Be-Ron Yaḥad: Studies in Jewish Thought and Theology in Honor of Nehemia Polen 9781644690208

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BE-RON YA H  . AD Studies in Jewish Thought and Theology in Honor of Nehemia Polen

Jewish Thought, Jewish History: New Studies Gregg Stern, Series Editor

BE-RON YA H  . AD Studies in Jewish Thought and Theology in Honor of Nehemia Polen

Edited by

Ariel Evan Mayse and Arthur Green

Boston 2019

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Polen, Nehemia, honouree. | Mayse, Ariel Evan, editor. | Green, Arthur, 1941- editor. Title: Be-Ron yahad : studies in Jewish thought and theology in honor of Nehemia Polen / edited by Ariel Evan Mayse and Arthur Green. Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, [2019] Identifiers: LCCN 2019007910 (print) | LCCN 2019008111 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644690208 (ebook) | ISBN 9781644690192 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Jewish philosophy. Classification: LCC B5800 (ebook) | LCC B5800 .B42 2019 (print) | DDC 296.3--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007910 Copyright © 2019 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved. ISBN 978-1-64469-019-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-64469-020-8 (electronic) Book design by Lapiz Digital Services. Cover art by Adina Polen. Published by Academic Studies Press. 1577 Beacon Street Brookline, MA 02446, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

‫לכבוד הרב נחמיה נ׳׳י עמו׳׳ש‬ ‫בן הרב דוד שמעון ז׳׳ל וגנעשע ז׳׳ל‬ ‫ולאשתו עליזה חיה נ׳׳י עמו׳׳ש‬ ‫בת ר׳ נח שי׳ ומלכה פערל שת׳‬ ‫באהבה עמוקה וידידות רבה‬ ‫מתלמידים מלאי תודה וזמרה‬ ‫מחברים ורעים נאמנים ונכספים‬ ‫וממשפחה מברכת ומבורכת‬

Contents

Reading in Harmony: An Introduction Ariel Evan Mayse and Arthur Greenxi Judaism as a Path of Love Avraham Yizhak (Arthur) Green1 To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg27 From the Cleft of the Rock: The Eclipse of God in the Bible, Midrash, and Post-Holocaust Theology Rachel Adelman50 The Unexpected Impact of Sections and Subsections in a Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah: A Case Study Chaim Milikowsky74 From Leviticus to Latkes: The Origins of Hanukkah’s Miraculous Oil and the Meaning of the Festival Michael Rosenberg89 Between Tradition and Innovation: The Pedagogical Possibilities of the Penai Yehoshua Jane L. Kanarek

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Rediscovering the Covenant: The Contemporary Hasidic Thought of Rabbi Shmuel Berezovsky of Slonim Alon Goshen-Gottstein118 Protest or Discernment? Divine Limitation and Mystical Activism in the Qedushat Levi Or N. Rose

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Leadership as Individual Relationships: A Close Study of the No‘am Elimelekh Ebn Leader

177

Letter to Riga: Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn’s Meditative System for a Young Woman Naftali Loewenthal203 Hasidic Women: Beyond Egalitarianist Discourse Tsippi Kauffman223 Prophecy and Imagination in the Teachings of R. Tzadoq ha-Kohen of Lublin, R. Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, and R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira Daniel Reiser258 Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies: Semantic Innovations for Discernment and Disclosure Elie Holzer281 Transcendent God, Immanent Kabbalah: Prolegomena to the Hasidic Teachings of R. Avraham ha-Malakh Avinoam J. Stillman311 Losing the Princess: Returning to Self: An Archetypal Mapping of the Soul Aubrey L. Glazer331 Caring for the Graves of the Righteous: The Holocaust in Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin’s Sippurei Ḥasidim Avraham Rosen

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”: The Death of Nadav and Avihu in Hasidic Literature Ariel Evan Mayse365 Index407

Came the Baal Shem and changed the whole thing. He introduced a kind of thinking that is concerned with personal, intimate problems of religion and life . . . The Baal Shem took the tradition of Jewish learning, the Talmud and Kabbalah, mysticism, and gave it new luster and a new meaning. He was very much influenced by and adopted quite a number of ideas from Jewish mysticism, kabbalah, but he gave them a new slant, a new accent. —Abraham Joshua Heschel1 Traditional music has a cosmological foundation and reflects the structure of manifested reality. It commences from silence, the unmanifested Reality, and returns to silence. The musical work itself is like the cosmos which issues from the One and returns to the One, except that in music the tissues out of which the world is woven are sounds that echo the primordial silence and reflect the harmony that characterizes all that the absolute and infinite Reality manifests. —Seyyed Hossein Nasr2

Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Hasidism as a New Approach to Torah,” Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, ed. Susannah Heschel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 36, 38. 2 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981), 272. 1

Reading in Harmony: An Introduction

The craft of textual exegesis shares much in common with the interpretation of music. Both projects require a set of skills of attunement that must be cultivated over many years: careful listening, perceptiveness to subtlety and the sublime, and the open-heartedness to be moved and transformed by the object of one’s interpretive attention. This art also requires a willingness to revisit the same compositions many times over, always plumbing the well in the search for deeper resonances or layers of meaning. Exegesis of texts as well as that of music requires attention to the silence, whether to the white spaces on the page or the pauses between the notes. One must also have an ear to what remains unspoken and unexpressed, glancing toward the font of inspiration that generated this artistic work and indeed continues to flow through it. The meeting grounds of interpretation generate new ideas and vistas of experience, heights that cannot be attained if one’s close reading is driven forward by a hermeneutic of immediate suspicion. A critical eye is an invaluable asset, but the interpreter whose project is driven by weary cynicism will miss many of the riches that are hidden in plain sight. Melodies and words are gateways to the infinite expanse of the human spirit and creativity. But sensitive and thoughtful exegesis is itself a kind of song, a duet between text and reader in which both are transformed through the encounter by the synergy of the voices. A disciple of the Ba‘al Shem Tov offered the following image regarding the power of music to stir the heavens: the upper and lower worlds, he said, are like two musical instruments tuned to the same key.1 When the string 1 Toledot Ya’akov Yosef (Koretz: 1781), tzav.

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of one is plucked, its resonant sound will cause the strings of the second to reverberate with music as well. Imagining the interpreter as one instrument and the text as the other, this metaphor points to the encounter with a text as carefully strumming the strings of tradition. The exegete cannot be too far removed, for one must sense the vibrations of the text and be ready to follow its lead. Only through finding the correct note may the threads of the text bring music to the heartstrings. Textual exegesis, we might say, is deeply repercussive. The Jewish tradition offers many terms for different modalities of textual interpretation and explanation, the result of several millennia of unflagging commitment to unpacking sacred texts. The most common and best known of these terms is “midrash,” a noun formed from the Hebrew root DaRaSH—to seek out or inquire.2 The project of midrash, which encompasses legal exegesis, theological interpretation, and very much more, may correctly be described as the heart of rabbinic Judaism. In dialogue with other interpretative traditions, medieval Jewish scholars developed a multi-layered approach that is commonly called PaRDeS, a fourfold exegetical structure of meaning: peshat (“plain-sense”), remez (“associative”), derash (“allusory”), and sod (“mysterious,” “esoteric”). These terms have been deployed across the centuries in different ways by various authors, many of whom have prided one layer over all the others. Jewish thinking on these terms is rich, though largely unsystematic and idiosyncratic. Such an approach to texts as holding a nearly infinite array of meanings, grounded in rabbinic conceptions in Scripture and expanded as the generations went on, is crucial for understanding the literature of Kabbalah and Hasidism. The Jewish mystical literature sees the Torah as a verdant textual garden overflowing with secrets, for each of its letters holds an untold number of new interpretations. Because Scripture is a linguistic embodiment of the invisible and ineffable Divine, medieval mystics depict the text of the Torah as the central medium through which the chasm between the human and divine realms may be bridged. Such sources describe the movement of interpretation as a revelatory experience. 2 See Nehemia Polen, “Derashah as Performative Exegesis in Tosefta and Mishnah,” Midrash and the Exegetical Mind, ed. Lieve Teugels, Rivka Ulmer (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 123–153; idem, “The Spirit Among the Sages: Seder Olam, the End of Prophecy and Sagely Illumination,” It’s Better to Hear the Rebuke of the Wise than the Songs of Fools (Qoh 7:5), ed. David Nelson, Rivka Ulmer (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2015), 83–94.

Reading in Harmony: An Introduction

Of course, the ideals of creativity and tradition may strain against one another in many Jewish works. This often tense but fructifying relationship, which appears in unique forms in all periods, is most pronounced in the self-reflective works of modern exegesis. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, for example, distinguishes between two different modalities of exegesis that complement and sustain each other. The first of these is perush, defined as “expansion” or “spreading forth” (as in Isa 25:11) in the quest to broaden our pool of understanding through the “intellectual encounter (pegishah) with the knowledge that we have already, to clarify and to expand it.”3 The unfolding project of interpretation stretches and renews the tradition by allowing no stone to remain unturned. But, says Rabbi Kook, there is a second type of exegesis, called be’ur, which relates to the Hebrew word for “well” (be’er). The goal of this modality is to drill down and tap into the mighty, flowing river of creativity, not through expanding the banks of pre-existent channels, but through bringing forth an artesian spring that had remained hidden and untouched. Neither of these thrusts of interpretation may exist independent of the other; they must be brought into attunement. The encounter with the same religious text or work of music may yield a radical variety of meanings.4 The exegete must look for those resonances that are both authentic to the source and uniquely fitting for his or her own time and place. Like a conductor who approaches the score and animates it in a way that it has never before been played, interpretive creativity is the gift of one who stands before the text. The text is brought to life through the melody of its exegesis; therefore, no two peoples’ songs will be identical. The text remains the same, just as the musical score remains unchanged, but the attuned vision and educated ear of the interpreter give them new and unique expression. Sometimes this is a choice on the part of the interpreter, but often there is a deeper force that shapes one’s reading. Jewish mystical tradition speaks of a shoresh neshamah, or “soul-root,” a particular constellation of character traits and unique intuitive knowledge that governs the encounter with a text. A scholar whose soul is rooted in kindness, for example, will train eyes of benevolence upon the sources of his tradition and share them with others. 3 ‘Eyn Ayah (Jerusalem: 1995), haqdamah, 14. 4 See Sefat Emet, toledot, 5646.

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Creativity also emerges from quiet moments of sustained listening, from attuning one’s mind and heart to a work’s liminal spaces. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, a Hasidic master known by the title of his masterpiece work Sefat Emet, offers the following remarks on the relationship between exegesis, silence and the melody of freedom: Some sections of the Torah are uniquely appropriate (meyuḥad) for exile, and are therefore closed in (satum).5 But others are designated for redemption and freedom. In the Song [of the Sea], there are gaps (parashiyot) in every verse and every line. These reveal the light of Torah. The sages have taught, “What is the purpose of the spaces? They allow room for contemplation between one section and the next.”6 The redemption of Israel left an impression on the Torah, and the hidden treasure houses of Scripture were opened. This is why it says, “At that time [Moses] will sing” (Ex. 15:1)—the time had come for these illuminations of Torah to be revealed.7

Hasidism teaches that exile is primarily to be understood as a state of restricted consciousness or spiritual vision. Redemption, by contrast, comes as one is freed from the shackles of this mindset and comes to see the cosmos—and the text—with a renewed vitality and expansiveness. Often it is through consideration of the white spaces, through creative attention to that which is least obvious about a text that allows the light of meaning to break though. Textual exegesis may become a song of redemption, a melody stitched together from the spaces as well as the text. Such an interpretive song, says the Sefat Emet, may leave an imprint on the text itself, flexing its contours such that it reveals its majesty and mysteries as never before. This redemptive song of freedom prepared Israel for receiving the Torah at Sinai, opening their hearts and minds to the revelatory moment.8 Homiletically linking be’er (“well”) and bi’ur (“explanation,” see Deut. 1:5), the Sefat Emet suggests that another song (Num. 21) readied Israel to begin the ever-expanding project of human interpretation: The song [of the well] prepared them for entering the land of Israel and the Oral Torah (Torah she-be’al peh). This is the meaning of the “mouth of 5 Parashat Va-Yeḥi begins in the middle of a column in the Torah scroll (see Gen. 47:28). Cf. Bereshit Rabbah 96:1. 6 Bamidbar Rabbah 14:21. 7 Sefat Emet, be-shalaḥ, 5650. 8 Sefat Emet, be-shalaḥ, 5638.

Reading in Harmony: An Introduction

the well” (pi ha-be’er) [i.e., one of the miracles created in the primordial twilight]9—Israel has the power to open up the wellspring of Torah. Of this we say, “He implanted eternal life within us.”10

The breath of the Eternal, claims Rabbi Alter, has been imbued in the mortal form as an unending wellspring of inspiration. This near-miraculous exegetical font is not divinely given, but actualized through the specifics of human creativity, as the interpreters bring forth new meaning from the sacred reservoir of tradition. We even might say that, in doing so, exegetes mirror the divine by granting eternal life to the texts of the tradition. Let us dwell for a moment longer with this image of the well as a stream of inspiration. Rabbi Alter often plays upon the difference between “cistern” (bor) and “well” (be’er), distinguished from one another by a single Hebrew letter. In one sermon, he explains as follows: “The cistern just contains gathered water; its contents are limited by the size of the vessel that contains them. The well, on the other hand, is joined directly to the source of an ever-flowing spring.”11 It is from the be’er, the well of infinite meaning that is connected to the sources of knowledge, wisdom, and tradition, that we summon forth new interpretations of ancient texts. The cistern, by contrast, represents a mode of thinking inside the box, routinized exegesis undergirded by a tired tradition of threadbare and rehearsed interpretations. “You, too, have a place to make your own,” says Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira of Warsaw. “In every subject, you can strive forward and delve deeply, revealing a greater part of your power, your vital animating force [nafshekha] and your soul, connecting them to the Torah and to the Infinite One that lies within.”12 Exegetical renewal and conceptual innovation, say these thinkers in unison, come through linking ourselves to that ever-flowing interior well at the heart of the tradition, of the text, and the human being. The inward quest into the depths of this well, the pulsing font of the spirit, is only one part of the quest for meaning. Building on an elliptical phrase from Sefer Yetzirah,13 Rabbi Alter claims that “the highest heights 9 See m. Avot 4:6. 10 Sefat Emet, ḥuqqat, 5641–5642. See also ibid., ḥuqqat, 5643, 5645. 11 See the passage translated in Arthur Green, The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998), 251. 12 Ḥovat ha-Talmidim (Jerusalem: Undated), ch. 12. 13 See Nehemia Polen, “Birkat Kohanim in the S’fat Emet,” Birkat Kohanim, ed. David Birnbuam and Martin S. Cohen (New York: New Paradigm Matrix, 2017), 259–274.

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and the deepest depths depend on one another” (‘omek rom ve-‘omek taḥat teluyim zeh be-zeh).14 The deeper one’s journeys into a text or a tradition, says Rabbi Alter, the more expansive the scope of the exegesis: “When the innermost root of the Torah is revealed, its illumination may be drawn into every language . . . the branches [of a tree] are renewed through the root.”15 One who sees into the heart of a text will also grasp how it branches into a wide canopy of interrelated ideas. For great scholars, the radiance of Torah spills outward and overcomes might have once been perceived as the boundaries of holiness. Astronomy, history, mathematics, literature, and, of course, music, are infused with sacred vitality through being brought into the concert with the text. Developing such attuned exegesis is very difficult. It is a long day’s work to simply understand the argument of many texts, not to mention subtle ideational resonances, unattributed influences, and conceptual affinities. Unearthing deeper intellectual, philosophical, or religious meaning is not always self-obvious. Texts that we may have seen hundreds of times, such as the book of Leviticus or the Mishnaic order of “Purities” (tahorot), may remain closed books before us. They seem inaccessible, and, for most, utterly irrelevant to contemporary life. Yet, says Rabbi Alter, it is precisely in difficult places that one’s efforts will be most rewarding.16 The hiddenness of the text is suggestive of its complexity, nuance and richness. The harder and more seemingly arid the textual ground, he claims, the more illumination may be yielded through successful exegesis. Some literary soil remains particularly hard to penetrate, but it may not be so because of abstruse technical vocabulary. Such mysteries may reflect a lack of willingness in the reader to bring the fullness of his or her self to the encounter with the text: We know there is something called “hidden wisdom” (ḥokhmat ha-nistar). I heard from the mouth of the holy Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel [of Premishlan] that “hidden” refers to something that cannot be communicated to another, like the taste of a food. One cannot speak about it with someone who has never tasted of it. Such things cannot be explained in words. . . People often call Kabbalah hokhmat ha-nistar, but how is it hidden?! Anyone wishing to study it can surely find the book in front of him! If one 14 Sefat Emet, bereshit, 5636 15 See Sefat Emet, devarim, 5638. 16 See his comments in Sefat Emet, toledot, 5650.

Reading in Harmony: An Introduction

doesn’t understand, it is simply because he is ignorant, and to such a person that Talmud and its commentaries might also be called “hidden”! Rather, the hidden elements of all the Zohar and Lurianic writings are built upon communion (devekut) with the Creator.17

One who lacks depth of experience or openness to personal engagement, be it philosophical or spiritual, will miss key aspects of meaning that inhere or may be elicited forth. Such engagement with scholarship is thus, in a sense, a quest for self-discovery, a journey founded in excitement and longing. Rabbi Shapira describes this fundamental yearning for completeness as driving forward the encounter with the text: “The Talmud says that a person will go to great lengths to recover his lost item. One who studies is searching for a part of the self, and delights in the union [when it is recovered]. The student is united [with the lost aspect] of his own essence.”18 The study of certain works—musical and textual—must go beyond technique. It requires cultivation of the inner life and the quest for experiential, existential meaning, thus broadening the self and awakening aspects of the subject of one’s study. Rabbi Shapira is one of the select Jewish thinkers who reflected upon the interface between textual creativity and musical innovation. In one teaching, he notes that the faculty of music (described as ‘olam ha-niggun) is the patrimony of all, and that one must awaken the soul through retrieving new melodies.19 But elsewhere Rabbi Shapira suggests that power may be summoned forth even from careworn melodies. “Song is one of the keys to the soul,” he writes, “But we do not need to compose new melodies, just as we do not say that someone who wants to gladden himself with wine needs to do so from his own press, or that one who wants to inspire himself or another else with words needs to invent a new language . . .”20 Rabbi Shapira then offers a series of contemplative exercises, techniques intended to allow his readers to study a melody’s peregrinations. In order to find deeper—and innovate—meaning, one need not compose a new melody any more than 17 Yosher Divrei Emet (Jerusalem: 1981), no. 22, fol. 122a. 18 Derekh ha-Melekh (Jerusalem: 1995), va-era, 1929, 94, interpreting b. Kiddushin 2b. 19 Tzav ve-Zeruz, printed with Hakhsharat ha-Avrekhim (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2001), no. 36, 389. 20 Hakhsharat ha-Avrekhim (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 2001), ch. 9:3, 113–114. See Nehemia Polen, “Niggun as Spiritual Practice, with Special Focus on the Writings of Rabbi Kalonymos Shapiro, the Rebbe of Piaseczna,” The Contemporary Uses of Hasidism, ed. Shlomo Zuckier (New York: Yeshiva University, forthcoming).

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one might need to invent a new language. Careful attention to a song in the form of aural exegesis allows the seeker to achieve spiritual uplift. Command of the art interpretation is a journey not achieved in a single day. Like the mastery of chess, or classical music, exegetical skill is refined over many thousands of hours. Yet ultimately, as a quest rather than a question, there can be no total dispositive answers or mastery. Each new vista of achievement must awaken the interpreter to the awareness that just over the next horizon there is another level of meaning, another well to be plumbed. Indeed, quotes Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev in the name of the Maggid of Zlotshev: One thing I have asked of God, it shall I seek. To gaze upon the pleasantness of God [and to visit His palace] (Ps. 27:4)—I have asked to gaze upon the pleasantness of God, and I will seek it eternally, knowing that there are always higher and higher levels understanding. Even when I attain something, I will continue to seek—this quest is unending.21

A text in all of its complexity and depth brooks no mastery. In the continuation of his homily, Rabbi Levi Yitshak offers an image of the Divine as teacher or parent, beckoning us closer only to step back and lead us further yet. Like the pool of meaning at the heart of the text, the divine is perennially hidden yet continuously revealed through our struggle. We need guides to help us along the path. Such an approach to study cannot be absorbed from a book. Though reading may train our eyes and ears to pick up on subtle resonances in the texts, Hasidism has taught us that we need living teachers to lift a text into the present. This message is the point of an early story, perhaps the earliest such tale committed to print, which describes the first meeting of Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch and his teacher, the Ba‘al Shem Tov. After being prompted by the Ba‘al Shem Tov to explain a certain passage in a religious text, Rabbi Dov Ber offered a series of learned explanations. The master dismisses each of his interpretations, and then the Ba‘al Shem Tov offers his own exegesis of the passage. The house is filled with angelic light, and a ring of fire surrounds the pair of scholars. The Ba‘al Shem tells the Maggid, “Your explanation was correct, but your study was without any soul.”22 The duty of spiritual education goes beyond imparting a body of knowledge or interpretation. The teacher is 21 Qedushat Levi ha-Shalem, ed. Michael Darbarmediger (Monsey: 1995), vol. 1, shemot, 143–144. 22 Keter Shem Tov ha-Shalem (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2004), no. 424, p. 264.

Reading in Harmony: An Introduction

tasked with showing the student how to unearth the experiential wisdom hidden in the words of a text. The illuminated educator, like a master conductor, makes the score come to life. Our remarks thus far have centered upon the power of exegesis and inspired interpretation in relation to sacred texts. But religious communities are not the only smithy in which meaning is forged. Rabbi Professor Nehemia Polen is one of those rare scholars whose religious teachings, spiritual writings, and academic scholarship have come together into a sustained project of interpretive imagination and engagement. Without compromising his intellectual integrity, his work brings forth the sacred from the mundane and expands the reach of Torah. He has shown us a path in which narrow scholarship is directly linked to a quest for ever-broadening depth and connectivity. Often he does not make the point explicitly, but a reader of his work who is attuned to the inner music of the interpretive process discussed above will feel clear echoes of it in both the tone and content of Polen’s writings. Those who have had the privilege of being his students will also know the energy and absorption in the sources reflected in his enthusiastic teaching style, ever seeking to penetrate the written sources to allow the student to glance at the inner experience that lies behind and within them. The breadth of his scholarship reflects the many turns and developments in Professor Polen’s own life. Raised in a traditional and learned family and given a yeshivah education at Ner Israel, where he studied with the great Rabbi Ruderman, Polen achieved a degree in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. He left Baltimore in the quest for a more expansive approach to Jewish learning, joining the intentional community of Havurat Shalom, founded by his friend, and now colleague, Arthur Green, one of the editors of the present work. After the sudden death of his father Rabbi David S. Polen, he answered the call to become rabbi of his father’s synagogue in Everett, Massachusetts. There he served with his mother Nettie Polen, who continued in her role as senior rebbetsin, and he remained at this post for twenty-three years. After his first year in Everett, Polen married Lauri Wolff, whose joyful presence illuminated the community as well as their growing family. During his tenure as rabbi, Polen began his doctoral studies at Boston University. His dissertation and subsequent book on Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, written under the guidance of Elie Wiesel, launched an entire sub-field of study, which Polen has complemented with a wide variety

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of works on early rabbinic, biblical theology, and Hasidic thought. Polen became one of the core faculty members of the Boston Hebrew College, joining the faculty of its post-denominational rabbinical school. The central pillar in Polen’s life across these many decades has been, and remains, his wife and life’s companion Lauri. The loving partnership at the heart of their shared intellectual and spiritual journey is founded in mutual encouragement, admiration and inspiration. In every element of Polen’s writing and teaching there is an unmistakable glow that resonates with Lauri’s wisdom, unflagging support, and generosity of spirit. It is our honor to present this volume to Professor Polen, a scholar and educator whose illuminated exegesis has inspired so many over the course of many decades. Many of his students have become teachers in their own right, and countless others have gone on to live much richer and deeper lives in dialogue with the texts at the heart of our intellectual and spiritual tradition. The essays in this collection, from his students, colleagues, and friends, are a testament to his enduring impact on the scholarly community. The contributions explore with a range of historical periods and themes, centering upon the fields dear to Polen’s heart, but a common thread unites them. Each essay is grounded in deeply engaged textual scholarship that casts a glance upon the sources that is at once critical and beneficent. In cultivating this approach, Professor Polen, we are all your students. “What we need more than anything else is not textbooks but text people,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said in an essay on contemporary Jewish education. “It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read; the text that they will never forget.”23 In his remarks about the craft of Hasidic exegesis, Professor Polen has offered the following remarks: The interpretive dynamics of early Hasidism depend crucially on the personhood of the interpreter engaging with the personality of Torah, effectively identical with the personality of God. The Hasidic interpreter not only applies a method, but also explores and reveals the personal aspect of self and of Torah, in dialogue with each other. To be sure, the mystical teachings—omnipresence of God, illusory nature of evil, the creation of the world anew every moment—frame and influence the teachings, but it

23 Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Jewish Education,” The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), 237.

Reading in Harmony: An Introduction

is also true that the masters celebrate the individuality of interpretation as reflecting the stamp of each unique personality.24

An old Hasidic adage has it that the pious who rejoice with the Law on the festival of Simh.at Torah are its feet. The same may be said of the exegetes who bring the Torah to life. Such interpretation is not about overcoming the plain-sense of a text or foisting an idea onto it. Hasidic masters, argues Polen, listen deeply to the nuances of the text and, through their living exegesis, allow it to begin to speak. Na’eh darash, na’eh kiyyem. Professor Polen is a text person of whom Heschel would be proud, a teacher whose scholarship and Torah continue to inspire his students and colleagues. The Ba‘al Shem Tov recommended that one find a teacher whose Torah never stops growing. Limited masters, he said, offer only constrained fragments of the Torah—like the Rabbi Alter’s cistern, it is a brackish Torah. The words of a great teacher, claims the Ba‘al Shem Tov, embody the injunction to “be fruitful and multiply.” They grow and mature across the years, blossoming in new and distinct forms as they take new root in each new student. Dear Nehemia, we bless you: May your writing and teaching continue for many long years, and may your splendid works continue to be fruitful and multiply. This wish is offered by your community of scholars, friends, students, and family, and the contributors to this volume, representing but a small number of those who have been touched by this remarkable scholar. Ariel Evan Mayse and Arthur Green Berkeley and Boston Erev Rosh Ha-Shanah

24 Nehemia Polen, “Hasidic Derashah as Illuminated Exegesis,” The Value of the Particular: Lessons From Judaism and the Modern Jewish Experience, Festschrift for Steven T. Katz, ed. Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 55–70.

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Avraham Yizhak (Arthur) Green

Judaism as a Path of Love ‫ שהלכה לעולמה‬,‫לזכר אשתי האהובה מרת קריינדל בת שמעון ולאה‬ .‫ תנצב״ה‬.‫ביום ט׳ אלול תשע״ז‬ A midrashic source dating from the early middle ages quotes the famous second-century sage Aqiva as saying: “Had the Torah not been given, the world could have been conducted by the Song of Songs alone.”1 What a world that might have been! Instead of the quaking, fiery mountain, and the earth trembling at God’s voice, we would have only, “I will go into the mountain of myrrh, the hill of frankincense” (Song. 4:2). Instead of forty years in the wilderness, we would have only, “Who is she who ascends from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved” (8:5)? Instead of all the sacrifices, food, and sexual taboos of Leviticus, there would be only, “Eat, O companions! Drink and become intoxicated, O lovers” (5:1)! Quite a world indeed. But from these verses we would have been able to reconstruct the entire Torah, one whose teachings would have allowed us to sustain the world. This is the full-throated message of Rabbi Aqiva, that there is no separation between the most precise detailing of the commandments, both ritual and moral, and the inward face of love.2 Ordinarily we do not pay too much attention to attributions to famous sages appearing many centuries after their time. This would be especially true of an invocation of Rabbi Aqiva, who is quoted so very 1 Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim, ed. Solomon Schechter (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co., 1896), line 22, and see Schechter’s notes ad loc. 2 Of course, all of this intends to consider Rabbi Aqiva as a literary figure, as projected to us by the later Tannaitic and Amoraic sources. For the latest biographical treatment, see Barry W. Holtz, Rabbi Aqiva: Sage of the Talmud (New Haven, CT; and London: Yale University Press, 2017) and bibliography there. My own Rabbi Aqiva, I freely admit, is largely based on my reading of my teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Torah min ha-Shamayim (Heavenly Torah), a work I have been sharing with students for nearly half a century.

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frequently by these later sources. But this statement fits strikingly well with much that the earlier sources tell us about Aqiva. It was he, after all, who got the Song of Songs included in the canon. In the second century, the sanctity of three books was still being debated. When it came to the Song of Songs, Aqiva declared, “There can never have been any doubt about this one. All of Scripture is holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies!”3 Just what did he mean by that claim? Love is at the heart of the religious life. “The merciful One wants the heart.”4 In Aqiva’s eyes, the Torah narrative is really all about the powerful love between God and His beloved, the Community of Israel. The tales of the patriarchs, the Exodus, Sinai and the wilderness, the laws and statutes, were all a spelling out of that love. The Song of Songs was, in fact, first spoken at Sinai itself, the day of their mystical marriage.5 While the public voice of God may have been heard as declaring do’s and don’ts, at the very same moment, He was whispering sweet nothings into His beloved’s ear. Those “nothings,” of course, come with a capital N. A major avenue of Jewish spiritual reflection views the very pinnacle of the religious life as a constant repetition of the heady mixture of emotional states we felt while standing at the base of that mountain: love and awe joined together as one. As so frequently, the traditional prayer book says it best: “Unify our hearts to love and fear Your name.”6 The burning fire of that mountain is also the fire within the beloved’s heart, her desire for her Lover who descends from the highest heavens to dwell in her midst. Following each utterance that came forth from the mouth of the blessed Holy One (and these utterances are nothing other than “the kisses of His mouth”), we are told that “Israel’s soul passed out of them,” following the 3 m. Yadayim 3:5. 4 b. Sanhedrin 106b. 5 Mekhilta de-RaShBI, ed. Epstein, 143. See treatment by S. Lieberman in Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkavah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960): 118–26. See also my prior discussion in “The Song of Songs in Early Jewish Mysticism,” The Heart of the Matter: Studies in Jewish Mysticism and Theology (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2015): 101–15. 6 Yir’ah is translated both “fear” and “awe,” words derived from the same Hebrew root y-r-‘. Such Jewish devotional classics as Meir Ibn Gabbai’s ‘Avodat ha-Qodesh (1:26) and Elijah De Vidas’ Reshit Ḥokhmah (Yir’ah 2:7–15) distinguish “higher” from “lower” (or sometimes “outer” from “inner”) yir’ah. In its higher form, “awe” is always the proper translation.

