 In your opinion, Hasidism first and foremost embodies a new system of needs—­of the individual and the collective. Pedaya: I think Scholem failed to properly understand Hasidism or predict its future because he wasn’t really interested in it. He’s at the peak of his powers in his study of Shabbatai Zvi, the phenomenology of the early Kabbalah, and the enormous—­sometimes traumatic—­transitions from the expulsion from Spain to what followed, namely Isaac Luria. Hasidism faces us with the challenges modernity sets for us and their effect on the Jewish people. When you examine Scholem’s views in the context of Rosenzweig and Buber’s philosophies, you see that they could not separate the issue of their own identities from the modern Jewish experiences they sought to analyze. Hasidism was too close, too much of a rival, and all of Scholem’s empathy toward what he was studying—­tsimtsum as an expression of the exile in Lurianic thought and the expulsion from Spain, and so on—­melted away when he got to Hasidism. In order to understand Hasidism, we have to actually “take hold” of it—­that is, to see it as it really takes form. Buber, realizing that one of its most important tenets was experience and deed, organized his approach to it in a way that closely fit with his own world. We can see that the struggle for identity within modernity revolves around the bearers of study themselves; their research isn’t cut off from them. For me, this is what connects Hasidism with Eastern thought. In other words, mysticism is not just a matter of writings and 381

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concepts, it is also an attempt to discover the right way of being in the world. These two dimensions form part of Zen. The Tao Te Ching also refers to them. Scholem never made this link, however. When he compared the mysticism he read and studied with the kabbalists he knew in Jerusalem, he describes the so-­called “Eastern” Bethel kabbalists’ lifestyle as being “completely irrelevant today.” On the other hand, he read Hasidism exclusively through the filter of the text. This disconnect between text and praxis—­which also divides the East and West—­impeded his understanding of both “Eastern” Kabbalah and “Western” Hasidism. Zifroni and Sheleg: You say of the study of the past: “Hasidism and Sabbateanism which preceded it were a social and theological construct designed to meet the particular needs of the time and place.” Can we look at contemporary phenomena with the same tools and think about how they meet our period’s needs? Pedaya: Absolutely. But to do so we have to analyze a number of processes. We have to see the crack that Jewish modernity has opened up in the traditional world, including Hasidism. Scholarly discourse generally identifies modernity with secularization, nationalism, and the establishment of the state. By contrast, the Holocaust also functions as a foundational and formative event of modern Jewish consciousness. Regarding all the catastrophes of the modern age, the ultra-­Orthodox as well as the post-­Zionists—­who tend to hold a similar view in a certain sense—­identify secularization, nationalism, and the Holocaust as cutting Jewish existence in two, drawing down the curtain on the world that was. The combination of the various events and the virtually complete eradication of European Jewry may have also contributed to the notion that modernity destroys the past in order to introduce something completely new, an unconscious modus vivendi arising from the ashes of the two erasures. Thus the diverse ways in 382

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which Hasidism and even Sabbateanism constituted prominent forms of Jewish modernity within the heart of Jewish religion, and even within its mysticism, were missed completely. In the wake of the collapse of the great monolithic ideological theories and movements—­socialism, communism, secularization, and Zionism—­the premodern language and resources of the Jewish people are returning forcefully to consciousness. In a certain sense, Hasidism is in fact a kind of voice that has been muted and silenced within the Israeli Jewish reality. What we are experiencing today is largely a hunger for “experience.” In a crazy form, it is essentially a longing for spirituality. I see it happening in all sorts of contexts. Many youth, for example, are avidly seeking rituals. When I taught a course on fourteenth-­century texts relating to marriage in Moravia, some of the students adopted these elements and made them part of their own wedding ceremonies. Zifroni and Sheleg: This calls to mind the secular trend toward turning to the sources in order to discover “rites of passage.” Pedaya: The phenomenon to which I’m referring is among religious youth, including the so-­called HardaL (Haredi Leumi)—­the nationalist-­Orthodox sector—­which customarily represents the young generations of the settlements. Rather than focusing solely on the national collective plane, messianic realm, or even settling the land, this group is looking for more personal, significant, and beautiful rituals and rites of passage. Since settlement on the land is no longer fulfilling all their religious longings, they want something that, while not passed down to them by their forefathers, exists and is documented in books. They are looking for ways to revive this lost tradition. In my view, this is a by-­product of the Hasidic way of thought. Zifroni and Sheleg: A wild antitraditionalism, as it were? Pedaya: No. Tradition is actually much more complex. Perhaps it’s more a return to new types of tradition. Because tradition isn’t 383

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really what we’ve always been taught—­a monolithic “orthodoxy.” It has many more aspects and voices, through which the struggle between the old and the desire for the new—­or even simply the up-­to-­date—­is conducted. The misunderstanding of tradition is closely tied to the one-­dimensional definition of modernity to which I just referred. Zifroni and Sheleg: Where else do you see the hunger for experience? Pedaya: Among the newly religious. They aren’t turning to religion in order to know what to think. Zifroni and Sheleg: Can you clarify the distinction between religion as a way of deep thinking and religion as a praxis, a form of life? Pedaya: They want to know what to do, how to behave. In fact it’s the need for doing that causes them to seek out one religious stream or another. They’re looking for deeds that will connect them to communitas. They want to be part of a community. We’ve passed the statist stage3 and people now want to go back to real communities. Here again we see the force of Hasidism and the needs it fulfills. Zifroni and Sheleg: You call the driving force of the Hasidic movement the “dream of fellowship.” Pedaya: For years I’ve regarded the kibbutz as one of the most prominent forms Hasidism has taken. The pioneers and founders of the kibbutz movement were informed by a Hasidic consciousness. Like the Hasidic dynasties, the kibbutzim were forged by rebellious sons: Hasidism was a rebellion by the offspring against their parents. Zionism too. The charges leveled against Hasidism as early as 1780 were that they were “sons who didn’t respect their fathers.” Rabbi Nahman of Kossov, a friend of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, mockingly asserted: “Don’t turn to your elders” [referring to the ways of prior generations].4 Later this consciousness separated Eastern and Western Jews, the latter growing up on the myth of the son who casts off the father and the former on the opposite—­ 384

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the parent who abandons his child or the son’s desperate search for his father. These gave rise to various dynamics. Zifroni and Sheleg: Who is the desperate son? Pedaya: Among Mizrachim, almost everyone past the age of fifty starts longing for his or her mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, returning at the end of their lives to tradition and all the processes attached to it. This is virtually a universal Mizrachi feature of Middle Eastern Jewish society in Israel. Ashkenazim exhibit precisely the opposite trend—­the transformation of the rebellious son into the prodigal son who, when he returns, mourns the loss or purloining of the father. But if we go back and look at the collapse of one-­dimensional ideologies, we see that people begin discovering their identity in another form. “Wait a minute,” they say, “perhaps we can be national-­religious or mystical and still challenge the government.” When things break down, a wise leadership can guide the public toward rejuvenation—­but this might not always be for the good. Here Hasidism serves as a theoretical bedrock that buttresses an even more ideological, political, and right-­wing mysticism. Up to a certain point, the [national-­religious] public has relied completely on Rav Kook’s teachings, blended with an idealization of the state. Because what Rav Kook did, in a certain sense, was to favor the signifier over the signified—­statehood, the state, the army, the Knesset over the absent signified [i.e., the transcendent Divine]. It’s difficult to define, because we seem to be faced with the coalescence of all the realms of the signified—­or much more frequently their complete disintegration. Zifroni and Sheleg: How do you define the return? Pedaya: In my Mizrachi studies, I often refer to the “return of the repressed voice.” Today, Hasidism can be seen as performing this role. It possesses not only a system and alternative language of an innate set of behaviors but also a range of ideologies—­ 385

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from conservatism through to a communist-­hued anarchism or outsiderism whose time may have arrived. This is a returning language. When I want to adduce an affinity between the behavior of the youth today and Hasidism, I point to the trend toward finding a way to express their feelings in new ways and forms. Just as in Hasidism’s first intuition, people are feeling that the religion of their forefathers is dry and perfunctory. This prompts a rapacious hunger. Zifroni and Sheleg: Will this encourage cultism? Pedaya: A great diversity exists today and we can’t identify just one pattern. Hasidism is relevant to very varied groups. For example, people who became disappointed with or even traumatically affected by the disengagement from Gush Katif [the Israeli disengagement from Gush Katif—­the Gaza Strip—­in the summer of 2005] felt they had to differentiate between the state and nationalism, that they’d lost their foundation. The process of deep disillusionment with the state of Israel is making some groups exchange their settlement on the land for an ideological position—­a sort of exchange-­within-­an-­exchange that’s been going on for some time. Let me unpack this: We have to appreciate the significance of the disengagement. In one sense, secularism and national mystical religion have taken the same path in Israel and in another they’ve diverged. Both share the idea that the return to the land and the establishment of the state presage the redemption—­what Rav Kook calls the “beginning of the emergence of our redemption.” In other words, they signal an advance along a fixed line of progress. In the eyes of the national-­religious public, the territorial withdrawal was also a step backward, away from the redemption, back toward exile—­a catastrophic deviation from the route toward the messianic age. Not only did they suffer the loss of concrete homes and territory but the national-­religious bloc also split and began disintegrating in several directions. 386

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First, between the spiritual and the concrete. For some, the disappointment over the failure of the political-­military process to expedite the linear vision of redemption moved them further toward the spiritual pole. For others it did precisely the opposite, strengthening their mystical view of the concrete land. The first group is exemplified by various types of Neo-­Hasidism, the latter by radical nationalists. The Temple Mount Faithful group, for example, focused their attention even more strongly on rebuilding the Temple—­simultaneously a concrete and iconic building—­ while the spiritualists stressed a Hasidic mysticism that is not necessarily place-­dependent. Chabad ideology, which influenced Rav Kook in his day, is clearly gaining force today, its long-­internalized nationalistic ideas and institutionalization, charisma, and construction of crowd-­control methods attracting lots of people. From the very first, Rabbi Nahman [of Bratslav] and Rabbi Shneur Zalman [the founder of Chabad] taught different ideas. Those who aren’t attracted by the language of nationalism and have little interest in wearing the outward signs of the Hasid, attaching more importance to the definition of Jewish identity, regard themselves as Bratslavers. This form of return occurs much more frequently in an explicit, transparent form, among media figures and the bohemian crowd, though not only among them of course. Zifroni and Sheleg: Will they be disappointed? Pedaya: Not necessarily. Although Hasidic ideas and values are extremely powerful, their force derives from the fact that no ideology exists that can institutionalize them within the establishment or society. I think individuals who voluntarily return to texts are hungry for memory. In intergenerational terms, this always happens in the third and fourth generations. After then, it’s quite likely to disappear—­that is, everything collapses. 387

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I don’t want to predict what will happen then. At the moment, this generation is in the process of looking. People have a strong sense of having lost language, tools, tradition, a world, and they’re drawn to the wealth within texts and the way they connect with them. The feeling that they’ve returned to themselves and to right behavior is very deep and fills them. Some cannot even be identified because they return to tradition privately. Others return in a social-­cultural form—­the Na-­Nah-­Nahmans, for example, or in a very institutional form, such as “See like this and sanctify!” and the “Faith in the Righteous” (emunat tsaddikim) or “Seeing the Face of the Righteous Person” (ro’e peney ha-­tsaddik).5 Zifroni and Sheleg: In recent years the religious world has been very unwilling to take responsibility for reality, a trait that never distinguished it in the past. You say that the turn toward socialist Zionism represented the rebellious Hasidic son. Hasidism itself, however, regards itself as bearing responsibility for the whole people. Now it’s being criticized for being patronizing and dominating. But Hasidism, which was accused of leading to the destruction of so many Jews who stayed in Europe during the Holocaust, now may be said to also have saved large parts of the people from destruction through assimilation, because of its powerful attraction. Are the streams you identify now likely to demonstrate such responsibility? Pedaya: That’s a very good question. [The answer] has several aspects. At its beginning, Hasidim provided answers to real-­life problems. Some scholars, including Mendel Piekarz, place the emergence of Hasidism in the context of Jewish poverty in Poland and the collapse of the old community. It also offered solutions to the disintegration of the family and social unity. That was one of its great successes: what to do with my wife or husband, to whom I should marry my daughter, or a prohibition against leasing a tavern again. The rebbe was involved in every aspect of life. At the 388

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same time, in a certain sense there was an innate mystical, spiritual escapism from the harshness of reality. Zifroni and Sheleg: The Hasidic transferal of events and concepts from the world to the soul, such as the “inner Amalek,” also helps it turn its back on and show its disdain for outside reality. Pedaya: If it were only that! But the move outward is no less evident in the Israeli space, each group finding fault with society at large because of the way other segments behave. In order to understand the conceptual streams in Israel you have to be aware of a problem we seem incapable of solving—­the shift from history to politics. All the religious and mystical discourse about nationalism blurs the distinction between them. If you’re brave enough to raise the question of “reality” with right-­wingers, they immediately ask you: “Are you an inciter? Don’t you believe in divine revelation in history?” They’re astonished if you don’t see the marks of divine providence in history—­itself a very pragmatic idea. This blurring has reached the point at which any political act is understood as God’s tolling of the bell of history. This in itself is an unrealistic stance, a misunderstanding. When it first emerged, Hasidism didn’t operate within state history or politics. It relates to human needs in life. Today, this is one of the most important roles the Hasidic rebbe plays within the Hasidic community. His status is accepted across the whole religious public, both by the ultra-­Orthodox Litvak and the Mizrachi streams. A woman can go places because a particular rebbe is also interested in feminist history, in family politics. Zifroni and Sheleg: He’s also involved in national politics, though, telling his followers who to vote for. Pedaya: Yes, all sorts of complications arise from the huge leadership vacuum. The denial of reality is first and foremost due to the blurring we just spoke of, however. We have to make a distinction and say: While the establishment of the state was a historic event, 389