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

Canticles verse that says “My soul came forth as He spoke.”7 “The mountain burned into the very heart of heaven (Deut. 4:11)”—this is the fire within the human heart. The mountain quakes, but at that very moment, the heart fills up with love. To stand in God’s presence is to live a life shaped by love. It requires an open heart, one that is able to receive the love of God that pours into us in each moment of our existence, and one that knows how to take in that blessing, that gift of love, and reshape it into a love for those around us, both within the human community and extending to the full fellowship of God’s creatures, amid whom His presence dwells. There is no response to the love of God other than that of sharing it with His creation. Lest the reader think that these sentiments are those of a naïve religious romantic, I need to say a few words about the theological context within which they are being spoken. As a student of my revered teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel, I am a Jew whose thoughts are much inspired by the words of the early Hasidic masters. Behind them stand many generations of kabbalists, especially the holy Zohar. But like Heschel, I also live in the wake of Maimonides, and he inevitably shapes my thoughts as well. His apophatic or negative approach to the question of divine personhood is life-saving (or faith-saving) for me, permitting me to dare to think of myself still as a believer. Throughout his long discussion of divine attributes in the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides remains silent on the question of divine love. Is it possible to claim that God loves this world He has created, or the creatures within it? Yes, the act of creation attests to God’s ḥesed, defined as “practicing beneficence toward one who has no right to claim it.”8 God does good for those creatures in every moment. But is this the same as saying that He loves them? Regarding anthropomorphism, the uncompromising views of the RaMBaM are well known. He attempts to be equally strict when it comes to anthropopathism, denying the attribution of human emotions to God. To illustrate this, however, he conveniently chooses to list some emotions that we 7 b. Shabbat 88b. 8 Guide 3:53. See the remarks of Zev Harvey: “If Maimonides had no problem speaking of our ahavah (or its Arabic analogue: mahabbah) for God, he had a big problem speaking about God’s ahavah (or mahabbah) for us. He rarely does so, and when he does it is with reference to a biblical verse. For how could God have ahavah for us? Ahavah is a bodily passion and God has no body,” in his “Notions of Divine and Human Love in Jewish Thought,” University of Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought 3 (2013): 2–3. God’s ḥesed in the act of creation is mentioned only at the Guide’s conclusion.

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would be happy to remove from the divine sphere: sadness, anger, jealousy, and the like.9 These might be considered imperfections even in the human character, after all. But on the simple questions—one so well known to those of us who live surrounded by a Christian culture—“Do you believe that God loves you?” and “How do you understand that love?” he remains silent. Any reader of my book Radical Judaism is aware that I operate out of a highly abstract theology, quite unlike that of Heschel, indeed more directly, in this sense, derivative from the Maimonidean approach to God. I understand God as the oneness of existence, the singular Source that underlies and is manifest in each of the varied forms of existence that appear before us. This God is indeed “the One to whom there is no second,” as the old philosophical hymn Adon ‘Olam tells us so clearly. But I need to understand this claim against the background of twenty-first-century science, including both astrophysics and evolutionary biology, not that of the Middle Ages. Of that Maimonides would surely approve. My theology (differing here from that of Maimonides quite sharply) leans in a panentheistic direction, seeing the One as reflected within the many. Regarding that infinite which lies beyond the creatures, I prefer to keep silent, following the Tiqqunei Zohar’s rather Maimonidean formulation “There is none who knows You at all.”10 I am speaking of this One that was there “before” the Big Bang, if one may use temporal language there at all. It was present in every bit of gas, in every fleck of rock-in-making that spewed forth from that event, and is the underlying stuff of every star in the heavens and every form of being on our own beloved and much-threatened planet. This force of existence coalesced into the pond of chemicals that came to constitute life and has then existed in every life-form that has come to be in our long, step-by-natural-selection-step, evolutionary journey, including ourselves. The very fact that we have begun to understand some bit of this process is testimony to our being a part of this great single mind of being, slowly revealing itself to us in the

9 Guide I: 29, 36. He has previously stated, of course, in Guide I: 54, that all qualities attributed to God, including ḥesed, are nothing other than descriptions of divine actions. 10 Tiqqunei Zohar, haqdamah, 17a. This is to say, in kabbalistic terms, that I understand the sefirot, and with them all metaphoric descriptions of God, personal and other, as projections from the realm of human experience, and eyn sof as eternally beyond the ken of human intellect, though accessible to preverbal intuition.

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

process that we often prefer to call scientific discovery.11 But it also attests to the greatness of the mystery. That One has been present in each life-form that has existed on this planet in the last fourteen and a half billion years, as it has been revolving around our sun. Because it has made the journey from the very simplest forms of life, one-celled creatures beneath the sea, to the great complexity of the still-mysterious human mind, we may assume that it has an appreciation for and seems to seek out both complexity and diversity. Or, to quote an earlier version of this story, we may say: “God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good.” This sacred process, in which the One is both hidden and revealed, is driven by that inner quest, one I suggest we humans might translate into a word based on our own emotional experience: “love.” I tend to respond to the question “Do you believe that God loves you?” with a liturgical reference, based on the order of our daily prayers. Each morning and evening, our service opens with two blessings, recited in order. One is a blessing to God for the wonders of Creation: the great lights, the drama of day and night. Its central line is “God renews constantly, each day, the work of Creation.” The second blessing is that of love: “With great love have You loved us, the house of Israel, giving us Your teachings.” I do not believe that God does anything different in the transition between those two blessings. God shines light upon the earth; the trees in the forest stretch upward to receive that sunlight, converting its rays into the chlorophyll they need to exist. The sun stands as a metaphor for the divine light, toward which all nature stretches. That is the first blessing. In the second blessing, we acknowledge that we too stretch forth to receive that same light. We convert it into our chlorophyll; we call it “love.” That is our stuff of life, the inner juice that allows us to be as fully human as the tree is fully tree. We then verbalize that love, share it, reflect on it, and turn it into teachings that help us to live, to pass the love on, and to become ever more human, ever more the divine image. Those teachings indeed come from God —as does the chlorophyll. That is who we are, little engines of humanization, humming away at the translation of ḥiyyut, the divine stream of energy or life force, into our beloved and life-giving force of love. In gratitude for the gift of life, we give 11 What we experience as the discoveries of human intellect, scientific, as well as mythopoeic, may also be viewed from the divine perspective as acts of ongoing selfrevelation. See this as a modification of the preceding note. See further discussion in my Seek My Face and Radical Judaism.

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to the One that underlies all existence the only thing we really have to offer: the gift of our own humanity. We fashion God in our image, making the cosmic One into a “Thou,” a loving partner. But we do this in response to a deep, innate sense of the mystery that dwells both within and around us. To say it in a way that may sound playful but is meant with complete seriousness: We sense that God creates us in the divine image, and we are obliged to return the favor. I have chosen to live my spiritual life within the Jewish tradition partly because I rejoice in our tradition’s ability to speak of this underlying oneness of being in personal terms. Theologically, that is what I mean when I thank God each morning for having made me a Jew. To see the ultimate as having a human face, a face radiant with blessing, calls me to ever-greater humanity. Yes, I fully understand that this personification is a result of projection, our human attempt to understand the mysteries of the universe in the language of human experience. But I am also open to the possibility— and this is an essential point—that the need to project a God figure onto the cosmos is itself the result of a deep inner truth implanted within us, an instinct for meaning-making that is aware that we stand in the face of great mystery. That inner quest for meaning, existing in the space between love and mortality, is also what makes us most fully human. This humbling awareness (“Know whence you have come and where you are going . . .”12), itself a gift of God, gives birth to mythical creativity, to the poetic muse, as well as to the drive for scientific investigation. Religion has insisted since most ancient times that our relationship with that One is expressed not only by intellectual quest, but also by emotion. In the language of the kabbalists, da‘at, the faculty given us in order that we might attain intimate knowledge of the One, is comprised of ahavah ve-yir’ah, love and awe. The stretching the mind toward the One is ever to be accompanied by the opening of the heart. This attempt to understand what we might mean today when we speak of the love of God and its mutuality will require some historical background. How and when did Jews learn to speak about the love of God? We will begin with the Tanakh, proceeding with the rabbis, and then on to the mystical tradition. The description of our relationship with God as a loving one first occurs in Sefer Devarim, the source of most of our vocabulary to describe religious emotion: ahavah, yir’ah, devequt, ḥesheq; love, awe, attachment to 12 m. Avot 3:1.

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

Y-H-W-H, and passion. This concluding book of the Torah is cast as a series of Moses’ parting admonitions to Israel before his death. There he speaks both of God’s love for His people and of our obligation to love God “with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” This love is mostly to be expressed in acts of loyalty, following His commandments and not rebelling, as did that generation of the wilderness. But where is R. Aqiva’s love in the first four books of the Torah? Why are we never explicitly told that God loves Abraham, that He redeems us from Egypt because He loves us, or that He is giving us the Torah out of Love? One Hasidic author13 suggests that the daily face-to-face contact with God known by that generation obviated the need for love, or at least the articulation of it as such. Only when there is a possibility of separation, after the child is weaned, we might say, does the parent need to say “I love you” and begin to ask the child “Do you love me?” The love that emerges from the passages in Devarim is that of God as loving ruler, whose protecting love and authority over us are one and the same, just as is ideally the case in either feudal fealty relationships (the knight defends his peasants; they reward him with the work of their hands) or in the more passionate but no less loyalty-demanding relationship of parent and young child. Show your love of God by following the rules; act well and you will be rewarded with a great and genuine outpouring of God’s love. The Eden of childhood offers a sheltered existence so long as you obey the rules. The relationship, we may say, is a mutually obligating one, but hardly a love between equals. “Our Father, our King” is the great refrain of liturgy we still intone in our holy season of repentance. That element of submission has not disappeared from Judaism, and indeed it is an essential part of the religious life. Even when the prophets began to use the metaphor of spousal love, equal partnership was hardly what they had in mind. When Hosea hears God tell him to go marry a prostitute, in order to feel what God feels in His covenant with Israel, we are hardly in the realm of egalitarian marriage. Only when He tells him to take that wife back, having forgiven her sins, as God has done for us, do we begin to feel that Y-H-W-H, too, has become vulnerable. His love for us is so deep as to make Him unable to 13 R. Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1789–1866), Derekh Mitzvotekha, ahavah (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1976), 397. This leads to the rather shocking thought that crossing the Jordan and entering the land (including sustenance by agriculture rather than manna) caused a potential space emerge between Israel and God, rather than bringing them closer.

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let go of us, despite all our inadequacies. Allowing Himself to love us, as Heschel would have said it, means that God allows Himself to need us.14 All this inequality is transcended, however, in the moment when Aqiva proclaims the Song of Songs to be the Holy of Holies. Of course he means that the Canticle is to be seen as a love poem sung between God and Israel, with the angels standing as the chorus of “maidens of Jerusalem” in the background. But the Canticle, if you read it carefully, is all about seduction and pursuit. The two of them, shepherd and shepherdess or king and maiden, run through the gardens and across the hills, filled with longing for one another. It is a remarkably egalitarian tale of love and desire, peril, and delight. The love is never routinized; it is more about courtship than it is about marriage, although we do get a wedding day. But certainly there is no sense of an impending marriage contract, where the husband will “acquire” a wife. Yes, she pines for him— “On my bed at night I seek the one my soul loves; I seek him but I find him not” (3:1). But he longs for her enough that he feels great fulfillment and rejoices when he finds her—“I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride” (5:1).15 While this love affair was mostly depicted as a collective one, carried on between the blessed Holy One and the Community of Israel, occasionally a verse from this Scripture would be applied to an individual moment or a single life. This was the case with Rabbi Aqiva himself, subject of the best-known account of a mystical journey in the rabbinic tradition. “Four entered the orchard,” we are told, Aqiva and three of his friends. One died, one went mad, and one became a heretic. Only Aqiva, the text goes on to say, “entered in peace and came out in peace. Of him the Canticle says: ‘Draw me after You; let us run. The King has brought me into His chambers (1:4).’”16 The sense that the passion of Shir ha-Shirim is to be applied to the individual’s relationship to God, as it is to that of the people, grew over 14 See my “God’s Need for Man: A Unitive Approach to the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel,” Modern Judaism 35, no. 3 (2015): 247–261. 15 Zev Harvey, in the interview quoted above and elsewhere, sets forth three terms for love in classical Hebrew sources: ḥesed, ahavah, and ḥesheq, suggesting that the last of these is the one best rendered as erotic love. Yet it is interesting that ahavah, not ḥesheq, is the term used for love throughout the Song of Songs, the primary text for divine/ human eros as interpreted throughout the later tradition. 16 b. Hagigah 14b. Interestingly, another version of the tale reads, “ascended in peace and descended in peace.” Here we have the internal and vertical metaphors for the journey to God laid out right before us. See my discussion in Seek My Face.

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

the generations (Christian interpretation of the song had it already in third-century Origen),17 perhaps with this image of Rabbi Aqiva playing a role in it. Listen to the RaMBaM, despite his refusal to depict God as loving humans, speak of the worshipper’s love of God: What is the proper love? One should love Y-H-W-H greatly and most powerfully. One’s soul should be bound up in the love of Y-H-W-H, constantly engaged (obsessed?) with it. It should be as though one is lovesick, the mind never free from the love of that particular woman . . . and the entire Song of Songs is a parable of this.18

Maimonides thus understands quite well what is at stake in the project of Midrash Shir ha-Shirim. It is the passionate love of the throbbing heart, with all its vulnerability, that he is talking about, when it comes to human love of God. But the love in the Song of Songs is mutual in that regard, surely more than that “acting with beneficence” that he finally allows for at the Guide’s conclusion. Perhaps in self-conscious defiance of the RaMBaM, in the kabbalistic tradition the sense that Creation is an act of divine love is portrayed quite graphically. “Everything depends on love,” to express it in the language of the Zohar. Listen to the Zohar’s description of the inner life of God: All is called love and all exists because of love, as Scripture says: “Mighty waters cannot quench love (Song. 8:5).” Everything stands upon love, because such is the holy name. We have established that the upper tip of the yod is never separated from it because it dwells upon it in love. . . . Regarding heh, we know that yod is never separated from it; they are in constant love and are inseparable. Thus Yod Heh. Of this we have learned: “A river flows from Eden (Gen. 2:10). [In the present tense:] It is constantly flowing; they cleave to one another in love. Vav is always the bridegroom of the bride. Yod with heh, heh with vav, vav with heh. That is why all is called love. And one who loves the King becomes bound up into that love. Hence: “You shall love with your God (Deut. 6:5).”19 17 See Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), and my fuller discussion in “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs” in AJS Review 26, no. 1 (2002): 1–52. 18 Mishneh Torah, hilkhot teshuvah, 10. Here, too, despite the highly passionate description, the term is ahavah, rather than ḥesheq. 19 Zohar 3:267b. “All” in the Zohar often refers to the entire sefirotic realm. See further the exposition of this text in Reshit Ḥokhmah, ahavah, 6:10, where he extends the “all”

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The divine realm is depicted as containing both male and female elements, and it is out of their union, an act of love, that the lower worlds are born and constantly sustained. While the Zohar is most interested in the birth of human souls, and especially the souls of Israel, as resulting from the zivvuga qadisha, it is quite clear that the same applies to all that exists in the kabbalistic version of the “sub-lunar” world, everything beneath the shekhinah. But the presence of gender, love, and union does not begin with shekhinah. The Zohar’s boldest mythic assertion is that the blessed Holy One Himself is the product of an act of love. That aspect of God is conceived in the womb of binah, the cosmic Mother within divinity, the product of the union of ḥokhmah and binah, “two inseparable companions.” They are the yod and heh of this passage, with the tip of the yod pointing to an ineffable mystery that transcends even them. The God who is the object of our worship (= vav, “the blessed Holy One”) is one who is Himself born of love, a love that transcends even Him. He is forever radiating the blessing of that parental love, however abstract, into His beloved Bride, shekhinah, and thence into all the worlds below.20 A notion of love that is at once highly abstract and boldly concrete and erotic lies at the very heart of Kabbalah. Even the mysterious forces that lie deepest in the inner mind of the universe are linked by something that can be called “love.” God’s love for the world, and specifically for humanity, for Israel, and for the righteous, is depicted through metaphors of both of the great and passionate loves known to humans, the parent/child relationship and the erotic/spousal. The image of God as loving parent of His creatures and the calling out to God in the language of “Father!” while found only occasionally in the Tanakh, is a mainstay of rabbinic teaching, where God is regularly Avinu Malkenu, “our Father, our King,” or Avinu sheba-Shamayim, “our heavenly Father.” The exile of Israel is frequently depicted as the tragedy of a father who has, in a moment of justified anger, cast his beloved children out of his palace and who longs for their return as passionately as they do, in seeking their redemption. Repentance is then depicted as the duty of a loving son (or daughter, as in the famous tale by Rabbi Nah.man to include the lower worlds. In the kabbalistic sources, including the Zohar, ḥesed and ahavah refer to the same divine locus, Generally, but not consistently, ḥesed is used regarding God’s love for humans, while ahavah is the term for human love of God. But even earlier, in the Bahir, Abraham is described as mitḥased ‘im qono. 20 See discussion by Isaiah Tishby, Mishnat ha-Zohar (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1957), vol. 1, 158–61 and passages cited there.

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

) to return, bringing about his own redemption, but also bringing consolation to his devastated and weeping father. In the Zohar, where Israel has a mother, the shekhinah, as well as a father, the picture becomes more complicated. Among the most touching of the varied pictures of parental love to be found there derives from the midrashic reading of “Due to your sins, your mother was exiled (Is. 50:1).” The Zohar depicts Israel as the child of a mother whose husband has divorced her because of her children’s waywardness.21 “It is our fault,” as the children of a divorced couple so often and so sadly feel. This strand of Zohar teaching says that we perform the mitzvot in order to affect their reconciliation. We so adorn Her with beauty that Father will no longer be able to resist, and will bring both her and us back into His bosom. We study the secret Torah of their love and devotedly perform the mitzvot that serve as Her adornments, ever hoping to rekindle their marriage. We endlessly declare and praise Her beauty. How could Father possibly resist taking her back? “Renew our days as of old!”—when we were all a happy family.22 It is a form of this parental love that takes the place of primacy in Hasidic discussions of love, found widely throughout the sources but nowhere more than in the teachings of R. Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezeritch.23 It may be shyness in discussing the erotic that turns the love-attention of these pietists toward the parental. But it may also be a certain lack of experience in the erotic love of man and woman. In a society like that of pre-modern East European Jewry, where arranged marriages take place in the years immediately following puberty, childbearing then beginning immediately afterwards, there is little time to develop feelings of such passion, and little if any legitimacy is given to them. In fact, they are seen mostly as the workings of the “evil urge.” But love between parent and child suffers no such societal strictures, and much of the force of eros comes to be channeled in that 21 Is. 50:1 is cited in Zohar 1:22b, 27b, 237a; 2:189b, 255b; 3:8a, 74b–75a, 102b, 115a, 253b, 268a. But see also 1:120b, as well as the passage quoted there by Derekh Emet from David ben Yehudah he-Hasid’s Livnat ha-Sappir, indicating that God has sent His shekhinah to be with them in exile in order to arouse Him to redeem them! See the very interesting treatment of this theme by Daniel Abrams in “Divine Yearning for Shekhinah,” in Kabbalah 32 (2014), 14ff. There and elsewhere (beginning in Kabbalah 6, 263–86, then in Ten Psychoanalytic Aphorisms (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2011), Abrams has dealt with aspects of family dynamic as expressed in sefirotic symbolism. Although my tastes are less Freudian than his, I find his treatments most suggestive. 22 See development of this motif in Reshit Ḥokhmah, ahavah, 8:10–14. 23 See the index to motifs of father-child relationships in Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer’s edition of Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘aqov (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1977), 372.

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direction. Thus the familiar parables of the father teaching his child to walk, always stepping backward so that the child will increase his skill, tzimtzum described as the father reducing his profound thoughts so that the child will be able to access them, and many more. The spousal love of God and Israel, such a major theme in the Midrash (developed especially in Shemot and Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah), is largely replaced in the kabbalistic sources by the love of male and female elements within God. The blessed Holy One and shekhinah, called kenesset yisra’el in the Zohar, are not God and the Jewish people, but “male” and “female” or “giver and “receiver” sides of the same divine self. It is this bold change in the meaning of kenesset yisra’el that allows the kabbalists to claim the ancient midrashic love-language as their own. But this surely does not mean that God loves Israel, or the created world as a whole, any less. I have suggested elsewhere24 that the interposing of a feminine hypostasis between God and the male community of kabbalistic devotees allowed for a fuller and less awkward expression of erotic passion, avoiding the obvious homoerotic implication of such intense love. Both God and the earthly community of Israel are passionate lovers of the same bride, a feeling that achieves its highest expression in the refrain to Alkabetz’s famous poem “Lekha Dodi li-qr’at kallah,” where we call upon God by the rarely used term dod, or “Lover,” evoking the Song of Songs, inviting Him to join us as we together go forth to meet our shared bride.25 This shared love of the bride is quite explicit in the Zohar, long before Lekha Dodi was composed: From each person (kol ish) you shall take my offering. Who is kol ish? This refers to tzaddiq, who is called kol26 . . . Master of the house, whose passion is toward the Mistress, like a husband who loves his wife always. And even though they are never separated in this love . . . from Him are you to take My offering. In the way of the world, if someone seeks to take a man’s wife

24 “Shekhinah, Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs,” 26. 25 See Kimelman, Lekhah Dodi ve-Qabbalat Shabba (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2003), and Green, “Some Aspects of Qabbalat Shabbat,” in The Heart of the Matter, 32–54. It may be that this refrain preceded Alkabetz’s composition, as it is found accompanying an entirely different (and less successful) poem in Machir ben Abba Mari’s Seder ha-Yom. See discussion by Kimelman, 25, n. 155. 26 Referring here to the ninth sefirah yesod, depicted as the male lover. See also the very important treatment of shekhinah in Tiqqunei Zohar in Biti Ro’i’s Ahavat ha-Shekhinah (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2018).

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

from him, the husband is severe and does not let her go. But the blessed Holy One is not that way. This One (zot) is the offering. She is shekhinah. Even though all Her love is toward Him and His toward Her, from Him are you to take Her, causing Her to dwell among you, from that high place where there dwells the love of Man and Wife, from there shall you take My offering. Blessed is the lot of Israel!27

This mutuality of divine–human love is also carried forth in yet another metaphor that is neither parental nor spousal, and therefore more surprising in the Jewish context. I refer to a striking midrashic reading of “Love your neighbor as yourself ” (Lev. 19:17), in which God is seen as the re‘a, the neighbor, friend, or lover (depending on the context) who loves you and therefore seeks your love in return. This reading begins with a midrashic interpretation of Proverbs 27:10: “Do not abandon your friend (re‘a) or the friend of your father.”28 Israel are then described as the “friends and brothers” of God, as in “for the sake of my brothers and friends [Ps. 122:8],” making God our re‘a as well, the one to whom we owe our love. One does not usually expect to find God as a brother in Jewish sources. If anything, this sounds more the language of evangelical Christianity than that of mystical Judaism. God becomes human in Christianity; it is obvious to depict Jesus as an elder brother. In Judaism, where God’s embodiment is chiefly in Torah, the “brother” or “friend” metaphor does not come as easily. That is why it is particularly exciting to find it among the kabbalists, including both the Zohar and in the remarkable treatise on love by Elijah De Vidas, the disciple of Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, a part of his Reshit Ḥokhmah, one of the great treasures of kabbalistic Mussar literature. It is well known that two brothers ordinarily love one another. In times of trouble, each of them will make every effort to save the other, even risking his life for him. The blessed Holy One is in that sense a Brother to us . . . just as brothers love one another . . . as Scripture says: “Two are better than one [Eccl. 4:9].” And between two friends, when one feels that the other loves him with heart and soul, he will love him in the same way, revealing to him the secrets of his heart.29 Any good that he can do for him, he will…and all 27 2:134a. Emphasis mine. 28 Va-Yyiqra Rabbah 6:1. 29 Here it is clear that De Vidas is influenced by the language of Avot de-Rabbi Natan 8 (ed. Schechter, 36).

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these categories exist in the blessed Holy One, who is partner to a person from his mother’s womb until the day of his death, helping him.30

And in another place: A person’s love for a friend is through the soul, because the soul’s desire is for love. Even though in body we are distinct and separate from one another, the souls of this one and that one are of the spirit. In spirit there is no such separation; they are joined in absolute oneness. As one person’s soul awakens its desire to love his companion, the soul of the companion will be aroused to love him as well. Those two souls are then one, as the verse says of David and Jonathan: “The soul of Jonathan was bound to that of David; Jonathan loved him as his own self. David’s love for Jonathan conceived his love for him, as it says “They kissed one another and wept . . . until David wept exceedingly [1 Sam. 20:41].”31

He brings the same Scripture again when describing “Love that does not depend upon any [extraneous] matter: Kisses come only from love, tears from attachment [devequt]. “Until David was overcome” refers to the exile of shekhinah. David and Jonathan point to the secret of the lovers above. The enlightened will understand.32

De Vidas is being circumspect in this final comment, but such “enlightenment” should not be too difficult for us to attain. “David” is a perhaps surprising but regular cipher for the (usually feminine) shekhinah. It is clear that here Jonathan is tzaddiq or yesod, Her divine Lover. Their shared maleness seems unimportant here, as they are translated into the symbolic realm amid this utterly unconditional love. They could be Boaz and Ruth or Jacob and Rachel, as they are elsewhere. Here they happen to be Jonathan and David. Still, the claim that this pair refers to “the secret of the lovers above” is most striking, and we cannot avoid its complete acceptance of love (asexual, of course) between two men. Perhaps what we see here is a reflection of the intense brotherly love that existed in the Safed fraternity of kabbalists, as it had in the Zohar’s literary circle (imaginary or real) as well.33 30 31 32 33

Ahavah, 6:16. Ahavah, 1:25. Ahavah 2:16. The first to call attention to the aspect of the Zohar fraternity was M. D. Georg (Jiri) Langer in his Die Erotik der Kabbala (Prague: Josef Flesch), 1923. It has more recently been the subject of extensive discussion by several scholars. See Y. Liebes’s comments

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

The word “love” in everyday human speech bears a wide range of meanings. We sign letters—or today emails (if we bother signing them) with “love” whether the correspondence is between spouses, lovers, parents and children, siblings, or dear friends. The same word, but not exactly the same love. But when we say the phrase “I love you”—in any of these contexts—we are getting more serious about the matter. Those words imply real openheartedness, one that carries with it a certain degree of need and vulnerability. We take a risk when we say, “I love you” to another human being; in doing so we are signaling that we hope for, even admit that we need, their love in return. God’s ahavti etkhem (“I love you”—Mal. 1:2) also implies such a risk. When God places His love, borne by the breath of his own mouth34 into humanity, He seeks our love in return. When He chooses Israel as his own, blessing them with a unique covenant of His love, He expects us to love Him as well. When Israel’s love is not forthcoming, His need for that love is witnessed by his deep hurt. Rabbinic sources hint by their language in a few places that God’s need for humans is His own salvation.35 The kabbalists erected huge mountains upon these words. As God’s love for us allows us to love, saving us from a life of emptiness, so does our love for God save Him from destroying His world in acts of rage and futility. What are the means for expression of this divine/human love? How do we both give and receive this love? Through verbal expression, the sacred words of both Torah u-tefillah, one might say: study and prayer. The mutual divine/human self-expression in language is central to the distinctively verbal Jewish character of this relationship. If we permit ourselves to jump for a moment from Kabbalah to Hasidism, we see this in the very powerful way in which the Sefat Emet (based on medieval sources) reads Deut. 26:17–18 as saying that both God and Israel are transformed into speech in their encounter with one another.36

in Zohar ve-Eros, 104–105 and Mashiah shel ha-Zohar, 157–65. In English, see also his Studies in the Zohar, 36–43. This subject has been discussed extensively in the various writings of Elliot Wolfson. See, for example, Through a Speculum That Shines, 368–73; idem, Language, Eros, Being, 328–32. See most recently Joel Hecker, “Kissing Kabbalists: Hierarchy, Reciprocity, and Equality,” Studies in Jewish Civilization 18 (2008): 171–208. 34 See Zohar 3:222b and Reshit Ḥokhmah, ahavah, 9:5. 35 See sources cited by A. J. Heschel in Torah min ha-Shamayim 1, 65–67. 36 Sefat Emet, Ki Tavo 1882, cited in my Radical Judaism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 119.

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Indeed, we might venture a guess that the RaMBaM avoids mention of God’s love because he was in something of a bind on this question. To say that “love” was another homonym when applied to God would give him nothing more than a pure Neoplatonic love, a divine love that is unlike anything we humans might mean by that term when applied to us bodily creatures. This would offer only a rather weak and unspecific love when compared to the passionate deity of the biblical and rabbinic tradition. As we have seen, the love he wanted to call forth in the other direction, human love for God, was indeed quite passionate. But he also understands that to allow God to truly love, in the fullness demanded by the human analogy, would involve him in what he considered a far more dangerous theological enterprise: admitting the possibility of divine vulnerability or need. If love means taking the risk of admitting that “I need you,” that was something the RaMBaM could not permit his God to do.37 There is indeed a danger in admitting divine need, which is the basis for the theurgical approach that characterizes the religion of Kabbalah. Theurgy shares a border with magic. If God is need of our love, might we withhold that love from Him in order to gain what we will? Then we are no longer giving unconditional love, nor can we expect the same. This is particularly true when theurgy becomes automatic or technical, depending upon the correct pronunciation or writing of the proper divine names, and is cut off from it devotional roots, of worship for God’s sake alone. But the admission of divine need also has a great advantage: it makes for a more equal divine/human relationship. To admit that God needs us, as Heschel did, is to say that our lives and deeds are ultimately important.38 We become real partners in the work of redemption, a task that involves the redeeming of God as well as that of humanity and the world. Living as we do today, in a world that so desperately needs human action to save it from destruction, I believe that we should take the risk of accepting God’s need for us as a challenge to act. The Ba‘al Shem Tov, following the pietistic teachings of prior ages, takes an additional step regarding the love of God. He taught that there exists only one single love in the world; that is the love of God for all His creatures. That love flows through all existence and penetrates every creature. It is manifest in the ḥiyyut within each of us, the power that both animates 37 I thus believe the question goes beyond that of God’s lack of body, touching on the very nature of the Maimonidean deity. 38 See my article cited in n. 12 above.

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

us, driving us forward, and plants within us the desire to return to God. Ultimately this means that God’s love for us and ours for God cannot fully be distinguished. But that force enters into the physical world in a fallen or broken state. We necessarily become alienated from our single Source in the course of our individuation, in becoming ego-selves.39 The love that energizes us thus may come forth in broken, hidden, and sometimes even painfully distorted ways. Many of us spend our lives in flight from God’s love, because we fear it will bring up too much pain. That love is also the source of desire, even lust, that which causes both animals and humans to mate and propagate their species. Even forbidden desires, he insisted, are part of that same stream of divine blessing.40 They are not to be acted upon, he taught (this was, after all, the eighteenth century!), but their energies should be recognized for what they are, transformed and turned back into an engine to charge our love of God. The Ba‘al Shem Tov had much in common with another great Jewish teacher, only a century and a half later, and in a place not far removed from his. I refer to Sigmund Freud, who also believed that all of eros is a single continuum, originating in libidinal energy and then shaped by the civilizing forces of repression and sublimation into love’s various expressions as we know them. The ultimate in sublimation, he would have said, might be the love of God, that love that seems most distant from its libidinal origins. For Freud, of course, eros here has been refined into the ultimate absurdity, the love of an illusion. Both Freud and the Ba‘al Shem Tov, in other words, are looking at love as the same single spectrum; one is viewing it from below, the other from above. 39 Hillel Zeitlin treated this point most perceptively in his essay “The Fundaments of Hasidism,” translating it into philosophical language. See my edition of his Hasidism for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin (New York: Paulist Press, 2012), 79–80. 40 He was fond of illustrating this by quoting Lev. 20:17: “If a man take his sister, the daughter of his father or his mother, seeing her nakedness and having her see his—this is ḥesed. They shall be cut off in the eyes of their people. This is his sister’s nakedness; he shall bear his sin.” The word ḥesed in that verse is what biblical scholars refer to as a “contronym,” a word that bears the opposite of its usual meaning. The translators render it as “abomination.” But the BeSHT insisted that it retained precisely its original meaning. Even the most absolutely forbidden of sexual loves, that between brother and sister, is a form of fallen ḥesed. This interpretation is found both in the Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef (once in the BeSHT’s name and twice more without citation) and in the Me’or ‘Eynayim of R. Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl, who was particularly fond of it (quoted in six places). See discussion in the introduction to my English translation of Me’or ‘Eynayim ‘al ha-Torah. Forthcoming from Stanford University Press, 2020.