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a significant step, it doesn’t mean that everything that happens afterward in it is necessarily a sign of the approaching redemption. Many people find it very difficult to jettison this idea. We must acknowledge that we don’t have a full perspective from which to look at contemporary reality. Where trauma is concerned, however, the more you try to deny the broken dream and continue looking for perfection, the more resources you have to mobilize in order to assert that the dream and the vision are still possible. All this when you can get out on the right side of a crisis—­and right now we’re in the middle of one. Zifroni and Sheleg: In what areas do you think we’re recovering from erasing the past? Pedaya: The most prominent is music. Among Mizrachi Jews, music was the vanguard of the heightening of identity. Among the Ashkenazim, it was the last. First came the return to Hasidism, in a long and complex process. The wave of the promotion of Yiddish [music] that followed was essentially an interaction and reaction to the rise of piyyut [liturgical poetry]. The spread of sacred Mizrachi music from the synagogue into the public sphere also brings to mind Hasidic music. Its return may have been delayed precisely because it had been cultivated all along, as it were, but associated with the Israeli musical heritage. Now, it’s already become very free. The musical context is also where we see the conflict we just spoke of between East and West in relation to the father and grandfather’s place. After the dynamics of the muted second-­ generation Holocaust survivors, the third generation no longer seeks the speech of the lost first generation. Music embodies the possibility of return or the closed channel. The antithesis between East and West in the bound son or father’s experience means that many European Ashkenazim in Israel cannot follow the avenue taken by the first generation because they 390

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reject the exile and its traditions and have lost their actual fathers or grandfathers, whether through secularization or the Holocaust. I experienced this very strongly in Israel when I formed an ensemble to sing the mystical Eastern music I inherited from my great-­ grandfather. The reactions from the audience demonstrated how envious they were that I had a grandfather. Thus, for example, after a recital by the Yonah Ensemble (founded to revitalize Judeo-­Arab liturgy and piyyut), a woman approached me and said bluntly: “The performance made me very angry because I was jealous that you can speak about your grandfather when I don’t even remember once even talking about my grandparents. And if they had lived, they wouldn’t have remembered any songs.” I know lots of Ashkenazim remember the songs they sang at home. But this woman represented the absolute break caused by complete secularization or the Holocaust. Now, however, we’re witnessing a kind of return. Zifroni and Sheleg: What do you mean by this? What mode of return? Pedaya: Let me approach this through the dynamic of the “rebellious son.” Hasidism was born by sons rebelling against their fathers. As a national movement, Zionism inherited Hasidism’s theological and social structures while secularizing them. This may also have been a characteristic of European secularization beyond the distinctive nature of the mystical and religious experience in Judaism, the death of God (Nietzsche) being accompanied by the death of the father or his murder (Freud). In the Judaism of Muslim lands and the East, however, secularization took a completely different path. Arriving through technology, it uprooted neither the father nor God, at most only extirpating the law. The Jews in Muslim countries and the East came to Israel and experienced the “death” of their parents. Wanting to protect them, the sons began seeking ways to resuscitate the father. The Mizrachim who become newly religious also became 391

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part of the Hasidic pattern, precisely in its form as a spiritual “father”—­a historical paradox. Zifroni and Sheleg: What’s the state of Hasidic messianism today? Scholem argued, of course, that Hasidism subdued messianism in the wake of the Sabbatean catastrophe. Is it reemerging in this generation? Pedaya: Scholem made a sweeping generalization. When he speaks about “neutralizing” messianism he only adduces examples from the Maggid of Mezritch, who gives the very strong impression of shifting things to the spiritual plane. With the Ba‘al Shem Tov, it’s an even more intense question, because he actually asks the Messiah: “When are you coming?”—­to which the Messiah answers: “When you’ve fulfilled your mission in the world.” The Ba‘al Shem Tov goes back to the people. This discussion takes us to the question of whether the texts we study in “Jewish Thought”—­that float in the air before your eyes—­connect us to the reality and experience of the Hasidim of those periods. So it’s also difficult to elucidate or measure the messianic impetus prevalent in various places and times. I think today—­regrettably—­messianism virtually no longer exists on the spiritual or individual plane. Its revolutionary force in the positive sense is therefore not taken advantage of, while its conservative drive is fully exploited in a combination of the institutionalization of the land and sanctified leadership. Green and Horowitz: What do you mean by an “individual messianism”? Do you see this brand of messianism in the history of Hasidism, or in modern-­day Israel? Pedaya: Yes, of course. That’s the pity. Because messianism is a huge dynamo but today it’s being increasingly institutionalized. In contrast to collective, national messianism, individual messianism emphasizes personal redemption à la “everyone is the Messiah.” This trend is being boosted by spiritual and Neo-­Hasidic trends 392

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in Israel, very interestingly resembling the neutralization of messianism Scholem adduced in the Maggid’s thought. Of course, some people and circles promote both kinds. The Neo-­Hasidic experience in Israel is associated with a broader effort to “break the Kookian monopoly” over who determines what belongs on the Jewish mystical bookshelf. Zifroni and Sheleg: When you refer to “collective, national messianism,” do you mean Chabad? Pedaya: Yes, among other things.. There are several manifestations of this basic pattern. For example, [there is] a combination of Chabad and Gush Emunim. It’s difficult to deal with these, because again, their power derives from experience. They’re groups that on the social level really help needy people in the society, and within which people are good to one another, in good times and bad; they’re wonderfully mutually supportive. But messianism, as a free and anarchic force, is virtually nonexistent among these circles. There is anarchism against the state, and that’s very dangerous from another direction. The Jewish underground includes elements of that. Zifroni and Sheleg: How does the postcolonial discourse function in Israel? Pedaya: The postcolonial discourse seeks to link together all the catastrophes that have occurred into a single epic cataclysm. In this context, the Holocaust dissolves into a general pool. But attributing the same value to all disasters strips them of all value. Although the ease with which people compare Israelis with Nazis is outrageous, the Holocaust demands something more important from us. It compels us to consistently examine and ask ourselves whether our suffering has blunted our sensitivity to that of others. That’s one of the motives that drives post-­Zionism, and it can’t be dismissed. The problem is that the participants in the postcolonial discourse operate on the basis of a tightly organized doctrine and defined 393

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terminology. It then runs up against problems like what to do with Zionism, which began in a colonialist setting. Postcolonialism is also very myopic, tending to regard itself as the only legitimate perspective and structuring phenomena dichotomously. It’s as though it refuses to be one tool in a diverse toolbox. In terms of local conflict, it generally relates only to the past sixty or seventy years—­a very short-­term viewpoint from which to look at the long, tragic, complicated history of the Jewish people. In truth, most people who engage in postcolonial discourse know very little about Jewish history and culture, either in Europe or Eastern, Muslim countries. Zifroni and Sheleg: And that creates a distortion? Pedaya: It makes for sterile research. Why do scholars not succeed in becoming leading intellectuals? Because we’re in a very impoverished state right now. Even in Mizrachi Studies you can’t confine the discussion to the postcolonial discourse. In order to understand the crisis you have to know the prior history and culture and what you propose now. That’s why I established the research group “The East Writes Itself,” formulating a new manifesto. How can you say anything about the Mizrachi-­Ashkenazi split in Israel if you don’t understand Jewish history, Eastern or Western? I personally believe it’s impossible to talk about Iraqi Jewish history, for example, in postcolonial terms. The same is true of the Holocaust. We’re standing here. Everything’s become black and white. The colonial schemes predominate, leaving no room for the tragic within national conflicts or the problems of language and memory. There are no profound, essential answers to the issue of two peoples claiming one land and no understanding that you can’t take away a collective body’s memory, erasing it in order to achieve peace—­just as the baggage of memory doesn’t justify injustice in the present. Because the discussion is sterile 394

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and doesn’t attempt to consider all the factors, the solutions also sometimes remain in the realm of fantasy. Zifroni and Sheleg: So we all have to undergo a process of maturation, freeing ourselves from fantasy? Pedaya: Yes, but I would speak in terms of relocating ourselves in time and space. In other words, realizing that we have to give more space in our consciousness to memory and reduce the significance we give to territory. Zifroni and Sheleg: Are you saying that those who claim that the state of Israel was created as a result of the rise of nationalism in Europe, borne on the waves of colonialism to a place that became French and British in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Balfour Declaration, so that in effect it’s a European colonial construction, are completely sterilizing and erasing Jewish memory and the longing to return to Zion? Pedaya: Not just that. It wasn’t just colonialism that drove Jews to Israel, but also antisemitism and the Holocaust. What drove them both to destruction and to Israel was the colonialism Europe imposed on them. We have to understand that the Jews were only the small cog within the big wheel. None of this exempts us from dealing with injustice. It doesn’t justify all the injustices that occurred in these frameworks. The postcolonial discourse is often a closed sociological one that doesn’t always succeed in connecting short-­term history with long-­term issues. We are dealing here with one of the most tragic and complicated issues facing the Jewish people! Zifroni and Sheleg: How do you link short-­and long-­term history in your academic work? Pedaya: In “Walking and Rituals of Exile: Rituals of Expulsion and the Construction of the Self in the Spaces of Europe and the Land of Israel,”6 I deal with the way in which walking as a form of exilic ritual and atonement in the sixteenth century was replaced by walking 395

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as a ritual of redemption in the eighteenth century. There I argue that the critical act of walking and wandering became the critical act of staying in the same place as a way of filling the gaping hole left by the Holocaust. As long as we feel that we have to fill this hole, we remain within the tragedy of the Holocaust. This is the traumatic effect of the reduction of an enormous segment of the Jewish people to ashes—­the fact that something that scarcely has a territorial remnant still possesses great weight in terms of will. From this perspective—­and there are others, of course—­we can talk about the transfer of the whole discourse of redemption to the soil. I see Eretz Yisra’el as the transitional space between the exilic walking project and the redemptive staying-­in-­one-­place project. The wandering Jew [is] reflecting both internal and external perceptions of the exiled one as a walker. I understand the expulsion as a trauma that drives an obsessive-­compulsive walking. Religion seeks to transform this into rituals. The more I realize that we haven’t yet paid the full cost of the catastrophe, the more I find myself softening and becoming more compassionate—­but at the same time as being greatly pained by the Israeli situation. I’m full of compassion and pain for all the forms of the brokenness. After such a desperate effort to settle, to hold on to something, the trauma strikes from within. During the disengagement from Gaza, we saw people sitting and crying and asking themselves: “Why didn’t we leave with a cart covered in black? We needed to go only walking, to leave on foot. Why did we go on buses? We erred, we didn’t understand.” These statements express a very harsh feeling of exile. Zifroni and Sheleg: You’re describing a three-­stage Jewish-­Israeli process: the exile, characterized by walking; the trauma of the Holocaust, which induced the desire to settle down; and now, the profound sense of disappointment, which is again prompting walking. Is this specific to the religious population? 396

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Pedaya: The walking of some of those evacuated from Gaza represents the split between the symbolic and the concrete. The mourning was a walking that marked a separation between the state and the sacred soil. Up to a certain point this populace relied absolutely on Rav Kook’s teachings, combined with an idealizing of the state. As I’ve already remarked, in a certain sense Rav Kook contributed to the favoring of the signifier over the signified, attributing immense significance to statehood. The state, the army, the Knesset are all extolled and glorified by the successors of Rav Kook7 at the expense of the Divine, of God Himself. It’s as though we think that the redeemer has come to Zion. What’s better than the fact that there’s no chasm and the world looks perfect? But the loss of the abyss is the price we pay—­we have neither. Theology becomes completely submerged in politics. For some of the nonreligious or post-­Zionists, the disappointment finds expression in departure from the Israeli space. Zifroni and Sheleg: Are you talking about a change in the relationship between the signifier and signified that finds form in Rav Kook’s thought? Do you see the change occurring in other areas? Pedaya: I see the break in the signifier-­signified relationship as a profound, complex process that takes place across numerous fields in the Western world throughout modernism. Postmodernism didn’t invent it; it’s a symptom of the phenomenon. I addressed the subject in more poetic terms in [my book] The Eye of the Cat—­in the chapter on the break, for example. The relationship between the concrete and the symbolic is distorted here. While we seem to have been liberated from the dual medieval structure of the concrete and the transcendent, in fact we continue within it despite the discourse change. The removal of the symbolic reinforced the concrete, which is now much more suffused with the symbolic. Although this distortion is evident across Israeli society, it takes a different form in each segment. Thus, for example, amongst the 397

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Israeli left wing it’s their awareness of the suffering of others. The price they pay for this is the weakening of the symbolic force of their own self-­identity. The complete emptying out of the Jewish symbolic charge brings about a loss of the communication channels between diverse Jewish publics. Their utter imperviousness to the symbolic charge in other Jewish groups precludes a common discourse—­the prerequisite for progress on the real-­political plane. In the particularist sphere of Jewish history, the traumatic effect of the Holocaust, which broke down language and destroyed the signifier-­signified relation, reinforced this widespread break. Zifroni and Sheleg: The problem is that people are mobilizing huge resources in order to deny the awful break rather than beginning the process of healing. Pedaya: Hasidism reenters precisely at this point, at the waking from the dream, when the previous language has saturated everything—­ from Rav Kook’s language and that of his followers. All of a sudden, right at this point, Hasidism takes the stage again, returning from every direction. It serves as another basis for the exhausted right-­ wing ideology; it attracts the young religious who’ve become tired of their fathers’ way of life and are seeking spirituality, whether individual or collective. It gives media figures and bohemian circles another India, and it goes hand in hand with the second-­and third-­ generation European and Holocaust survivors’ yearnings for roots in the Diaspora in general and Poland in particular, and Yiddish. Zifroni and Sheleg: Are there elements in the Hasidic tradition that can help redevelop the set of concepts we’ve been dealing with in the face of a reality that seems to be standing before an impasse? Pedaya: Certainly, indeed. The treasure house for the possibility of Jewish spiritual revival still lies within Hasidism. Hasidism is the great enterprise within Jewish modernity that updated all the existing infrastructures with its psychological theories, literary riches, musical traditions. It showed that the keys to existence are 398

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through experience rather than the mind. Messages of unity, collaboration, and communality—­even within an urban setting—­as a form of consolidation are becoming more and more relevant to people in our age. It’s not coincidental that it’s emerging again now, when increasing numbers are becoming disillusioned with the state as an organizational mechanism identical to ideology—­ just as took place after the partition of Poland.8 Hasidism has not yet spoken its final word about the possibilities of Jewish spiritual renewal in our day. But at the same time, Hasidism is also the general container of the struggles, dangers, and possibilities of open existence. We must hope that it won’t become fixed in one pattern and that a titanic struggle will ensue between the various forms of messianism—­political or spiritual—­ and between modes of charisma and institutionalization, at the fringes of this system. We find a strong movement toward a return to religion among many Israelis returning from India, media figures, and Mizrachim from the peripheries. Surprisingly, many of these groups are coming together within Hasidism. Hopefully there will emerge a spiritual path that isn’t necessarily identified with any particular political or religious grouping. Green and Horowitz: Can you talk about alternative ways of accessing the strengths of Hasidism in Israel? Must one join a traditional Hasidic community such as Chabad or Bratslav, or does a Neo-­ Hasidic option work, where you take the essential teachings but without the extreme antimodern views that accompany them? How do we create a different sort of Hasidism for today? Pedaya: Rav Kook epitomizes the spirit of Jewish modernity and thus also the stage of longing for the home—­the road to the unknown of the homeland, the Jewish state as the realization of the vision of redemption. His thought is also marked, however, by the fear of secularism as an “irreversible” stage and the attempt to contain everything within a unifying paradigm. He also undoubtedly 399

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belonged to the school of mystical visionaries. Most of his writings take the form of diaries—­a writing to himself that his disciples and those who edited his writings helped become public, making him into a modern-­day rebbe. Rav Shagar,9 on the other hand, exemplifies the spirit of postmodern Judaism—­or the rising to its challenge. His questions, which emerge from the encounter with general culture and its worldview, differ from Rav Kook’s: how to live at home, how to moderate foreignness and outside threats, how to cope with the fear of being abandoned within language itself and the loss of spiritual religiosity at the peak of the process in which it becomes institutionalized. In sum, how to prevent the vessels from overwhelming the lights. In contrast to Rav Kook’s ecstatic light, Rav Shagar is attentive. Rather than sweeping ecstasy and light, his experience is one of truth grounded in reality—­real truth, an experience of moments. Both modernism and postmodernism exhibit a dialectic movement between unity and consolidation and disintegration. Modernism seeks to unify everything within a single structure while dichotomizing the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the bestial. While postmodernism starts from unity, it regards it as composed of multiple fractures—­not schizophrenia but endless multiple selves. These changes exert pressure on the national-­religious public, the natural home of Rav Kook’s mystical stream, from several directions. On the national level, a state that withdraws from Gush Katif feels at home when faced with a loss of commitment and permanence. This is a completely other encounter with the world and social reality, whose echo contrasts vividly with the concepts of the home: the national homeland, the personal home, the religious home, and even consciousness as home. Hesitation and resistance are clearly evident in each of the links in this chain, as 400

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they also are in the transfer of the center of gravity of existential uncertainty from the national homeland of Zionism (in and to which the youth were then subject) to the personal home—­the question of whether to marry or remain eternally young (a stance typical of broad segments of the younger generations today). Zygmunt Bauman defines the shift from modernism to postmodernism as the transition from pilgrim to tourist, arguing that in Judaism it takes the form of feeling oneself to be a tourist in one’s own home—­that is no longer home—­rather than foreign in the outside world: homeowner turned guest. As we have observed, this transformation occurs on the national, individual, and personal level. Rather than a struggle against modernity, it is an indifference, a recklessness, a being outside things—­the noncommitment of the passerby. In this context, Rav Kook symbolizes the experience of foreignness, which in a certain sense he brought home by introducing it into Jewish nationalism. Rav Shagar represents the experience of being a tourist, of needing to make oneself at home again, even if only temporarily, by returning to the mystical bookshelf via a single national-­religious perspective. The new mystical society in Israel is now confronted by an updated corpus marked by a more open mystical heritage. The fresh interest displayed in it by those who have left the national-­ religious camp on the one hand and the free, secular, Mizrachi public on the other is not only or necessarily a sign of the spirit of the age—­a general, floating concept—­but rather targets specific disciples, particular individuals, including the broken, each one in his own way. Despite the great importance it attaches to spiritual teachers and knowledge brokers, everyone is aware that the new Neo-­Hasidic movement today in Israel embodies first and foremost a desire to draw directly from the well, national filters no longer being necessary. 401

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Notes

1. Referring to the Oyneg Shabbos archive hidden in the Warsaw Ghetto by Emanuel Ringelblum and his staff, containing a great deal of information about ghetto life, including that of the Hasidic communities. 2. See Haviva Pedaya’s notes in Gershom Scholem, Hasidism: The Latest Stage, ed. David Assaf and Esther Liebes (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2008), 23–­ 37 (Hebrew). 3. The first period in Israeli history, when the state and the Zionist movement defined identity. 4. He was playing on the aural similarity, especially in Eastern European Hebrew, between the words ovot (familiar spirits, in Leviticus 19:31) and avot, “parents, ancestors.” 5. Referring to the adoption of specific Hasidic masters who then offer detailed direction on how to live. 6. In Haviva Pedaya and Ephraim Meir, eds., Judaism—­Topics, Fragments, Faces, Identities: Jubilee Volume in Honor of Rivka (Beersheba, Israel: Ben-­ Gurion University Press, 2007), 73–­147 (Hebrew). 7. Rav Kook died in 1935, long before the state of Israel was founded. 8. Between 1772 and 1795. A majority of Jews found themselves living within the czarist empire, which had a strong statist ideology. 9. Shim‘on Gershon Rosenberg (1949–­2007), a popular Rosh Yeshiva and author within the more moderate sector of the national-­religious community. Multiple volumes of his writings and lectures have been published since his death. See especially Luhot ve-­Shivrey Luhot [Tablets and broken tablets] (Tel Aviv: Yediot Sefarim, 2013).

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16 The Turn to Hasidism in the Religious-­Zionist Israeli Yeshiva Elhanan Nir Like my friends and colleagues, I was raised in the religious-­Zionist world, which in our generation steered us toward an almost mandatory post‒high school—­or, more correctly, post‒yeshiva high school—­sojourn in the religious-­Zionist yeshiva world. In Israel, in our generation, taking such a path was no longer a matter for debate. We did not have to fight the intergenerational battle that our parents and rabbis had waged, in which the decision to attend such a yeshiva was subversive, flying in the face of religious-­Zionist aspirations in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time the pursuit of an academic degree, a profession, and “normalcy” was paramount; however, by the time our cohort reached that age, study in a post‒high school religious institution had been mainstreamed. There was no need to make a stand or engage in a “holy rebellion” to receive parental permission to study in yeshiva. In fact, the opposite was true. All of us went on to study in post‒ high school yeshivot, and those who did not were deemed dropouts and failures of the system, whose existence had to be concealed to prevent negative gossip about the otherwise well-­oiled machine. The yeshivot that we attended were all products of the revolution in Jewish thought (mahshavah) that Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva had wrought in the 1970s and 1980s.1 These yeshivot offered not only Gemara classes, as had been traditional in the yeshiva world, but 403

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also classes on Jewish thought that were given the novel title of “classes in Jewish faith [emunah].” We studied Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari, the writings of the MaHaRaL of Prague, and, most importantly and intensively, Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook’s writings. Tanakh classes were marginalized and almost insignificant in comparison to our immersion in classical Gemara study (lamdanut) and, especially, in the extensive study of Jewish faith, as portrayed in the aforementioned books. The years we spent in yeshiva were devoted to an intensive, totalizing experience of study and spirituality, which manifested itself in our constant efforts to study more than fifteen hours a day. The motto that guided us throughout our years in yeshiva—­which we constantly repeated from the first day on—­was the commentary by Rabbi Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna, on Proverbs 8:34: “Happy is the man who hearkens to me, watching daily at my gates [lishkod ‘al daltotai yom yom], waiting at the posts of my doors”—­one must diligently struggle with Torah every day—­all day. Our study was replete with self-­convincing arguments that persuaded us of the rightness of our path and deemed us the “forward scouts of the nation,” those who knew how to correctly interpret the inner, subconscious processes the nation was undergoing. And, secretly, we believed that the very act of interpreting reality in this way wove the fabric of redemption for a generation that experienced itself without any self-­reflective—­Torah-­inspired—­historical consciousness. When I look back with two decades of hindsight, I realize that many of my righteous and talented friends did not continue on this path, and not only did they fail to continue on it, but they recall it with pain and anguish, as a trauma of sorts. Therefore, I feel compelled to ask why those who seem to have been brought up and primed to continue on this path did not do so. Even more, I am compelled to contemplate why they recall this world with such pain. 404

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The study of Gemara was not meaningful enough for most of us. After a few years, many of my contemporaries felt they had gotten what they could out of it. Without a doubt, this feeling was intensified by a pervasive sense of needing to strive for relevance and meaning. Our Gemara study was founded upon two pillars: (1) the study of ancient legal discussions that for the most part had never seen practical application in the Jewish world—­not even in one, isolated, model community; and (2) the investigation of extreme cases using classical, Lithuanian study methodologies that had been the delight of nineteenth-­century yeshiva heads. Unfortunately, the latter methodologies were ill-­suited for us, for they demanded that we deny the ways of thinking we had been raised to believe in, including our allegiance to rational Western thought, the romantic-­Zionist world, and the postmodern world full of searching and pondering. The latter was already a part of us even though we did not yet know it. As we saw it, the yeshivot completely ignored the worlds at their doorsteps, or to put it even more pointedly, the worlds into which we, their students, sought entry. Instead we were compelled to accept citizenship in only one state: the talmudic one. Paradoxically, however, in that very state, the country of the Gemara (note that at that time we called it “Gemara,” not the more academically correct “Talmud”), we found that the tannaim and amoraim claimed citizenship in many lands: in nature, in the unvarnished reality of life, in the mighty and unceasing vitality connected to the physical world and the complex contours of the soul, and in cutting, boisterous humor, full of bite. And we did not know how to contain these conflicting needs within us. As time went on, the need to imbue our studies (which took up most of our days and nights) with creativity also began to trouble us. This need, too, received no response. Our main goal in studying Gemara, according to our teachers, was to determine the true reasons for disputes among the early sages or for contradictions in Maimonides’ Mish405

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neh Torah. However, beyond our ability to quickly transpose a scholarly distinction—­and a well-­worn and familiar one at that—­to a dispute or a contradiction, our instructors made no attempt—­not even a minimal one—­to develop within us the ability, and the habit, to reflect upon the meaning of the issues or to internalize them. We did not study, for instance, about how the tractate Kiddushin might influence our perception of married life, how tractate Shabbat might affect the way we experienced Shabbat, or how tractate Nedarim might influence our comprehension of the meaning of language and our intra-­and interpersonal relationships. The scholarly distinctions and terminology that we adopted with great seriousness and fluidity—­as is evident from the many scholarly compositions we wrote in that period, during which, like prominent yeshiva heads, we spoke this language sixteen hours a day—­in fact served to stifle our creativity and our search for the meaning and relevance that Gemara study might have had for our lives. Likewise, it diminished our ability to recognize the plurality of citizenships that we already held. We could not tolerate this situation. We believed that we would find our answer in the classes devoted to Jewish faith (limudei emunah). We hoped that there we would find that intersection, the meeting point of all our most pressing, basic, spiritual yearnings—­including the avant-­garde and revolutionary ones, as well as the intellectual ones expressed through Gemara study. However, even these “classes in Jewish faith” failed to provide us with sufficient meaning. The range of studies that received this unique name were, in fact, just classes in Jewish thought. These classes were also limited to quite a narrow selection of thinkers—­Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, the MaHaRaL, Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook (whose writings were chosen because of their patriotic, nationalistic content), and an even more limited number of their interpreters. These interpreters primarily dealt with the significance of the nation of Israel and the insights of Rabbi Kook and 406

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his son about the meaning of the state. However, they barely spoke about that elusive concept called the soul, which is in constant tension with the corporeal body, or about the cultural processes that the soul and the body were consciously or, for the most part, subconsciously undergoing in the here and now. Those passages in which Rabbi Kook actually addressed the tribulations of the soul were blatantly ignored or even censored. We came to feel that much of the atrophy that Rabbi Kook had described in the Diaspora religion he had known, and which he had no scruples in speaking out against, was also present in those transmitting his words. We understood, and almost empathized with the fact (though we never said so explicitly), that the root of this atrophy was Rabbi Kook’s disciples’ conscious desire to correct the path of history. They deceived solely in order to return history to its true course. Or, in other words, they had undertaken a process of affirmative action designed to shift the focus of the Torah to the collective, replacing two thousand years of focus on the individual Jew. Ironically, however, we felt that this Torah of the collective did not have the ability to embrace us. But since we were, by definition, a highly engaged and extremely prominent part of this collective, a fundamental question loomed about the essence of this concept of a collective Torah. How were we to comprehend its autonomy from earlier thought and its originality? To what extent was it able to allow for freedom and growth, not just enslavement to predetermined templates? In each class we performed a close, detailed reading of a passage, but these readings did not add up to a comprehensive, complete, and exhaustive philosophy that could motivate our yearning-­filled lives. We were unable to visualize life in all its complexity—­for life is often surprising, full of question marks and confusion, and relentlessly disappointing. Rather, we merely perceived isolated insights that were proclaimed and repeated with great pathos and charisma, but which denied the rushing, roaring river of life that jostled us without respite. 407