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Having given you some idea of what I mean by the love of God in Jewish sources, I now have to turn to our own era and ask how this approach to religious life might work in our time. How can a person with a theology as abstract as my own speak of the love of God? Attracted as I am by the kabbalists’ passion, what do I do with my inner RaMBaM? This question stands alongside two others that cannot be ignored. How do we dare to speak of the love of God as Jews living after the Holocaust, the greatest test of faith that has befallen us since the destruction of the Temple, a test from which the body politic of world Jewry (the two thirds of us who were not among the slaughtered) is just beginning to recover? And how do we live in that love in an age after the great foundations of our faith have been shaken to their root, both by scientific approaches to the origin of existence and by critical approaches to the origin of religion, including the history of our own texts and tradition? Please notice the way I formulate these questions. The question is “How?” “How do we dare . . .” and “How do we live . . . ?” “Dare” and “live” we must! I do not doubt for a minute that God’s love exists, any more than I doubt that the world exists. So too do I not doubt that our proper response to that love is to love God in return, expressing that love in a love for all of God’s creatures. But nevertheless, something has indeed changed. The Hasidic teachings to which I am so attracted are filled with the ideal of serving God only for the sake of shekhinah, only to restore unity. There are constant warnings in this literature not to seek reward, either in this world or the next. But at the tail end of such teachings, they almost always offer a postscript. If you do this with full kavvanah, not thinking of yourself at all, you, too, will be blessed. That blessing may even take classical material forms, including offspring, health and longevity, and prosperity, let alone the untold blessings of the afterlife. While quite aware which is the higher value, they cannot hold back from offering an additional prize well. The same is true on the negative side. Although the kabbalists refer to true “fear of heaven” as the awe of standing before Mount Sinai and openness to infinity, the child’s fear of God as judging and potentially punishing parent lurks in the background as a spur toward observance of the mitzvot. Particularly because the Hasidic masters were seeking to create a popular movement, they felt that had to buttress their spiritualized offerings with these promises, and occasionally even threats, as well.

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

For me, as a Jew of the post-Holocaust era, all that is ended. The assurance of reward undercuts the teaching rather than reinforcing it. The meaninglessness of such promises has been thrown in our faces six million times. I expect no reward for loving God or for observing the mitzvot other than a purely spiritual one. I live in the face of a historical reality that tells me to accept fully that “there is no reward for mitzvot in this world.”41 And of another world I simply know nothing.42 This means, in effect, that all we religious faithful have left is love, our love of God, of our religious traditions, and hopefully of one another. All the other motivations for religious behavior—mainly fear of divine wrath or hope of reward—have simply melted away. This possibility of understanding the Shoah as a moment that leads to the purification of faith, rather than to its destruction, is essential to my own religious life. We Jews, descendants of both Abraham and Isaac, are those strong vessels that the potter chooses to test in the heat of fire, in that wellknown midrash on the ‘aqedah.43 We are left with no reason to love God and Torah beyond the inner drive of love itself. As a Holocaust survivor from Frankfurt, a onetime student in Franz Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus, once said to me: “We are called upon to be God’s witnesses in the world. How strong would our witness be if we had received only good from His hands?” No, we do not believe it because it is absurd, as the church father Tertullian claimed, and as it re-enters western religious thought via Kierkegaard. We value reason and would prefer faith without absurdity. But that choice has not been given to us. Our ongoing life of faith is a defiance of absurdity. It allows, even forces, us to say “One thing I ask of Y-H-W-H . . . to behold the face of Y-H-W-H and to dwell in His house (Ps. 27:4),” and not to be secretly counting on the postscript. Of course, the spiritual reward remains very great, and to call myself in that sense a person who serves without thought of reward would be outrageous hutzpah; I am deeply rewarded every day. When Heschel was asked, as he was frequently when lecturing in the Jewish community in the early postwar years, “Where was God during the 41 b. Qiddushin 39b. 42 See the very firm rejection of even any “hope” of reward, especially that of the next world, in such Hasidic passages as Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl’s Yesamaḥ Lev on Avot, in Me’or ‘Eynayim (v. 2), 587f. Throughout the work, that author consistently interprets any discussion of ‘olam ha-ba in a this-worldly manner. 43 Bereshit Rabbah 35:2.

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Holocaust?” his standard reply was: “That is the wrong question. ‘Where was man?’ is what we have to ask.” Human deeds are human responsibility. This is an important answer, but a partial one. Because I am a Jew living after the Holocaust, I am no longer able to say that I believe that historical events, whether collective or individual, happen because of divine will and intent. I have no answers. Mystery, tzimtzum, and the hiding of God’s face are all active parts of my religious vocabulary. But to say that events are not brought about by the willful action of a controlling God does not release me from seeking the face of God in those same events. If I believe that shekhinah is everywhere, then it is clear that all that takes place in the world takes place within God, within that trans-temporal One that embraces all. “There is no place devoid of Him” is my most essential theological claim. Yes, the face of God may be a tortured one, that of “I am with him in distress (Ps. 91:15).” It may be in the surviving islands of true humanity, the divine image, and the bits of kindness people did for one another in the most unimaginably awful of circumstances, or in faith itself, in the face of absurdity and utter debasement of the tzelem Elohim, that God dwells. That is enough for me. Or it may simply be the silently weeping face of God that one may find there. But divinity is never completely absent. God’s love can be found, in the words of poet Aaron Zeitlin, the son of our teacher Hillel: Afile nokh ale tfiles, Afile nokh ale afiles. Even after all the prayers; even after all the “evens.”

The Zoharic image of the love between God and the human soul as that of brothers and friends, especially as illustrated by David and Jonathan, presses me toward understanding our love of God as a brotherhood with all of God’s creations. God loves us as God loves every one of them, both people and trees, as I have said. We return that love with an all-embracing openheartedness that demands utter vulnerability. This is a Jewish version of the sort of love of God embodied throughout Creation that is found in Saint Francis, in Rūmī, in Tagore, Whitman, and other great spokesmen of the divine/human spirit. Hear it in the words of Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk, disciple of the Maggid and founder of the Hasidic community in Eretz Yisra’el, speaking of the love of God:

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

In this love you are bound, as a matter of course, to all who come into this world, to all other humans, who are just like you. Since such love is a blessing that flows from above, you are absolutely aware that you have not achieved it on your own. You could not have done this at all. Rather the blessed Holy One has given it to you freely. Had God given this gift to another, your fellow-person, s/he would be just as enflamed [with love] for His great name as you are. That being the case, in what way are you better than your fellow? So of course you will love all of Israel, even the wicked among them, because you truly understand and are aware of how close they are to you. You belong to them. You are just another person; you have nothing over them, other than that which has taken you by storm from the heavens. Therefore, when you rise up in your love of God, they, by the thousands, all rise up with you . . . You and they constitute a single soul. By whatever rod you can measure, you are tied to those thousands, even tens of thousands, of people. When you rise up, they rise with you.44

If the Creator of all is also the Friend who is there at my side at all times, I can only do the same for all those others that He has created in the same single ongoing act of love. This mystical uniting faith lives in a complicated tension with the notion of love. Love is required to open our heart to the reality that we call God. Along with its partner yir’ah, it is the basis of our spiritual life as Jews. Unlike some Buddhists, and perhaps certain old-school Ḥabadniks as well, I do not seek to transcend emotion in order to seek the one in an act of detached contemplation, but rather to open myself through the gateway of religious emotion. But love, in our human experience, requires a subject, an “other” whom we can love. This is surely the whole focus in religious existentialism, indeed in much of western mysticism, as well as in the various forms of bhakti yoga. But how do we love if God is not an “other?” In a world where there is only one, and where we seek to enter that one, is there a place for love? Note again the words of De Vidas: “Even though in body we are distinct and separate from one another, the souls of this one and that one are of the spirit. In spirit there is no such separation; they are joined in absolute oneness.” This is the deeper love of which I speak when I talk about 44 Pri ha-Aretz, shoftim. Emphasis mine. My thanks to Rabbi Ebn Leader for calling my attention to this text, as well as the portion of it to quoted below. I am especially delighted for the opportunity to translate these in honor of my friend R. Nehemia, who is ‫ מחסידי טבריה‬,‫כחד מן קדמאי‬.

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the love of God, one that recognizes contiguity rather than separation. It is a love that carries us back into the embrace of those “two inseparable companions” who are nothing other than the inner mind of God. Once again, R. Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk, in a passage immediately preceding the one just quoted: The most essential root of all is [to understand that] you as a person on your own could not perform a single mitzvah or good deed, those things that attach you to the ways of Y-H-W-H. It is the Creator who lights the fires of love and awe in His presence . . . You do not have the power within your mouth to speak. You do so only by the word of Y-H-W-H, as in “O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth might flow with Your praise (Ps. 51:17).” Both your love and your awe come from God! Who is the one who loves, if not the living God, flowing through your soul? And whom does He love, if not God? And what is that love? It is hewn out of the flowing essence of divinity. It joins itself and becomes one with the lower world, reducing itself into that microcosm called the human being. Wherever you stand, you are standing within blessed Y-H-W-H, since He is the locus of the world, surrounding and filling all the worlds at once. When that quality of love attacks you, you don’t know what is happening. “If you gave all your worldly goods for it, they would shame you (Song. 8:7).” All is naught in the face of it, because “It comes from Y-H-W-H (Ps. 118:24).” The more you become enraptured, [the more] you will grasp in your heart the truth that this is not your own doing. What have you done? What could you possibly do, given the great coarseness of both your body and mind? This is the spirit of Y-H-W-H speaking within you, His word upon your tongue. This love is a brand plucked from the divine fire. [As you realize this], you will become ever more enflamed, the voice growing louder without ceasing. The written page could not contain, nor could oceans of ink express, the great openness of heart in that true love . . .

Let me again transfer this powerful description of love back into the language of commentary on our liturgy, the spiritual setting within which much of my religious life takes place. The Zohar, and the Hasidic Tanya in its wake, designates the opening verse of the shema’ as depicting “the upper unity,” the absolute oneness of all being in Y-H-W-H, existing after “Creation” exactly as it had before. Nothing has changed. That which we call “Creation” is the donning of an outer garb, a world of appearances that does not affect the single core of being. The whispered second line

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

“Blessed is His glorious kingdom forever,” added to the biblical text, represents the “lower unity,” the ongoing oneness of Y-H-W-H as it is manifest within the endless procession of created forms, the one immanent within the many. There is only One. That is the ultimate truth of all the mystics. But how do we mere mortals, living in this broken world in which each of us so struggles to assert his/her own unique identity, grab hold of that truth? If there is only one, how much am I called upon to let go of that ego-self I have so assiduously cultivated? Will my very mental stability not be called into question if I do? Do I not risk the fate of R. Aqiva’s friend Ben Zoma, who “looked and suffered damage?” But here is why the shema’ is preceded by this blessing on love. Love is the great gift given to us by our Creator (or by human nature, if you prefer) allowing us to reach beyond ourselves. Love allows us to feel a sense of oneness with the other, to go beyond our ego’s limits, to stretch toward unity with another, hence potentially with all others, and with the great “Other.” Through the mirror of love, we are given a glimpse into the oneness of being, should we choose to open our eyes to it. It is through the pathways of “Great Love” and “Love Eternal,” in the language of our daily prayer book, that we come to open our hearts to the oneness of Being. Immediately following the cry of “Hear O Israel!” we proceed with the next line in the biblical text: “You shall love Y-H-W-H your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.” Just as love has led us to the possibility of seeing and calling out God’s oneness, so does that moment of being in the one call forth a response within us. We return from oneness with a commandment to respond in love, to turn the mystical insight back into the this-worldly language of loving the other. Our love of God is to be demonstrated by the love we share for His creatures, both within and beyond the human sphere. The great proclamation of God’s oneness, the line for which martyrs ever since Aqiva himself gave their lives, is thus sandwiched between two declarations of love. It is our realization of God’s love that allows us to reach that moment, and it is with our love for God and for God’s creatures that we are to come forth from it. It is our ability to live with that love, allowing it to sustain us even in moments of doubt and unfaithfulness (that is the subject of the second passage of the shema‘, as I understand it), that leads us to the grand conclusion of the shema‘, where we hear the divine voice call out to us in the first person “I am Y-H-W-H your God.”

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Of course, much of the discussion of love in our sources is built around the love of the blessed Holy One and the Community of Israel, whether earthly or divinized. We cannot conclude a discussion of God’s love in Judaism without confronting that question of exclusiveness. It is true that few Jewish sources say that God loves only the Jews. The sense of God’s love for all His creatures, including non-Jewish humans, remains strong through most of our tradition, and not only for apologetic reasons. Nevertheless, we have to notice that all the great expressions of intimacy and openheartedness, from God toward humans as well as in reverse, are offered in an exclusively Judeocentric context. Even the beautifully universal passage I have just quoted from the Vitebsker bounces back and forth between “person” and “Jew.” The fact that other traditions also make exclusive claims does not suffice to justify ours, especially because our way of loving God is linked to belonging to an ethnic community. When Paul and the church broke this link, we remained loyal to Jewish peoplehood in its original covenantal sense. Whereas classical Christianity came to be marred by the sense that God loves only the Christian faithful, we are stuck with a God who seems to love only our people, something potentially veering even closer to a sort of spiritual tribalism. I fear we have to admit that there are members of our tribe for whom that leans over into a real racism, or at least an inability to fully appreciate the image of God in the non-Jewish other. I understand the vital role that this unique claim on God’s love had in the preservation of Jewry throughout long ages of oppression, especially since that oppression took place at the hands of members of two faiths that saw themselves as superior and superseding religions to Judaism. Our claim that God continues to choose us and love us, despite what must have seemed like mountains of historical “evidence” to the contrary, embodied a stubborn courage that needs to be understood and respected. Even in the modern world, where oppression gave way to assimilationist pressures for Jews living in mostly Christian surroundings, the need for such assertion is understandable, even as it became harder to defend. Jewish thinkers of the early twentieth century already tried to deal with this problem. Rosenzweig insisted on widening the triangle of God, Torah, and Israel, to include all of humanity. Buber was also a universalist is expanding the message of Hasidism, sometimes calling forth objections that he had overly denatured it. Their contemporary, Hillel Zeitlin, also called for a new and more universalized Hasidism as early as the

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Judaism as a Path of Love    AVRAHAM YIZHAK (ARTHUR) GREEN

1920s. Abraham Joshua Heschel offered a universalist spirituality in distinctively Jewish garb. The uniqueness of Judaism, for all these thinkers, lay in the beauty and moral richness of the inner life it contained, not in a sense that God had chosen this people above all others as an object of His love. But all these thinkers lived and wrote in an era when the Jewish people still had the moral luxury of relentless victimhood. Today we live in an era when the world is rife with religiously inspired violence on a horrific scale. We also live in a time when Jews have re-entered the realm of political history, having responsibility for the legal and moral climate of a real state, one that has a non-Jewish minority of some twenty percent and also stands in great need of achieving positive and respectful relations with its (mostly Muslim) neighbors. In the minds of not a few observers, Jews are seen as victimizers of others, rather than victims of circumstance, as we prefer to see ourselves. The need to universalize our message about God’s love and care for every human life, indeed for every creature on our much-threatened planet, takes on a new urgency. Jewish statehood, along with the role taken by diaspora Jews as free citizens in multiethnic democracies, has brought the issue of exclusivism back to the fore. To see God’s love as focused on us alone is too dangerous. And it is wrong, both morally and theologically. It helps me to take a long-range view of this question, understanding it as an internal Jewish debate has been going on throughout our history, at least since Second Temple times. I place before you two psalms, both composed in that period. I see their authors sitting across from one another, somewhere in that Temple courtyard. One psalmist is the author of our Psalm 136, called hallel ha-gadol in our tradition. It is an antiphonal poem, the congregation calling out “For His compassion endures forever!” after each strophe. Following several lines around Creation, the author turns to the history of Israel as the locus of divine compassion. Here (notice, by the way, no mention of either Sinai or Torah) he depicts quite a merciless deity when it comes to the fate of others. He drowns Pharaoh and his hosts in the Reed Sea, strikes down the kings who rule east of the Jordan, giving their land to Israel, His servant. There is no indication that God gives a whit for the poor draftee in the Egyptian army or the frightened subjects of Og and Sihon before the conquering Israelite forces. This God is strictly on our side. Perhaps an editor felt this and added, “He gives food to all flesh” at the very end, in an attempt to soften the harshness.

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Across the table from this psalmist sits another, the author of Psalm 145, which we know as Ashrey (without the two introductory lines, taken from elsewhere in the psalter). Notice first that there is no specific Israelite reference in the entire psalm: no Zion or Jerusalem, no patriarchs or Exodus, etc. But notice also, beginning with the ninth verse, how frequently the word kol appears in the text. “Y-H-W-H is good to all; His compassion is over all His works;” “All Your works praise you;” “Your kingdom is one of all eternity;” “Y-H-W-H sustains all the falling, uplifting all who are bent over.” I hear in him an outrage at the fellow across the table. “How dare you limit God’s compassion to Jews alone! God loves all His creatures!” His outcry reaches a crescendo as he thunders on: “You open Your hand and satisfy all the living with desire:” “Y-H-W-H is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call to Him in truth;” ending with “And may all flesh bless His holy name.” The emphasis couldn’t be clearer. The Psalm 136 forces came to dominate in Jerusalem at the very end. Perhaps this offers another understanding of the sin’at ḥinam, baseless hatred that led to the destruction. Under their leadership, the Second Temple did not end very well for us. Not only was Jerusalem destroyed, but also the universalist strain within our tradition—the voice of Psalm 145—was carried off to Rome and became Christianity. We were left with the narrower vision, which then came to serve as our protective shell for the next two millennia. It might make sense for us this time to try our hand at ahavat ḥinam, love even toward those who seem not to have earned or “deserve” it. There are no guarantees in history, but at least we’ll be on God’s side, doing for others what God has done for us—all of us—recipients of divine love, beyond what we could even begin to merit.

Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters

The Frame Narrative In a signal act of courage, five sisters—daughters of one Tzelofḥad—come forward and defend their right to inherit their father’s portion in the land.1 Their claim is accepted by God (Num. 27:1–7). Moreover, the law is framed in accordance with this precedent (27:8–11). The most striking moment in this legal drama is the moment when God approves their plea: Ken benot Tzelofḥad dovrot: “They speak ken [rightly, justly].” Before instructing Moses to give the women the family land, God speaks about their act of speech. This unprecedented divine compliment resonates powerfully toward the end of a book in which so many unhappy acts of speech have been recorded. A cacophony of language rises up from the text of this book: after all the complaints of the people, the verbal fury and distrust, after Moses’ complex failure to speak to the rock, after the Balaam narrative, with its murky projections of the problem of language as benediction and malediction, after forty years of misspeaking—five sisters achieve an act of dibbur that gains a gratified response from God, all the more intense for the misfires of the past. (Ken, God says—Yes! At last!)

1 “To Be of Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters” originally appeared in  Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. Copyright 2015 by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg.  Reprinted by permission of Schocken Books, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved. We have introduced only slight changes to ensure consistency with the present volume.

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This legal victory is recounted specifically as a narrative rather than simply as a formulation of the law. It makes its way into the text by way of a complaint, an appeal, and an apparent adjustment of the law.2 More than that, instead of launching directly into the women’s speech—“Our father died . . .” (Num. 27:3)—the episode begins with two verses of quite elaborate narrative scene-setting: The daughters of Tzelofḥad, of the family of Manasseh—son of Hepher, son of Gilead, son of Machir, son of Manasseh, son of Joseph—came forward. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the princes, and the whole assembly, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and they said . . . (Num. 27:1–2).

We notice that the framework of this episode is narrative from start to finish. Time plays a role here. There is suspense and resolution, initial uncertainty, and tension tuned to the highest pitch, as the case is referred upward to God, the “Supreme Court”; and gratification, as the divine ken is handed down. More specifically, we notice the details of the introductory narrative. The two verbs—resonant in their unusual feminine plural form— va-tiqravna, va-ta‘amodna—declare the significant acts of the sisters. Before they even open their mouths, they come forward: and they stand before all the dignitaries of the people. Both verbs, each introducing a separate verse, express audacity: the root qarav (“they came forward”) signifies intimacy, struggle, sacrifice, possibly encroachment.3 The wrong person in the wrong place may bring down a thunderbolt from heaven. Standing, too, implies that they stand their ground “in the presence of all of them,” as RaShI puts it. The roll call of dignitaries represents an intimidating forum—perhaps a House of Study, an institute of advanced research into the law. Before a word has been spoken, therefore, the narrative has set these sisters in a world that holds no obvious place for them. The frame narrative introduces them by listing their ancestry: five male names that link them back to Joseph; this is followed by the women’s names—five names4—even though these have already been listed among the clans enrolled for inheritance 2 Cf. the case of the “second Passover” (Num. 9:1–12), which bears many similarities to our narrative, as well as important differences. 3 See, for example, Num. 1:51 and Lev. 10:1. 4 The two lists are in different order.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

(Num. 26:33). Women’s names in such a list is in itself unexpected, since censuses are patrilineal by definition. The sisters’ names are followed by specific reference to the male members of the forum they approach: Moses, Eleazar, the princes, the whole ‘edah—again, by definition, the male assembly. The place in which the women stand, therefore, is framed by male names. This structure gives us the sense of the world, the field, in which the women speak: five women, heirs to sons who become fathers, addressing an entirely male forum.

Force Fields They speak in the name of their dead father, who begins and ends their speech: Our father died in the wilderness. He was not one of the faction, Koraḥ’s faction, which banded together against God, but died for his own sin; and he has left no sons. Why should our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son? Give us a holding among our father’s brothers! (Num. 27:3–4).

Three times they refer to “our father.” They speak in the name of a dead father who has been silenced by his lack of male heirs; sons represent and substitute for their father. Strangely, the sisters begin with an idiosyncratic description of their father’s sin that blurs the clarity of their legal presentation. Only toward the end of their speech do they come to the legal core of the matter: “And he has left no sons. . . .” And only after that do they make their plea: “Why should our father’s name be lost . . . ?” In other words, a narrative element—apparently redundant—infiltrates even into their legal plea. The text emphasizes that this is a speech given by specific women in a specific context and at a specific moment in time; and that their appeal calls on a specific, if obscure, biographical narrative. The sisters’ plea is in the plural voice: “Give us a holding. . . .” The tone of “Give us”—tena lanu—evokes associations from narratives throughout the Torah and later scriptures: “Give us water,” the people demand; “Give us meat” (Num. 11:13); “Give us seed that we may live” (Gen. 47:19); “Give me please of your son’s mandrakes” (30:14); “Give me a burial site” (23:4); “Give me the girl as a wife” (34:12); “Give us a king” (1 Sam. 8:6); “Give me your vineyard” (1 Kings 21:2,6). The tone is imperious, expressing vital need, often existential need. It brooks no denial. In speaking in this way, the five sisters press their case with some force.

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Similarly, when they pose their rhetorical question: “Why [lamah] should our father’s name be lost?” lamah implies a challenge to show why it should be so; its connotations are emphatically negative (“It should not be lost”). The burden of proof is laid on the opposition. Strikingly, it is with just such a “Why” that the people often prefaced their resentments and complaints during the wilderness journey. The sisters adopt the language of skepticism for their successful speech of protest. Why indeed should a man’s name be lost from the midst of his family? His property should be given to his daughters, in the midst of his brothers. They emphasize their father’s place within a social world, which represents a world of meaning. They speak as the only possible claimants and executives of their father’s rights within a patriarchal society. However, in spite of their assertive tone, these five sisters express no feminist aspirations. Even to describe them as “five sisters” is, in a sense, to skew the biblical presentation: they are daughters of a man, of a line of men, father and son; in the name of the father, of reason and order, they seek a place within the family, the clan, and the tribe. And yet, surprisingly, their names are listed, a female roll call. And the fact that they are five— counterbalancing their five illustrious ancestors—also has an ambiguous effect. Neither heroic individuals nor exactly a group, they speak without obvious leadership.5 As sisters, they are neither identical nor fully differentiated. Does this diminish the impact of their dignity and courage? Or does it add gravitas to their position? Speaking with one voice, forming, as it were, their own female society, how do they affect the reader? The reference to their father’s sin is also mysterious: he did not belong to Koraḥ’s faction. The negative description seeks to exonerate him from having participated in Koraḥ’s rebellion; he died for a purely personal sin, which is never specified. Perhaps his daughters fear that Moses may be prejudiced against them if their father was party to that rebellion that was directed against the leadership of Moses and Aaron? On this reading, the women are aware of possible bias that needs to be neutralized. In other words, they have a realistic sense of the political field in which they must stake their claim. A similar awareness informs the Zohar’s explanation of Moses’ referring the case to God (Num. 27:5): he recuses himself from the case, to avoid suspicion of prejudice against Tzelofḥad as a 5 In fact, RaShI understands the changed order of their names as indicating that they are all equivalent (Num. 27:1).

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

rebel against Moses’ leadership. Here, again, is a reminder that truth is to be found within a force field of political power. According to the Concise Science Dictionary, a field is a “region in which a body experiences a force as the result of the presence of some other body or bodies. A field is thus a method of representing the way in which bodies influence each other.”6 The field in which the women stand and speak is one in which passion may plausibly play a role, if only in the attempts of the protagonists to ward off suspicion. Justice must be seen to be. The legal principle that registers the significance of this awareness derives from a biblical verse: “You shall be clear before God and before Israel” (Num. 32:22).

Implicit Tensions Against this background, let us look at RaShI’s comments on God’s accolade to the sisters: And Moses brought their case before God”: The law on this subject escaped him (b. Sanhedrin 8a). Here, he received punishment because he had assumed a “crown” (he had set himself as the supreme judge) by saying, “The case that is too hard for you bring to me” (Deut. 1:17). Another explanation: This chapter should have been written by Moses; but the daughters of Tzelofḥad merited to have it written by them.7 The daughters of Tzelofḥad speak right”: Read the word ken as the Targum does: ya’ut—rightly, properly. God said: Exactly so is this chapter written before Me on high.8 This tells us that their eye saw what Moses’ eye did not see.9 The daughters of Tzelofḥad speak right: They have made a fair claim. Happy is the person with whose words God agrees!10

Why does Moses take the case immediately to God? The simplest answer is because he could not answer it himself: the law eluded him, was hidden— nit‘alma—from him. This fit of forgetting is a punishment for the tone of superiority in Moses’ long-ago words, in which he seemed to set himself up as the ultimate authority on the law. (It is striking that taqrivun—“you 6 Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. 7 b. Bava Batra 119a; b. Sanhedrin 8a. 8 Sifre. 9 Cf. Tanḥuma, 8. 10 Sifre.

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shall bring to me”—is the same expression used in our narrative of the “approach” of the sisters to Moses for a legal decision.) But there is another possibility: in this case, Moses loses the privilege of “having the Torah written through him”—“by his hand”—directly. Instead, the five sisters are granted that privilege; they are the catalysts of a page in Torah—in a sense, they are accredited with its authorship. To author is to initiate, to authorize, to assume responsibility. To have a section of Torah written through one’s agency is a privilege that the women, in this case, take over from Moses. The sense of an implicit tension between Moses and the five sisters—his loss is their gain—is carried over into the next passage. “Their eye saw what Moses’ eye did not see.” The theme of tension between Moses and the five sisters is, perhaps surprisingly, to be found in many midrashic sources. For instance, in Midrash Rabbah,11 the women refuse to marry anyone who is not appropriate (hagun) for them. God brings the women into Moses’ field so as to chasten any pride he might take in his own sexual abstinence. By force of their very being, they bring a moral perspective that in a sense makes Moses’ self-control less remarkable. Even more eloquently, the following section in the midrash12 relates another version of the story about the law that is hidden from Moses. It eludes him (hifli mimenu). In the end, God charges him with hubris in his declaration, “What is too hard for you, bring to me!” And then God seemingly taunts Moses: “The law that you don’t know, women discuss it!” The sarcasm slights Moses with its implication of “Even women . . .” This is, at least, the obvious way to read the midrash, again implying tension between Moses and the sisters. And yet, as we shall see later, there is another possibility: without sarcasm, God may be making a factual observation about the difference between Moses’ vision and theirs.

Truth and Beauty God responds, Ken; strikingly, RaShI translates (after the Targum) ya’ut— rightly, properly—exactly so is this chapter written on high. The women have achieved an exact simulacrum of the ideal version written before God. This achievement, suggests Malbim, extends to the whole narrative 11 Bamidbar Rabbah 21:11. 12 Bamidbar Rabbah 21:12.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

framework—not just to the legal plea. All—the women’s courage, their approach to the court, the way in which they live their moment—is “already written” before God on high. Following the Sifre, he reads ken to suggest that God shows Moses his original version to demonstrate the rightness of the women’s narrative. It is a fine work of art; their story is just as it should be. The women’s speech is, one might say, the “happiest” act of dibbur in the book of Bamidbar—the book of speakings and misspeakings.13 It is as though, quite simply, God can at last draw breath and say, Ken!—Yes! This kind of fineness borders on the aesthetic. Indeed, RaShI’s two translations of ken—ya’ut and yaffeh—relate to beauty. He represents this fine rightness as a matter of the eye: their eye saw what Moses’ eye did not see. Again, Moses and the sisters are placed in tension with each other.14 In some way, Moses’ eye fails. And God celebrates the felicitousness of the women’s vision; He finds it beautiful. In English, too, rightness and beauty meet in such expressions as nice, fine, and fair. In his last sentence RaShI modulates God’s aesthetic acclaim—ken!—to the key of happiness: “Happy [ashrei] is the person with whose words God agrees!” When God is in accord with one’s words, that is happiness! Here, RaShI interprets the exclamation Ken! as both reporting the sisters’ happiness and generating it. The philosopher Elaine Scarry notes that the English word “fairness,” which refers both to beauty and to the ethical requirement of being fair, has traveled “from a cluster of roots in European languages (Old English, Old Norse, Gothic), as well as cognates in both Eastern European and Sanskrit, that all originally express the aesthetic use of ‘fair’ to mean ‘beautiful’ or ‘fit’—fit both in the sense of ‘pleasing to the eye’ and in the sense of ‘firmly placed,’ as when something matches or exists in accord with another thing’s shape or size.”15 Scarry argues that features of physical beauty, like symmetry and equality, “act as a lever in the direction of justice.”16 “Beautiful things . . . hold steadily visible the manifest good of equality and balance.”17 In our story, RaShI reads God’s accolade, “Ken dovrot—They speak fairly,” to suggest a similar pact between the aesthetic and the ethical. God 13 See Chapter 1, “Flags in the Wilderness,” for a discussion of the classic pun on the double meaning of midbar—wilderness and speech. 14 It is interesting that RaShI is here piecing together readings from different sources: Sifre, Sanhedrin, Tanḥuma. 15 Elaine Scarry, On Beauty (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 91–92. 16 Ibid., 100. 17 Ibid., 97. Scarry brings the examples of the figure of the cube, equidistant in all directions, and of scales, equally weighted in both directions.