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Some of the pathos was also a function of our attempt to claim continuity with the past. Or, in other words, it was caused by our declaration that we were the next link in the masoretic chain stretching back from us to the Gaon of Vilna through the Yeshiva of Volozhin, Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook, and Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda ha-­Kohen Kook, his son. However, in making this claim we committed a historical injustice, and, even more painfully, we tried to rewrite history, creating a new history of which we were to eventually become the building blocks. Because of this attempt to demonstrate how our freedom could be consistent with the traditional Torah world, we had to sacrifice our own freedom on the altar of tradition’s continuity, which, of course, never existed and certainly ceased to exist after the destruction of the Eastern European Torah centers in the Holocaust. Even our sincere search, which attempted to discover how what we were learning was relevant and could be translated into our lives—­ without our having to erase ourselves or leave large parts of ourselves outside the nexus of truth—­did not receive a response. Every morning, when we entered the beit midrash (study hall)—­the moment before we recited the prayer before Talmud study—­we would shrug off our coats and leave the greater part of our lives hung upon the coatrack at the entrance. We would hang up the secular parts of ourselves, the talents that coursed through our veins, and even our tremendous aspirations for holiness, to cleave to the blessed Ein Sof (the infinite Divine). And in the wee hours of the night, when we left the beit midrash and, as if under duress, went home to sleep, we would return to these parts of ourselves, somewhat shamefacedly and against our will. No room was provided in the curriculum for self-­awareness, for adopting a reflective stance on the process we were undergoing. Beyond the frustration we felt at certain goings-­on, no attempt whatsoever was made to develop a language to describe our feelings and allow 408

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us to talk about them. The burning sensation did not go away, as our sincere and open quest was cauterized like an open sore. Instead of responding by validating our concerns and respecting them, our rabbis responded by launching a stubborn, uncompromising war against our aspirations. Such aspirations, they argued, would lead to one of two outcomes: egotistical nihilism or madness. This response was also intrinsically related to another truth of yeshiva life: the yeshiva world was rife with judgment that constantly rained down on our heads. The judgmental mentality was rooted in the need to constantly establish boundaries, and boundaries within boundaries, between those fortunate few who bore God’s holy vessels and belonged to the realm of the Holy and the rest of humanity, which lived in the real world. While those segments of the population that were ideologically distant from us were treated with a certain abstract love and affection,2 those who were closer to us were openly disparaged and treated with a contempt that stemmed from our self-­pride. The unofficial rule was that the closer a group was to us ideologically, while still failing to think exactly like us, the greater our disdain. The verse “be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord” (Isa. 52:11) became a motto designed to differentiate between those who carry the vessels of the Lord—­those who correctly understand those works on Jewish faith in which the spiritual condition of the “generation” is depicted—­from their contemporaries, who do not comprehend, who lack knowledge and understanding. There was also a tremendous degree of seriousness. This seriousness lacked all humor—­the spice that has enlivened Jewish life throughout all our travails as a people. This seriousness also asserted: “This is the way things are done, and there is nothing more to be said.” No thought was given to whether this approach was suitable for everyone. No consideration was given to preparing the students for the practical realities of life that were to come. In fact, with hindsight, perhaps this humorlessness, yes, this lack of comedic insight, was the straw that 409

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broke the camel’s back—­that created a tidal wave out of the emotions stifled within us. The few—­not necessarily the most talented ones—­who still retained some faith in the Torah world and did not depart full of pain and heartache, who did not slam the door as they left for greener pastures, searched for a Torah that believed in them and in the profound processes they were undergoing. This spiritual quest took many different directions. The last few individuals who still had the energy sought out Hasidism (as well as the related intellectual spheres of art, psychology, and philosophy). When I say Hasidism, I am referring specifically to the teachings of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezritch, Chabad Lubavitch, Bratslav, and the Izhbitser and his disciples, including Rabbi Tsadok ha-­Kohen of Lublin. The primary teachers of Hasidic thought in those years, the late 1990s, were Rav Shagar (Shimon Gershon Rosenberg) of blessed memory, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzberg, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, and Rabbi Menachem Froman of blessed memory. It is no coincidence that all of these scholars (except for Rav Shagar, who was raised in the very heart of mainstream religious Zionism) were returnees to Orthodox Judaism who wished to replenish the somewhat arid religion they found with waters from the fount of Hasidism, waters that contained both Hasidism’s pervading ambience and, even more importantly, its profound and stirring theology and Torah insights. The fact that we were drawn to Hasidism was no accident. Under the constant, withering judgment of the yeshiva world, we found in Hasidism a movement that trusted in the soul, in prayer, and in doubt, in ups and downs, in the secular and in that which exists in the neutral space between the holy and the profane (not only in the realms of the sanctified and in those spheres whose parameters are fastidiously set out), in the relentless quest, and in the constant tension inherent in living life in this world. And also—­a belief in anarchy, in madness, in the seriousness that is to be found in the lack of seriousness. (For all these reasons, the Hasidim especially loved to tell stories.) 410

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And most importantly, we discovered the quest to see the face of God. This integration of the quest for God into our spiritual world had a tremendous impact because, believe it or not, the concept of God was never mentioned in yeshiva. There was no one with a “face” whom we could turn to, no one with whom to build a stirring, exciting, and enduring long-­term relationship. Instead we were faced with an entity that was more a “what” than a “who,” one that had bestowed His infinite ideals upon the world and expected human beings to imitate them. Just as He behaved in a certain way, we too had to behave in a certain way, diligently following the exact path He had left us. Since the simplest and most accessible ideal to imitate was redemption, just as He was engaged in redeeming Israel in our times, so too we were enjoined to engage in redeeming Israel. We primarily did this through the Torah we assiduously studied in the yeshivot; through participating in the nation of Israel by serving in the army and taking part in gar‘inim Torani’im (groups sent out to live and spread Torah in the irreligious hinterlands of the state of Israel); and through our settling the Land of Israel—­in the context of the settlement enterprise. The quest to interface with God was accompanied by the desire to cleave to Him and to discover traditional methods of doing so. However, we had no recourse to these, since religious-­Zionist society—­even its yeshiva world (though it denied this vociferously)—­lacked classical traditions teaching us how to worship God and how to live, and even how to decide questions of Jewish law. These traditions were often pejoratively characterized as diasporic in nature, and, therefore, as traditions that ought to be ignored. (This approach found expression, for instance, in the yeshiva world’s negative response—­almost the declaration of a religious war—­to the Yiddish language and heritage tours abroad.) We were like a group of converts that had just emerged from the ritual bath. 411

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We never expressed interest in the Eastern European world our elders had come from and we never spoke with them about it. (Many parts of the ultra-­Orthodox world, in complete contrast, still remain fascinated with the Eastern European Jewish past.) Our teachers portrayed this world as at best irrelevant and at worst as an impediment to the rebirth of our redeemed nation. Our exposure to Hasidism enabled us to regain some of the traditions and riches of the past that had been denied us by their discomfiting classification as diasporic, and allowed us to reconnect with our elders. In our necessary, though perhaps naive, search for personages to emulate and follow, we found three individuals: Rabbi Hillel Zeitlin, Rabbi David Cohen, and Pinhas Sadeh. We immersed ourselves in studying their writings and their very personae. Paradoxically, their literary works served to both conceal and reveal their unique personalities. Rabbi Hillel Zeitlin (1871–­1942), who perished in the Holocaust fifty years before we began our quest, provided us with a window into the sober Hasidic world that developed after Hasidism’s initial ascent to greatness, and into the philosophy of the Far East and its consciousness. In his writings we found the herald of “Hasidism for the days to come.” In the writings of Rabbi David Cohen (1887–­1972)—­ha-­Rav ha-­ Nazir—­we discovered the combination of scientific order and passionate inner world that demanded divine revelation; a continuum spanning the traditional and the innovative; Hasidic prayer combined with academic and Lithuanian-­style Talmud study; and aspirations to greatness combined with a homespun sincerity.3 These won our hearts. The third individual, the poet Pinhas Sadeh (1929–­1994), had only returned to Judaism in his later years. He had spent his entire life, however, in the relentless pursuit of truth. These three people, we believed, had felt the turmoil that we felt. Perhaps they were the only people who could understand what we were going through. Possibly they could provide a balm for our weary souls. 412

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Meanwhile, new yeshivot (popularly referred to as Neo-­Hasidic yeshivot) opened in that period in response to our unnoticed cry. I am referring to the hesder yeshivot in Safed, Tekoa, Otniel, Yitzhar, Efrat (Yeshivat Siah Yitzhak), and Ramat Gan. Merely listing these yeshivot, however, does not tell the full story, as these yeshivot not only influenced their students. They also broke the taboo on studying Hasidic literature in religious-­Zionist society and thus helped introduce it to far wider circles. These yeshivot responded to our desperate need and pain. In a brief period they gained momentum and achieved public and societal acceptance as well. Admittedly, however, they too failed to provide a superstructure defining the meaning of things. They failed to thoroughly explore every issue. They failed to systematically analyze each matter and construct an entire, complete, and comprehensive language that plumbed each phenomenon to its very depths. The language they created failed to draw its force from the inner essence of the Torah and remake this source into the blueprint for operating in the contemporary world, providing insights that exceeded the individual sphere and influenced the collective. In these yeshivot as well, the classes often merely focused on the close reading of one passage—­and what ultimately is the difference between one class that focuses on a passage from Rabbi Kook’s Orot and another that focuses on Rabbi Nahman’s Likkutey Moharan? Sometimes the classes did achieve a level of vitality deriving from their negation of their closed-­minded parent yeshivot; however, they still lacked the ability to plumb the depths and mull over them, as they pretentiously claimed to be able to do in studying Gemara. They still lacked the ability to take a broader view of these works on faith and to adequately “translate” them for maturing, evolving individuals who were still constantly striving for relevance. In my opinion, the positive path we had hoped for is still in the process of being built. Such a path addresses the lofty claims that life 413

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makes, the demand for a just, honest, moral society that also recognizes the human needs of those outside of the immediate community, as well as the claims made on the unique, individual soul to strive to live completely ethically, obtain a Jewish consciousness, and worship God. We also need a historical and national-­political consciousness, because the narrative of Israel’s return to its land cannot be the only narrative we seriously consider. We need to take meaningful steps to address coexistence with our Palestinian neighbors, with whom we share this land. The efficacy of the neo-­Hasidic solution I have mentioned requires a mature, objective appraisal. The instruction manuals ascribed to the Ba‘al Shem Tov and his disciples are chock-­full of various types of advice. Most of them do not employ an interior, soul-­oriented language but contain language and lofty ideals derived from the practices of the earlier Jewish ethical tracts. These ideals highlight the constant back-­and-­ forth movement between good and evil, between the evil inclination and the good one. Sometimes it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff and schematize an unambiguous, orderly system that is applicable to our contemporary concerns. Thus, for instance, the attention paid to achieving humility by waging an uncompromising battle against pride has drained more than a few young men I have known of their energy, leaving them completely dispirited. These men are in need of steadfast character, stable faith, and individual persuasion. None of these qualities are available to them in the abovementioned writings. Some remaining fortresses of the intellect do provide detailed counsel, with limitations. Kabbalistic teachings do not suit all comers to the same degree; the Hasidim often pointed out their complexity. Chabad Hasidism’s contemplation, which is so profound and also contains elements of meditation, has also lost its accessibility. There are almost no substantial, contemporary traditions that derive from this Hasidic approach. Bratslav’s practice of seclusion (hitbodedut) and 414

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personal, heartfelt “conversation” with God is that which remains, and it is increasingly taking pride of place among the masses. In the last few years various Bratslav rabbis have written an enormous amount on this topic, but perhaps because most of these individuals became interested in this approach during their own adolescent years, much of what they have written repeats the extant writings of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, packaging it in new forms. There are almost no texts available that provide complete, carefully constructed schemata for helping people develop a spiritual praxis on both the spiritual and physiological levels, fueled by a thorough holistic work process. However, the more basic problem is that of quality. In the last several generations, humanity has taken incredible steps forward in many fields that explore the human psyche through its depths and the rocky road it travels in this world. The various schools of psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and mysticism, as well as New Age writings, have led to significant advances in the ways we understand ourselves. While these new insights have not resolved the problems we grapple with as contemporary human beings, they have increased our self-­awareness and our ability to describe what we are going through in precise and unbiased language—­a language that allows for the poetic exploration of our souls through the rubric of a complex web of insights and perspectives. Even more pointedly, it is almost impossible to talk about the soul, which has lost some of its primeval wholeness, without constantly making sure that all the aforementioned perspectives are part of the dialogue. Thus, adopting a single form of speech, even if it is the most profoundly religious one, is the wrong tack to take, since it will inevitably become tongue-­tied as it faces the myriad contemporary demands stemming from within the human psyche. One of my colleagues recently asked me what I find missing in the Torah. Sharpening his point, he continued by remarking on how many beau415

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tiful families and kind communities it engenders. Indeed, I completely agree with his appraisal of the beauty and kindness it gives rise to, and I have also chosen to live in the hallowed halls of the Jewish tradition. However, much of what I find missing in contemporary Judaism comprises those traditions that know how to profoundly and consistently integrate between an awareness of spirituality and the physical dimension. Judaism certainly applies itself to the physical realm—­all 248 positive commandments and 365 negative ones have their parallels in the body’s limbs and organs—­but these do not consciously and directly act upon the body. Washing the hands before breaking bread, engaging in the various fasts, donning phylacteries, and wearing the large and small prayer shawls are all actions that work on the body; however, they might be better described as bodily endeavors than as conscious attempts to include the body and its various, unique organs in what is happening to them. We might be able to argue that in the time of the Temple there were commandments that incorporated this level of awareness; however, these were lost in the tangled web of the exile. We might be able to argue that there were ancient dances and melodies, movements and traditions concerning the body; however, all that remains of these are the three steps forward and the three steps backward at the beginning and end of the Shemoneh Esrei, and the minimal bowing of the head in the middle. And, as I have mentioned, these are not accompanied by any comprehensive, meaningful, conscious work on the body. Many of the problems that lead to moral depravity stem from the body’s lack of participation in the spiritual work: the incursion of foreign thoughts that the Hasidic masters constantly discussed, debating whether this problem applied to every person or only to the tsaddik; the problem of achieving intention in prayer and the inner peace and concentration necessary for Torah study; the attention paid to pegam ha-­berit (masturbation or nocturnal seminal emissions) among the youth—­a flaw that was taken out of all proportions and threatened to 416