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acknowledges a perfect accord between the sisters’ speech and His script. Ken is Kakh—Exactly so!; their words are aesthetically and ethically pleasing. RaShI’s lyrical conclusion celebrates the felicity of those who speak so felicitously. Citing the Sifre, he extrapolates from this narrative and opens up a new possibility for human happiness: “Happy is the person with whose words God is in accord!”18 Here, RaShI goes beyond his usual brief. This is no longer commentary on the text: it is exhortation, creating a climate of aspiration. RaShI has made a personal appearance in his text; suddenly, he projects an imaginative world that he offers to his readers. What would it mean to fulfill this possibility? The word ashrei, “happy,” derives from a root meaning “going straight,” “setting right,” “on sure footing.” This happiness is well grounded, stable; it is the experience of one who speaks ken—which also refers to stability. Speaking in a way that coincides with God’s version of things generates true happiness. Both words, ken and ashrei, come together in Psalms 40:3, where the Psalmist praises God for stabilizing him in this way: “He lifted me out of the miry pit, the slimy clay, and set my feet on a rock, steadied my legs. He put a new song into my mouth . . .” “He steadied my legs”—Konen ashurai— the two words are set on their firm common ground. RaShI evokes the emotional satisfaction of one who has found this ground of accord with the divine. Redemption now means finding a new song in one’s mouth. But what constitutes this state of accord? How might one experience this kind of happiness, short of hearing a heavenly voice proclaiming it? It is not, I suggest, that there exists a single, ideal utterance that one is called on to approximate. Only after the fact is the achievement of the daughters of Tzelofḥad celebrated in this way. Wherein lies the exquisite felicity of their words?

Two View of Greatness “The daughters of Tzelofḥad came forward” (Num. 27:1): This was greatness for them and greatness for their father; greatness also for Machir as well as for Joseph, that such women came forth from them. They were wise and righteous women. What was their wisdom? They spoke at the appropriate moment, for 18 RaShI omits to refer to the speakers of this explanation—“The nations of the world will in the future say, Happy is the person with whose words God agrees!” Without this attribution, the celebration becomes both more anonymous and more intimate.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

Moses was engaged upon the subject of inheritances, saying: “Among these the land shall be divided” (26:53). They said to him: “If we have the status of a son let us inherit like a son; if not, let our mother perform the levirate marriage.” Immediately, “Moses brought their case before God” (27:5).19

The midrash reverses our expectations: these women bring glory to their distinguished ancestors. They are wise, righteous: these terms, applied usually to men, are now inflected in the feminine form. In fact, they become classic epithets for the sisters, along with a third epithet: darshaniyot— expounders of textual meaning—this last term being the most unexpected praise for women. But this midrash aims to define their wisdom, grounding it in their fine sense of timing—lefi sha‘ah dibru: they spoke at the appropriate moment. Their wisdom, then, implies a kind of tact, a sense of decorum, of boundaries, which allows their plea to gain a hearing from Moses at just this moment. This pragmatic wisdom characterizes the content, as well as the timing of their intervention, and ensures its success. Their argument is cogent, well within the genre of such legal arguments: if they are considered their father’s seed—“like sons”—they should inherit; or, if their father left no seed, let their mother conceive from her dead husband’s brother. Their reasoning gives them the title of darshaniyot: they know how to draw meaning from the text,20 while their ḥokhmah, their wisdom, teaches them when to speak and when not to speak. They have a case only in the present circumstances, where there are no male heirs: lefi sha‘ah, in accord with the reality of the moment, they plead their cause. Another midrash, however, takes a different view of the greatness of these women. Also addressing the issue of time, this midrash makes a more radical claim: These women rose up in the generation of the wilderness and merited to take the reward of all of them. This teaches you at what moment they stood before Moses—at the moment that Israel were saying, Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt! Moses said, But Israel are demanding to return to Egypt, and you demand an inheritance in the land! They answered, We know that in the end all Israel will claim their share in the Land; as it is said, “It is a time to 19 Bamidbar Rabbah 21:11. 20 As the Talmud in b. Bava Batra 119b puts it: “The daughters of Tzelofḥad were expounders of the text, for they said, If our father had had a son, we would not have spoken.”

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act for God—they have transgressed Your Torah!” Don’t read like this; read “They have transgressed Your Torah in acting for God!” . . . Where there is no man, try to be a man!21

Here, the sisters’ fine timing is expressed in their speaking against the grain of current prejudice. When the people are hankering to return to Egypt, these women affirm their desire for the land. Their plea expresses more than its minimal meaning—“We want to be considered our father’s heirs!” It also represents their love for the Land of Israel, an unfashionable love at that time. But the midrash goes far in expressing the provocative force of the women’s voice. “It is a time to act for God” has become an aphorism that carries a double meaning: When the Torah is being transgressed, this is the moment to act for God; but also “When it is time to act for God, one may even transgress Torah commandments” Here, the women transgress no formal commandments. But, inspired by the energy of loving conviction, they speak against the status quo of legal understanding. They speak with a fierce serenity. They represent an emergency ethic. Their passion becomes a paradigm for all human courage in the face of conformity. “Where there is no man, try to be a man!” Of course, the midrashic authors are fully aware of the shock effect of this aphorism as applied to women.22 Unmistakably gendered, “Try to be a man, a gever” evokes masculine might (gevurah) as the aspiration—and achievement—of these women. For a moment, the reader is jarred; the boundaries of gender slip. If we look more closely at this midrash, the particular quality of the sisters’ nonconformity emerges. Moses himself is astonished to hear such a different voice: “Everyone else wants to return to Egypt, and you desire inheritance in the Land!” The proof text refers to the narrative of the Spies, as though that was the historical moment of the women’s declaration. However, the Spies’ narrative took place in the second year in the wilderness, while Tzelofḥad’s daughters make their claim in the fortieth year. How then can the midrash claim that the women’s speech is a direct response to the early rebellion? Pushing against obvious chronology, the midrash extends the meaning of sha‘ah: the moment of the Spies’ revolt remains the emotional moment of that “wilderness generation,” even into the second

21 Yalqut Shimoni 773. 22 This aphorism occurs at the end of another narrative of feminine timeliness.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

generation. From start to finish, an emotional and spiritual undertow draws them back to Egypt. In the face of this, the women speak. Here, then, to speak at the right moment is to speak precisely at the wrong moment. It is to speak without the support of conventional frameworks; to speak at the particular historical moment when one’s speech will resound uncannily—when it may create change.

The Moment of Emergence This midrashic reading takes the daughters of Tzelofḥad one step into the “masculine” world of gevurah, of the struggle against the stream as both an external struggle and an internal struggle. In a different time and place, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes of the moment of self- creation, in which one authors oneself. In his essay “Self-Reliance,” he describes it as the moment of becoming: “This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes.”23 Before this moment, the individual is, in a sense, uncreated: Emerson calls this state “conformity.” Descartes’s description of existence, “I think, therefore I am,” becomes in Emerson’s thought the continuing challenge to say “I am”: Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose . . . they are for what they are; they exist with God today.24

In conformity, the cringing posture of an individual prevents him from acknowledging his true existence. As the philosopher Stanley Cavell puts it, “I am a being who to exist must say I exist, or must acknowledge my existence—claim it, stake it, enact it.”25 The aim of such an existence is “not a state of being, but a moment of change.” Against a life of skepticism—of “world-consuming doubt”—Cavell, in Emerson’s name, advocates the upright posture. The “life-giving power of words, of saying ‘I,’ is your readiness to subject your desire to words . . . to become intelligible, with no assurance that you will be taken up.”26 “You never know when someone will learn the posture, as for themselves, that 23 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Selected Essays, ed. Larzer Ziff (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK, and New York: Penguin Books, 1982), 190. 24 Ibid., 189. 25 Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 109. 26 Ibid., 114.

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will make sense of a field of movement, it may be writing, or dancing, or passing a ball, or sitting at a keyboard, or free associating.”27 Good posture, it turns out, is the posture that allows one to create one’s existence by performing it within a particular force field. One’s ability to learn this is mysterious. After all the regulations have been absorbed, there comes a moment when a new world falls into proper focus. The daughters of Tzelofḥad come upon this moment when they speak within the complex force field that constitutes their world. They find their always-untimely, always-timely moment of “I am.” Not just their legal plea, but also their whole narrative is, Malbim asserts, “written before God on high.” Beyond their legal astuteness, beyond their tactical sense of timing there is their primal, idiosyncratic passion. In a climate of ongoing skepticism—the climate of the Book of the Wilderness—in which faith, trust, and love are constantly challenged, these women speak and breathe a different language. In a moment of emergency, they emerge from the swarm of life. Without assurance that they will be heard, they allow themselves to be known. Cavell writes: “‘No one comes’ is a tragedy for a child. For a grown-up it means that the time has come to be the one who goes first.”28 The daughters of Tzelofḥad represent this form of adulthood or, as the midrash describes it, gevurah—the “masculine” self-assertion that is self-conquest.

The Language of Desire “The daughters of Tzelofḥad speak ken”: the sisters’ act of dibbur is timely in yet another sense. According to the Talmud, at this same historical moment, the word of God returns to Moses after a thirty-eight-year hiatus: “And it was when all the men of war had ceased dying, God spoke to me”: But from the narrative of the Spies till this point the expression va-yidabber is never used, but va-yomer—to teach you that all those thirty-eight years when Israel were in disfavor, the divine dibbur never addressed Moses— in the mode of affection, of a face-to-face encounter, and of tranquil communication. This teaches that God’s presence rests on the prophets only for the sake of Israel.29 27 Ibid., 115–116. 28 Ibid., 119. 29 RaShI to Deuteronomy 2:16–17. It is striking that “God spoke to me” is given a verse of its own. See b. Bava Batra 121a–b.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

The word dibbur has been absent from the text since the sin of the Spies, whose skepticism was so effective in undermining the people’s trust. World-consuming doubt wracks them during the long wilderness years, a melancholy that saps their ability to speak or to hear the language of love, intimacy, composure. Since Moses is deeply connected with his people, God addresses him, during these years, only in the muted tones of amirah—saying. The new epoch of dibbur that begins at this point restores the possibility, particularly, of ḥibah, loving communication face-to-face. Both as presence and as absence, dibbur courses through the narrative of the midbar, the wilderness. At the beginning of the book, we read, “And God spoke [va-yidabber] to Moses in the midbar, in the wilderness of Sinai” (Num. 1:1). What is the quality of God’s language? Again, RaShI treats it as an expression of ḥibah: “Because they were dear to Him, He counted them every now and then.” The census, which is the first commandment in the book, represents tenderness, affection, familiarity—the gentler aspects of love connoted by ḥibah. Again, RaShI associates the full act of speech with a kind of mirroring intimacy—face-to-face, tranquil. This mode of relation vanishes and now again reappears. On the surface of the text, the transitions—the loss and return of dibbur—go unnoticed. But for the Rabbis, who sense the secret pulse of life in the text, an ebb and flow has occurred. In this new period, ḥibah is restored. Perhaps God’s command to Moses to speak to the rock evokes something of this old/new ethos. After so many losses, Moses and the people must again learn to put desire into language, without violence, and without the assurance of being heard. At the turning point of the narrative, God enacts with Moses the new way of speaking: “Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up on Mount Hor. There Aaron shall be gathered unto the dead” (Num. 20:25–26). How is Moses to “take” Aaron to his death? “Take Aaron”: With consoling words. Tell him: Happy are you that you will see your crown passed on to your son, which I am not privileged to see!30

One takes a human being with words: Moses is to speak words that will shift Aaron from his sadness to another way of thinking. Happy are you [ashrekha] that your son inherits your legacy, unlike me!” Ashrekha is an 30 RaShI to Num. 20:25.

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example of a performative speech act. The word does not merely describe; it acts. It creates, in language, an alternative world, in which a different happiness becomes imaginable. It renames reality so that the unacceptable changes its color. Only in this way can one move another human being. By reframing Aaron’s reality, Moses “takes” him to the mountaintop. A similar usage occurs soon after the episode of Tzelofḥad’s daughters. Moses is told: “Take Joshua, and appoint him your successor.” Again, RaShI comments: “Take him with words: Happy are you [ashrekha] that you are privileged to lead God’s children!” (Num. 27:18). Here, too, Moses is to move Joshua to a new ground of happiness. He invites him to contemplate leadership of a troublesome people from a different perspective. “Happy are you!” His words are to do the work of transformation. In these and in many other cases of such “takings,” a realistic expectation of death and sadness is to be transfigured by imaginative words. When a human being is to be “taken,” RaShI often glosses the word in this way. A striking example is God’s taking Adam and placing him in the Garden of Eden: “He took him with beautiful words and seduced [pitahu] him to enter the Garden” (RaShI to Gen. 2:15). Seduction, with its complex range of associations, recurs in Rashi’s translation of such moments of “taking.” For better and for worse, language has the power of captivating the other, moving him to unthought perspectives. To say Ashrei!, particularly, is to recount experience; to create a vocabulary of transfiguration. We remember RaShI’s lyrical outburst: “Happy [ashrei] is the person with whose words God is in accord!” Here, too, Ashrei! acts as a performative—“The happiness of it!” It creates a confrontation of old and new values. And it brings onto the scene the voice of a speaker who creates this new perspective. In this case, the speaker is RaShI, or his midrashic forebear, who inflects the more limited meaning of the narrative. This is, in itself, an act of full speech, which the speaker implicitly hopes will be acknowledged by God. In a sense, then, to say Ashrei! about a happy use of words is to wish happiness for oneself as well as the other. To find one’s voice is to transform both speaker and other, to open up a register of tenderness, intimacy, and tranquil communication. When RaShI exclaims Ashrei, he is, in effect, extending his commentary on the word ken: in celebrating the women’s language, God is Himself exclaiming Ashrei! The reader is initiated into a divine aspiration.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

On Slippery Ground We have noticed that both ashrei and ken refer at root to stability, to the well-grounded step. In modern Hebrew, le-asher is to substantiate, verify, give strength, and authorize. The peculiar strength of the ashrei usage is that in most cases the speaker speaks against the grain, in defiance of the commonsense view of stability. Why else would such a proclamation be necessary? “Happy is the man who has not followed the counsel of the wicked!” (Ps. 1:1); “Happy is the man who is always afraid!” (Prov. 28:14); “It is a tree of life to those who grasp it, and whoever holds to it is happy” (Prov. 3:18); “Her children rise up and declare her happy” (Prov. 31:28); “He lifted me out of the miry pit . . . He steadied my legs. He put a new song in my mouth . . . Happy is the man who makes God his trust!” (Ps. 40:3–5). Ashrei! Holds a provocative power: it steadies one’s steps with uncanny firmness in a world of slimy clay. Precisely in conditions of instability, an alternative stability is conjured—by a word. At the end of his life, Moses blesses the people, and ends: “Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people delivered by God!” (Deut. 33:29). Again, RaShI gives great weight to Ashrekha!—“After Moses had given them the detailed blessings, he said, ‘Why should I go into detail? All is yours!’ [Kelal davar—Ha-kol shelakhem!].” Moses leaves his people, not with specific blessings, but with a vision of fullness. Against the realities of their situation—about to lose their leader and teacher, facing a difficult war of conquest—he creates for them at one stroke the plenitude of Ashrekha! Ashrei! resounds throughout the book of Psalms. The Talmud declares about one occasion when the Psalmist both begins and ends a Psalm with Ashrei—“Every chapter of Psalms that was particularly cherished [ḥaviv] by David he began and ended with Ashrei!”31 David’s speech act is an expression of tenderness, doubly affirming the power of his own words. A situation where one’s foot slips on the miry ground becomes a scene of salvation, of blessed grounding; Ashrei! Itself sings the new song32 in which a precious-precarious stability is affirmed. Suddenly, one is wholly present again.

31 The reference is to Psalms 1 and 2, read together as one long chapter. 32 See Psalm 40:4.

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Stumbling and Standing Perhaps we can go further. It is only in the act of falling, of failing, that such speech-acts become meaningful. In discussing the philosopher J. L. Austin’s theory of the performative speech act, Shoshana Felman notes: “The capacity for misfire is an inherent capacity of the performative . . . the act as such is defined, for Austin, as the capacity to miss its goal and to fail to be achieved, to remain unconsummated, to fall short of its own accomplishment”33 Uttering the formula of the marriage ceremony incorrectly, or if one is married already, would be an example of such a misfire. The utterance would then be void, without effect. In its subtler form, Felman argues, such a failure could be caused by a slip of the tongue, demonstrating “the human aptitude for fiasco.”34 Like a miner’s lamp, in Austin’s famous image, human intention illuminates only in a limited way: “It will never extend indefinitely far ahead.”35 In this image of the play of light and shadow, Felman suggests, Austin may be acknowledging the effect of the unconscious on the speaking body. To speak in this transformative way is always to risk failure: this is the precarious reach of the Ashrei! language. Like the miner’s lamp, it probes the dark with a stark, bravely playful light. The play of light and shadow constitutes its affirmation. Ashrei! enjoys itself, while knowing that it may fail to persuade. It may misfire; its beauty (the beautiful words that seek, according to RaShI, to seduce) may miss its mark. Even so, even when the act is “infelicitous,” as Austin puts it, its performance may still bring a “slippery” kind of pleasure. Slipping and sliding play an important role in language: “We may hope to learn something . . . about the meanings of some English words . . . philosophically very slippery.”36 “We have discussed the performative utterance and its infelicities. That equips us . . . with two shining new skids under our metaphysical feet.”37 “Vainly I strive against it,” writes Kierkegaard. “My foot slips. My life is 33 Shoshana Felman, The Scandal of the Speaking Body, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 55–56. 34 Ibid., 70. 35 Ibid., 71. Felman makes the interesting point that the adverb “inadvertently” has no antonym in English: there is no use, apparently, for advertently. A psychoanalytic intuition notes that such expressions stem from a discontinuity or a break in tension, which for Austin is “scarcely conscious.” 36 J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, 4–5, quoted in Felman, Scandal, 85. 37 J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers, 241, quoted in Felman, Scandal, 85.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

still a poet’s existence! The seduction of slipping is thus the seduction of poetry, of the poetic functioning of language.”38 “I must explain again that we are floundering here. To feel the firm ground of prejudice slipping away is exhilarating, but brings its revenges.”39 The Talmud offers an aphorism that conveys its own version of this notion of blessed slipping. “One never stands firmly on the words of Torah unless one has stumbled over them.”40 Error, failure, stumbling, slipping become the condition for stability. Only so, in such dismaying, exhilarating lurches, are prejudices transcended and a piece of Torah is understood. To expose oneself to the slips of language is, undoubtedly, to move beyond the world of conformity. Here is the vertigo of lost footing, the instant fear of falling. Here, too, is poetry, humor, exhilaration. Here, one renounces playing God. And here, paradoxically, one may become aware of God acknowledging one’s words; one may come to hear an Ashrei! ringing through them.

Paul Celan’s Hebrew Word The word Ashrei! endures its most testing moment in the poetry of Paul Celan. In 1966, Celan wrote a long poem called “Aschrei,” writing the word in transliterated German. Now, he says, this is a “word without meaning.” In a Europe where no Jewish community remains, what meaning can the word have? The word is quite literally meaningless to its German readers. Perhaps, as literary scholar John Felstiner suggests, Jewish readers will hear in it a schrei, “a scream” in Yiddish. Or, as he goes on to remark, we may remember “that in prewar Jewish prayer books, the German for Aschrei (in the sense of ‘hale’) was Heil.”41 The sarcasm of the ashrei word in such a world is lacerating. Celan writes of the “torn strings of a strident and discordant harp.”42 His language is petrified, “a language of stone,” he says. And yet, as Felstiner finely puts it: “Leaving Celan’s Hebrew intact in English [as Celan did in the German (AZ)] preserves a communal bond against the muting of the Nazi years.” 38 Felman, Scandal, 85. 39 J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 61, quoted in Felman, Scandal, 92. 40 b. Gittin 43a. 41 John Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 232. 42 Paul Celan, “Winter,” 1938. Cited in Felstiner, Paul Celan, 17.

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In other words, the word still “does something”; it works, however ambiguously, against the silence. Felstiner soberly attests that in reading Celan, he has “felt a grim energy verging on elation . . . Is elation akin to something the poet knew?43

Coauthoring God’s Text The daughters of Tzelofḥad are celebrated by God for having reaffirmed God’s original text on high. The unprecedented compliment transfigures an act that has taken place in the human field of uncertainty. The women speak without assurance of being taken up; the possibility of slipping and failing is inherent in their act. What prevents other speeches recorded in this book from attaining the high acclaim that God now accords these women? Beyond the women’s legal acumen, there is the question of posture: it is a matter of how one stands and moves within the field. As Cavell says, “You never know when someone will learn the posture, as for themselves, that will make sense of a field of movement.”44 It is hard to know how such learning happens. One might say of the Israelites in the wilderness that a habit of poor posture, a kind of automaticity, haunts all the complaints and hatreds of the people. Somehow, the women have learned how to shake off shrill voices, how to stand and how to move, as for themselves. This involves overcoming the rigidities of everyday life. “They speak ken,” says God. Precisely at a moment of personal loss and instability, they dare to question the given world. But their skeptical question penetrates to another possibility. Their Why? implicitly envisions a “happier” world. If one speaks, in the full sense, one feels the firm ground of prejudice, of certainty, slipping away. When God congratulates them on the happy infelicity of their words, He, too, invokes a different kind of rightness. The sisters speak in such a way as to author a passage in the Torah. Through them, and not through Moses, this passage in the Torah is written. Their instrumentality is necessary. To have a portion of Torah written “by one’s hand” is to play on the edge of the notion of authorship. The traditional understanding is that Moses “took dictation” of the Torah text from God. But in this case, the midrash clearly implies some measure of direct 43 Felstiner, Paul Celan, xix. 44 Cavell, Quest, 115–116.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

involvement—whether by Moses, or by the five sisters. The hand by which Torah is written is privileged; the life of the writer has played a role in the creation of the text. To be an author is to authorize something, to redeem it from muteness. From the Latin auctor, it means to validate a title, to ratify, to supplement and actualize something else that needs strengthening, As the European philosopher Giorgio Agamhen puts it, “The act of the auctor completes the act of an incapable person, giving strength of proof to what in itself lacks it and granting life to what could not live alone. It can conversely be said . . . that the imperfect act completes and gives meaning to the word of the auctor-witness.”45 In Hebrew, Ashrei! contains some of the same meanings as the Latin auctor: to validate, corroborate, affirm, authorize. To declare Ashrei! is to legitimize the other, to complete and give meaning to him. The daughters of Tzelofḥad have their meanings amplified by God’s words: Ken dovrot—“They speak with a just beauty, so as to realize My transcendent text on high.” By saying ken, God supplements the power of the women’s words. But similarly, one might say, by speaking as they do, by enacting their own existence in God’s presence, the women give force to God’s text on high. Through the prism of ken, the Creator and His creatures give life and authorship to one another.

Acquiring One’s World In such moments of change, a whole world may be brought into focus. “One may acquire/create one’s world in one instant.” In the Talmud, we find a cluster of stories that enact this axiom. In the best-known of these stories, a notorious libertine, Eleazar ben Dordia, suddenly and inexplicably46 conceives the desire to change his life.47 He beseeches mountains and hills, heaven and earth, sun and moon, to beg God for mercy. Finally, he realizes, “It depends only on me”; he puts his head between his knees and bellows in tears until his soul leaves him. A heavenly voice cries out, R. Eleazar ben Dordia is welcome into the life of the world to come! “On hearing of it, 45 Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz (New York: Zone Books, 1999), 150. 46 The trigger for his transformation is the provocative statement of the harlot—“You will never repent!” Her words change his world sufficiently to make him desire to change it entirely. 47 b. Avodah Zarah 17a.

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Rabbi (R. Yehuda ha-Nassi) wept: “One may acquire one’s world [eternal life] over many years, or one may acquire it in one instant! He added: Is it not sufficient that penitents are accepted, but they are also called Rabbi!” Rabbi, the compiler of the Mishnah, the quintessential rabbinical figure, is deeply agitated, to the point of tears, by the notion of acquiring eternal life in one instant. The lives of the Rabbis, the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud, stand as paradigms of spiritual work performed “over many years.” How outrageous that the lifelong sensualist can access eternal life— acquire his world—in one instant of sacrificial passion! And, to top it all, to be welcomed into that world precisely as “Rabbi!” Both Rabbi and penitent weep; one deploring such a possibility—but in effect acknowledging it—the other soliciting it with his whole being. Many centuries later, the nineteenth-century Hasidic master Sefat Emet,48 sets this fraught paradox by the side of another statement about “the world”: “Everyone has a world that is his alone.” He cites a view that the word ‘olam, the world, is linked with the notion of he‘alem, of hiddenness. Every person has a specific form of obscurity, of resistance, that (s)he is challenged to confront in the world.49 Eternal life, one’s personal world, is created by the way in which one struggles to engage with this blind spot. “These are the struggles of human beings all their days in this world.” The world that one creates is primarily constituted by one’s confrontation with he‘alem, with that which baffles and eludes one in this world. Imagination is required for this struggle. Only then can one speak of eternal life. Acquiring one’s world, then, involves “coming forward” and “standing”: finding the movement and posture that makes sense of the field of this world. For the daughters of Tzelofḥad, this means standing against the pressures of the field, against the resistances, external and internal, that are intended specifically for them. The question of creating a world is ultimately a question of enacting one’s existence, of being created, of acknowledging one’s place in the world. ‘”To be or not to be, that is the question,” says Hamlet: whether to be born, “whether to affirm or deny the fact of natality, as a way of enacting, or not, one’s existence.”50 This means finding the posture that will allow them to stand up for an obscure love. 48 Sefat Emet, Bamidbar, 173–74. 49 Kafka’s story, “The Door of the Law,” The Trial (London: Penguin Books, 1953), 237, ends with a similar paradox: “No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since the door was intended only for you.” 50 Cavell, Quest, 128.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

The Emerging Order If the daughters of Tzelofḥad have gained the felicity of such a moment, RaShI immediately transfers this possibility to the reader: “Happy is the person with whose words God is in accord!” On a different plane, in the Torah text, God declares the law in this particular case, and then declares it as a precedent for all future generations. “You shall transfer their father’s share to them. Further, speak to the Israelites as follows: If a man dies without leaving a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter . . .” (Num. 27:7–8). The unusual expression, “You shall transfer—ve-ha‘avarta—his inheritance,” is repeated in the text. RaShI explains: “The expression ha‘avarah applies to one who dies without a male heir. Another explanation: daughters transfer [me‘aberet] the inheritance from tribe to tribe.” Citing b. Bava Batra 109a, RaShI links female inheritance with the idea of transferal. If a daughter inherits, the land goes with her when she marries. It adheres to her husband and to his tribe. Female inheritance, therefore, takes the ground out from under the stable division of the Land among the tribes. “Daughters transfer land”: in effect, the feminine represents a fluid, even a slippery possibility. The firm ground of law slides away under their feet. Daughter becomes wife; and the land is lost to the tribe.51 In spite of this, God ratifies the law of the daughters’ inheritance for future generations. He even calls it ken—as though, in its very instability, it establishes a different kind of grounding. In a complex teaching Sefat Emet addresses the “slippery” quality that seems to characterize the feminine principle.52 If women are the vehicles of transferal, of transition, even in the case of something as stable as land, perhaps they embody the notion of a kind of translation principle?

51 This is the argument made by the women’s male relatives later in Num. 36:1–4. God’s response opens with the same words as He had spoken to the five sisters: “Ken, rightly do they the clan of Josephites speak!” According to the Sifre, here, too, God gives the speakers the same praise of replicating the divine version of the narrative. However, this second ken does not have the same performative power as the first. The women created the precedent of such speech. God’s response to them therefore does not draw the panoply of midrashic elaborations that we have noticed. The solution that God later proposes protects the stability of the land but leaves open the question of whether women in this position are prevented by law from marrying outside the tribe, or merely advised not to do so. 52 Sefat Emet, Bamidbar, 183.

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The Hasidic master weaves into his text another use of the root ‘a-v-r that occurs soon after: God tells Moses, “Ascend this Mountain of ‘Avarim— of Transitions” (Num. 27:12). Transitions haunt this section of the Torah. Joshua is initiated into his new role as substitute for Moses. Moses lays (ve-samakhta) hands on him in the presence of the whole community and invests him with some of his own authority (27:18–20). This laying on of hands—semikhah—will in later generations characterize the conferral of rabbinic authority. At this moment, however, semikhah means the transmission, the transfer of some of Moses’ power, his hod—his radiance of authorship—to Joshua. The Sages compare Moses to the sun and Joshua to the moon: Joshua receives all of his light from his master Moses.53 In this sense, suggests Sefat Emet, Joshua can be seen as embodying the energy of the Oral Law, which draws on the Written Law, represented by Moses. The laying on of hands (semikhah) relates, by a play on words, to the legal decisions that the Rabbis deduce from the written text (asmakhtot). A new epoch begins; the trajectory of the Oral Law emerges here. Sefat Emet associates the feminine principle with this movement into interpretation of given texts. What transpires in this section of the Torah is the transmission of Moses’ Torah—the sun, the original source—to Joshua—the moon, representing the energy of the feminine, which receives and procreates. The Law of inheritance, newly written “by the hand” of women, evokes the mythic notion of a movement from the age of the masculine to the age of the feminine. Now, in the time of Joshua, those who enter the Land will have their daughters inherit, when there are no male heirs. And women, as we have seen, shift boundaries: they transfer, translate, reframe realities. This new ethos—initially disruptive of the status quo—is greeted by God with enthusiasm. It represents the movement and proliferation of genes and memes; it involves substitutions, metaphors, performative speech acts. Radically, it involves the creative imagination, which speaks the given world into transfigured being. What at first blush seemed infelicitous is now declared happy. Most strikingly, Sefat Emet suggests that the shift from a masculine modality to a feminine one explains why this law of feminine inheritance is hidden from Moses. In answering the women’s case, Moses finds himself at a disadvantage. He is unable to “see” the law that the women see so justly. 53 b. Bava Batra 75a.

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To Be or Not to Be: A Tale of Five Sisters    AVIVAH GOTTLIEB ZORNBERG

Without sarcasm, Sefat Emet reads this midrash with a new lucidity: “The law that you don’t know, the women frame,” God tells Moses. The women see from a feminine perspective, which is the emerging order of the world. Your time is receding, God tells Moses. This moment is for them: it offers them an opportunity to enact their own existence, to go first. It represents their unique struggle to acquire their world. But we may say, in another sense, that this moment is also for Moses. This is his moment of he‘alem, of hiddenness, of blockage. Such moments of challenge, resistance, constitute the world of an individual. At this moment, when the law is hidden from him—the sun is, as it were, in eclipse—Moses knows that indeed he will not enter the land. Here begins the regime of the Oral Law, signaled by the daughters of Tzelofḥad, who embody the “moon” principle, carrying interpretations to full term.54 The Sages will author Torah, completing and fulfilling what Moses has implanted in the world. Here, multiple interpretations, wordplays, slippages, will create networks of meaning. Moses, his face suffused with the light of God’s word, is to ascend the Mount of Transitions, of translations and transmissions, and to contemplate this future. In concrete terms, he will ascend Mount Nevo, months in the future, to look his first and last time on the Land. But for now, suggests Sefat Emet, it is the very experience of transition, the transference of masculine to feminine, that he must undergo. In this sense, the tension that the midrash traces between Moses and the daughters of Tzelofḥad represents the turning point between the world in which Moses has acted until now—the world of miracles and revelations—and the world of his successors. A “feminine” epoch of passages, and translations, and fertile slippages of language will constantly reimagine the Torah of Sinai. For Moses, this, paradoxically, is the moment when he confronts his own blind spot and acquires his own world.