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undermine these holy youths’ self-­confidence as they sought to desperately battle this “flaw” and enter a world of sanctity. All of these challenges are hard to overcome, to break free from, and as the saying goes, an imprisoned man cannot escape his jail without receiving outside help.4 In Sufism, which developed in various forms in North Africa and the Middle East, a deeper sort of partnership between the physical and the spiritual exists, as it does in the Far East. I feel that Jewish society is in ever-­greater need of such a partnership. But since those who are charged with conveying the Torah to the next generation have not taken it upon themselves to incorporate and integrate these missing aspects, divine providence seems to be doing the work for them: individuals distant from the orbs of leadership are bringing these elements into the fold, mostly by importing them from other traditions, a process we have witnessed several times in the last few generations. This type of spiritual collaboration, however, needs to be undertaken with the utmost seriousness and attention to detail, not merely at the behest of commercial interests or in the guise of haphazard, timid, preliminary experimentations. From this perspective, the New Age movement opened a doorway we should walk through, but this time with complete seriousness and profound forethought. Will this path, which I have briefly depicted above and termed “Neo-­ Hasidic,” succeed in producing seasoned Torah scholars who bring with them a new message, or will it turn out to merely be a response, or even remedy, for our own time and place? As this revolution is still only in its infancy, it is still difficult to determine those characteristics that bind its different adherents together, especially since they often profess diametrically opposed religious and political visions. Does this approach wish to produce Torah scholars who are also called upon—­ both on the individual and collective levels—­to support a particular ideological goal, or is it capable of producing spiritual leaders who are 417

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not wedded to an impersonal and particularly hard ideological stance? Is the principle of freedom capable of producing a stable, ongoing approach to life, or can it only be a source of negation? It seems to me that these questions need to be addressed at the very beginning of our journey. They deserve an answer based on the in-­ depth study of the inner secrets of the Torah, a simultaneously broad and deep investigation that begins with the ancients and continues until our own times, and through its researches attempts to produce a Jewish language relevant to our times. This, in my opinion, was the vision evinced by Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook. I pray that this process will succeed and find favor in God’s eyes. I am glad to contribute to its success in any way I can. There are two further points we need to consider. The first is the issue of the profane and the pareve—­the neutral, that which is neither profane nor holy, which just is. The intensity of the yeshiva experience I described above was and remains tremendously impactful. All those who have had such an intense experience know it deep in the marrow of their bones and recall it often with great longing. However, such an experience also has its problematic dimensions; in this case it exudes a single-­minded toughness, devoid of tenderness. To achieve such an exalted spiritual peak, to reach a level of spirituality that aspires to tower over the mundane, an individual must devote every iota of his being, every ounce of his life force to this end. Every field engenders a certain intensity among its disciples, but the religious-­ethical one is different than all the others: the artistic, the athletic, the economic, and so forth. A person who devotes himself to art does not believe that he is committing himself to the only field that has internal, spiritual value, that it is the only field that is indisputably the cream of the crop. Even if he truly and wholeheartedly devotes himself to his art, he remains aware of the fact that this devotion possesses a crucial subjective component. In contrast, someone enveloped in an 418

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intense religious or ethical experience often believes that his endeavor is the only one that possesses intrinsic, eternal value. He understands that in his endeavor there is an objective element that takes pride of place above and beyond all the subjective options that surround it, and that objectivity, in and of itself, possesses a significance beyond itself, that is to say, a metaphysical one. And what about those matters lacking intensity that are part of the very fabric of existence? Those matters that fill life with grace, but that most agree lack an objective purpose, such as, for instance, a fondness for humor, practicing the culinary arts, or playing a musical instrument or chess, the mad obsession of the philatelist or bibliophile, or any other flourishing endeavor that is neither holy nor profane? Does the pursuit of these endeavors transgress the proscription of wasting time that could have been used for Torah study? Would an individual whose personality is heavily or even marginally based on such pursuits be merely willing to define them apologetically in terms of “its nullification [time spent not studying Torah] is its performance [the actuation of studying Torah]”5 or would he take a Hasidic approach claiming that he is redeeming the sparks? Or would he feel obligated to enter into an exhausting journey to identify the purposes underlying these endeavors? Indeed, to put it mildly, such declarations fail to show true respect for these endeavors, and leave those pursuing them with a bitter taste in their mouths, feeling alienated from the true source of meaning. Any justification for these neutral enterprises fails to comprehend their true nature and even undermines them. Any attempt to classify these endeavors as divine worship fails to understand the power of these activities that are neither holy nor profane. Such activities reflect an intrinsic neutrality that merely is, that does not need to apologize for itself, that is satisfied to be itself without any recourse to an interpretation or framework provided for it by extrinsic sources. 419

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Even more to the point, the inner, spiritual demand requiring us to measure all our actions from the perspective of “before whom you are going to be required to provide a reckoning”6 does not allow any justification for the trivial, for the whimsical (ha-­mah be-­khakh). It is uncomfortable with high-­spirited mischievousness or naughtiness, with a sense of adventure, with childish curiosity, with the light touch of humor. Holiness is understood to be at war not only with the profane but also with the neutral. Indeed, the Hasidim explicitly state that holiness is the opposite of the whimsical. Among the Mitnagdim, the opponents of Hasidism, one hears the retort that “the wisdom of the man in the street is the opposite of that of the Torah.” Eventually a point is reached where the following joking remark, which reveals a very harsh truth, was made by one of the great talmudists of the previous generation (in my presence): “When I wish to know the truth, I ask a man in the street, and then I know that the truth is to be found at the very opposite end of the spectrum from the answer given by this simple man whom I had met and asked to respond to my question. After all he is called an am ha-­aretz [a boorish or ignorant man].” As I see it, it is at this point that the demand for holiness enters the picture. This is a holiness that by its very nature is internalized because there are spheres that lack any justification. Such a demand stems from the aspiration to return the secular sphere to the fold, to engage in secular matters in and of themselves, as themselves, integrating them into Jewish life. This is the acquiescence to the need for play, to the grace of creation as found in that which has no value, which is merely whimsical. The second point concerns secularism’s innovations. Secular Judaism’s most important innovation, to my mind, is not its aspiration to territoriality, its nationalism, or its early, twentieth-­century Zionism. Neither is it the fundamental normalcy that it returned to Jewish life; rather, it is the new possibilities that it provides for innova420

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tion in the Torah world, possibilities that currently are barely expressed in any way at all. That great revolutionary, Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook, did not primarily dedicate his revolution to transforming our attitude toward the Land of Israel or the nation of Israel; rather, he revolutionized the very way we look at the Torah: he asserted that we need to imbue the Torah with a new light. The Torah, after many years in exile, where it did not need to deal with certain harsh realities of life, had been patiently “sitting in a corner,” waiting. It was waiting for the freedom and the seriousness, the thoroughness and the independence, the creativity and the individual courage, that the West introduced to the world and that the process of secularization had brought to the nation of Israel. These were meant to enter the domain of the Torah and nurture the Book of Life back to the life it had been waiting for. Even more innovatively, according to Rabbi Kook, this renewed growth must also be the result of the gentile’s nurturing the Torah, allowing for a process of cross-­pollination, as it were. The Torah world, of course, recoiled strongly from such a suggestion, even though no thorough investigation had been conducted into the issues of whether gentiles may be taught the Torah nor of whether Jews may interact with gentiles in a way that does not inherently negate and disparage them—­a trend prevalent in certain schools of Jewish thought. I believe that we must share the treasure that is the Torah (the repository of our covenant with God) with the nations of the world. This endeavor will by its very nature demand a process of translation that will imbue the Torah with a new light. If we accomplish this process correctly and successfully, we will fill in the blank pages in the book of the final redemption. In making this claim I rely on the thought of two kabbalists. One is the nineteenth-­century Italian kabbalist Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh, who was born in Morocco and wrote Israel and Humanity (Yisrael ve-­ 421

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ha-­Enoshut); the other is the great twentieth-­century kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag. However, even more significantly, the nations of the world—­a fluid entity comprised of all those who do not belong to the Jewish people—­ owe us an enormous debt. If they wish to repay this debt and simultaneously help us and the Torah grow by sharing their knowledge and insight, we should certainly respond positively. If not for ourselves, we should do so for the sake of our Torah study and for the Torah study of our children and our children’s children, as our own study of the Torah is rapidly reaching a dead end. Instead of creating the next link in the chain of the revelation of the Oral Torah, we, ad nauseam, repeat the words of our predecessors.

Postscript I wrote these remarks about twelve years ago. Now, having reread them, I should note that the Neo-­Hasidic approach has indeed successfully entered the religious-­Zionist mainstream. Hasidic convocations (hitva‘aduyot) and talks on divine worship and soul work, as well as art workshops, have become de rigueur in many different yeshivot; the girls’ seminaries have been heavily influenced by the Neo-­Hasidic revolution; the individuals leading the revolution have received a significant amount of recognition; and their institutions have published an impressive and far-­ranging series of books that have garnered space on many bookshelves and in many hearts. Music is another field that mediated Neo-­Hasidism’s entrance into the mainstream. First came Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who, beginning in the 1960s, frequently performed in Israel and garnished his music with radical Hasidic insights. Then came many of the most influential contemporary Israeli singers, including Evyatar Banai, Shuli Rand, Etti Ankri, and Ariel Zilber, who were also influenced by Neo-­ 422

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Hasidism, primarily that associated with Bratslav and Chabad Lubavitch. They also contributed very significantly to disseminating the Hasidic consciousness—­its melodies and its worldview—­throughout Israel’s religious population, and, even more impressively, throughout Israeli society in general. While some of the Neo-­Hasidic houses of study are identified with more liberal approaches to Judaism (including Yeshivat Siah Yitzhak, Otniel, Tekoa, and Mahanayyim), others are affiliated with a more zealous worldview (such as the yeshivot in Ramat Gan and Yitzhar, which are associated with the hilltop youth). Thus, pragmatically speaking, these two groups do not really work together, and it is impossible to discuss one, unified umbrella-­group of Neo-­Hasidic yeshivot; however, Neo-­Hasidism is still the wellspring from which the many changes wrought by these batei midrash (houses of study) have come—­changes that extend well beyond Hasidism’s parameters. The very existence of another voice in the religious-­Zionist conversation—­one that is not exclusively influenced by Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook’s insights—­changed the language employed in the religious-­Zionist sphere. The perspective on Israel’s relationship with the Arabs that emerged from Rabbi Menachem Froman’s school of thought was founded on a Neo-­Hasidic base, as was the diametrically opposed conception espoused by Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg. Rav Shagar’s somewhat positive attitude toward postmodernist thought, feminism, and Far Eastern religions was cognizant of Hasidic thought, as is the thought of his Neo-­Hasidic detractors, including R. Yehoshu’a Shapira, who established the Ramat Gan Yeshiva and opposed Rav Shagar. Where will the Neo-­Hasidic consciousness take us in the years to come? Will it gain an even stronger hold on the Israeli consciousness? Time will tell. However, I pray that it will take a greater role in the uniquely Israeli and broader Jewish conversations about identity, and even spread its influence to other matters. 423

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1. Merkaz ha-­Rav Yeshiva in Jerusalem was the Harvard of the religious-­ Zionist movement’s higher educational institutions. Named for Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-­Kohen Kook (1865–­1935), after his demise it was led by his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda ha-­Kohen Kook (1891–­1982), the spiritual father of Gush Emunim (the religious settler movement). 2. This was the particular legacy of Rav Kook, who sought a religious appreciation for the work of the mostly secular early Zionist pioneers. 3. Rabbi Cohen was Rav Kook’s other chief disciple, alongside his son, though his philosophical-­mystical spirit had been somewhat shunted aside in the yeshiva that bore his master’s name. 4. b. Berachot 5b. 5. b. Menachot 99a-­99b in the name of Resh Lakish. 6. m. Avot 3:1.

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17 A Closing Conversation with the Editors Conducted by Jordan Schuster The following text is based on a 2018 interview with Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, editors of the present volume, conducted by Rabbi Jordan Schuster, a graduate of Hebrew College and a student of Hasidism, modern Jewish thought, and Yiddish. Schuster: How is Neo-­Hasidism different from Hasidism? Why is it important for you both to articulate what you are doing as “Neo-­Hasidism?” Mayse: Art, you often refer to both Hasidism and Neo-­Hasidism as a kind of “devotional mysticism.” In that sense, I think we really stand within the lineage of Hasidism itself. Neo-­Hasidism sees itself as cultivating a devotion to the inner world, a life of the spirit that is expressed through actions but also through the inward glance. We are drawn to this path of interior spirituality that sees the richness of inner piety as flowing into the performance of deeds and rituals—­this is the heart of the matter. The prefix “neo” may of course refer to something new, but it also means the contemporary reclamation and revival of something old. We consciously take or uplift ideas from Hasidism and do so knowing that we are reading the tradition selectively. Like Martin Buber, Hillel Zeitlin, and other Neo-­Hasidic thinkers (presented in this book’s companion volume A New Hasidism: Roots), we too are active participants in shaping its contemporary expression—­ 425

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based on our own religious personalities and moral compass. But we also allow the traditions of Hasidism to shape us and make claims upon us; the encounter with these sources is a relationship of mutuality. As one can see in this volume of contemporary Neo-­ Hasidic thinkers, each one of us reads the tradition differently, with an accent or emphasis grounded in the spiritual trajectory that has informed his or her own life. We do share in a deep engagement with the traditional sources, those that came before Hasidim, as well as the language of Hasidut itself. It’s more than just a nice vort (a pithy teaching) here or idea there; it’s reading Hasidic texts thoughtfully and occasionally reading them “creatively.” We are really trying to see what these sources have to say to us and our generation. Art and I are frequently asked, “Why do you Neo-­Hasidim work so hard to put these texts into dialogue with the modern world?” Or, as some people put it, “Why do you work so hard to rescue this tradition? Is it worth the great effort it seems to take?” But Art and I fell in love with these sources; somehow we are both summoned to the life of the spirit they offer. In different ways, these Hasidic books saved Judaism for us. This is our key to the tradition. The teachings of the Hasidic masters are a window into the world of the spirit—­a universal phenomenon—­and also our window into the specific traditions and language of Jewish piety. Green: I would start with the word “neo.” “Neo” is a translation of the Hebrew word hadash (new). And Neo-­Hasidism, like Hasidism itself, is all about hiddush (novum, or a sense of renewal). We begin with what looks like very old-­fashioned Judaism, but then discover that it is brand-­new. Note how the psalms chosen for Kabbalat Shabbat alternate back and forth between Ha-­shem malakh, “Y-­H-­W-­H has ruled,” and shir hadash, “a new song.” Shabbat is the oldest thing in the world, going back to Creation, but each 426

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Shabbat is completely fresh and new. That’s the way I feel about combining “neo” and “Hasidism.” Hasidism began as a renewal movement in Judaism, as a kind of spiritual rebirth. It felt that Judaism had gotten old and dry, formulaic and legalistic, and it needed to breathe the spirit back into it. The great enemy of early Hasidism was mitzvat anashim melumadah—­rote religious behavior—­but I think that in its later years Hasidism fell back into that learned behavior again. It fell into what the Kotsker Rebbe already saw as “Hasidism by inheritance.” Hasidism became tradition; Hasidism became a matter of performing this or that custom; you do what your grandfather did because your grandfather was a great Hasid. That is Hasidism in its relative decrepitude. This isn’t to stay there aren’t live sparks among the embers. I believe there are. Nevertheless, Hasidism mostly fell into being a habit of mind and behavior rather than being about spiritual renewal, rather than being about hiddush. It was so bound to tradition that it couldn’t be a hiddush. The power of “keep it the same as it was” overwhelmed the inner impulse toward hiddush. Part of what repressed the creative spirit of Hasidism was its extreme position of battle against the modern Western world. The terrible struggle between Hasidism and Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) really placed Hasidism in an antimodernity stance, opposing Western education, any modern innovation, any change in the status of women, any innovation at all that was seen as changing the old way. Neo-­Hasidism, since Buber and Zeitlin, has claimed that Hasidism needs renewal, a new rebirth. We want the spirit of Hasidism—­our heartfelt commitment to its most important teachings—­without the bitter opposition to modernity and modern education, which is almost universal in the Hasidic world today. So in all these senses we are looking for something quite new and different than Hasidism as it exists today. Thus “neo” is really 427

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important to me as an active force. To call for “Neo-­Hasidism” is to declare that the spirit of Hasidism needs to be rescued from the kelippot (husks) that have grown around it, obscuring the sacred sparks. Schuster: Both of you discuss how Neo-­Hasidism seeks to “rescue” the spirit of Hasidism for modernity. Do you see Neo-­Hasidism as also seeking to “rescue” modernity in some way? Mayse: Each of the great writers presented in the A New Hasidism: Roots volume spent some time in that world of modernity and then made a conscious choice to return to a mystical form of Judaism. Zeitlin and Buber studied Nietzsche, Spinoza, and Kant, and Heschel wrote a doctorate at the University of Berlin on religious phenomenology. Their works reveal a brooding awareness that modernity itself doesn’t hold everything one needs. On the contrary, together with a bounty of positive ideas, modernity presents an array of new challenges to the spirit, including humanity’s hubris and the descent into wanton destruction in the quest for power and domination. So we too are drawn both to the tradition and to modernity and postmodernity, as well as to the creative tension—­or hopefully, the fruitful dialogue, synthesis, or at least synergy of ideas—­that this simultaneous commitment may realize. The “will to power” that governed much of modernity has become a new sort of self-­ obsession in our day, leading to a preoccupation with the individual and near-­total loss of self-­transcendence. Our inability to stand in dialogue with prior generations costs us the richness of our symbolic languages. And cutting ourselves off from these traditions only compounds the sense of telishah or “rootlessness” that inheres in our experience of modernity. Our collective search for an intellectual and spiritual lineage, for groundedness in the tradition, is expressed in the Roots volume of this collection. 428

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Green: I would say the same thing in a different language. We are Hasidim. We have an essential message that begins with: Melo khol ha-­arets kevodo, leyt atar panui mineh—­the world is filled with divine glory; there is no place—­or object or moment—­in which Y-­H-­W-­H cannot be found. And we believe that the purpose of human life is to redeem sparks of holiness, everywhere. Our job is to cultivate that consciousness, to uplift, to transform. I see the modern world as desperately in need of that attitude—­of that search for kedushah amid the kelippot, holiness amid the “shells.” We have a stance. We approach modernity from that very rooted place; that is the work we have to do, and the work we think society has to do. We come into modernity as full participants in the modern and postmodern world. But we come with this very deep rerooting in those essential values. ‘Avodat ha-­Shem—­we are here to serve the One. And serving means uplifting and transformation and showing people what it means to be a religious human being and what that has to do with transforming the world. Mayse: That is the very point of this book: to say something to the world. To look at the different elements of our Neo-­Hasidic message, and—­together with these kindred souls—­try to figure out what we have to say to those beyond our immediate community. Green: How did we wind up being such a minority? I mean, the Jews are a tiny minority of humanity, and we are a tiny minority of Jews being interested in the mystical tradition. And among those, we “neo’s” are a minority yet again. Coming from such a tiny, narrow corner, such a specific and somewhat odd place, can we really say something to the world? Is there a message that transcends the kelim (vessels) that we are so in love with, that can go beyond and speak to a broader humanity? That is a challenge to us or to the people who read us, maybe to the next generation of thinkers who come out of us: How do 429

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we translate this tradition again for the broader world? Buber and Heschel were very good at this. I would say, Ariel, that they were better at it than you and I are. In some ways we are very text-­bound people, you and I. We are in love with the sources. Thus perhaps we are more successful at reclaiming the textual tradition than we are at broadening the focus for the whole world. We might need another generation of disciples who can do that for us. Mayse: This is something I struggle with quite a bit. Who am I really trying to talk to here? I fear that the Jewish specificity of our message often prevents it from having a broader interest or impact. But on the other hand, how can we do this without watering down the intensity of our message? Won’t popularization lead immediately to religious mediocrity and a loss of the critical heart of Neo-­Hasidic devotion? There must have been a similar conversation in the days after the Maggid’s death. . . . Schuster: I’m thinking about how Buber and Heschel’s focus seems slightly different than yours, and therefore ends up speaking to a different audience than yours. Buber in particular seemed to be writing to “root” Judaism in a kind of universal spiritual-­ humanism. It seems like you are both much more interested in “rooting” Jews in a tradition of Jewish spiritual devotion, but one that interfaces and engages with the modern world. You spoke a bit about some of the obstacles of communicating your message to a broader, more universal audience. But what strategies do you have to speak more limitedly to Jews who resist the idea of embracing a tradition or practice of Jewish devotion? And how do these strategies and struggles reflect your own spiritual journeys? Green: I came to Hasidism after a bad youthful romance with Orthodoxy, after a great need to escape what had become a kind of compulsive, self-­repressing devotion to observance. And having made the break, I was looking for a different kind of Judaism. For me, Hasidism was a liberation, a Judaism that was about 430

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this deep spirituality. It was about the adventure of finding holiness everywhere. It was about a joyous, openhearted, encouraging Judaism that built people up rather than knocking them down. It was about trying to give people more joy and less guilt. So, Hasidim was an opening for me in that sense. It helped me return to Judaism after breaking out of a narrow place. Perhaps, ironically, it also helped me to realize that my own very Jewish quest was part of a universal spirituality. I discovered Hasidism at about the same time I discovered a comparative approach to religion, and I came to see Hasidism as a Jewish version of more universal trends. In that sense I feel quite close to Buber and Heschel as you describe them. And Hasidism was liberating also because it thought about God so differently: recognizing the all-­pervasive spiritual aspect of existence and the underlying oneness of the universe. Now, in my theological writings, I use this kind of religious language, which I mostly learned from the Hasidic sources about God. I wouldn’t say that my language is exactly the same as you would find in any particular Hasidic text, but it derives from those sources and is constantly nourished by my studying and teaching them. For me all of this is opening and liberating because of the history of how I came to it: as an alternative. But I recognize that for lots of people who read my book Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition and then discover that I daven from a traditional siddur—­ that is a big shock. It is not a step that they can necessarily follow. They like what I say theologically, but then the very traditionalist Jewish expression of it is harder for them. I’m aware of that, and I try to build that bridge the best I can. But it’s not a simple one. Mayse: It’s funny, our paths intersect almost like a double helix: I came to Orthodoxy after a bad romance with liberal Judaism. I had started to make inroads into the liberal Jewish community. I admired the openness, courage, and autonomy of liberal Jews, 431

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and also the emphasis on equality and egalitarianism. I hold these values dear, and will take them with me to the grave. But to me the liberal communities lacked devotional intensity. The sustained commitment to learning and praxis wasn’t there. And so I looked at the world around me and said: “I want to see something more. I need something more.” I had just started taking classes in Jewish Studies in college. One day, I opened up this book about Hasidism and fell in love. I said to myself: “This is the language of my soul. These Hasidic teachings on the oneness of all being, on the power of intention to create sacred deeds, are lessons that I recognize from my experiences as a martial artist” (see chapter 7). I came to Orthodoxy for its commitment to constant and consistent practice. But I brought with me the voice of Hasidic devotion and the spirit of liberal America. The primary community I’m now in conversation with is the Orthodox world. I don’t have to convince people there to daven from a traditional siddur, but rather to be open to heartfelt spiritual experiences, to talking about God and to exploring the vast richness of Jewish theology, to reclaiming the emphasis on Jewish life as a quest to stand in the presence of God. I’m trying to convince them that their commitment to intensity and halakhah must be rooted in the inner world. And to this there is an equal amount of resistance, in a different way. And then there is a whole different conversation to be had with Israelis. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik won a profound victory in defining American Orthodoxy, but the legacy of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook means that a conversation about spirituality in the Israeli world looks totally different. As the essays included in this volume reveal, there is a whole realm of spiritual discourse in Israel in which spirituality, praxis, politics are all mixed together—­ from the revival of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s teachings, to the 432

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Neo-­Hasidic piety of the dati le’umi (religious-­Zionist) or HardaL (ultra-­Orthodox religious-­Zionist) communities, to mystical ultranationalists, people like Yitzhak Ginsburgh. Neo-­Hasidim in Israel may draw upon the vitality of this revival, but many of us also struggle with the way the Hasidic sources are used to justify stances and actions we find morally abhorrent. Don Seeman’s essay in chapter 4 of this book, “The Anxiety of Ethics and the Presence of God,” explores this thorny issue with great insight and sensitivity. Schuster: As you both work to bring the messages of Neo-­Hasidism to the wider world, do you feel that different kinds of messages should be emphasized to different kinds of Jewish communities? Mayse: I guess the heart of what I really have to say is directed toward a community of people committed to Torah and mitzvot and halakhah. And that doesn’t refer to any denominational boundary in particular, but to a group of people who see themselves as beholden to and living the path of Jewish practice in the contemporary world. I would love to welcome other people into that world, but I don’t quite know how to invite those others into its beauty. I often describe to my students that there is a tension in the way we come to practice. One of these poles is like what the Sefer ha-­Hinnukh says: “Aharey ha-­pe‘ulot nimshakhot ha-­levavot”—­the heart is drawn after one’s deeds. Each action creates a vessel into which sacred illumination, flowing from the inward well of inspiration, can be drawn. The way that one moves in the world affects the spiritual life within. But on the other hand, I always point out that the first point of the Shulchan Arukh—­at least according to Rabbi Moshe Isserles’s gloss, is “shiviti ha-­Shem le-­negdi tamid”—­ religious life begins with the awareness of standing in God’s presence. That is the point of departure for this code of Jewish law. He continues by saying that to stand before the Divine is to realize that none of our deeds is ordinary or mundane. 433

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These are the things I find myself constantly trying to be mindful of, and hope to balance. This is a very old part of our tradition—­ first we act, and then we create meaning. We who live in the modern or the postmodern world know, perhaps better than ever, that becoming a meaning-­maker is essential to the spiritual life. And yet, on the other hand, as mystics and seekers we know that, as the Kotsker says, “To daven today because you davened yesterday means that you’re no better than any other rasha [a wicked person].” To have frumkeit rather than frishkeit—­ossified, rote piety rather than of-­the-­moment devotion and perpetual newness of spirit—­is to miss the entire point of the journey. These are two voices in our tradition, and in my own spiritual life. Part of what I try to share through my teaching and writing is a different way of thinking about the relationship between halakhah and spirituality, leaving room for personal devotion and communal practice, theology and law, eros and nomos, kavvanah and deed. There is a verse in Devarim: “lo avarti me-­mitzvotekha ve-­lo shakhahti” (Deut. 26:13): “I have not transgressed your commandments and I have not forgotten.” The order of this pasuk (verse) doesn’t make sense. It should have been the other way around. One of the Gerer rebbes—­I don’t remember which one—­says: “You know, at the end of the day, saying, lo avarti me-­mitzvotekha—­I have not transgressed your commandments—­is not enough.” Lo shakhahti—­not forgetting—­is the key. You have to remember what it’s all about—­the mitzvot are gateways through which we enter the realm of the Infinite, drawing forth some of that light into the physical cosmos and striving to make the world a more ennobled, just, and illuminated dwelling place for God. Green: In the years when I hung around with the Reconstructionists, I learned Mordecai Kaplan’s formula of the three B’s—­behaving, belonging, and believing—­going in that order. First, you behave in a certain way. Next, you feel like you can belong to a certain com434