54 The root ‘a-v-r is also connected with ‘ibbur—pregnancy.

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Rachel Adelman

From the Cleft of the Rock: The Eclipse of God in the Bible, Midrash, and PostHolocaust Theology

Introduction This essay aspires to the impassioned thinking of my colleague, teacher, and friend, Nehemia Polen. He has taught me to honor the insights of mystical and Hasidic interpretation, while holding a deep appreciation for the literary integrity of the Hebrew Bible. Nehemia urges us not to get lost in abstract theosophical musings and never to lose touch with the wellspring of the poetic and prophetic voice of Tanakh.1 In this essay, I follow the lead of his courage and optimism in an attempt to address the question that haunts this generation: Where was God during the Shoah? Deeply committed to theology, Nehemia has spoken to this issue particularly in his work on the Esh Kodesh, based on derashot penned in the Warsaw Ghetto by Rabbi Kalonymos Kalman Shapira (1889–1943).2 On the one hand, as teachers we 1 Especially in his essay: “Dark Ladies and Redemptive Compassion: Ruth and the Messianic Lineage in Judaism,” in Scrolls of Love, edited by Peter S. Hawkins and Lesleigh Cushing Stahlberg (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 59–74. 2 While Nehemia Polen does not necessarily grapple with these questions head-on, they loom large at the back of his entire oeuvre. See, for example, his work: “Divine Weeping: Rabbi Kalonymos Shapiro’s Theology of Catastrophe in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in Modern Judaism 7:3 (1987), 253–269, and The Holy Fire: The teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

are keenly aware that our post–World War reality is unique. In the past century, Jews have witnessed both the atrocities of World War II and the foundation of the State of Israel, the nadir of God’s absence from history and the apogee of the redemptive return to Zion. On the other hand, we also know that this generation is not at all unique. Jews have experienced collective calamity before, though never on the scale of Hitler’s Final Solution. I share Nehemia’s sense of urgency and, as he has, I turn to Tanakh and Midrash in search of a model for a constructive theology that provides, if not an answer, at least succor to the crisis of faith. I write in search of a new paradigm, a theodicy with an alternative biblical precedent—not punitive or fatalistic but full of pathos, where the onus for a redeeming presence resides with the human being. I will give a brief overview of the traditional problem of theodicy, and the concept of hester panim (the hiding of God’s face) as an answer in biblical and rabbinic literature,3 and then gesture at the limitations of this model for post-Holocaust Jewish theology. I then turn to an alternative model for the obscuring of God’s face: the vision of God’s “back (aḥor)” to Moses in the cleft of the rock (Ex. 33–34), drawing upon the insights of rabbinic exegesis. In this turn, I hope to show how the revelatory process of midrash is ongoing as the interpretation of Tanakh continues to provide us with meaningful answers about the nature of God’s relationship with all humanity and with the Jewish people in particular. It is a search for an authentic response that transcends the smoke columns of rising and falling civilizations, while still adhering to a faith in the God that inheres in history.

The Classic Problem of Theodicy: Hester Panim as an Answer From Exodus to Esther, God gradually seems to disappear over the course of biblical history. An overt redeeming presence at Sinai, God is almost fully occluded by the Babylonian and Persian exile, marked by the absence Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1994); “Theological Responses to the Hurban from within the Hurban,” in Jewish Perspectives on the Experience of Suffering, ed. Shalom Carmy (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson 1999), 277–295; “‘Night’ as Counternarrative: The Jewish Background,” in Approaches to Teaching Wiesel’s Night, ed. Alan Rosen (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007), 22–31. 3 For a review of the concept of hester panim in post-Holocaust theological literature see David Wolpe, “Hester Panim in Modern Jewish Thought,” in Modern Judaism 17:1 (1997), 25–56.

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of direct revelation in the form of prophecy or miracles.4 This divine “disappearance,” recast as “the hiding of Face/Presence (hester panim),” is foreshadowed by Moses in his final swan song to the people and justified in terms of collective punishment for Israel’s apostasy (Deut. 31:16–18, 32:20).5 Martin Buber softens the idea underlying hester panim by translating the term as the “eclipse of God.”6 Analogous to an overlap of the luminaries—the moon blood red at night in a lunar eclipse or the sun darkened by the moon in a solar eclipse—hester panim is a passing phenomenon. Indeed, the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel portend that there would be an end to God’s face hiding.7 Just as an eclipse is dependent on our own vantage point (the size of the sun and moon remain constant), so our experience of God’s hiddenness and revelation is linked to human perception. The Hasidic commentaries will point out that the intensification of the term haster astir (“I will surely hide my face” in Deut. 31:18) suggests that even the concealment of God’s hiddenness is concealed; the people don’t even 4 See Richard Eliot Friedman, The Hidden Face of God (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), originally published as The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995). The claim that the Shekhinah has gone into exile, along with prophecy and miracles, becomes almost an ideological tenet for the Rabbis. In a tannaitic dictum, it is taught: “From the time that the last prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, died, the Holy Spirit was withdrawn (nistalqah ruaḥ ha-qodesh) from Israel” (b. Sanhedrin 11a, cf. b. Yoma 9b, b. Sota 48b, y. Sota 9.13, t. Sota 13.3, Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 8:11). For a review of whether this belief was held unilaterally through the Second Temple Period, see Benjamin Sommer’s article, “Did Prophecy Cease? Evaluating a Reevaluation” in JBL 115/1 (1996): 31–47. Nehemia Polen has pointed out, however, that the tannaitic literature never claimed that prophecy ceased. He suggests, rather, that the Spirit withdrew which promises return in another form, and argues that derashah (homily or teaching) and the wisdom of the sages become the conduit for God’s immanence; see “The Spirit among the Sages: Seder Olam, the End of Prophecy, and Sagely Illumination,” in Midrash and the Exegetical Mind: Proceedings of the 2008 and 2009 SBL Midrash Sessions (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2015), 83–94, and “Derashah as Performative Exegesis” in ‘It’s Better to Hear the Rebuke of the Wise than the Song of Fools’ (Qoh 7:5), Proceedings of the Midrash Section, SBL, Vol. 6 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 123–54. 5 The Talmud suggests that this prophecy is ultimately fulfilled in the time of Esther, perhaps the latest book to enter the biblical canon. “Where is Esther indicated in the Torah? R. Matan replied: ‘Then I will indeed hide My face (haster astir) on that day. . . .’” (b. Ḥullin 139b). 6 Martin Buber, Eclipse of God (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1953). See also his beautiful essay on Job, On the Bible: Eighteen Studies, ed. Nahum Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1982), 188–198. The theological tenets expressed there are considerably expanded as “God of the Sufferers,” in The Prophetic Faith (New York: Macmillan, 1977), 155–235. 7 Is. 54:8 and 57:18; and Ez. 39:29.

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

know God is hiding.8 Buber emphasizes the relational dynamic between God and the human implied by the metaphor and links it to the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century: Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God—such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is passing. But it is not a process which can be adequately accounted for by instancing the changes that have taken place in man’s spirit. An eclipse of the sun is something that occurs between the sun and our eyes, not in the sun itself. . . . But when, as in this instance, something is taking place between heaven and earth, one misses everything when one insists on discovering within earthly thought the power that unveils the mystery. He who refuses to submit himself to the effective reality of the transcendence as such—our vis-à-vis—contributes to the human responsibility for the eclipse.9

Though the prophets deemed hester panim transitory, history suggests otherwise. God’s deepening occlusion is not ephemeral and this is attributed, by biblical historiography, to the collective sins of the people, Israel. The formulation of God’s hiddenness in terms of Israel’s transgression presumes a theodicy—an attempt to “justify the ways of God to man.”10 It is the question of Job: why do the righteous or innocent suffer? Where is there vindication for the individual, who is “blameless and upright, God-fearing and shuns evil” (Job 1:1, 8, 2:3), who, as a consequence of a wager with the Adversary, loses all his wealth and his ten children, and finds himself scraping his boils with a potshard atop an ash-heap? For Jews, this question is posed on a collective scale. Why has this people whose God is the “Lord of History”, having chosen them to be His people, bearing “them on eagles’ wings . . . to become a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:4–6), suffered inexorably two thousand years of persecution, from the Emperor Hadrian’s oppressive rule in the second century, to the slaughter and forced conversions during the Crusades and Inquisition, and, ultimately, Hitler’s Final Solution? In classic theological terms, the problem is: How can one reconcile an all-powerful, benevolent deity with the presence of evil in the 8 See, for example, the Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, 1847–1905), va-yelekh 5639 [1879] and 5641 [1891] on Deut. 31:18. 9 Buber, Eclipse of God, 34–35. 10 I am paraphrasing John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1.26. The term “theodicy” (in Hebrew tzidduq ha-din), is based on a portmanteau of the Greek words, theo-, God, and dike, justice.

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world? Given the suffering of the innocent—the slaughter of one and a half million children in the Shoah—one is compelled to ask: How could God allow this to happen? Either God is impotent, powerless to affect the ways of the world, or God is not all good. The classic (reprehensible) answer to the individual, in the case of Job, is provided by his so-called friends: Job must have sinned (though they are deemed wrong in the end). For the Jewish people as a collective, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic History provide a similar answer: God abandoned them because they betrayed the covenant. According to Moses’ final oratory to the Israelites, the prophet speaks of a time when the divine Presence will be fully occluded and the Israelites will suffer inexorably, sent into exile at the hands of foreign nations: YHWH said to Moses, “Soon you will lie down with your ancestors. Then this people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst, the gods of the land into which they are going; they will forsake me, breaking my covenant that I have made with them. My anger will be kindled against them in that day. I will forsake them and hide my face from them (vehistarti fanai); they will become easy prey, and many terrible troubles will come upon them. In that day they will say, ‘Have not these troubles come upon us because our God is not in our midst?’ On that day I will surely hide my face (ve-anokhi haster astir panai ba-yom ha-h’u) on account of all the evil they have done by turning to other gods. (Deut. 31:16–18, NJPS trans. adapted)

Here, Moses prophesizes the destruction of the First Commonwealth and the Babylonian exile as collective punishment for the people’s apostasy. It is accompanied by the disappearance of God (hester panim), depicted in terms of retribution for the Israelites’ rejection of the covenant. This withdrawal of divine providence, in turn, reinforces their claim that God is no longer in their midst. With regard to the intensive, haster astir (v. 18), it is as if the hiding itself is in hiding such that mortals do not understand that God has deliberately hid Himself. Norman Lamm explains: Man, however, interprets the nature of the punishment, and repudiates the dialogue altogether, holding that his misfortune signifies the absence of God, not just His displeasure, and therefore the unhappy events are interpreted by him not as punishment, but as chance occurrences precisely because God is either “absent” or indifferent to man. This is, in essence, a denial of God’s

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

providence, and the punishment (for this consequent theological rather than original behavioral sin) is ironically appropriate: the true denial to man of divine providence, i.e., Hester Panim. In this state of alienation, Israel becomes a derelict people, left by God to its own resources and to the mercy of both nature and history. 11

The absence of divine providence leads to the people’s claim that God is not even “out there”; the obscurity itself is obscured. Isaiah’s prophecy invoking the same term then serves as a corrective: “No, YHWH’s arm is not too short to save, or His ear too dull to hear; But your iniquities have separated you from your God, Your sins have made (Him?) hide Presence/Face(s) from you in understanding (histiru fanim mikem mishmo‘a)” (Is. 59:1–2, author’s translation). In response to unjustified suffering and the absence of God’s answering, both Deuteronomy and Isaiah anticipate the claim: God is powerless to save—either impotent or non-existent. The prophet suggests otherwise: it is the Israelites who have blocked their ears and caused the hiding of face(s). The agency behind the occlusion is left open-ended, whether it is human sin and misunderstanding or God’s willful withdrawal that cause the obscuring.12 11 Norman Lamm, “The Face of God: Thoughts on the Holocaust,” in Theological and Halakhic Reflections on the Holocaust, eds., F. S. Heuman and B. H. Rosenberg (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Pub. House, 1992), 129. Lamm cites Maimonides, who suggests that the experience of hester panim is misinterpreted as the absence of God, not God’s displeasure. “It is clear that we are the cause of this hiding of the face, and that the screen that separates us from God is of our own creation . . . There is undoubtedly no difference in this regard between one single person and a whole community. It is now clearly established that the cause of our being exposed to chance and abandoned to destruction like cattle, is to be found in our separation from God” (Guide of the Perplexed 3:51, quoted by Lamm, 129). As Wolpe summarizes: “Therefore the unhappy events are interpreted by people not as punishments, but as chance occurrences, precisely because God is either ‘absent’ or indifferent to man” (Wolpe, “Hester Panim”, 41). Joseph Soloveitchik similarly invokes hester panim to account for the Holocaust. In his understanding, hester panim “involves a temporary abandonment of the world, a suspension of His active surveillance, as RaShI clearly explains, ‘as though I do not see their distress’” (in Reflections of the Rav, vol. 1, ed. Abraham Besdin (Jerusalem: Department of the Jewish Agency 1979), 35. 12 Note that the subject of the verb (pl.) in Isaiah is highly ambiguous: “Your sins have made (Him?) hide face from you and from hearing (histiru fanim mikem mishmo‘a)” (Is. 59:2)—on one level, sins (pl.) cause the hiding and deafness to hearing; alternatively, it could be God’s face/Presence, panim (pl.) that hides, histiru mi-kem, from you (pl., the people of Israel). A similar ambiguity is implied in Cain’s response to his punishment, “you have banished me from the face of the ground and from Your face I shall be hidden (mipaneikha esater) . . .” (Gen. 4:14) . . . “and Cain left the face/Presence of

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In this theodicy, the biblical text presents the removal of divine favor in terms of retributive justice; the punishment of the Israelites is commensurate with their sin. God hides His face ostensibly because they have hidden from Him in turning to other gods.13 According to Ephriam Urbach all traditional theodicies are based on some form of retributive justice—righteousness will ultimately be rewarded and sin will meet with just deserts.14 But this generalization requires more nuances. Zachary Braiterman paraphrases the underlying basis of classic theodicy as “mipnei ḥata’einu” (lit. because of our sins) and summarizes it as follows: God rewards the righteous on the basis of accrued merit and punishes the wicked on the basis of accumulated sin. Although this retributive order is not necessarily revealed in our particular historical framework or even in this-world, God will faithfully dispense proportionate retribution in the messianic future and in the world-to-come. Indeed suffering often represents the means by which God purges Israel for its few sins in this-world so as to accrue merit for messianic and other-worldly futures. In the meantime, the LORD” (v. 16). The experience of ‘avvon (punishment/sin) is experienced as exile from the earth (an extension of Adam’s curse) and from the divine presence. Cain, in response to being banished by God, literally “hidden” from the divine face (Gen. 4:14), calls in dismay: “My punishment is too great to bear (or, Is my sin too great to be forgiven?) (gadol ‘avvoni minss’o)” (v. 13). To be borne by the face of God is the inverse of Cain’s banishment; it would entail, if not forgiveness, a softening of the consequences of hester panim. (See the discussion of Wolpe who argues that Cain’s punishment is the prefiguration of hester panim in history, “Hester Panim”, 40–41). In a derash attributed to R. Meir (based on the Job 34:29), God’s withdrawal, the hiding of His face, is likened “to a judge that stretches a curtain across his face and does not know what is happening without” (Bereshit Rabbah 58:36). That is, God withdrew while humanity continued to sin (through the Generation of the Flood, according to the midrash), and God as judge could not be held culpable because it is as if He blindfolded Himself. This passage is discussed at length in Zachary Braiterman (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1998), 31–32. 13 This prophecy is echoed by the later prophets: Is. 1:15, “I [God] will hide my eyes away from you [Israel]…”; and God “hides (s.t.r.) His presence/face (panim)” in Is. 8:17, 54:8, 59:2 and 64:6; Jer. 33:5; Ez. 39:23, 24; and 29; and Mic. 3:4. In the Psalms and the Book of Job, this trope is invoked as a plea that God not hide His face from the individual: Psalms 13:1, 22:25, 27:9, 30:8, 69:18, 88:15, 102:3 and 143:7; Job 13:24. In Elihu’s speech to Job, however, God’s response of silence or occlusion may operate on both the level of individual and the collective: “When He is silent, who will condemn? If He hides His face, who will see Him, be it nation or man?” (Job 34:29, NJPS). 14 According to Ephraim E. Urbach, “Doctrines of retribution, no matter how strained, underlie all traditional theodicy” The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem: Magnes 1979), 514.

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

Israel must trust God and accept suffering. God is a loving father and a just judge whose mitzvoth Israel should observe solely out of love—without any thought of reward that is often dispensed in this world and that is surely to come in the future.15

The suffering of the innocent, then, is not the consequence of an arbitrary, distant or indifferent deity. God is unequivocally omnibenevolent and omnipotent, but the relationship between righteousness and reward, sin and punishment, is delayed. Yet not all theology concerned with suffering falls under the rubric of classic theodicy. Braiterman suggests various alternative approaches and positions them under the rubric “antitheodicy”, defined as the refusal to “justify” “explain” or “accept” the relationship between God and evil. God’s ways cannot (and, perhaps, should not) be justified. In the service of this theology, Braiterman deploys the theory of “counter-coherence” (Mieke Bal’s term), wherein disparate textual strands “disrupt an otherwise monolithic message. Counter-coherence does not obviate established patterns of textual meaning. Its effect rather is ‘to enforce an awareness of a reality which is also represented in the book.’”16 So the figure of the protesting Job may be understood as an example of counter-coherence within the biblical canon, as it provides a profound critique of retributive justice; the suffering of the righteous or the innocent is not the inevitable consequence of sin. In his reading of Job and aggadic passages throughout the rabbinic corpus, Braiterman identifies three expressions of antitheodicy: complaint, solidarity, and incomprehension. Likewise, David Weiss Halivni rejects the notion of hester panim as the collective consequence of transgression (mipnei ḥata’einu). The slaughter of the six million Jews at the hands of the Nazi genocidal machine cannot be explained in terms of any sin: Because, as indicated in Deuteronomy, the ‘hiding of God’s face’ arises as a consequence of sin. . . . If we believed that (hester panim) prevailed during the Shoah, then it would be as if we attributed the Shoah to sin, which is the very notion that we have rejected. God, as it were, restrained Himself from taking part in history and gave humanity an opportunity to display its

15 Braiterman, (God) After Auschwitz, 46. 16 Ibid., 37, drawing on Mieke Bal, Death and Dissymetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 16–17, 20–21.

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capacities for good or for evil. It is our misfortune that, in the time of the Shoah, humanity displayed its capacities for unprecedented evil.17

The question for him remains: How could God let it happen?18 Jewish theologians such as Halivni and Hans Jonas reject the notion of retributive justice, while still trying “to justify the ways of God to man.” They turn to the Lurianic kabbalistic idea of tzimtzum (divine contraction) for an alternative theodicy. In the creation of the world, God deliberately diminished Himself in order to make space for human autonomy and free will. Through God’s contraction, a vacuum (ḥallal ha-panui) was left in the divine wake that had to be continually regenerated, in dynamic relationship with God’s involvement in the world.19 As Halivni summarizes: Those murdered in the Shoah lived, as it were, outside of normal history— that is, in a period of ultimate divine contraction—Their lives depended on how free will would be exercised by those whose freedom was fully liberated by the ‘renewal of tsimtsum’ that took place in their days . . . Unfortunately for their victims and for us, those who exercised his free will exercised it in the most evil of ways, while their victims remained unprotected and

17 David Weis Halivni, Breaking the Tablets (Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 32. Lamm also argues that the principle of retributive justice, mipnei ḥata’einu, cannot be applied to the Holocaust. Yet he still adheres to the theological principle of “intensive Hester Panim” to account for the nadir in the absence of Divine Providence, which began after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE (Lamm, “The Face of God,” 132). Similarly Jonathan Sacks argues that the Shoah is really an extension of hester panim that began with the Galut (Diaspora/Exile), where God’s Presence (Shekhinah) also withdrew from history (Jonathan Sacks, “The Holocaust in Jewish Theology,” in Tradition in an Untraditional Age (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1990), 139–160. See also his discussion of hester panim and Soloveitchik’s response to the Holocaust in Crisis and Covenant (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1992), 38–40, 136–140. I think this blurring of the theological response to the Destruction of the Second Temple and the Shoah is problematic for the same reasons that Halivni, Yitz Greenberg, Hans Jonas, and Eliezer Berkowitz do. I believe that the unprecedented scale of the calamity and the modern secular historical context (with the confluence of state and race) call for a different theological response. 18 Based on Hans Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz,” in Out of the Whirlwind, ed. Albert H. Friedlander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1968), 465–476; first published in Harvard Theological Review 55 (1962): 1–20. 19 Art Green argues that Heschel’s whole concept of God’s need for man (esp. God in Search of Man [1955]) derives deeply from Hasidic ideas. See Arthur Green, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns,” Modern Judaism 29, no. 1 (2009): 62–79.

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

undefended without any intervention from Above. They suffered and died, but for nothing they had done. The cause of their suffering was cosmic.20

If we adopt the Lurianic concept of divine contraction, as Halivni and Jonas do, two issues remain: 1) Why believe in God’s abiding relationship with Israel and history? Or, even further, why accept the existence of a personal God at all?21 2) And what of human responsibility? What roles do humanity, in general, and Jews, in particular, play if God indeed recoiled in suffering from being present in the world? One response rises out of a radical humanism—a rejection of theo-logy altogether (What has God got to do with it?) and a turn to anthro-pology or social psychology. Another response entails the renunciation of any adequate answer in the face of such calamity, a refusal to “justify the ways of God to man.”22 But an abiding danger lingers in the turn away from God for an answer. In the Shoah, the nadir of God’s absence in history, Nietzsche’s answer to the madman’s quest resounds ominously: “Whither is God,” he cried. I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers.”23 20 Halivni, Breaking the Tablets, 33–34 (his italics). 21 Rubenstein argued as much. In rejecting a “personal God,” he rejected the God of history and the doctrine of the Chosen People; see Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966). But his verdict on God changed. In the second version, he wrote: “Today I no longer regard the cosmos as ‘cold, silent, unfeeling.’ At the very least, insofar as man is a part of the cosmos and is capable of love as well as hate, the cosmos cannot be said to be entirely cold and silent . . . Today I would balance the elements of creation and love in the cosmos more evenly with those of destruction and hate than was possible in 1966” (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 172. 22 The great wisdom Psalm, first in the collection of the Psaltser, adjures the worthy man not to rely solely on other humans. “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night” (Ps. 1:1–2 NRSV). I take this in the most expansive sense, meaning even that the lessons of history must not be gleaned from the wicked. The turn to a theological answer may emerge from despair with humanity as much as a search for a relationship with God on a new footing. Some scholars claim that the Shoah calls for no new theological response at all, especially from those critical of Fackenheim’s “614th commandment”: not to grant Hitler a posthumous victory. Accordingly, any attempt to make meaning of the Holocaust is a travesty. See Michael Wyschogrod, “Faith and the Holocaust,” Judaism 20, no. 3 (1971): 286–294, Jacob Neusner, “Of God and Man,” Midstream 16, no. 8 (1970): 70–73; Robert Alter, “Deformations of the Holocaust”, Commentary (Feb. 1981), accessed on September 19, 2017, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/ articles/deformations-of-the-holocaust/. 23 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (La Gaia Scienza) (Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch 1887), 181.

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The mocking answer to the madman at best calls for a secular humanism, and, at worst, bodes a nihilistic relativism and abnegation of responsibility. Though the original impetus for the “death of God” theologians might have been humanistic, placing the onus for the Holocaust solely on people, many Jewish theologians ultimately rejected the turn to holding humans solely accountable.24 The explanation that people were the sole source of salvation (and perdition) is an answer foreign to the Jewish sources. Irving Greenberg takes the consequences of this atheism to the extreme: “the need to deny God leads directly to the assumption of omnipotent power over life and death. The desire to control people leads directly to crushing the image of God within them, so that the jailer becomes God.”25 That is, the persecutor imagines he is a deity, with the power of death over life. Evil is the prism of this malevolent god filtered through the human face. But such absolute evil is really the darkest, most manifest denial of God. Deicide devolves into the eradication of the image of God in the human and a repudiation of the Jewish God of history. The genocidal ideology of the Nazis inevitably follows. In George Steiner’s words, “By killing the Jews, Western culture would eradicate those who had ‘invented’ God, who had, however imperfectly, however restively, been the declarers of His unbearable Absence.”26 24 See the summary of the critique of the “God is Dead” theology in Wolpe, “Hester Panim”, 30–31. Nehemia Polen offers a fascinating response in his analysis of Elie Wiesel’s Night. The most vivid image in the memoir depicts a child dying in slow agony on the gallows while a man, forced to march by and watch, asks: “Where is God now?” to which the young Eliezer (not much older than the child), responds in his heart: “Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows” (Night [Bantam Books, 1982], 61–62). Nehemia reframes the horrific image in terms of “God suffering—not for humanity but with humanity, indeed as humanity. And children embody the sacred in a particularly vibrant form. As the Zohar puts it, the face of a schoolchild is the face of the Shechinah, the growing edge of the divine, oriented to the world, beaming hope” (Polen, “Night as Counternarrative,” 29). While Wiesel’s faith turned away, at that moment, from the Jewish tradition he never really succumbed to nihilism because he survived and made it his mission to tell the story. In Nehemia’s reading, the image of the gaunt corpse, “the shattered self ”, that Wiesel saw in the mirror upon being liberated from Buchenwald, “is not to be identified with the narrator . . . [he] has recovered his self-awareness, has found a voice, has a face beyond the image in the mirror. The mirror did more than reflect the present in inexorable fixity: by its very starkness, it broke open a window on the future” (Ibid., 30–31). 25 Irving Greenberg, “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity, and Modernity after the Holocaust,” in Eva Fleischner (ed.), Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? (New York: Ktav 1977), 29. 26 George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards a Re-definition of Culture (London: Faber and Faber Ltd. 1971), 38. This short but very profound book is based

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

In response to Nietzsche’s claim that “God is dead” because man has slain Him, George Steiner invokes this paradox: “But that God, blank as the desert air, would not rest. The memory of His ultimatum, the presence of His Absence, have goaded Western man.”27 As a literary critic, Steiner turns to the future in calling for a redefinition of Culture, while I, as a Bible scholar interested in theology, turn to the past in search of a precedent in Scripture. I adopt Martin Buber’s “eclipse of God,” which, unlike the classic understanding of hester panim, does not carry the burden of a theology based on retributive justice. Before addressing the relational and ethical imperative that undergirds the “eclipse of God,” I want to explore the paradox, “the presence of His Absence,” in the image of God’s back (aḥor). In the second theophany at Sinai to Moses alone in the cleft of the rock at Horeb, the prophet pleads that God reveal “His ways” to him in the wake of the Sin of the Golden Calf. It is not God or “the memory of His ultimatum,” but the prophet’s ultimatum that calls for an alternative mode of revelation. As a consequence of Moses’ request, God grants divine presence refracted through the human face. In Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “depth theology,” the reason one may not represent God in a graven image of stone, wood or clay (according to the Second of the Ten Commandments) is not because there is no image of God, but because the human being is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27, 5:1–2) and defies that fixity in the fullness of his or her self.28 As Heschel tells us, “Life is a partnership of God and man;” indeed “the essence of Judaism is the awareness of the reciprocity of God and man, of man’s togetherness with Him who abides in eternal otherness.”29

on a collection of four lectures that focus on a post-Holocaust literary and moral imperative. Steiner is pointedly critical of the Christian (and implied antisemitic underpinnings) of T. S. Eliot’s Notes towards the Definition of Culture, as well as other foundational modern literary and philosophical works. Similarly, Eliezer Berkowitz argues that Hitler’s Final Solution was an attempt to destroy the only witnesses to the God of history. The miracle that testifies that God exists is that the people of Israel exist; see Eliezer Berkowitz, Faith after the Holocaust (New York: Ktav 1973). 27 Steiner, Bluebeard’s Castle, 38. 28 Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Sacred Image of Man,” The Insecurity of Freedom: Essays on Human Existence (New York Schocken Books, 1972), 150–167. 29 Idem, Man is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, 1951), 242.

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The Alternative: Bearable or Unbearable Absence? After the sin of the Golden Calf, Moses engages in a private conversation with God, presumably at the top of Mount Sinai where he is given the second set of Tablets (Ex. 33:12–23 and 34:1–8). Having secured forgiveness for the people, God asserts that He can no longer travel with the Israelites, for “If I were to go in your midst for one moment, I would destroy you” (33:5, cf. v. 3). God promises to send a messenger/angel (mala’kh) instead (v. 2). The prophet, however, demands that God show His ways and that He not abandon them, but travel with them (33:14–15).30 He then audaciously asks to see the Glory of God (v. 19). But the vison which Moses “sees” is obscure; it is not overtly visual. Rather there is a slipping into a crevice, a covering, a closure, where he sees a trace of the divine, no face at all. This is the counter-revelation in the wake of the theophany at Sinai. It foreshadows the hiding of God’s face in history, which may be mediated through the covenant of the so-called “Thirteen Attributes of Mercy.”31 30 What is Moses really asking for when he demands of God: “show me your ways that I may know you” (v. 13)? Initially, God seems to ignore the request, and addresses only the prophet personally, “My Presence (panai) will go and I will give you [sg.] rest” (v. 14). This seems to mitigate the initial refusal not to go in their midst (vv. 2–3). Ibn Ezra (loc. cit. v. 3) understands God’s earlier statement to mean the cancellation of the order to construct the Tabernacle (cf. Ex. 25:8); so the promise to go with them reinstates the building project of the sanctuary. RaShBaM, on the other hand, suggests that God concedes to Moses’ request by promising to go with them into the Promised Land (rather than an angel/intermediary), engaging directly in the battles of conquest (cf. Deut. 3:30 and 25:19). When Moses complains further—“if your presence does not travel [with us], do not bring us up out of this” (v. 15), RaShBaM understands this as a request for proof and reassurance that God will continue to abide with them. RaShI (loc. cit. v. 15), on the other hand, understands God’s promise as restricted to being with Moses, and the prophet’s second complaint (v. 15) as a request that God travel with him as well as the people. Note his repetition of “us” and “Your people” (vv. 15–16). 31 The so-called “Thirteen Attributes of Mercy” are first recited in Ex. 34:6–7, and are invoked by the prophets and throughout Psalms with considerable variation (some omitted, while others are added depending on the context). The original enumeration of “thirteen” is identified in the Talmud as the berit shalosh-‘esreh—the Covenant of Thirteen—based on the covenant formulation that follows (34:10). God’s final words, however, are not necessarily merciful: “. . . yet by no means clearing the guilty (naqeh l’o yenaqeh), but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (v. 7). So the identification and enumeration of the attributes as compassionate is clearly a rabbinic overlay. In fact, the emphatic form “naqeh l’o yenaqeh” is often split or altogether dropped, rendered simply “naqeh” (clearing the guilty), against the grain of the plain meaning. How the invocation is divided into Thirteen Attributes of God differs between geonim and

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

And He [God] said, “I will make all My goodness pass before you (‘al paneikha, lit. over your face), and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD (YHWH)’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” He [God] said, “you cannot see My face (panai); for no one shall see Me and live.” And YHWH continued, “See, there is a place by Me where you shall stand on the rock; and while My glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My hand until I have passed by; then I will take away My hand, and you shall see My back (aḥorai); but My face (u-fanai) shall not be seen.” (Ex. 33:19–23, NRSV trans. adapted)

This counter-revelation is a concession to Moses’ request, “show me Your ways . . .” (v. 13) and “show me Your glory” (v. 19). It is also a sign of divine reconciliation, partial forgiveness of the people after their apostasy with the Golden Calf. Though God initially claims that He (or rather His “face/ presence”) cannot travel with them, a compromise is offered. How does the experience of the absence of face/presence (panim) modulate into a vision of the “back (aḥor)”? Why in the crevice of the rock (niqrat ha-tzur)? What do we make of these metaphors that are so provocatively anthropomorphic? The aggadah unravels these perplexing metaphors by expanding them into exegetical narratives or parables. It is then incumbent upon us moderns to translate the midrash into philosophical or theological terms. There are two central ideas that undergird the aggadic passages: 1. The first entails a translation of the spatial metaphor into temporal terms. The face (panim) as forward or turning towards the future, and the back (aḥor), as trace or turning to the past, may be understood in terms of the experience of God as manifest in time, or more expansively, in history—the way we may come to understand God’s presence in the events of the past. 2. The second reads this vision as a precedent for prayer or, more precisely, liturgy of intercession for the sake of forgiveness. It is essentially theurgic in that the human is empowered with the means of invoking God’s compassion even in the absence of divine presence. One might then understand the image of the trace and the verbal accompaniment of the “Thirteen Attributes rishonim. See the chart outlined by Adin Steinsaltz, Talmud Bavli Beitzah and Rosh Ha-Shanah (Jerusalem: Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications 1982), 72 (Hebrew).