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munity. And only then can you deal with the question of believing. I didn’t realize that he was on the side of the Sefer ha-­Hinnukh! Heschel, by contrast, begins God in Search of Man with one hundred or so pages of spiritual quest to open the heart. Only then does he get to mitzvot—­part three of the book. And maybe that is a little bit like how the Shulchan Arukh’s “shiviti ha-­Shem le-­negdi tamid”—­placing Y-­H-­W-­H before you at all times—­comes first. You have to begin with faith, with the quest for faith, and then you get to observance. Believing, behaving, belonging, he would say. So listen: Hasidism developed among people who were already observant, so they didn’t have that issue. But Neo-­Hasidism begins with the spiritual journey, begins with the seeker and that seeker’s finding a response to his or her quest in the heart-­language of Judaism. That leads you to try on observance, to do what you can with observance. This always has to be at a person’s own pace, as he or she is ready. It cannot be imposed from the outside. It has to grow from within, Personally, coming to live in a pretty fully traditional way took me a very long time. I went through a very rough patch early on in life. It took a fifty-­year struggle to get here, to be able to say about traditional Judaism, “This is the life I want to live. And this is the path I love. I’m living this life out of a combination of ahavah [love] and yir’ah [awe]. This is why I do it. And here I am.” I don’t think my personal narrative with its fifty years of ambivalence is a model I want to hold up. I hope others don’t need fifty years of struggle to get there. But I want to be open to people who, like myself, struggle and hesitate. “‘Ad yom moto tehakeh lo,” “You will wait for the person until the day he dies,” our tradition says of God. We should be that patient with this process as well. I think even our Chabad friends have learned that “either all or nothing” is not the way to go. They tried it at one point—­based on an argument that if you believed in God, you would have to accept 435

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all the commandments—­and they learned otherwise. You keep the door open to people, even if they are driving to your shul on Shabbos. People have to do things at their own pace. At the same time, I encourage people to be proactive in that quest, to try to grow in it. I encourage people to be open to all the ritual forms within Judaism. I think spiritual discipline does need forms. Judaism works so well as a spiritual path because of its richness of forms. So if you are lucky enough not to have had as big a burden as I had, I welcome you to open yourself to those forms, as fully as you can, without raising antibodies that resist. You have to know your own soul. And knowing your own soul means going at your own pace. Ultimately I do believe—­and I think we both know this, despite our somewhat different halakhic behaviors—­that doing one thing with a lot of kavvanah and a lot of heart is more important, more urgent, than imposing on yourself a lot of things that you really aren’t ready for. Mayse: Kavvanah, total commitment and presence in a single deed, is one of the truest teachings of Hasidism. We’re called to have that kind of focus and concentration, and yes discipline, in a single moment of dedication, rather than a diffuse range of practices about which you’re ruminating all the time and thus dwelling within none. The Ba‘al Shem Tov and Martin Buber have taught us to take things one at a time; whatever task lies before you at that moment—­that’s where you place the entirety of your being. Schuster: You have been suggesting that spiritual discipline can look different to different people. You’re not talking about doing everything the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh says. Are you advising those of us without a disciplined spiritual life to focus on a single spiritual practice—­to “take on disciplines one at a time,” develop each one, live into it, and then see where that takes us next? 436

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Mayse: I’m not talking about the submission to the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh either. Spiritual discipline definitely takes on different forms for different people—­whether it is one particular mitzvah or a set of mitzvot in a particular area. Spiritual discipline has two different elements. One of them is the demand for penimiut or inwardness: don’t let yourself get away with rote observance. Mitzvat anashim melumadah, rote worship, is the enemy of the spirit, right? Hergel, habituation, is a four-­letter word in the Hasidic universe. And for us! The second element is the focus on the discipline—­the voice of the whip that tells you to do something even when it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient. Of course, guilt is not the discipline we accentuate. The Ba‘al Shem Tov freed us from that kind of piety; he taught us that even the word for misdeed (het) has an alef in it: Alufo shel ‘olam mistater bo—­the Master of the world dwells even there within human frailty and failing. This allows for a kind of compassion that mediates all rigor and discipline. At the end of the day, we focus on the positive and not the negative. Green: There we are very much on the same page. Mayse: Without a doubt. This discipline is not about restraining some yetzer ha-­ra (evil inclination) that’s going to destroy us all if we don’t hold it back. It’s about the power of forms, structures, and deeds to move us. They have tremendous power over us, whether that is regarding one particular mitzvah or—­in a community where that looks different—­choosing a number of them and committing to those. I’m really talking about consistency—­consistency in both deed and inwardness. Green: Achieving consistency was part of what was so hard for me for such a long time. For me, it is not just about one practice. For me, spiritual discipline is about the pattern of Jewish traditional living. I consider 437

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the entirety of it a kind of discipline. It is about regularity, regularity of practice, and what that regularity gives me. I can explain it best by talking about what I do every morning at the beginning of my davening: I recite the passages on korbanot—­ the sacrificial passages. I recite four every morning, and the last two of them are about regularity. The first one is parashat ha-­ tamid (Num. 28:1-­8, recited in the morning liturgy), where you give the daily offering every morning and every evening. One of the deepest wisdoms of the tradition, I believe, is that dawn and dusk are sacred moments. There is something about davening that is a joining with the birds in recognizing that those moments are coming, that they know half an hour before sunrise or sunset to start singing. It’s always blown me away that we are a part of them, joining into that chorus. The second of those two parshiyot is the ketoret—­the aroma of incense offering. It is offered every morning and evening. The passage says: “You grind up the powder finely and it becomes a holy of holies for you—­kodesh kodeshim tehiyeh la-­khem.” I take that to mean that this aroma of prayer stays with you all day. And you can enter into it as your own private Holy of Holies. I have done this every weekday and Shabbos morning faithfully for a number of years now. You would think that would convince me to do it every evening as well! And yet, getting around to davening Mincha (the afternoon prayer) before sunset is somehow hard for me. I’m busy, I’m tired. Some days I’m sort of strung out from watching the news. I believe in the value of that discipline, the regularity of noting morning and dusk. I believe that is right, that is a deep wisdom, but that doesn’t always get me to do it. That’s where I am with struggling about religious discipline. I think that the discipline of afternoon prayer would be good for me, and I would like to do it. I did it yesterday! But I don’t do it every single day because somehow my discipline unwinds by that 438

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time of the day. And because I don’t have the same halakhic of-­ course-­I’m-­going-­to-­do-­it that Ariel has, it has to be some kind of ahavah or yir’ah rather than a sense of halakhic obligation that gets me there. So I don’t always get there. Confessions! Mayse: Remember the teaching of the Maggid: “Esh tamid tukad ‘al ha-­mizbeah, lo tikhbeh” (Lev. 6:13)—­“An eternal fire shall burn upon the altar; do not let it become extinguished.” Rabbi Dov Baer reads it as a command of the spirit: Extinguish that “lo”—­the feeling of inadequacy, of not being able to do something—­and the inward fire of the heart’s altar will burn forevermore! Green: Lo tikhbeh! Very nice. Mayse: That inner passion will always carry you forward. Schuster: Art—­I feel incredibly sympathetic when hearing that confession! At this point, could I ask you both to say more about what motivated you to create this project? Mayse: One reason for these volumes is the hope of getting the message out. We’ve tried to gather together, under a single roof, as it were, the voices of Neo-­Hasidic Jews who are teaching, working, and publishing in a variety of venues in communities throughout the world. Green: I guess for me part of doing this is a rebellion against the current organizational structure of Jewish life, where we are defined by denominations. Those denominations are mostly built around the questions of “How much do you observe?” “Do you permit this or that, and why?” We understand that these are not the most essential questions. We are asking a different set of questions: “What does it mean to be a religious human being, and how do you express that in Jewish language?” “What are the essential values of a spiritual life?” These are bigger questions than “Do you daven Mincha?” or “To what extent do you keep kosher?” And we wanted to say that there is an approach to Judaism that begins with 439

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those inner-­life questions and not with “Do you have a mechitzah (separation of sexes) in your synagogue?” or “Do you drive to shul on Shabbos?” Those may be important issues for some Jews, but they are secondary to the much bigger ones. Neo-­Hasidism is a new “slicing” of Jewish life around big and universal questions. These transcend denominational labels and are more basic. Yet they often seem to be missing in the way most American Jews encounter our tradition. Mayse: Art, you often tell people that the Ba‘al Shem Tov taught us to look at the world, at the self, and at the text differently, to uncover a deeper truth within each of those. His religious approach was a fundamental reorientation in all of these areas. This is represented in our collection of essays in different ways—­ looking at the text of our tradition with new eyes, with the glance of freshness and excitement. To use Rav Kook’s formulation: We must know in our heart of hearts that ha-­yashan yithadesh ve-­he-­ hadash yitkadesh—­the old shall be renewed, and the new shall be sanctified. We need to look into the texts of our tradition and say: “These really do have something exciting to say to our world!” The Torah, the sources of Jewish mysticism, and even the Talmud form the language of the Jewish spirit. Sacred time, sacred space, the sanctity of all moments and all people—­these are not forgotten concepts. And to the extent that they are, they must be reclaimed. Green: The Judaism we are talking about is very God-­centered, but we are rethinking how we use that word “God.” It’s finding Y-­H-­W-­H, the breathing core of all being, the One that underlies and unifies all that is. In some ways our central message is: Judaism is a religion! Whatever else Jewish identity is—­I don’t mean to oppose ethnicity or culture—­we are here over these three thousand years because we have something to say about God. With or without the “G-­word,” 440

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it’s about finding a way to bring the Divine into your life and to give expression to it. I have often defined a mystic as a person who understands that all of religion, the laws and the stories, the melodies and the texts and so on, are all there to bring you into the mysterious Divine Presence, and to then bring that presence into your life. I think that is our essential message—­and it’s a reading of the entirety of Judaism this way. All the various questions we have asked people to address in this second volume are in this spirit of Judaism as spiritual quest, as finding divinity everywhere. Mayse: And we really believe in the power of sacred study. Maybe too much, at times. When you open a book—­sometimes it’s the Humash, sometimes it’s the Gemara, sometimes it’s the Shulchan Arukh, sometimes it’s the teachings of a Hasidic master—­we feel that these words guide you in a quest for openheartedness, in the journey to come into the presence of the One. We can hear echoes of God’s voice in the words of these texts of our tradition. We don’t always come to this rung. But it’s the goal of our study. And I think that we also believe in the power of sacred people, though we’re sometimes ambivalent about this. Leadership is very important to our project. Schuster: Right. In chapter 12 of this book Ebn Leader explores the topic, asking “Does a New Hasidism Need Rebbes?” Can both of you speak more about leadership and its relationship to Neo-­Hasidism? Green: Hasidism has a leadership that is very powerful and dynamic, but sometimes scary. Charismatic leadership to which you devote yourself quite fully and unquestioningly, the relationship of Hasidim to their rebbe, demands a kind of hitbatlut: negate yourselves, negate your own will, give it entirely to your spiritual master. Have that full trust that your spiritual master knows what your spiritual life should be, and not only your spiritual life but your personal life, your business life, your everything else; your mas441

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ter knows better than you do. And I—­I’ll speak for myself at least—­come from a world where that kind of self-­negation is something we learned to see as dangerous and not desirable. We have all witnessed cult leaders who made all these claims and then used them to lead people astray, sometimes in terrible ways. So, in all our calls for Neo-­Hasidism, we have struggled with the question, “Are you romanticizing Hasidism to the point where you will lead people to that kind of self-­negation before a spiritual master?!” I have never let myself have a rebbe, giving myself totally to somebody else. I never quite let myself be a rebbe either, not wanting anybody else to give themselves too totally to me. I worried both about people negating themselves too much and their not finding their unique path, their unique star. I wouldn’t want to take that away from them. Early in my spiritual development, if I go back to age seventeen or eighteen, both Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Antoine de St.-­Exupéry’s The Little Prince were significant books to me. Both were about finding your unique spiritual path in life. Then I found in Hasidism a Jewish language that spoke of something similar, seeking out the sparks of your own unique soul. I think I had known all along that I needed such a teaching, and even those earlier books had “spoken” to me for that reason. I have always sought to encourage each of my students to seek and find that unique path. That’s the way we’ve tried to educate people here at our rabbinical school. That has been bedrock for me. So, when we are asked, “In what ways does Neo-­Hasidism have to be quite different from much of traditional Hasidism?” we have to say, around the issue of leadership: “Yes! It has to be quite different!” We have to avoid that hitbatlut, avoid that sense that there is a master who takes over your decision-­making and your spiritual life—­and also of course avoid the dynastic model. 442

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I watched, when Zalman passed, the thought that arose in the minds of one or two of his sons: “Should I be there in that role?” They knew quite immediately that they shouldn’t, and that was fine with everybody. I’m also thinking about the probably correct decision of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, who said: “No. I’m not going to find a Schneerson cousin whom I will adopt to become the next rebbe. That game is over. That is not what this generation of Jews needs.” That was a very important statement. All this said, there is a less dominant strand within Hasidic tradition that says that each person has a spiritual journey that belongs to him or her; the spiritual master is an important guide and example but is not the one who determines everything for us. In fact, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of Chabad, was closer to that view. It also dominated in the Polish Hasidic school. Now we need to come back to it. Mayse: Of course, we see the dangers of charismatic leadership all too often. But let me push back and say that Neo-­Hasidism also believes in the power of great individuals to inspire us, to share their own journeys with us, and to illuminate us even with their very presence. We believe this, as we know it to be true from our own experience. We don’t put much stock in piety by proxy, in cleaving to the tsaddik and thus being redeemed through his divine service alone, but we know that great teachers can utterly transform our vision of the world and inspire us to reach new vistas of the spirit. Thus there’s an important place for charismatic and spiritual teachers—­who are different from thought-­leaders or intellectuals. The early Hasidim had these kinds of leaders too. People gravitated to someone like Reb Zushya not because of the power of his ideas but because of the power of his religious personality—­ his integrity, kindness, humility, and gracious intensity. We need something of that in the modern world, especially in places and 443