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of Mercy” (Ex. 34:6–7) as an injunction to act in the image of God, encouraging human compassion and accountability.32 The experience of God’s back (aḥor) then modulates into a mandate for responsibility (aḥrayut).

The Back of God as Trace In the first translation of the metaphors, the cave or crevice in the mountain (niqrat ha-tzur) is a place, or perhaps ha-maqom, the locus of divine-human encounter, evoking entrance, closure, and aperture, like the fluttering of an eyelid.33 The place is a mode of being in place with God, “standing on the rock” (33:21), echoed in the sequel, when God descends in a cloud, and stands with him (there) (34:5). According to the Talmud this is the same cave in which Elijah experienced his theophany at the mountain of God at Horeb (1 Kgs. 19:8–9). In the wake of the mighty mountain-splitting wind, the earthquake, and the fire, God’s trace (aḥor) is experienced as a thin murmuring voice (qol demamah daqah). The sound of near silence—the 32 Lamm argues along similar lines but draws on a different textual tradition. The inverse of hester panim is nesi’at panim, meaning, “to bear or lift up the presence/face”, an idiom for forgiveness or divine providence as in the priestly blessing—“May the Eternal lift up His countenance upon you (yiss’a YHWH panav ’eleikha)”(Num. 6:26, discussed in Lamm, “The Face of God”, 126–127). Nehemia Polen, in his eloquent essay on the Sefat Emet’s commentary on the priestly blessing, connects the two expressions of panim (Num. 6:25–26) with the nequdah penimit (innermost point or interiority). The first phrase in the priestly blessing—“may the eternal make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you (ya’er YHWH panav ’eleikha viḥuneka)” (Num. 6:25)—may be paraphrased as: the one so blessed should experience the divine Face as directed towards him or her, “shining and smiling . . . a catalyst for total presence and touching the depths of one’s own being.” The comment is derived from the nation’s experience at Sinai, when “face to face (panim be-fanim), the Eternal spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire” (Deut. 5:4). Thus, the blessing is a way of internalizing the experience of Sinai outside the bounds of the one-time historical event of Revelation. “What is being elicited,” according to Polen, “is our own inwardness.” See Nehemia Polen, “Birkat Kohanim in the S’fat Emet,” in Birkat Kohanim The Priestly Blessing, eds. David Birnbaum and Martin S. Cohen (New York: New Paradigm Matrix Publishing, 2015), 264265. Later in this essay, we will discuss the relationship between the face-to-face experience at Sinai and the inverse, hester panim. 33 According to a rabbinic teaching, God is referred to as maqom, yet not confined to place, maqom. “Why is the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, called maqom? For He is the place of the world, but the world is not His place” (Pesiqta Rabbati 21:10; see also: Bereshit Rabbah 68:9 and Tanḥuma, va-yeshev 1, Midrash Tehillim 90:10).

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

qol echoing the qolot (sounds of thunder) at Sinai. In drawing this parallel, the midrash gives us an auditory and temporal metaphor for the visual— what cannot be seen or heard, God’s presence in the present. Just as Moses experiences the deepest, quiet intimacy after the sturm und drang of the theophany at Sinai, so Elijah is called upon to hear, paradoxically, the sound of silence following the pyrotechnics of Mount Carmel (1 Kgs. 18). Of this cave, the Talmud comments: R. Yoḥanan says: If there had been an opening as large as the eye of a needle in the cave in which Moses and Elijah had stood, they could not have withstood its light, at it says: For no one shall see me and live (Ex. 33:20, b. Megillah 19b).

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? An infinite number for God is no-place and yet in every crevice, nook and cranny—ubiquitous. Slipping into that place, where the Presence of God (panim) in the present cannot be seen but only sensed in the aftermath through a chink in the cave, entails, according to R. Yoḥanan, a near-death experience, on the pivot between Eros and Thanatos.34 This is an experience of almost seeing that which cannot be seen and survived.35 It is a locus of desire and yearning, a consummation perennially eluded, which can only be sensed once it has passed in time. Edmund Jabès alludes to this experience of the divine presence: “Do you know that the final period of the book is an eye,” he said, 34 There are essentially three ways of understanding the warning, “You cannot see My face for no man may see My face and live” (Ex. 33:20). 1) God is essentially beyond the visible, that is, incorporeal, and therefore has no face. But this is a very narrow, overly literal understanding of “face”. In the same passage, we are told that God “spoke to Moses face-to-face” (Ex. 33:11; cf. Deut. 34:10 and Num. 12:8); in Deut. 5:4, God is said to have spoken to the people, “face to face (panim be-fanim)…on the mountain out of the fire.” The anthropomorphic expression of face-to-face conveys a special intimacy, a unique mode of revelation between God and Moses that is unmediated by visions or dreams, without any cryptic expressions that need decoding. In the priestly blessing, God is asked to “shine His face” upon the person (Num. 6:25)—an intimation of grace. So the “not seeing the Face” cannot be about God’s essential incorporeality. 2) Alternatively, the passage implies that if you see God’s full presence, you will die because it is too much to withstand (as the Talmud suggests); or 3) You may only see God’s presence upon death (as in Pesiqta Rabbati, ki tissa 10 and Pirqe deRabbi Eliezer, ch. 46). Interestingly, another passage in the Talmud sees it merely as a particular response to Moses (not a general statement about the relations between God and human beings). Because Moses hid his face from God at the burning bush (Ex. 3:6), now that he asked to see the divine glory, God would play hide-and-seek with him (b. Berakhot 6a). 35 As in Hagar’s declaration in the naming of Beer la-hai Roi, “‘You Are El-roi,’ by which she meant, ‘Have I not gone on seeing after He saw me!’” (Gen. 16:13).

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“and without a lid?” Dieu, “God,” he spelled D’yeux, “of eyes.” The ‘D’ stands for desire,” he added. “Desire to see. Desire to be seen.”36 When Moses expresses a desire to see the glory of God and is granted a vision of His back but not the face, the passage conveys a sense of God that Jews have intuitively understood since. We move forward into history but come to understand history only as it fades into the past. The experience of the trace (aḥor) in Jewish consciousness is the experience of history as part of God’s self-revelation on this earth. But we only understand that history by recording, by deciphering its significance, by looking back at God’s “back”—the trace of divine presence as meaning in retrospect. The opaque image of the “back”, in another comment in the Talmud, is understood mysteriously as the knot of God’s phylacteries (tefillin) (b. Berakhot 7a). Avivah Zornberg unpacks the image: This extraordinary midrash seems to aggravate the anthropomorphism of the biblical text. The tefillin knot, however, is a phenomenon of the back of the head: what Moses is to see after God removes His obscuring hand is that part of the tefillin that signifies that one is not seeing the tefillin itself. Through this daring image, the midrash conveys the experience of not seeing the heart of the mystery. That total knowledge, in which time and change are blindingly effaced, literally “passes him by”: in the darkness of the cave, his gaze is protectively covered by God’s hand. What he sees is the aftermath of God’s presence, its effects. What it leaves in its wake. The tefillin knot is the trace left by His presence. As a knot, a kesher, too, it binds, it forms a link between the divine and the human. Only this “knot” of relationship, separating and uniting is presented to Moses’ gaze.37

In the Talmud, Rav Naḥman asks: what was written on the scrolls within the divine phylacteries, to which Rav Hiyya bar Abin answers: “And who is like Your people, Israel, a unique nation on earth!?!” (1 Chron. 17:21, b. Berakhot 6a). That is, the relationship between God and the chosen people is irrevocable; to be a Jew is ineluctably to be God’s people, bound in covenantal connection, as expressed by the binding nature of the divine tefillin. In this knot, God expresses commitment to all Jews (male or female), whether or not they wear human phylacteries. It is a divine election that 36 Quoted from Rosemarie Waldrop, Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès (Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press 2002), 13. 37 Avivah Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 440–441 (her italics).

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

inheres through history and an understanding of one’s purpose as part of a collective within that history.

The Experience of God’s “Back” in Prayer This metaphor for the revelation of God’s “back (aḥor)” as tefillin segues into our second reading of this scene in liturgical terms. The Exodus narrative earlier had informed us that Moses speaks with God face-to-face (33:11, cf. Num. 12:8); there is no direct visual encounter. The cleft in the rock scene, the refusal of an unmediated ocular experience, anticipates what will follow in the form of a verbal revelation. The elusive image of the “back” modulates into speech or, rather, an invocation (qeri’ah) of the Thirteen Attributes (34:6–7). The latter overlaps with the prior passage as a fulfillment and concrete manifestation of God’s conciliatory words to Moses (33:12–33). In responds to the prophet’s audacious request, “show me now Your glory (har’eni n’a et kvodekha)” (33:18), God appears in a lowering cloud (34:5), which He had described would be His “passing glory (ba‘avor kvodi)” (33:22). Likewise, Moses later stands with “Him” (that is, with God)—“va-yityatzev ‘imoֹ” (34:5) before the recitation of God’s attributes of mercy, just as Moses was told to stand on the rock in the place with Him—“hineh maqom iti ve-nitzavta ‘al hatzur” (33:21). The attributes themselves are foreshadowed in God’s self-referential statement “I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (33:19), echoed in the descriptors: “a God merciful and gracious” (34:6), and expanded into the “Attributes of Mercy”. As Zornberg comments, “As the narrative continues, this oblique revelation merges into an auditory experience: God proclaims His Thirteen Attributes…. To hear these is, in a sense, to see God’s back.”38 Yet, in the invocation of the Thirteen Attributes, it is not at all obvious who summons whom or who even recites them. Is it Moses who cries out in the name of God or God who intones His own name/attributes (v. 5): YHWH descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and he [Moses or God?] proclaimed the name, “YHWH.” YHWH passed before him, and [Moses or God] proclaimed (va-yyiqra), “YHWH, YHWH, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and 38 Zornberg, Particulars of Rapture, 440.

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transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. (Ex. 34:1–6, NRSV trans. adapted)

This formula serves as paradigmatic for prayer as intercession from this moment onward, invoked throughout the Tanakh, with “variations on a theme” as in a classical symphony.39 Perhaps the most audacious example is found in the improvisation on the Attributes recited by Moses after the debacle of the spies. As in the response to the Sin of the Golden Calf, God is prepared to wipe out the whole nation and start anew with Moses. But the prophet pleads for forbearance: “as You declared (ka’-asher dibarta), saying, ‘YHWH slow to anger and abounding in kindness; forgiving iniquity and transgression;…’ And the LORD said, “I pardon, according to your words (salaḥti ki-dvarekha)” (Num. 14:17–20). Though Moses introduces them as God’s speech (v. 17), God affirms their power now, in an act of forgiveness, as a response to Moses’ words (v. 20). This verbal formula of God’s attributes is given over as a prayer, a supplication for forgiveness, like the Heavenly Tablets themselves (at first whole then broken), symbolic of the power of the rabbinic interpretive tradition, the Torah she-be ‘al peh.40 The Teaching is now no longer in Heaven! Rather, the Torah belongs, ever after, to earth, delivered into human hands to be interpreted for better or for worse. The divine word becomes the human word but, unlike the Christian logos, it is not incarnate. It is not the word of God embodied in one Messianic figure. Rather, God’s attributes are refracted through a mortal verbal lens, emulating and invoking the principles of compassion and forgiveness for the individual who has internalized them. Variations of these attributes are deployed throughout the Tanakh by prophet and poet, and by Jews in prayer during daily Taḥanun, Sliḥot in the month of Elul, and throughout the Days of Awe. According to yet another statement by Rabbi Yoḥanan in the Talmud, the original formula was recited by God (Ex. 34:6–8), who models the role 39 As in Num. 14:18–19, Ps. 86:15, 103:8, 145:8, Jonah 4:2, Joel 2:13, and Neh. 9:17. And, of course, in our present liturgy during daily taḥanun (supplication for forgiveness), the sliḥot of Elul and the Days of Awe (Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur). 40 In a famous dictum attributed to Resh Laqish, God responds to Moses breaking of the Tablets (asher shibarta) (Ex. 34:1, Deut. 10:2): “Yesher koaḥ asher shibarta (good for you for breaking them)!” (b. Shabbat 87a, b. Yevamot 62a, b. Bava Batra 14b, and b. Menaḥot 99b).

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

of the prayer leader. The aggadic reading exaggerates the anthropomorphism which runs latent throughout the biblical passage. Here, it is God that imitates human behavior, or, more specifically, rabbinic performance in a kind of imitatio hominis: R. Yoḥanan said: If it were not written in Scripture, it would be impossible to say.41 This comes to teach us that the Holy One, Blessed be He, wrapped himself up in a Tallit as a prayer leader (shaliaḥ tzibbur) and showed Moses the order of prayer. Every time Israel sins, conduct this order of prayer in my presence (le-fanai) and I will forgive them: “YHWH, YHWH…” I am the LORD before a man sins and I am He after he sins and repents… (b. Rosh Ha-Shanah 17b).

The verbal corollary to the counter-revelation entails an emulation of God’s attributes of compassion. The purpose, according to Zornberg, “is to revive desire and compassion, and to relinquish total possession. The eye yields its claim, is covered when God’s face passes, is uncovered only when it has passed. This erotic play of veiling and revealing replaces the public Revelation at Mount Sinai.”42 After the scene in the cleft of the rock, Moses comes to identify wholly with the people in supplication: “Forgive our iniquity” (Ex. 34:9). “This is the moment when he makes his profound choice to speak from the side of the human…At this moment, God renews His covenant.”43 It is this identification with the people of Israel that the prophet and, later, the prayer leader in the Days of Awe, invoke in reciting the Thirteen Attributes. Divine pathos, the experience of the face (or rather back) of God is channeled through human prayer.

From the Back to the Face-to-Face: Levinas on Revelation and Torah In the oscillation between the vision of God’s “back” and a verbal face-toface encounter with Moses, we read a choreography of desire and distance, 41 This apology, in Hebrew, “ilmal’ei katuv ba-miqr’a i efshar le-’omro” is repeated several times throughout the Talmudic corpus (as in b. Bava Batra 10a and 16a, b. Berakhot 32a, b. Rosh Ha-Shanah 17b, and b. Megillah 21a). In each case, the Rabbis seem to have their tongue in their cheek as they are using Scripture to identify an audacious idea, through an intensively anthropomorphic image that they introject into Scripture about the nature of God. 42 Zornberg, Particulars of Rapture, 441–442. 43 Ibid., 443.

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turning towards and yearning across separation. When Moses recalls the theophany at Sinai, he refers to the elusive experience of the divine presence as a warning: “Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that YHWH spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire....” (Deut. 4:15). And yet, declares the prophet, “YHWH spoke with you face to face” (Deut. 5:4). The modulation from not seeing to speaking inheres not only for Moses but for all who stood at Sinai. By extension, the Rabbis confer prophetic status on all the Israelites. According to Levinas, it suggests that “in principle, the human mind is inherently open to inspiration and that man is inherently able to become a prophet… Can we not see, in this possibility of listening—of obeying that is—that subjectivity is the very fracturing of immanence.”44 Prophecy is not limited to that one moment in history—the theophany at Sinai. Rather, it is experienced throughout the generations as a sense of being commanded, inspired, hearing the words of Torah as one’s own. Levinas reads the experience of God’s “back,” the knot of tefillin at the nape of God’s neck (in the Talmudic image), as a prism for the entire experience of Revelation. “The prescriptive teaching appears even here!... bound up with the ritual practices of each day…And this ritualism confirms the conception of God in which he is welcomed in the face-to-face with the Other, in the obligation towards the Other. It confirms it to the extent that, by suspending the immediacy of one’s contact with Nature’s given, it can determine, against the blinding spontaneity of Desire, the ethical relationship with the other person.”45 In a classic finesse, Levinas slips from a relationship between the self and the ultimate Other, to the ethical demands of a human ‘other’. The gap between the subject and the unknown other, turning towards and yearning across difference, is imbedded in every human encounter that honors another human created in the divine image as a prism for the face-to-face encounter with God. This brings us full circle back to the question of God after Auschwitz. How does this counter-revelation, the vision of God’s “back”, address the seeming absence of God through the Shoah? Whether we use the image of the knot of God’s tefillin—a metaphor for the divine immanent engagement with Israel through the bond of covenant—or we adopt the liturgical response of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy in which God empowers 44 Emmanuel Levinas, “Revelation in the Jewish Tradition,” in The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1989), 203–204. 45 Levinas, “Revelation,” 204.

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From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

humans to intercede in prayer, we are compelled to make meaning of the seeming absence. In his most articulate response to the problem of evil, “To Love the Torah more than God,” Levinas draws upon a document that was supposedly penned during the final hours of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance by Yossel son of Yossel, the last survivor of his family. Though fictional, it conveys a truth: “The certainty of God is something Yossel, son of Yossel experiences with a new force, beneath an empty sky.”46 The philosopher, drawing upon these confessional notes, moves into a faith grounded in second naiveté (Paul Ricoeur’s term). It entails a specifically Jewish response to suffering when God is wholly eclipsed—an adherence to being bound by the covenant and God’s Law despite the sense of God’s absence. “It is the moment in which the just individual can find no help. No institution will protect him. The consolation of divine presence to be found in infantile religious feeling is equally denied him, and the individual can prevail only through his conscience which necessarily involves suffering.”47 Quoting Yossel, he writes: “’To be a Jew means…to swim eternally against the filthy, criminal tide of man…’ By belonging to the suffering Jewish people, the distant God becomes my God: ‘Now I know that you are are really my God, for you could not be the God of those whose actions represent the most horrible expression of a militant absence of God’.”48 And so the Torah must be abided, observed as testimony to those words inscribed on the Tablets of Stone (once whole, now broken), or the words written on tefillin, donned by the observant Jew (and, perhaps, even haQadosh barukh Hu). Yossel avers: “’I love him, but I love even more his Torah….And even if I were deceived by him and became disillusioned, I should nevertheless observe the precepts of the Torah.’”49 Levinas concludes by addressing the paradox with an ethical imperative: “God must show His face, justice and power must join, just institutions must reign on earth. But only the man who has recognized the hidden God can demand that he show Himself.”50

46 Emmanuel Levinas, “To Love the Torah more than God,” in Difficult Freedom, trans. by Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1990), 143. 47 Levinas, “To Love the Torah,” 143. 48 Ibid., 144. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 145.

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Implications: Why and How Must We Engage in Jewish Theology? As George Steiner asserted, the claim to “kill God” was just one step removed from impulse to decimate the people who “invented” Him. In working out a particularly Jewish theology, we involve ourselves in resisting that act of deicide. Inspired by the rabbinic reading of Scripture, we engage in a mode of translating from the world of the Bible to our world. This is what Cass Fisher summons us to do, to go beyond the homiletical, translating traditional aggadic discourse about God and the divine-human relationship into contemporary existential terms.51 For me, this involves grappling with the challenges of the seeming disappearance of God through history, most profoundly experienced in the events that befell the Jewish people during the Second World War. For millennia, theologians have struggled with the problem of theodicy: why do the innocent suffer? The Shoah, however, makes this question both more urgent and more particular. What should the Jewish response be to the complete occlusion of God, “the nadir of His absence”, given the covenant? Is it broken or does it stand despite God? The classic theodicy of hester panim, based on a principle of retributive justice, seems inadequate as an explanatory tool for it blames the victims. The alternative kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum (divine contraction) is compelling but begs the question: what role do people play in effecting the divine presence? Why resort to an image of an impotent, suffering God, even if the occlusion were temporary? And to say that the calamity led to the establishment of the State of Israel, catapulting God back into history, makes martyrs of the hapless millions slaughtered or burned in the crematory. What kind of God would require such a price? This is hardly a theology I personally could tender. Instead of justifying the eclipse of God on the basis of the sequence of modern historical events, I reach back to the Talmudic discourse for an alternative paradigm. In response to human transgression (the Sin of the Golden Calf), God indeed withdrew. But here Moses was given a mitigating image (the back, ah̩ or) and a verbal formula of intercession, which the Rabbis and modern thinkers, such as Zornberg and Levinas, translate into an engagement with God despite divine absence. The context of the image imbeds the paradox, “the presence of His absence”, in a narrative and becomes paradigmatic for a sustained covenantal relationship with 51 Cass Fisher, “Beyond the Homiletical: Rabbinic Theology as Discursive and Reflective Practice,” Journal of Religion 90, no.2 (2010): 199–236

•

From the Cleft of the Rock    RACHEL ADELMAN

God ever after—through a retroactive view of meaning in history, in the fulfillment of Torah (mitzvot), and in liturgy. By adopting aggadah as an idiom of Jewish theology, we engage with a hermeneutics of Scripture (or Torah, rather) as inclusive of both the written and oral tradition, both the whole and broken tablets of testimony. Jewish theology as a hermeneutic enterprise (Hermes being the messenger deity with winged feet) translates across time and texts, and across genres of discourse, inviting scholars to engage seriously in God talk.

73

Chaim Milikowsky

The Unexpected Impact of Sections and Subsections in a Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah: A Case Study

A few years ago, a student at an English-speaking university handed in a paper on the thematic structure of the first chapter of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah. I was puzzled by several misunderstandings of the logic of the chapter that seemingly emerged from conclusions he had drawn from an external source rather than from his own reasoning. I turned to the English translation he had consulted, namely one included in the University of Chicago Press volume entitled Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabbah.1 At first glance, it looked accurate enough, but I soon understood that the student had been misled not by the translator’s choice of language, but by the way he had presented the text on the page. In this paper, I will use what I will henceforth call the Chicago translation as a case study of some implications of textual divisions.2 Word for word, the Chicago translation is quite good. The translator notes that he made extensive use of the Israelstam-Slotki translation included in the Soncino Midrash Rabbah,3 which is in general excellent. 1 J. Neusner, Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabbah, Chicago 1986. 2 My findings are relevant to original language texts as well as translations, and to digital presentations as well as books. 3 Midrash Rabbah, translated into English with notes, glossary and indices under the editorship of H. Freedman and M. Simon, vol. 4, Leviticus, trans. J. Israelstam and J. J. Slotki (London 1939).

•

Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah    CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

However, the Chicago translator had produced what he termed an “analytic translation”, and the troubles began here. In his analytic translation, the Chicago translator subdivides each large unit into several smaller units. Some of these divisions do not conform to the structure and logic of the passage, suggesting that the translator had misread the midrash. Even if that was not the case, there is little doubt that his rearrangement of the midrashic text would lead others to misread it. This is my subject in this paper—the surprising power of the simple laying out of words on a page, especially when the layout includes extensive insertion of numbers and letters as outline dividers. The pisqa, for which the Chicago translator uses Roman numerals, we will call the “section.” The major subdivisions, for which he uses Arabic numerals, we will call “subsections,” and the smaller subdivisions, for which he uses Latin letters, we will call “subunits.” Let us turn to Va-Yyiqra Rabbah, chapter 1, section 4. I will first quote the Hebrew text of this section as it appears in Margulies’s edition,4 adding subdivision indicators to where I think the section should be divided. Thereafter I will present in parallel the Chicago translation with the Chicago translator’s subdivision indicators—on the left, and the Chicago translation with my subdivision indicators—on the right.5 I will then discuss the relationship between the Chicago translator’s interpretation of the content of this section and his choices about its form.6 The Margulies Edition [with my divisions] ‫ר׳ אבין בשם ר׳ ברכיה סבא פתח אז דברת בחזון לחסידיך ותאמר שויתי‬ .(‫ כ‬,‫עזר על גבור הרימ׳ בחור מעם (תהלים פט‬ ‫ הה״ד אחר הדברים האלה‬,‫מדבר באברהם שנדבר עמו בדיבור ובחיזיון‬ .(‫ א‬,‫היה דבר י״י אל אברם במחזה לאמר (בראשית טו‬ .(‫ כ‬,‫ תתן אמת ליעקב חסד לאברהם (מיכה ז‬,‫לחסידיך‬ ‫ הה״ד‬,‫ שהרג ארבעה מלכים בלילה אחת‬,‫ותאמר שויתי עזר על גיבור‬ ‫ אמ׳ ר׳ פינחס וכי יש לך אדם‬.)‫ ט‬,‫ויחלק עליהם לילה וגו׳ (בראשית יד‬



 .1 .A .2 .B  .C 

4 Midrash Vayyiqra Rabbah, ed. M. Margulies, 3 volumes, second printing (Jerusalem 1972); the quotation here and below is from Vol. 1, 13–18. 5 The Chicago translation is presented without quotation marks. 6 All references to subsections and subunits without identifying marks are those of the Chicago translator; when I refer to my own subsections and subunits I add the following (CM).

75

‫‪Be-Ron Yah.ad‬‬

‫  ‪.D‬‬ ‫ ‪.A .3‬‬ ‫ ‪.B‬‬ ‫ ‪.C‬‬

‫ ‪.D‬‬ ‫‪.A .4‬‬ ‫ ‪.B‬‬ ‫ ‪.C‬‬

‫ ‪.D‬‬

‫שרודף הרוגים דכתיב ויכם וירדפם (שם)‪ ,‬אלא‬ ‫מלמד שהקב״ה רודף ואברהם הורג‪.‬‬ ‫הרימותי בחור מעם‪ ,‬אתה הוא י״י האלהים אשר‬ ‫בחרת באברם והוצאתו מאור כשדים (נחמיה ט‪ ,‬ז(‪.‬‬ ‫מדבר בדוד שנידבר עמו בדיבור ובחיזיון‪ ,‬הה״ד ככל‬ ‫הדברים האלה וככל החיזיון הזה כן דבר נתן אל דוד (ש״ב ז‪ ,‬יז(‪.‬‬ ‫לחסידיך‪ ,‬לדוד שמרה נפשי כי חסיד אני (תהלים פו‪ ,‬ב(‪.‬‬ ‫ותאמר שויתי עזר על גבור‪ ,‬ר׳ אבה בר כהנא ורבנן‪ .‬ר׳ אבה בר כהנא‬ ‫אמ׳ שלש עשרה מלחמות עשה דוד‪ .‬ורבנן אמ׳ שמנה עשרה‪ .‬ולא פליגי‬ ‫מאן דאמ׳ שלש עשרה לצורכיהן שלישראל‪ ,‬מאן דאמ‬ ‫שמנה עשרה חמש לצורך עצמו ושלש עשרה לצורך ישראל‪.‬‬ ‫הרימותי בחור מעם‪ ,‬ויבחר בדוד עבדו ויקחהו וגו׳(תהלים עח‪ ,‬ע(‪.‬‬ ‫מדבר במשה שנדבר עימו בדיבור ובחיזיון‪ ,‬דכ׳ פה‬ ‫אל פה אדבר בו (במדבר יב‪ ,‬ח(‪.‬‬ ‫לחסידך‪ ,‬שהיה משבטו שללוי‪ ,‬אתו שכת׳ בו תומיך‬ ‫ואוריך לאיש חסידיך (דברים לג‪ ,‬ח(‪.‬‬ ‫ותאמר שויתי עזר על גבור‪ ,‬אתיא כההיא דאמ׳ ר׳ תנחום בן חנילאי‬ ‫בנוהג שבעולם משוי שקשה לאחד נוח לשנים‪ ,‬לשנים נוח לארבעה‪ ,‬או‬ ‫שמה משוי שקשה לששים ריבו נוח לאחד‪ .‬כל ישראל עומדין לפני הר‬ ‫סיני ואומ׳ אם יספים אנחנו לשמ׳ (דברים ה‪ ,‬כב) ומשה שומע קול דיבור‬ ‫עצמו וחיה‪ .‬תדע לך שהוא כן‪ ,‬שמכולם לא קרא הדיבור‬ ‫אלא למשה‪ ,‬דכתיב ויקרא אל משה‪.‬‬ ‫הרימותי בחור מעם‪ ,‬לולי משה בחירו עמד בפרץ‬ ‫לפניו להשיב חמתו מהשחית (תהלים קו‪ ,‬כג(‪.‬‬

‫‪The Chicago Translation [with my‬‬ ‫]‪divisions‬‬

‫‪The Chicago Translation [with the‬‬ ‫]‪translator’s divisions‬‬

‫‪1. A. R . Abin in the name of R.‬‬ ‫‪Berekhiah the Elder opened‬‬ ‫‪[discourse by citing the fol‬‬‫‪lowing verse]: Of old you‬‬ ‫‪spoke in a vision to your‬‬ ‫‪faithful ones, saying, I have‬‬ ‫‪set the crown upon one who‬‬ ‫‪is mighty, I have exalted‬‬ ‫‪one chosen from the people‬‬ ‫‪[Ps. 89:20].‬‬

‫‪1. A. R . Abin in the name of R.‬‬ ‫‪Berekhiah the Elder opened‬‬ ‫‪[discourse by citing the‬‬ ‫‪following verse]: Of old you‬‬ ‫‪spoke in a vision to your‬‬ ‫‪faithful ones, saying, I have‬‬ ‫‪set the crown upon one who‬‬ ‫‪is mighty, I have exalted‬‬ ‫‪one chosen from the people‬‬ ‫‪[Ps. 89:20].‬‬

‫‪76‬‬

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Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah    CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

B.  [The Psalmist] speaks of Abraham, with whom [God] spoke both in word and in vision. C.  That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: After these words the word of God came to Abram in a vision, saying . . . [Gen. 15:1]. D. .  .  . to your faithful one— You will show truth to Jacob, faithfulness to Abraham [Mic. 7:20]. E. .  .  . saying, I have set the crown upon one who is mighty—for [Abraham] slew four kings in a single night. F.   That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: nd he divided himself against them by night . . . and smote them (Gen. 14: 15). 2. A.  Said R. Phineas, And is there a case of someone who pursues people already slain? B.  For it is written, He smote them and he [then] pursued them [Gen. 14:15]! C.  But [the usage at hand] teaches that the Holy One, did the pursuing, and Abraham did the slaying.

2. A.  [The Psalmist] speaks of Abraham, with whom [God] spoke both in word and in vision. That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: After these words the word of God came to Abram in a vision, saying . . . [Gen. 15:1]. B. . . . to your faithful one—You will show truth to Jacob, faithfulness to Abraham [Mic. 7:20]. C. . . . saying, I have set the crown upon one who is mighty—for [Abraham] slew four kings in a single night. That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: And he divided himself against them by night . . . and smote them (Gen. 14: 15). Said R. Phineas, And is there a case of someone who pursues people already slain? For it is written, He smote them and he [then] pursued them [Gen. 14:15]! But [the usage at hand] teaches that the Holy One, did the pursuing, and Abraham did the slaying. D.  [Abin continues,] I have exalted one chosen from the people [Ps. 89:20]. It is you, Lord, God, who chose Abram and took him out of Ur in Chaldea [Neh. 9:7].

77

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Be-Ron Yah.ad

3. A.  [Abin continues,] I have exalted one chosen from the people [Ps. 89:20]. B.   It is you, Lord, God, who chose Abram and took him out of Ur in Chaldea (Neh. 9:7). 4. A.  [I have exalted one chosen from the people (Ps. 89:20)] speaks of David, with whom God spoke both in speech and in vision. B.  That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: In accord with all these words and in accord with this entire vision, so did Nathan speak to David (2 Sam. 7:17). C.  To your faithful one (Ps. 89:20) [refers] to David, [in line with the following verse:] Keep my soul, for I am faithful (Ps. 86:2). D. . . . saying, I have set the crown upon one who is mighty, (Ps. 89:20) — E.   R. Abba bar Kahana and rabbis: F.   R. Abba bar Kahana said, David made thirteen wars. G.  And rabbis say, Eighteen.

3. A.  [I have exalted one chosen from the people (Ps. 89:20)] speaks of David, with whom God spoke both in speech and in vision. That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: In accord with all these words and in accord with this entire vision, so did Nathan speak to David (2 Sam. 7:17). B.  To your faithful one (Ps. 89:20) [refers] to David, [in line with the following verse:] Keep my soul, for I am faithful (Ps. 86:2). C.  .  .  . saying, I have set the crown upon one who is mighty, (Ps. 89:20)—R. Abba bar Kahana and rabbis: R. Abba bar Kahana said, David made thirteen wars. And rabbis say, Eighteen. But they do not really differ. The party who said thirteen wars [refers only to those that were fought] in behalf of the need of Israel [overall], while the one who held that [he fought] eighteen includes five [more, that David fought] for his own need, along with the thirteen [that he fought] for the need of Israel [at large].

•

Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah    CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

H. But they do not really differ. The party who said thirteen wars [refers only to those that were fought] in behalf of the need of Israel [overall], while the one who held that [he fought] eighteen includes five [more, that David fought] for his own need, along with the thirteen [that he fought] for the need of Israel [at large]. I.  I have exalted one chosen from the people (Ps. 89:20)— And he chose David, his servant, and he took him . . . (Ps. 78:70). 5. A.  [Of old you spoke in a vision to your faithful one . . .] speaks of Moses, with whom [God] spoke in both speech and vision, in line with the following verse of Scripture: With him do I speak mouth to mouth [in a vision and not in dark speeches] (Num. 12:8). B.  To your faithful one—for [Moses] came from the tribe of Levi, the one concerning which it is written, Let your Thummim and Urim be with your faithful one (Deut. 33:8). C. .  .  . saying, I have set the crown upon one who is mighty —

D.  I have exalted one chosen from the people (Ps. 89:20)— And he chose David, his servant, and he took him . . . (Ps. 78:70). 5. A. [Of old you spoke in a vision to your faithful one .  .  .] speaks of Moses, with whom [God] spoke in both speech and vision, in line with the following verse of Scripture: With him do I speak mouth to mouth [in a vision and not in dark speeches] (Num. 12:8). B.  To your faithful one—for [Moses] came from the tribe of Levi, the one concerning which it is written, Let your Thummim and Urim be with your faithful one (Deut. 33:8).

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Be-Ron Yah.ad



D.  The cited passage is to be read in accord with that which R. Tanhum b. Hanilai said, Under ordinary circumstances a burden which is too heavy for one person is light for two, or too heavy for two is light for four. But is it possible to suppose that a burden that is too weighty for six hundred thousand can be light for a single individual? Now the entire people of Israel were standing before Mount Sinai and saying, If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die [Deut. 5:22]. But, for his part, Moses heard the voice of God himself and lived. E.  You may know that that is indeed the case, for among them all, the word [of the Lord] called only to Moses, in line with that verse which states, And [God] called to Moses (Lev. 1:1 1). F.  I have exalted one chosen from the people (Ps. 89:20)— Had not Moses, whom he chose, stood in the breach before him to turn his wrath from destroying them [he would have destroyed Israel] (Ps. 106:23).

C.  .  .  . saying, I have set the crown upon one who is mighty—The cited passage is to be read in accord with that which R. Tanhum b. Hanilai said, Under ordinary circumstances a burden which is too heavy for one person is light for two, or too heavy for two is light for four. But is it possible to suppose that a burden that is too weighty for six hundred thousand can be light for a single individual? Now the entire people of Israel were standing before Mount Sinai and saying, If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, then we shall die [Deut. 5:22]. But, for his part, Moses heard the voice of God himself and lived. You may know that that is indeed the case, for among them all, the word [of the Lord] called only to Moses, in line with that verse which states, And [God] called to Moses (Lev. 1:1 1). D.  I have exalted one chosen from the people (Ps. 89:20)— Had not Moses, whom he chose, stood in the breach before him to turn his wrath from destroying them [he would have destroyed Israel] (Ps. 106:23).

•

Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah    CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

The first point to make is that the three main exegetical units in the passage apply Psalm 89:20 consecutively to three figures: Abraham, David, and Moses. The logic of the midrash demands, I think, that these three should be treated equally. If the exegetical units pertaining to David and Moses are not divided into smaller subsections, then the exegetical unit pertaining to Abraham should also remain undivided. The Chicago translator presents the David unit as one subsection, 4 A-I, and the Moses unit as one subsection, 5 A-F, but divides the Abraham unit into three subsections: 1 B-F, 2 A-C, and 3 A-B. It will probably not occur to an inexperienced reader such as my student that they comprise a single thematic unit. The opening sentence of the midrash cites the verse from Psalms which is commented upon by the entire section. This sentence should be presented in a subsection of its own, since all three subsections will relate to it in parallel ways, and indeed these parallels lie at the heart of the midrash. The Chicago translator, however, makes the opening sentence and the verse from Psalms part of the Abraham subsection. The midrashic comments on Abraham, David, and Moses are unequivocally and wholly in parallel with each other; the opening sentence applies as much to David and Moses as to Abraham. Simply by virtue of its presentation of the text, this essential parallelism is lost in the Chicago translation, and hence to many who read it. Did the Chicago translator decide that this parallelism was unimportant, or did he simply not grasp it? His decision to divide the Abraham exegetical unit into three subsections—1 B-F, 2 A-C, and 3 A-B—suggests the latter. In keeping with the type of formal analysis in which meaning can become secondary, it made sense to him to present the passage beginning “Said R. Phineas” (2A) in parallel with the passage beginning “R. Abin in the name of R. Berekhiah the Elder opened” (1A). No other sages is cited between these two, so, given the rabbinic propensity for argument and discussion, they must—a formalist might assert—be in parallel. That they are not not parallel to each other is obvious from even a perfunctory reading of the text. R. Phineas’s statement is a direct continuation of 1F, and no new subsection should begin there. Furthermore, in the petiḥta type of midrash of which this passage is a classic exemplar, no sage cited in a petiḥta is ever in parallel with the sage cited at the beginning of the petiḥta. Again, the Chicago translator has misled the student of midrash not by his choice of words, but by his organization of the words on the page. And in this case, the translator obscures a general principle about the

81

82

Be-Ron Yah.ad

relationship between rabbis cited in a petiḥta that could have helped the student in his future studies. Another respect in which the Chicago translator’s treatment of the parallelism at the base of this midrashic passage generates problems is his bracketed insertions in subunits 4A and 5A. As noted, the midrash itself begins with R. Abin citing Psalm 89:20, and this is followed by three subsections in which this verse is applied in turn to Abraham, David and Moses. Each subsection begins simply with ‫;מדבר בדוד שנידבר עמו בדיבור ובחיזיון‬ ‫מדבר במשה שנדבר עמו בדיבור ובחיזיון ;מדבר בדוד שנידבר עמו בדיבור ובחיזיון ;בדיבור ובחיזיון‬, without repeating the verse from Psalms. The midrashic author’s logic is clear: since he begins with . . .‫מדבר ב‬, he knows that the reader will return to the verse cited at the beginning of the midrash, specifically the first few words of that verse—‫אז דברת בחזון‬. An annotator or translator who wishes to highlight this homiletic move for the reader has two options: (1) he can add in brackets the entire verse of Psalms, as it appears at the beginning of the midrash; or (2) he can add in brackets the opening words of the verse (‫“ ;אז דברת בחזון‬Of old you spoke in a vision”), the phrase being commented upon in this subunit. Crucially, he must treat the subsections concerning David and Moses in precisely the same way in order to retain the underlying parallelism.7 The Chicago translator chose neither of these options.8 At the beginning of the David subsection in subunit 4a, he erroneously places in square brackets the sentence “I have exalted one chosen from the people.” This is the last unit of the verse, and was just commented upon in subsection 3, which is why he assumed ‫ מדבר‬refers to the last verse cited. In subunit 5A, the beginning of the Moses subsection, he places in square brackets “Of old you spoke in a vision to your faithful one.” This is a considerably better choice than that of 4A, but it is still misleading; he should have included either the entire verse or just “Of old you spoke in a vision,” since the biblical words “to your faithful one” are addressed in the next subunit. The Chicago translator’s division completely obliterates the beautiful symmetry of the interpretative comments on each unit of the opening biblical verse. The midrash divides the verse into four units (“Then you spoke in a vision”; “to your faithful ones”; “and you said I have made help for 7 Since the Abraham subsection follows immediately after the citation of the verse, there would be no reason for an annotator or translator to add it there. 8 See also the variants cited in the Margulies edition, and the reading of MS Cambridge, Or. 1080, Box 4.41, transcribed in Margulies, Vol. 3: 10.

•

Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah    CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

the mighty”; “I have raised up one chosen from the people”) and—as is common in these types of midrashic passages, comments on each unit in turn, first in the Abraham subsection, then in the David subsection, and finally in the Moses subsection. Thus, each one of these subsections must be divided into four subunits, each corresponding to the individual units of the biblical verse. The Chicago translator divides the Abraham subsection into ten subunits,9 and the David subsection divides it into nine subunits.10 Only the Moses subsection is divided correctly into four subunits. Any division of the midrash which does not follow the analysis outlined above cannot but mislead both the inexperienced reader and the experienced reader reading in haste. Although the exact presentation of the biblical verse at various points throughout the midrash seems at first glance to be a minor matter, it turns to play a crucial part in the midrashic logic and structure. As noted above, each unit of the biblical verse is commented upon in each midrashic subsection. Generally, the subunit of the midrashic subsection commenting upon each unit of the biblical verse has two parts: first the subunit quotes the unit of the biblical verse, and this is followed by a proof that the words just quoted apply to the biblical figure being discussed. The Chicago translator’s decision to occasionally separate these two parts of the subunit into independent subunits has no logic; they are mutually dependent and belong together. The student of midrash should be shown how the biblical text is being deconstructed and applied. The Chicago translator’s inconsistent handling of parallel subunits creates a similar problem in relation to the three subunits commenting upon ‫הרימותי בחור מעם‬: In the Abraham subunit, the Psalms quotation is 3A and the Nehemiah proof-text is 3B. In the David and Moses subunits, however, the Psalms quotation and the biblical proof-texts (both also from Psalms) are bundled together in a single subunit (4I and 5F, respectively), again at the expense of the beautiful symmetry developed so painstakingly by the midrashic author. Let us now turn to Va-Yyiqra Rabbah chapter 1, section 5. Again I will first quote the Hebrew text of Margulies’s edition with my analytic division, 9 In the second edition/version of this translation (J. Neusner, The Components of the Rabbinic Documents: From the Whole to the Parts, Vol. 10, Leviticus Rabbah, Part 1, South Florida Academic Commentary Series 95 (Atlanta 1997, 8): the entirety of subsection 2 is indented under subunit 1F. This is strange: using the numeral 2 means this passage is in parallel to subsection 1, but indenting it under 1F signifies that, on the contrary, it is dependent upon, or an elaboration of, subunit 1F. 10 In the second edition/version, subunits 4 E-H are indented under subunit 4D.

83

‫‪Be-Ron Yah.ad‬‬

‫‪and then present in parallel the Chicago translation with the Chicago‬‬ ‫‪translator’s analytic division and the Chicago translation with my analytic‬‬ ‫‪division.‬‬ ‫]‪The Margulies Edition [with my divisions‬‬ ‫‪.A .1‬‬ ‫ ‪.B‬‬

‫ ‪.C‬‬ ‫‪.A .2‬‬

‫ ‪.B‬‬ ‫ ‪.C‬‬ ‫ ‪.D‬‬

‫ר׳ יהושע דסיכני בש׳ ר׳ לוי פתח קריה כי טוב אמר‬ ‫לך עלה הנה מהשפילך לפני נדיב אשר ראו עיניך (משלי כה‪ ,‬ז(‪.‬‬ ‫ר׳ עקיבה מתני לה בש׳ ר׳ שמעון בן עזאי רחק ממקומך שנים ושלשה‬ ‫מקומות ושב‪ .‬רד שיאמרו לך עלה ואל תעלה‬ ‫שיאמרו לך רד‪ .‬מוטב שיאמרו לך עלה עלה ואל יאמרו לך רד רד‪.‬‬ ‫וכן היה הלל אומר השפלתי היא הגבהתי‪ ,‬הגבהתי היא‬ ‫השפלתי‪ .‬מה טעם המגביהי לשבת המשפילי לראות (תהלים קיג‪ ,‬ה ‪ -‬ו(‪.‬‬ ‫ואתה מוצא בשעה שנגלה הקב״ה על משה מתוך הסנה היה מסתיר משה‬ ‫פניו ממנו‪ .‬הה״ד ויסתר משה פניו וגו׳ (שמות ג‪ ,‬ו)‪ .‬אמ׳ לו הקב״ה ועתה‬ ‫לך ואשלחך אל פרעה (שם‪ ,‬פסוק י)‪ .‬אמ׳ ר׳ אלעזר לך ודיי‪ ,‬ה״א בסוף‬ ‫תיבתה‪ ,‬לומר שאם אי אתה גואלם אין אחר גואלם‪.‬‬ ‫בים עמד לו מן הצד‪ ,‬אמ׳ לו הק׳ ואתה הרם את מטך ונטה את ידך וגו׳‬ ‫)שמות יד‪ ,‬טז)‪ ,‬לומר שאם אי אתה בוקעו אין אחר בוקעו‪.‬‬ ‫בסיני עמד לו מן הצד‪ ,‬אמ׳ לו הקב״ה עלה אל י״י אתה ואהרן (שמות‬ ‫כד‪ ,‬א)‪ ,‬לומר שאם אין אתה עולה אין אחר עולה‪.‬‬ ‫באהל מועד עמד לו מן הצד‪ ,‬א״ל הקב״ה עד מתי אתה משפיל עצמך ואין‬ ‫השעה מצפה אלא לך‪ .‬תדע שהוא כן‪ ,‬שמכולם לא קרא הדיבור אלא‬ ‫למשה‪ ,‬דכתיב ויקרא אל משה‪.‬‬

‫‪The Chicago Translation [with my‬‬ ‫]‪divisions‬‬

‫‪The Chicago Translation [with the‬‬ ‫]‪translator’s divisions‬‬

‫‪1. A. R. Joshua of Sikhnin in the‬‬ ‫‪name of R. Levi opened‬‬ ‫‪[discourse by citing the‬‬ ‫‪following] verse: For it is‬‬ ‫‪better to be told, Come up‬‬ ‫‪here, than to be put lower‬‬ ‫‪in the presence of the prince‬‬ ‫‪(Prov. 25: 7).‬‬

‫‪1. A. R. Joshua of Sikhnin in the‬‬ ‫‪name of R. Levi opened‬‬ ‫‪[discourse by citing the‬‬ ‫‪following] verse: For it is‬‬ ‫‪better to be told, Come up‬‬ ‫‪here, than to be put lower in‬‬ ‫‪the presence of the prince‬‬ ‫‪(Prov. 25: 7).‬‬

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Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah    CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

B.  R. Aqiba repeated [the following tradition] in the name of R. Simeon b. Azzai, Take a place two or three lower and sit down, so that people may tell you, Come up, but do not go up [beyond your station] lest people say to you, Go down. It is better for people to say to you, Come up, come up, than that they say to you, Go down, go down. C. And so did Hillel say, When I am degraded, I am exalted, but when I am exalted, I am degraded. D. What is the pertinent biblical verse? He who raises himself is to be made to sit down, he who lowers himself is to be [raised so that he is] seen (Ps. 113:5). E. So too you find that, when the Holy One, blessed be he, revealed himself to Moses from the midst of the bush, Moses hid his face from him. F.  That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: Moses hid his face (Ex. 3:6). 2. A. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, And now, go (LKH), I am sending you to Pharaoh (Ex. 3: 10).

B.  R. Aqiba repeated [the following tradition] in the name of R. Simeon b. Azzai, Take a place two or three lower and sit down, so that people may tell you, Come up, but do not go up [beyond your station] lest people say to you, Go down. It is better for people to say to you, Come up, come up, than that they say to you, Go down, go down. C. And so did Hillel say, When I am degraded, I am exalted, but when I am exalted, I am degraded. What is the pertinent biblical verse? He who raises himself is to be made to sit down, he who lowers himself is to be [raised so that he is] seen (Ps. 113:5). 2 A. So too you find that, when the Holy One, blessed be he, revealed himself to Moses from the midst of the bush, Moses hid his face from him. That is in line with the following verse of Scripture: Moses hid his face (Ex. 3:6). Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, And now, go (LKH), I am sending you to Pharaoh (Ex. 3: 10). Said R. Eleazar, [Taking the word Go, LK, not as the imperative,

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B.   Said R. Eleazar, [Taking the word Go, LK, not as the imperative, but to mean, to you, and spelled LKH, with an H at the end, I may observe that] it would have been sufficient to write, You (LK), [without adding] an H at the end of the word. [Why then did Scripture add the H?] To indicate to you, If you are not the one who will redeem them, no one else is going to redeem them. C. At the Red Sea, Moses stood aside. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, Now you, raise your rod and stretch out your hand [over the sea and divide it] [Ex. 14: 16]. D. This is to say, If you do not split the sea, no one else is going to split it. E.  At Sinai Moses stood aside. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, Come up to the  Lord, you and Aaron [Ex. 24: 1]. F.  This is to say, If you do not come up, no one else is going to come up.

  b ut to mean, to you, and spelled LKH, with an H at the end, I may observe that] it would have been sufficient to write, You (LK), [without adding] an H at the end of the word. [Why then did Scripture add the H?] To indicate to you, If you are not the one who will redeem them, no one else is going to redeem them. B. At the Red Sea, Moses stood aside. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, Now you, raise your rod and stretch out your hand [over the sea and divide it] [Ex. 14: 16]. This is to say, If you do not split the sea, no one else is going to split it. C. At Sinai Moses stood aside. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron [Ex. 24: 1]. This is to say, If you do not come up, no one else is going to come up.

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Translation of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah    CHAIM MILIKOWSKY

G.  At the [revelation of the instructions governing sacrifices at] the tent of meeting, [Moses] stood to the side. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, How long are you going to humble yourself? For the times demand only you. H. You must recognize that that is the case, for among them all, the Word [of God] called only to Moses, as it is written, And [God] called to Moses (Lev. 1: 1).

D.  At the [revelation of the instructions governing sacrifices at] the tent of meeting, [Moses] stood to the side. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be he, How long are you going to humble yourself? For the times demand only you. You must recognize that that is the case, for among them all, the Word [of God] called only to Moses, as it is written, And [God] called to Moses (Lev. 1: 1).

The thematic structure of this section is simple. It opens with a quotation of a verse from Proverbs exhorting a person to allow himself to be commanded to “go up” rather than going up on his own initiative. This is followed by six subunits detailing and exemplifying this principle, one attributed to R. Aqiva, one attributed to Hillel and four relating the principle to various episodes in the life of Moses. Only in relation to the first of these is there any biblical indication of hesitation on Moses’ part, but that is precisely the point of the midrash. Hesitation is built into the very nature of Moses, even if the Bible chooses not to report it. The Chicago translator’s reorganization of the midrash obscures a central purpose. I separated those subunits containing solely rabbinic apothegms from those having a biblical context, and presented this midrashic section as consisting of two subsections, but I could just as easily have considered all seven subunits parts of one subsection.11 The Chicago translator also divides this section into two subsections, but at quite different points. Whereas I have a total of seven subunits, he has fourteen. Most of the differences between our divisions are not major. There is no reason for the Chicago translator’s 1C 11 From a formative perspective, it is clear that subunit 2A (CM) and subunits 2 B-D (CM) developed independently—note especially their variant structure and diction. I could thus have started a new subsection with 2B (CM), which would then have become 3A (CM), but since all four subunits focus upon Moses, I combined them in one subsection. Another possibility would be to divide this section into seven subsections.

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and 1D to be two subunits, and similarly regarding 2C and 2D and 2E and 2F, respectively. These divisions prevent the reader from appreciating the passage’s parallelism and symmetry, but the basic meaning remains clear. One division, though, is fatally misleading. All parts of my subunit 2A (CM) relate to each other. When God speaks to Moses at the burning bush, Moses hides his face, which the midrash takes to indicate that he does not want to step out and become prominent. The midrash sees this as an example of Moses “lowering himself,” and in accordance with the theme of this midrashic section, there must follow an assertion that Moses was “raised up.” This is precisely what occurs; R. Ele’azar asserts that God told Moses that only he, Moses, can redeem the children of Israel. Without doubt, this is part of one thematic unit, but the Chicago translator divides it between two subsections. There are four subunits: Moses hiding his face is presented as 1E and 1F, seemingly connected to the R.  Aqiva and Hillel subunits. God’s response is presented as 2A and 2B, which are connected to the three ensuing subunits, each detailing other occurrences of Moses “lowering himself ”. The division into four subunits is not crucial point,12 but placing two subunits of one thematic unit in one subsection and the other two in a different subsection seriously misrepresents the logic of the midrash to its reader. The conclusions that emerge from the above analyses are clear: the Chicago translator’s divisions obscure the structure and symmetry of these passages of Va-Yyiqra Rabbah and the inexperienced reader will be misled, not just about a single passage or even a whole collection, but about the structure of midrash in general. The organization of text on a page—or a screen—is more significant for some genres than for others. My analyses here indicate that, with regard to midrash, it should be taken very seriously indeed. Language constitutes, of course, the main element in a successful translation of midrash, but the translator’s capacity to transmit meaning depends also on his ability to preserve and reconstruct the innate structure of the work.13 12 Though it is does mislead the reader into thinking that a new subject has begun along with the new subunit. But only occasionally does the beginning of a new subunit indicate a new subject, and thus the multiplicity of subunits engenders confusion in the reader; instead of helping him, it hinders him. In a word, there are far too many divisions, not only in this section and in this chapter, but in the translation of the entire work. 13 Imposing his own divisions on rabbinic material is a hallmark of the Chicago translator’s work. Based on the preceding analysis, there is reason to hesitate before placing his translations of midrash into the hands of unseasoned readers, and even experienced readers should tread most carefully.

Michael Rosenberg

From Leviticus to Latkes: The Origins of Hanukkah’s Miraculous Oil and the Meaning of the Festival

The miracle of the oil cruse that, though apparently sufficient to light the candelabrum in the Temple for only one night, nonetheless lasted for eight days, thus providing an etiology for the eight-day observance of Hanukkah, is likely the Rabbinic tale most widely known in popular culture. But despite its remarkable success in post-Talmudic times, the story is unparalleled in Rabbinic literature. In classical Rabbinic literature, it appears only once, in the Babylonian Talmud; no similar origin story for Hanukkah exists, either elsewhere within the Babylonian Talmud or elsewhere in classical Rabbinic texts. In her 2003 article “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil,” Vered Noam demonstrated that, while the tale has as its source a story that appears in one recension of the commentary (“Scholium”) to Megillat Ta‘anit (MT), a work of fairly obscure origins, even that connection is weaker than commonly assumed. The defining traits of the Rabbinic story, as it appears in the Babylonian Talmud (“Bavli,” or BT), are unique to that work and reflect the talents of “the anonymous editor . . . blessed with a literary bent of mind.”1 1 Vered Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil,” HUCA 73 (2003): 191–226, at 221. The article is a translation of an earlier version in Hebrew, which appeared as “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil: A Source for Clarifying the Attitude of the Sages to the Hasmoneans?” Zion 67 (2001–2002): 381–400. One of Noam’s central arguments in that article is that “the Scholium” actually exists in two distinct recensions, which should not

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In this article, I build on Noam’s findings, arguing that, as is so often the case, the literary creativity of the Babylonian author/editors who produced that Talmud’s stories is, in fact, primarily synthetic, rather than inventive. In other words, Noam is correct to point out that the differences between the BT’s oil story and that found in MT are so significant that they practically make them different stories. However, I will argue that the uniquely Babylonian aspects of the BT’s version were not made up out of whole cloth, but actually result from the synthesis of the story found in MT with another tradition that comes fully from within the Rabbinic canon—a midrash found in the tannaitic work Sifra and paralleled in both the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. What is more, recognizing this synthetic, rather than inventive, creativity at work in the Babylonian production of the story also makes clear that while the Bavli may depart narratively from earlier traditions, its story of miraculous oil demonstrates remarkable thematic continuity with those texts.

The Etiology of Hanukkah in Megillat Ta‘anit MT includes several thematic units discussing and at times explaining the observance of Hanukkah as an eight-day-long holiday.2 Important for my purposes, these elements include a comparison of the Hasmonean recapture of the Temple to the dedications of the biblical Tabernacle and Temple by Moses and Solomon, respectively; the rebuilding of the Temple’s candelabrum out of iron spits; and the rebuilding of the profaned altar. A story of miraculous oil appears only in one recension. However, as Noam convincingly demonstrates, the story of oil in MT is decidedly not the well-known etiology of over-performing oil. Rather, in one recension, we find a tale of those who have regained control of the Temple searching be conflated with each other, and that a story about miraculous oil appears only in one of these two scholia. See also Noam, Megillat Ta‘anit: Versions, Interpretation, History (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2003 [Hebrew]). In this article, I will occasionally follow medieval precedent and refer to the traditions in “MT” even when what I mean is the Scholium to that work, simply for verbal felicity. The actual MT (as opposed to its commentary) provides only the date of the holiday on which eulogizing and fasting is prohibited; the various narratives explaining that observance all occur with the Scholium. 2 Noam usefully presents the two distinct recensions of the Scholium in her article, dividing them into their constituent units and noting which themes appear in one or both of the recensions (Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse,” 206–18).

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From Leviticus to Latkes    MICHAEL ROSENBERG

for and finding a container of pure oil. In this miracle story, it is simply the act of finding pure oil, rather than its remarkable longevity, that provides the reason for celebration.3 Noam points out that this story is a cognate not for the Babylonian Talmud’s Hanukkah story, but instead for a narrative in the Palestinian Talmud (“Yerushalmi”), a story in which, “during the days of the Greek kingdom,” ewes are miraculously discovered in order to continue the daily offerings.4 The tale of oil lasting for eight days, Noam concludes, is decidedly Babylonian with no true parallels in either Rabbinic literature or MT. Noam suggests that while the oil narrative of MT may serve as the kernel of the Babylonian story, the literary creativity of the latter may have as its vorlage the biblical story of the widow who approaches the prophet Elisha proclaiming her poverty, and who, in response, discovers that her single jug of oil has turned into a nearly bottomless supply (2 Kgs 4:1–7). This episode, together with the “motif of a miraculous reaction from Heaven to a human activity at the beginning of the Tabernacle/Temple service,” could have formed the raw material through which MT’s story of finding pure oil was transformed into the tale now before us in the BT.5 I think that Noam is likely correct in hypothesizing that these biblical examples are in the background of the BT narrative; however, there is an intermediary source, which already combined the tropes of unending oil and miraculous dedications of sacred space, and which probably serves as the more direct antecedent to the Hanukkah tale. But before I turn to that source, we must first clarify the meaning of the miracle as it appears in the BT narrative.

The Miraculous Oil of bSab 21b The miracle of the oil often appears in popular retellings as oil that burns for eight continuous days. In other words, the candelabrum was lit once, and the fire continued for eight days. Indeed, we find such a depiction already in the thirteenth-century work Or Zaru‘a: “the miracle that was wrought, 3 Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse,” 218–24, demonstrates how manuscripts of MT, in which the better-known miracle of oil that lasted for eight days appears, reflect the influence of the Babylonian Talmud on medieval scribes rather than traditions found in either of the two earlier recensions of MT. 4 pTa‘an 4:6 (68c); Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse,” 220. 5 Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse,” 220–21.

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that it burned (she-hayah doleq) for eight days.” However, the language of the Bavli story does not imply continuous burning. Rather, the tale of the oil is, as in the story of the widow and Elisha in 2 Kings, one of a vessel of non-depleting oil from which the Temple’s candelabrum was lit each night. Such is clear in the language of the Bavli: “a miracle was wrought with it and they lit from it for eight days.”6 This understanding of the story also makes sense with the biblical mandate of the candelabrum, namely, that it be lit (only) during the night.7 I suspect that the popular conception of the miracle as one of continuous light for eight days, rather than as a container of oil that, despite being used goes un-depleted, has obscured the rabbinic precedent that lies behind the BT’s Hanukkah narrative.

Miraculous Oil at the Dedication of the Tabernacle Once we have clarified the nature of the miracle claimed by bSab 21b, a midrash found in the tannaitic work Sifra becomes strikingly similar to the Hanukkah tale: “Then Moses took the anointing oil” (Lev 8:10). Rabbi Judah says: The anointing oil that Moses made in the wilderness—miracles occurred with it from its beginning until its end. From its beginning: there was only twelve8 log worth, as it says, “a hin of olive oil” (Exod 30:24). If [it were only] to anoint the planks, it would not be enough! Some the fire consumes, some the planks absorb, some the pot absorbs. [And yet] Aaron and his sons were anointed from it all seven days of the dedication;9 high priests and kings were anointed with it; and even a high priest who is son of a high priest requires anointing . . . and all of it remains for the future to come, as it says “This shall be for me holy anointing oil for all of your generations” (Exod 30:31).10

6 bSab 21b. My translation is based on the Vilna printing; the word bo (“with it”) is absent in mss. Munich 95 and Oxford 23; it has been added above the line in ms. Vatican 127. 7 See Exod 27:20–21. Although these verses are sometimes incorrectly or ambiguously translated, the word tamid in v. 20 clearly functions as an adverb (i.e., “continually”), modifying the act of lighting, and not an adjective (“continuously”) modifying the light itself. Such an understanding is evident from v. 21 (“from evening until morning”). 8 Ms. London: “two.” 9 “[And yet] Aaron . . . seven days of the dedication” does not appear in ms. Vatican 31. 10 Sifra, Milu’im 1(9). My translation is based on ms. Vatican 66. I gratefully acknowledge the transcriptions of Sifra manuscripts made available at www.biu.ac.il/JS/tannaim.