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times when people are becoming increasingly disconnected from one another. We, as Neo-­Hasidic seekers, are also in search of communities! Schuster: It sounds like, for both of you, the Neo-­Hasidic leader must have a clear understanding of the problematics of power. He or she needs to be self-­reflective about it and to recognize the dynamics at play—­the innate human tendency to submit to a leader’s authority, people’s tendencies to project their ideals and fears onto a leader, and more. Would you then say that a Neo-­Hasidic leader’s main role is to facilitate the evolution of another’s own spiritual path? Mayse: That is so much of our project—­to be aware of all these issues. In this case, it demands that we cultivate spiritual leaders of integrity and courage who can stitch together the most noble elements of modernity and postmodernity with the sources of tradition. Green: I have had the great privilege in life of having had several students who are spiritually inspiring to me. And therefore the relationship between master and disciple—­the question of who learns from whom—­is complicated and mutual. I recognize the mutuality of it because I have been challenged to grow in the very course of being “teacher.” Zalman used to do a cute exercise: “This week you be the rebbe. Next week someone else will be the rebbe. You go sit at the head of the table and you be the rebbe!” I’ve never been much for those games or exercises, but in fact, if I look at my life, I’m happily feeling the complexity of master-­disciple relationships. When God chooses a messenger to call us back, that messenger may be garbed as teacher, student . . . or even thornbush. Schuster: Is there any other theme from this book that you would like to elaborate on? Mayse: What about Israel, so much a part of our project? 444

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Green: I’ll just say that we really consider ourselves one Jewish people, that we have inherited a single—­though multivocal—­legacy from the past: we are American, Israeli, European, Middle Eastern, and other Jews. Neo-­Hasidism is not just an American Jewish project. This is a universal Jewish reclamation. When we were already at work on this project, we began to say: “Wait! This is happening in Israel too. And how are we including that?” And the more we opened ourselves to that dimension, the more we realized that it was a very big piece of the picture. In some ways Neo-­Hasidism is happening more in Israel than it is here. Schuster: Is there anything that wasn’t said in the book that you wish you had the chance to say? Mayse: In seeking a broader audience, we are also trying to figure out what it is to say to people who aren’t Jewish, and what can we learn from traditions other than our own. This question is very much a part of our Neo-­Hasidism. It is something Hillel Zeitlin said to us through his writings very explicitly—­in the future, ahavat Yisra’el, the classical love of other Jews, will become transformed into a love of humanity. Ahavat ha-­Torah will expand to include the noblest elements of Western and Eastern religious literature, art, music, and so on. We clearly have learned a lot, and continue to learn a lot, from the cultures in which we are situated. That includes both contemporary spirituality and other faith traditions we encounter, in their current and past manifestations. Green: We regret not being able to include an essay on integral spirituality, which could have explored the question: How do we translate these specific Jewish insights into a language that can serve as a kind of universalist spiritual path? Are things we are saying also being said in a parallel way in Buddhism, in Sufism, and so on? Can Hasidic teachings somehow be taken out of the 445

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specific mythic context of Judaism and put into a language about which all of us can say: “This is our real message”? Mayse: Can we do so without denaturing it, without removing all complexity and the rich and living bond between the sources and their tradition? Green: Well, there is that question. In choosing to speak through the Jewish mystical tradition, without being literalist about it, I see us acting as remythologizers of Judaism. I delight in that, as I think mythic language allows for a depth of personal expression. But sometimes we need to be able to demythologize as well, to answer the question: “What do you really mean by telling that lovely story?” You explain it to the outside in universal terms, but then you go back to live it within your particularistic Jewish expression of it. At the same time, though, you can say: “This is the universal spiritual value I’m trying to represent here.” We are talking about trying to cultivate spiritual awareness, called da‘at in the Hasidic sources. As we try to make people more aware of the spiritual dimension of life on a daily basis, we are also open to learning how other people do that—­both our commonalities and differences with these other groups, and how together we might shape a universal language for cultivating awareness. The Zohar says, Ashrey man de-­‘ayil u-­nefiq, “Happy is the person who can both go in and come out.” Mayse: In chapter 9, “Neo-­Hasidic Meditation: Mindfulness as a Neo-­ Hasidic Practice,” James Jacobson-­Maisels does a beautiful job in intimating some of the insights our specifically Jewish version of mindfulness might have for the broader world. That is such an important question to consider, especially in light of the impending environmental crises as well as the contemporary political climate. We have a moral obligation—­here and in Israel—­to speak out against self-­interest, xenophobia, and essentialism, looming 446

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environmental disaster, and the eclipse of freedom. So, what are the messages we really have to say to that world? Green: How do we take this beyond the renewal of our Jewish language? I don’t think we know yet. Mayse: No, we don’t. Green: We have a gut-­level, instinctive sense of the values we want to teach and share. Sometimes I am almost tempted to say: “Let’s find ourselves a popular spirituality writer who can go through this book and pull out the values, telling us: ‘These are the things you are trying to teach. Here is how you would express them in a book addressed to non-­Jews.’” I don’t think we would go for it. We love the framing too much to see it cast aside. Schuster: I think it might be useful to hear, from your perspectives, what those specific values are. Green: I would start with the divine Oneness of Being. The interrelationship of all creatures, the interdependence of all creatures. Within that, the interdependence of humans on one another. And the sense that there is an ethos called forth by that. You find in the Hasidic works such teachings as: “Why could you ever strike another person? We are all one being. So hitting the other would be a case of your left arm striking your right arm. What would be the purpose of that?!” I think that this sense of unity bears with it a sense of holiness—­a presence of God, a discovery of the One within, that gives it a sense of holy task. Helping people to discover, articulate, and live in accord with that is a pretty big part of our message. Mayse: Specific practices and theologies guide us toward a sense of yihud, penimiut, and da‘at—­unity, inwardness, and spiritual awareness. We have our way of cultivating these values, but sharing the essential message of God’s Oneness as the heart of all Being is our part of a much bigger story. In a world filled with environmental and humanitarian crises, governed by increasingly amoral politics, 447

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mired in nationalism and xenophobia, the ethos that grows forth from this essential truth of unity and interdependence is a call to action that, as Heschel often said, must “shatter all complacency.” It beckons us to look beyond the surface textures of the world and its people and to act in accord with those convictions. As Heschel also taught: “To be is to obey”: to step into God’s presence is to penetrate into the meaning of existence, to see everything anew, and then to go about lessening the gap between the world as it is and the world as it can be. Our Jewish practices remind us to do this every single day. That is the point of it all. Schuster: When you think of Jews who have made this a central message, what do their communities look like? Mayse: Some inhabit shuls, some start independent minyanim, some others start various thought-­factories and community-­building projects. I don’t think there is a particular model. This is one of the great flexibilities of our Neo-­Hasidic path, but also one of the aspects that makes it so difficult to grow beyond small centers. Schuster: In your eyes, what would success look like? Green: Communities of people deeply engaged in Jewish learning, especially this sort of Hasidic mystical learning, which is to say learning in the spirit of deep openheartedness, as well as in living a Jewish life where prayer is integral, and where their commitment to social justice and societal transformation stems from that learning and praying. I mean, of course: Torah, ‘avodah, ma‘asim tovim (Torah, worship, and acts of lovingkindness). This is a basic message, but, with a Neo-­Hasidic teaching at its core, these values and actions have the power to transform lives and break open the heart. Mayse: It takes a long time for cultures to transform. It took thirty-­ five years after the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s teachings began to circulate for the ethos to crystallize into communities. What we are seeing now, independent minyanim and communities, were largely 448

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unheard of twenty years ago. So it might be another decade or two before these voices can take root in lived communities. That said, Judaism is in the midst of structural and ideological transformations—­the meaning of communities and synagogues is changing, as is the role of the rabbi, and the very place of religion in our lives. And I don’t think we exactly know where it’s all going. In this book we invite people to take up the challenge and join us in this quest. We have no interest in doing this alone; nor do we feel that our exact approach—­or any of those in the present volume—­will be the right fit for everyone. It’s not the passing of a baton, but it is a summons. If there is one thing I hope for this volume and A New Hasidism: Roots, it is that the collection will be a gateway for others to forge a new path—­Art, just as you did and I have done, each in our own generation—­so that it becomes their path. If the volumes can help create that, we will have made a difference.

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Contributors Rabbi Nancy Flam, a pioneer in the fields of Jewish spirituality and healing, serves as senior program director for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, where she directs the Prayer Project and teaches on the faculty of the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teaching Training Program. She was the first executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and the West Coast Director of the National Center for Jewish Healing, both institutions she cofounded. Rabbi Flam has consulted, written, and taught widely about Judaism, spirituality, healing, feminism, and social justice. She also edited the Lifelights pamphlet series. Estelle Frankel, ms, mft, is a practicing psychotherapist, spiritual adviser, and teacher of Jewish mysticism who blends the healing wisdom and spiritual practices of Kabbalah with insights from depth psychology (www​.estellefrankel​.com). A teacher of Jewish Studies for more than forty years, she is currently on the teaching faculty of Lehrhaus Judaica and Chochmat HaLev Center for Jewish Meditation in Berkeley, California. She is also the author of numerous essays and two award-­winning books on Kabbalah and depth psychology: Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness (Shambhala, 2005) and The Wisdom of Not Knowing: Discovering a Life of Wonder by Embracing Uncertainty (Shambhala, 2017). Rabbi Dr. James Jacobson-­Maisels is the founder and spiritual director of Or HaLev: A Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation (http://​ orhalev​.org/). He also teaches Jewish thought, mysticism, spiritual practices, and meditation at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Haifa University, Yeshivat Hadar, and other settings around the world. He has been studying and teaching meditation and Jewish spirituality 451

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for twenty years. He strives to integrate his study and practice and to help teach and live Judaism as a spiritual discipline. Rabbi Ebn Leader has a growing international reputation as a Jewish spiritual teacher in the Neo-­Hasidic tradition and is an authority on Jewish prayer. He is coeditor, with Rabbi Or N. Rose, of God in All Moments: Mystical and Practical Wisdom from Hasidic Masters (Jewish Lights, 2011). Currently he is a talmid (student-­disciple) of Hebrew College Rector Art Green, from whom he has received rabbinic ordination. Growing up in Jerusalem, he was formerly a talmid of Rabbi David Hartman, from whom he learned Talmud, and of Amos Hetz, from whom he studied movement and movement notation. Shaul Magid is the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, Kogod Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, and rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue. His most recent books are Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism and the Making of Modern Judaism (Stanford University Press, 2016), The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament: Elijah Zvi’s Commentary to the Gospels (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), and Piety and Rebellion: Essays in Hasidism (Academic Studies Press, 2019). Rabbi Elhanan Nir is currently a rabbi and teacher at the Hesder Yeshiva Siah Yitzhak and Yeshivat Mahanayyim in Gush Etzion. He is the editor of the newspaper Makor Rishon’s Sabbath insert and won the Prime Minister’s Prize for creative work in 2011. He is also the author of two books on Jewish thought: Spirituality in Day-­to-­Day Life (Yediot Sefarim, 2011) and A Jew in the Night: On the Dreams of R. Nahman of Bratslav (Yediot Sefarim, 2017), as well as three books of poetry: Begging for Intimacy (2008), The Ordinary Fire (2011), and He Who Is under the Rubble (2014), all published in Hebrew as part of Hakibbutz Hameuchad’s Rhythmos series. Haviva Pedaya is an Israeli poet, author, and scholar of Kabbalah and Hasidism. Her academic research is devoted to the phenomenolog452

Contributors

ical study of mysticism and religion and to examining sociocultural and psychohistorical intersections. She has also spearheaded dialogue between Kabbalah and psychoanalysis. As a social activist, she engages contemporary issues in Israel as they relate to Jewish existence such as Mizrachi Jewish experience, feminism, art, music, and ethics. She is also a full professor at Ben-­Gurion University of the Negev, while her house serves as a center for classes on Jewish spirituality and she offers community learning to the Israeli public. She is a descendant of the kabbalist Rabbi Yehudah Petahyah of Baghdad. Rabbi Nehemia Polen, PhD, is professor of Jewish Thought at Boston’s Hebrew College. He is the author of The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (Jason Aronson, 1994, 1999) and is a contributing commentator to My People’s Prayer Book, a multivolume siddur incorporating diverse perspectives on the liturgy (Jewish Lights, 1997 and ongoing). He previously studied with and served as a teaching fellow for Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel. In 1998-­99 he was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, working on the writings of Malkah Shapiro (1894-­1971), the daughter of a noted Hasidic master whose Hebrew memoirs focus on the spiritual lives of women in the context of prewar Hasidism in Poland. The research culminated in his book The Rebbe’s Daughter (Jewish Publication Society, 2002), which won a National Jewish Book Award. Rabbi Or N. Rose is the founding director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership at Hebrew College, which he previously served as a founding faculty member, a teacher, and an associate dean of the Rabbinical School. He is coeditor of Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table (Jewish Lights, 2013) and My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (Orbis, 2012), as well as co-­publisher of the Journal of Interreligious Studies. Reb Zalman Schachter-­Shalomi, who is featured and introduced at greater length in A New Hasidism: Roots (Jewish Publication Society, 2019), 453

Contributors

was the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. He was the leading voice of Neo-­Hasidism in North America until his death in 2014. Born in Vienna and trained as a disciple of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, he broke with Chabad in the 1960s to become a bold and highly creative innovator in the fields of Jewish theology, liturgy, music, and religious community. He is the author of many books devoted to teaching the arts of Jewish prayer and devotion, including Davening: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Prayer (Jewish Lights, 2012). His contribution to the present volume was written in his last years. Rabbi Don Seeman is associate professor in the Department of Religion and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. He works at the crossroads of Jewish Studies, phenomenological anthropology, and the ethnography of religion. He also currently serves as rabbi of the New Toco Shul in Atlanta. Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg is the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God’s Image in the More-­Than-­Human World (Cambridge, 2015) and the creator of neohasid​.org. He teaches and is widely published on Judaism and ecology, animal rights, and human rights. His academic research focuses on Kabbalah, Hasidism, Maimonides, midrash, and Martin Buber, among other subjects. He also founded the first Hasidic-­ egalitarian minyan, in New York in 1995. Rabbi Jonathan P. Slater is senior program director at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, where he works to cultivate mindful leadership among rabbis, cantors, and other Jewish leaders to transform Jewish life. He is author of the two-­volume A Partner In Holiness: Deepening Mindfulness, Practicing Compassion and Enriching our Lives through the Wisdom of R. Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev’s Kedushat Levi (Jewish Lights, 2014) as well as Mindful Jewish Living: Compassionate Practice (Aviv, 2004). He has served congregations in New York and northern California.

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