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From Leviticus to Latkes    MICHAEL ROSENBERG

The midrash shares three important elements with the origin story of Hanukkah in the Bavli. At the most basic level, it is a miraculous story told of oil (though it shares this with MT’s tradition, too). And like the story of Hanukkah in the Bavli, here too, the miracle that this midrash depicts occurs in response to the dedication of a sacred space. But most importantly, as is the case in bSab 21b, here too, we have a miracle specifically about a small amount of oil that over-performs; in the Sifra, the oil, despite its absorption into the various vessels to which it must be applied, continues to serve to anoint the high priest and his sons, and in fact remains to be used for the “future to come,” while in the Babylonian Hanukkah story, despite its burning on the first night, sufficient oil remains to light the candelabrum on the second night, and then again on the third, and so on. It is easy to see how an author familiar with the invocation of oil as an etiology for Hanukkah as preserved in MT, and knowing this tannaitic midrash as well, could combine the two to produce a story of oil that lasted, not for the continued anointing of the Temple and its vessels, but rather, for the lighting of the candelabrum. Indeed, the Babylonian narrative seems to preserve some linguistic hints of its origin in the midrash found in the Sifra. The earlier midrash states of the anointing oil that “miracles occurred with it (ma‘aseh nissim na‘asu bo’) from its beginning until its end.” A strikingly similar phrase appears in the Babylonian Hanukkah story when it relates that “a miracle occurred with it (na‘asah bo’ nes).” To be sure, the latter phrase is not rare in rabbinic literature; it appears in a number of contexts.11 However, it is worth noting that no such similar phrase appears in the recension of MT in which the oil-miracle appears. Rather, this phrase is an aspect of the Babylonian reworking of the MT source. While this may simply reflect rabbinic authors using language that comes naturally to them as they rework an earlier source, it seems to me more likely, given the similarity between the Babylonian Hanukkah story and the tannaitic midrash about the anointing oil, that this language results from the incorporation of the tradition found in the Sifra into the Bavli’s version of the tale.12 11 See, for example, mBer 9:1; mMid 2:3; tYom 2:4; bSab 89a; bMeg 2b; pTa‘an 2:12 (67a); pMeg 1:4 (70c). 12 The phrase does appear in the tale as preserved in corrupted versions of the other recension of MT, but there it (and the whole story of oil) results from the influence of the Bavli story. Note also that the phrase appears in the scholion to MT’s discussion of 14 Adar.

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Finally, the midrash was clearly well-known in talmudic times. It appears multiple times in both the Palestinian and the Babylonian Talmuds, as well as in the amoraic Palestinian midrash Va-Yyiqra Rabbah.13 It is thus easy to imagine the author/editors of the story that appears at bSab 21b latching onto this tale and incorporating it into the tradition preserved in one recension of MT in order to create an entirely new etiology for the length and candle-based observance of Hanukkah. Recognizing the midrash that stands behind the Bavli’s miracle also heightens its similarity to its other source, Megillat Ta‘anit. Having shown the original meaning of the oil in Megilat Ta‘anit, Noam writes: Essentially, the episode is not a story of a miracle but rather the story of the renewal of the Temple service. The motif of eight days was a later addition to the story . . . In Scholium Ρ this connection is still hesitant and flimsy, while the explanation presented in the Talmud is already well developed and polished, inventing a new motif of a bit of oil that miraculously lasted for eight days.14

In light of the Sifra, however, I would argue that the episode as presented in the Bavli is a story about a miracle and about the renewal of the Temple service. Indeed, throughout biblical, early Jewish, and Rabbinic literature, we find again and again the motif that dedications of sacred space are by their nature miraculous.

Once More to the Meaning of the Babylonian Hanukkah Story Recognizing the presence of the Sifra tradition as a key component of the Bavli’s story of the cruse of oil emphasizes the fundamental unity lying behind the seemingly disparate etiological traditions found in Second Temple and Rabbinic sources. The diversity of explanations for the origins of Hanukkah has bothered scholar and layperson alike. Scholarly and lay responses to the diversity of narratives often reflect a preference for “hard history” over “irrational” miracles.15 Lay responses offer a similar take, 13 pShek 6:1 (49c); pSot 8:3 (22c); pHor 3:2 (47c); bHor 11b; bKer 5b; LevR Tzav 10:8. 14 Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil,” 221, emphasis added. 15 See, for example, S. Stein, “The Liturgy of Hanukkah and the First Two Books of Maccabees—II,” Journal of Jewish Studies 5, no. 4 (1954): 148–55, where he explains the increasing presence of military imagery in medieval Jewish liturgy as reflecting people’s original interest in the “Heilsgeschichte,” whereas later the “actual events of the Hasmonean era are brought to the fore” (at 150, emphasis added).

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From Leviticus to Latkes    MICHAEL ROSENBERG

often taking the form of self-righteous indignation at having been sold a “false” story in Hebrew school (that is, the Bavli’s story of the cruse of oil), only later to “discover” the “true,” military/sociological/nationalist/anti-colonialist message as captured in 1 and 2 Maccabees.16 But a consideration of the various stories reveals far less variation in the ancient texts—or at least variation of significance—than is often asserted. To begin with, while the general narrative told in both 1 and 2 Maccabees is primarily a political/military one, in both books the reason for the ongoing observance of a festival beginning on the twenty-fifth day of Kislev is clearly the rededication of the Temple, not the victory itself.17 To be sure, in both works, this rededication follows—and is made possible only through—an important victory in battle. But significantly, these two books do not present that victory as the culmination of this period of war and revolt. Rather, the twenty-fifth day of Kislev occurs during a lull, following Lysias’s decision to retreat to Antioch, in order to recruit more soldiers.18 To be sure, this particular defeat of Lysias as portrayed in 1 Maccabees was a major turning point, and in retrospect it marks the beginning of the end; but it was not a final victory.19 The same holds true for Josephus’ description of Hanukkah in Antiquities.20 In particular, 2 Maccabees highlights the Temple-focused nature of the holiday. It famously connects Hanukkah to the observance of Sukkot, describing the procession with palm fronds.21 Sukkot is of course a pilgrimage festival, that is, a holiday the observance of which is specifically tied to the Temple. And indeed, like the better-known example of Passover, Sukkot is distinguished by its required sacrifices; it alone features a different requirement of animals to be offered on each of its days.22 The connection to Sukkot is thus ipso facto a centering of Temple ritual in the description of Hanukkah. What is more, Yael Avrahami has argued that this connection 16 For one example in a particularly prominent setting, see Hilary Leila Krieger, “The True Meaning of Hanukkah,” The New York Times, Dec. 8, 2012. 17 1 Macc 4:52–59; 2 Macc 10:1–8. In 2 Macc 1:7–8 the motivation for the holiday observance is a bit more mixed, discussing the offering of sacrifices in response to answered prayers in the aftermath of Jason’s attacking the Temple and killing innocents, but even here, the Temple aspect is clear. 18 1 Macc 4:35. 19 As we see in 1 Macc 6. 20 Antiquities, Book 12. 21 2 Macc 10:7. 22 Num 29:13–32.

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to Sukkot may serve to connect Hanukkah more specifically to the dedication of the first Temple, which, according to 1 Kings 8:2, took place on the holiday.23 We find a similar connecting of Hanukkah to Sukkot and its specified offerings in Rabbinic literature, namely, in the Bavli’s discussion of the reasons for the conflicting views of the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel regarding the order of lighting Hanukkah candles. In support of the House of Shammai’s view, the Bavli cites a Palestinian amora who connects their opinion to the “bulls of Sukkot,” that is, the decreasing number of bulls offered on each day of Sukkot. Thus, both in Second Temple and Rabbinic texts, we find a connection between Hanukkah and the Templebased observances of Sukkot.24 2 Maccabees also tells a strange story about “fire” having been hidden when the Jews initially went into exile, and recovered—but only as a viscous, oily mass—upon their return at the behest of Nehemiah. When placed on the sacrifices on the altar, fire spontaneously breaks out, consuming the offerings, in a clear echo of Leviticus 9:24—another dedication story.25 Stories of Tabernacle/Temple dedications are thus shot through the descriptions of Hanukkah in these Second Temple works.

23 Yael Avrahami, “Identifying the Building Blocks of Chanukah,” www.thetorah.com. 24 Stein already pointed to the similarity (he suggested actual influence) between 2 Macc’s interest in Sukkot and the suggestion in the Bavli regarding the House of Shammai’s opinion (S. Stein, “The Liturgy of Hanukkah and the First Two Books of Maccabees—I,” Journal of Jewish Studies 5, no. 3 [1954]: 100–106, at 105). But one need not accept the implication that the Bavli here is a “reminiscence” of the Second Temple work; rather, it may simply reflect common traditions in antiquity linking Hanukkah to Sukkot. Tabory argues that the Bavli’s connection of Hanukkah to the Sukkot offering is a mere postfacto mnemonic device (asmakhta’ be-‘alma’) without “great meaning,” since otherwise, the House of Shammai should hold that one should light 13 candles on the first night of Hanukkah (Jewish Festivals in the Time of the Mishnah and the Talmud [Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1995], 378). This over-literalist approach, however, misses the point; it is precisely the preponderance of both explicit and allusive connections between Hanukkah, on the one hand, and Sukkot specifically and the Temple more generally, on the other, that is significant. See, for a similar argument to my own, John C. Poirier, “Hanukkah in the Narrative Chronology of the Fourth Gospel,” New Testament Studies 54, no. 4 (2008): 466–478, at 474n26. Poirier goes farther than I would, however, in suggesting that the lighting of candles is a “less costly and more democratic” substitution for the original—i.e., Sukkot-specific, Temple rite. See also Avrahami, “Identifying the Building Blocks,” who suggests that the reference to Hanukkah at mBik 1:6 may also signal the ongoing connection between Hanukkah and Sukkot in the Rabbinic period. 25 2 Macc 1:18–23.

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From Leviticus to Latkes    MICHAEL ROSENBERG

Another pre-Rabbinic text also highlights the Temple-centric nature of Hanukkah, namely John 10:22–23. The author of the Fourth Gospel relates: “At that time the festival of the Dedication (egkainia) took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon” (NRSV). Jesus’ presence in the Temple is striking; in John 7:1–10, he traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem and the Temple, despite his initial misgivings about the political and legal ramifications (i.e., his fears that “the Jews” would try to kill him [7:1]). That Jesus returns to the Temple for the festival of Hanukkah suggests that this was an important time for him to be there, signaling again the significance of the Temple specifically for early Jewish understandings of Hanukkah.26 So too the scholium to Megillat Ta‘anit, in both its recensions, continues these early traditions of Hanukkah, focusing on aspects of the Temple dedication in all of its many attempts to explain either the origin or the length of the holiday. In one of the two recensions, the great evil performed by the “gentiles” is not a military oppression, but rather, the defiling of the Temple (the other recension does not feature an alternative). Strikingly, both recensions begin with a comparison of the Hasmonean rededication to the biblical dedications of the Tabernacle and the Temple by Moses and Solomon, respectively.27 One of the two recensions offers a tale of rebuilding the Temple’s candelabrum from iron spits. The other recension tells of the rebuilding of the altar. These elements of the scholium thus all point to the Temple specifically as the central theme of the holiday of Hanukkah. In light of the foregoing, I would slightly modify Noam’s claim that “these descriptions in Josephus and 1 and 2 Maccabees present the dedication of the Temple as the result of the military victories described previously, thus indicating that Hanukkah commemorates a military triumph as well as a religious rededication.”28 A “military triumph” may 26 See also Poirier, “Hanukkah in the Narrative Chronology,” 469–70, who points to Solomon’s portico as intended by the author of the Fourth Gospel as a symbolic representation of Jesus’ message here, specifically tied to the timing of the speech on Hanukkah. 27 Noam describes clearly the incomprehensibility especially of the Oxford recension on this point (Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil,” 208–10), but the basic point of connecting this later dedication to the earlier, paradigmatic ones is clear. A similar connection between the Hasmonean rededication and the biblical dedication of the Tabernacle occurs in Rabbinic law, which legislates the reading of the chiefs’ offerings in Num 7 as the Torah reading for Hanukkah (mMeg 3:6; see Tabory, Jewish Festivals, 371). 28 Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil,” 193.

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well be commemorated, but only indirectly, as the necessary precursor to the rededication of the Temple. In all of these sources, including the scholium to Megillat Ta‘anit, the trope of beginning a new Temple service predominates.29 The Bavli’s story, then, while surely a “late” Babylonian invention, is not at all surprising. Rather, it is exactly the sort of explanation for the festival that earlier sources lead us to expect: an etiology for Hanukkah that focuses on the kinds of narrative concerns that might arise in the (re)dedication of a temple. That the Bavli, in reworking (one recension of) Megillat Ta‘anit’s miracle of finding pure oil, would make use of a tannaitic midrash about the dedication of the biblical Tabernacle in order to create the wellknown story of the bottomless cruse of oil that keeps on producing oil for eight days makes perfect sense. We do find, of course, one genre in which the cultic focus of Hanukkah is not predominant, even if here too it remains significant: liturgy. Both the insertion ‘al ha-nissim, included in the ‘amidah and the grace after meals, as well as the formula hanerot halalu, recited following the lighting of the candles, reference the “redemptions” (teshu‘ot) and “wars” (milḥamot). ‘Al ha-nissim goes further and has as its core topic the victory of the Hasmoneans over the Syrian Greeks: When the evil kingdom of Greece stood against your people Israel . . . but You stood for them in your great mercy in their time of trouble. You fought their battle (ravta et rivam), judged their judgment, avenged their vengeance (naqamta ’et niqmatam). You gave over the mighty into the hands of the weak; the many into the hands of the few; the impure into the hands of the pure; the wicked into the hands of the righteous; the insolent into the hands of those who engage with your Torah . . . Afterwards, your sons entered into your holy sanctuary, and they cleared your chamber, and they purified your temple, and they lit candles in your holy chambers . . .

To be sure, Temple imagery appears in the second half of this insertion, in particular tropes of rededication and lighting candles. But the military 29 To be clear, this is indeed only a “slight” modification to Noam’s claim, since in the immediately preceding sentences she also emphasizes the Temple-dedication aspect of Hanukkah in the Second Temple sources. See also Tabory, Jewish Festivals, 370, who suggests that perhaps it is precisely the “religious” nature of Hanukkah—“the dedication of the Temple”—that leads to its being the lone Hasmonean holiday to survive in Rabbinic Judaism.

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From Leviticus to Latkes    MICHAEL ROSENBERG

victory here, far more so even than in texts such as 1 Maccabees and Josephus, appears as part-and-parcel of, rather than a prerequisite for, the events commemorated by Hanukkah.30 Yet it is worth noting that the evidence for these liturgical passages is all relatively late. The blessings for lighting candles, referenced already in classical Rabbinic literature, are general and vague, one the standard formula for blessings over commandments (“. . . and commanded us to light the candle of Hanukkah”),31 the other referencing only “miracles” (“who has performed miracles for our ancestors in those days, at this time”).32 Neither references either Temple-based practices or military victories. So too, the earliest extant testimony to the liturgical form hanerot halalu, in tractate Soferim, makes no reference to military victory: One lighting says: “Blessed . . . and commanded us to light the candle of Hanukkah,” and makes a condition, saying (matneh ve-omer):33 “We light these candles on account of the redemptions (yeshu‘ot) and the miracles and the wonders that you performed for our ancestors, by means of your holy priests . . . in order to acknowledge your name for your wonders and for your miracles and for your redemptions . . .”34

The word “redemptions” probably has a military connotation, referring to the salvation of the people from the hands of their colonizers. Strikingly, though, the word milḥamot (“wars”), which in later versions of the formula 30 See Noam, “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil,” 193n20: “This aspect is emphasized in the ritual texts of Hanukkah, such as Al Hanisim and Hanerot Halalu,” emphasis added. See also Stein, “Liturgy of Hanukkah—I,” who cites Elbogen on the connection between these liturgical texts and the ideas and language of 1 Macc (100). 31 The earliest explicit reference to the blessing seems to be in the anonymous stratum of the Bavli (bSab 23a; bSuk 46a). Aside from the question, irrelevant to this study, of whether the blessing concludes ner shel ḥanukah or ner ḥanukah, there are not variants in the manuscripts. 32 The earliest appearance of the text of this blessing is in tractate Soferim 20:4, where it appears as “who has performed miracles,” without the time-focused coda (though many manuscripts have the slightly more expansive “who has performed miracles for our ancestors;” see Higger’s edition, 344). Stein quite reasonably points to mBer 9:1 (“One who sees a place where miracles were performed for Israel says ‘Blessed is the one who performed miracles for our ancestors in this place,’”), which seems to serve quite well as a model for the Hanukkah blessing, though this does not necessarily lead to Stein’s conclusion that the mishnaic blessing thus has its origins in the Maccabean period (Stein, “Liturgy of Hanukkah—II,” 148–49). 33 The word matneh is absent in most manuscripts. 34 Soferim 20:4, cited from Michael Higger’s 1937 edition, 343–344.

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more vividly and explicitly refers to the Hasmonean victory, rather than some Temple-centered event, is notable by its absence. So too ‘al ha-nissim, in its earliest appearance, again in tractate Soferim, though surely less focused on the Temple-based aspects of Hanukkah than earlier sources, nonetheless features less explicit reference to the military victory than we find in later versions: And like the miracles, wonders, and redemptions (u-teshu‘ot) of your priests, which you performed in the days of Mattathias son of John the Hasmonean high priest, and his sons, so too perform for us… miracles and wonders, and we will acknowledge . . .

Unsurprisingly, this early form of the liturgical insertion is shorter than later versions. Like tractate Soferim’s version of hanerot halalu, “redemptions” appear in the passage (though the word does not reappear in the request at the end—“performs for us . . . miracles and wonders”). However, we find no extended description of the Hasmonean victory over the Syrian Greeks, as is familiar from the more developed forms of the liturgy. To be sure, we also do not find any reference to the rededication of the Temple. That is to say, as one might expect for an early witness to a liturgical passage, this is a bare-boned version of the formula. Nonetheless, the vagueness of this earliest form of ‘al ha-nissim does not present the sort of jarring counterpoint to the pre-Rabbinic and Rabbinic passages and their consistent attention to the cultic aspects of the holiday. Those aspects—the detailed description of the Hasmonean victory, as well as the words “strengths” (gevurot) and “wars”—appear for the first time in the siddur of Rav Amram Gaon.35

35 Stein, “Liturgy of Hanukkah—II,” 150. Indeed, Stein argues that much of the language of this section was drawn from the version of ‘al ha-nissim for Purim, though he also contends that some of it reflects the continued (and growing) interest in 1 and 2 Maccabees in early medieval Judaism (152–153). See also Stefan Reif, who writes that the Hanukkah liturgy is, “with the exception of the main benediction, substantially the product of the post-talmudic period” (Reif, “The Function of History in Early Rabbinic Liturgy,” History and Identity [2006]: 321–339, at 330). Reif argues that by and large liturgy produced in the classical Rabbinic period does not include “historical” claims or elements (see there, at 336, for his conclusions). See also Jonathan A. Goldstein, I Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 41, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 281, who suggests that the absence of reference to the altar in ‘al ha-nissim reflects embarrassment at the lack of a miraculous kindling during the Hasmonean rededication, thus resulting in greater emphasis on the military victory and the lighting of the candelabrum!

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From Leviticus to Latkes    MICHAEL ROSENBERG

The notion that Hanukkah is primarily a celebration of a military victory, then, rather than being an “original” reason provided by earlier sources, which was then extirpated by mischievous Rabbinic authors for whatever reason, does not hold up to serious scrutiny. To the contrary, it is precisely (and only) in the later, post-talmudic sources, where we find the Hasmonean triumph trumpeted as the miracle commemorated by Hanukkah, rather than the setting in which the miraculous (or otherwise significant) event occurred.36 The Babylonian story of Hanukkah, by contrast, maintains clear continuity with earlier traditions that root the holiday in the significance of the Temple. Not only does it relate a miracle the sole purpose of which is to allow for the functioning of the cult, but by alluding to the Sifra passage about the consecrating oil, it does so in a way that ties the Hasmonean rededication to biblical models of Tabernacle/Temple dedication—just as we find in both 2 Maccabees and Megillat Ta‘anit. The Bavli’s miracle of the oil then, rather than snubbing the Hasmoneans through some erasure of their military victories, extolls them by equating their actions with those of biblical heroes such as Aaron, Moses, and Solomon. And, in a finding that I imagine our honoree will particularly appreciate, what is likely the most popular Jewish holiday in contemporary Judaism turns out to be a celebration of the Temple and its cultic performances. Before concluding, however, I would like to suggest that even the late, post-talmudic texts, which turn our attention from the Temple to the battlefield, have more in common with the Bavli’s narrative about miraculous oil than I have made it appear above. Because fundamentally, the Bavli’s story—and the tannaitic midrash on which it is based—is a tale of over-performing, of oil that was supposed to be sufficient to last for only one night’s lighting, but which seemingly miraculously met the needs of the time. And indeed, the military tale preserved in 1 and 2 Maccabees and newly centered in post-talmudic liturgy tells a similar story (the historicity of which is, of course, absolutely irrelevant). A small, overmatched band of rebels over-performs to meet the needs of their time, standing 36 See also Pesiqta Rabbati #6, a midrashic work with a post-talmudic date of redaction, for another example of the new centering of the military victory as the reason for Hanukkah’s celebration: “This Hanukkah that we perform is a remembrance of the Hasmonean dedication (ḥanukat bet ḥashmona’i), for they made war and defeated the Greeks, and we now light.” The midrash then juxtaposes this military victory—and not any rededication of the Temple in Hasmonean times—with the biblical dedication of the Tabernacle!

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up to a military force of far superior ability and means. In this sense, the story of Hanukkah truly remains constant across the generations. Whether manifest through oil that miraculously refuses to run out or overmatched rebels resisting imperial authority, Hanukkah commemorates and inspires both the ability and the desire to do more than is expected.37 I imagine that that is a conclusion our honoree will appreciate even more than a renewed attention to the Temple!

37 My teacher Rabbi Yehuda Gilad once suggested to me that this core message of Hanukkah explains an unusual legal holding, namely, that even though one is required to light only one candle on each night of the holiday, if one forgot to recite the blessing and realized it only after having lit the first—and thus having already fulfilled the literal obligation—one nonetheless should recite the blessing prior to lighting the additional, beyond-the-minimal-requirement candles (see Mishnah Berurah 676:4).

Jane L. Kanarek

Between Tradition and Innovation: The Pedagogical Possibilities of the Penai Yehoshua

Scholars of the Babylonian Talmud have long recognized the central role that commentary has played in the Talmud’s reception history as a canonical text. Commentary has helped to define—and redefine—the Talmud’s iconic place within Jewish culture: as source for legal norms,1 focus of dialectical debates, center for ritualized study, and subject for academic inquiry. When read alongside the base text of the Talmudic passage, commentary facilitates an interweaving of the voice of the commentary into the very text of the Talmud, generating commentary’s potential to explain, analyze, uncover, and even transform the meaning of the Talmudic text itself. However, scholarship has yet to examine in detail the pedagogical possibilities of Talmud commentary.2

1 On the textualization of the Babylonian Talmud, that is its transposition into a prescriptive reference work, in medieval Jewish culture, see Talya Fishman, Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 2 One exception to this is Ethan M. Tucker, “Looking for Problems: A Pedagogic Quest for Difficulties,” in Learning to Read Talmud: What it Looks Like and How it Happens, ed. Jane L. Kanarek, and Marjorie Lehman (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2016). Tucker explores how medieval and modern commentaries can function as one step in a longer process of teaching students to identify and formulate difficulties in Talmudic sugyot.

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In this piece, I aim to undertake the beginnings of such an exploration: In what ways can the teaching and study of Talmud commentary help students to become sophisticated and thoughtful readers of Talmud? Even more specifically, how might the study of Talmud commentary help rabbinical students in particular to interact with the Talmud as an ongoing source for the formation of individual and communal Jewish religious practices? Although it might appear simplest to begin this exploration with the iconic commentary of RaShI or the tosafists,3 for reasons that will become clear further on, the work which I choose to discuss is an early-modern commentary, the Penai Yehoshua of Rabbi Jacob Joshua ben Zvi Hirsch Falk (1680–1756).4 My questions about the commentary’s potential stem from my own teaching in the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, a liberal and trans-denominational institution.5 While Talmud and rishonim—medieval commentators—have a place in our rabbinical school curriculum, and 3 RaShI refers to the northern French commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitzḥaki (1040–1105). Tosafot refers to the twelfth- and thirteenth-century school of Franco-German Talmud commentary. Since the first printing of the first volume of the Talmud, tractate Berakhot in 1483/4, RaShI has been printed on the inside margin of the talmudic page and Tosafot on the outside. The printing of these commentaries on the same page as the text of the Bavli itself is part of what has facilitated the study of RaShI and Tosafot as integral to what it means to learn a page (or daf) of Talmud. On the printing of the Talmud and its commentaries, see Sharon Liberman Mintz, and Gabriel M. Goldstein, eds. Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein (New York: Yeshiva University Museum, 2006). 4 Jacob Joshua ben Zvi Hirsch Falk was born in Krakow in 1680, studied in a number of Polish yeshivot and became a leader of the Jewish community, first in Poland and then in a number of different communities in Germany. He died in Offenbach in 1756 and was subsequently buried in Frankfurt. To date, there is no book-length study of Rabbi Jacob Joshua Falk or of the Penai Yehoshua. There are a limited number of shorter articles. See Israel M. Ta-Shma, “On the Book ‘Pnei Yehoshua’ and Its Author,” in Studies on the History of the Jews of Ashkenaz, ed. Gershon Bacon, Daniel Sperber, and Aharon Gaimani [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2008); Israel M. Ta-Shma, “The Vilna Gaon and the Author of Sha’agat Aryeh, the P’Nei Yehoshua and the Book Tzion L’Nefesh Chaya—on the History of New Currents in Rabbinic Literature on the Eve of the Enlightenment,” Sidra: A Journal for the Study of Rabbinic Literature [Hebrew] (1999): 181–91; Elchanan Reiner, “Beyond the Realm of the Haskalah— Changing Learning Patterns in Jewish Traditional Society,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook: Early Modern Culture and Haskalah 6 (2007): 123–33. The Penai Yehoshua of Falk should not be confused with the work of Responsa by Falk’s grandfather, rabbi of Krakow (d. 1648), which bears the same title. 5 For an overview of the Hebrew College Rabbinical School see http://www.hebrewcollege. edu/rabbinical. Accessed 10/24/2017. See also Arthur Green’s address at the 2017 Hebrew College Ordination ceremony, http://blog.hebrewcollege.edu/my-rabbinate/. Accessed 10/24/2017.

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Between Tradition and Innovation    JANE L. KANAREK

indeed in other liberal rabbinical schools, aḥaronim—early modern and modern Talmudic commentators and legal decisors6—are not part of the curriculum. Although my own more advanced courses include Tosafot and other medieval commentators such as Rabbi Asher ben Yeḥiel (RoSh, c. 1250–1327) and Rabbi Yom Tov ben Avraham Ishbili (RITBA, c. 1250– 1330), I generally neglect the aḥaronim in favor of contemporary talmudic scholarship that stems from the academy. In other words, I favor the university over the later modes of yeshivah study.7 Thus one aspect of my project and my interest in the Penai Yehoshua lies in expanding the bookshelf of liberal rabbis, teaching what is not usually taught outside of the context of Orthodox institutions.8 Yet I have another and more significant purpose beyond expanding the liberal bookshelf and that lies in considering my students as rabbis-in-formation, that is as future Jewish communal leaders. As such, I want them to view study of the Bavli not simply as fulfilling a curricular requirement, but rather as providing a guide for their own Jewish practices and those of their future communities.9 To do so, they must see the Bavli as opening up 6 Aḥaronim are often dated from approximately the mid-16th century to the present, with the publication of the full Shulḥan ‘Arukh (Joseph Karo’s code with the glosses of Moses Isserles), printed for the first time in 1577, as the turning point from the period of the rishonim. Israel Ta-Shma advocates using a date specific to the particular literary genre under consideration. Thus, the beginning of the period of aḥaronim for legal codes would differ from that of Talmud commentary. Ta-Shma suggests utilizing Ḥiddushei Halakhot ve-Aggadot of Rabbi Shmuel Eidels (1555–1631, MaHaRSha), first printed in 1612, as marking the beginning of aḥaronim for Talmud commentary. See Ta-Shma, “On the Book ‘Pnei Yehoshua,’” 278. 7 It is important to note that the university itself is beginning to discover the aḥaronim as a locus for academic study. See for example Paul E. Nahme, “Wissen Und Lomdus: Idealism, Modernity, and History in Some Nineteenth-Century Rabbinic and Philosophical Responses to the Wissenschaft Des Judentums,” Harvard Theological Review 110, no.  3 (2017): 393–420; Chaim Saiman, “Legal Theology: The Turn to Conceptualism in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Law,” Journal of Law and Religion 21, no.  1 (2005): 39–100; Shai Wozner, Legal Thinking in the Lithuanian Yeshivoth: The Heritage and Works of Rabbi Shimon Shkop [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2016). 8 The privileging of aḥaronim within Orthodox institutions can be attributed to a number of different historical, curricular, and ideological factors. One significant factor is the way in which commentary is viewed as an integral aspect of what it means to study and learn Talmud. RaShI and Tosafot are seen as beginning this process, authorities that then became the basis for further authoritative commentaries. Studying aḥaronim becomes a method of ensuring that the interpretive project is ongoing. 9 Moshe Halbertal distinguishes between normative and formative canonical texts. Normative texts are prescriptive, establishing norms to be followed. Formative texts provide a community or profession with a common vocabulary; they are taught, read,

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meaning and not as closing it off. On the one hand, however, the fact of the Bavli’s historical contingency, its redaction in historical contexts quite different from our own, means a gap between its sensibilities and those of my students. In fact, it would be surprising (and troubling) if such a gap did not exist. On the other hand, the Bavli is also a sacred text, a work that has shaped and continues to shape individual and communal Jewish life, thus muting the gap between its context and our own. In order for my students to inhabit a space that integrates both of these poles, maintaining a sense of the distance between the Bavli and their own selves while simultaneously closing that gap, they need to conceptualize the Bavli as at once a historically bound document, edited in particular times and places, and as a transcendent text, meant to speak beyond the times and places of its redaction. They should cultivate openness to the Bavli’s speaking to them as well as their own ability to speak to the Bavli, creating a circle where past shapes present and present shapes the past. This process of dialogue between past and present, foreign and familiar,10 and self and text is crucial to the Bavli’s becoming a rich resource for contemporary Jewish practice. Of course, this dialogical mode of engaging the Bavli does not simply occur instinctively or intuitively. Teachers must find strategies to help their students learn how to read within these different poles. I conjecture that commentary, an interpretive genre that not only explains but also reframes and re-contextualizes earlier texts, can offer students a road to such an expansive and dialogical model of reading the Bavli. As Moshe Halbertal observes, “The dominant mode of intellectual creativity in a text-centered transmitted, and interpreted. The Bavli is both normative and formative: It has acted as a strong source for legal codification and as a fundamental text in the Jewish educational curriculum, studied for its own sake and not necessarily for normative practice. Although some of my students may depart from the norms of the Shulḥan ‘Arukh (and other Jewish law codes), they should understand the Bavli as helping them to formulate prescriptive norms for their own selves and their respective communities as well as providing those communities with a shared vocabulary. See Moshe Halbertal, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3. 10 On the importance of the tension between the familiar and the strange, see J. Z. Smith, introduction to Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xii–xiii; J.Z. Smith, “God Save This Honourable Court: Religion and Civic Discourse,” in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 382–89. Smith argues that making the familiar strange enhances a person’s perception of what had been familiar, enabling that person to see it anew.

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Between Tradition and Innovation    JANE L. KANAREK

community is interpretive.”11 Indeed, the Bavli (like all texts) is not static; centuries of commentators have remade its meaning through careful, close, and creative reading. My students, too, should learn to participate actively in the textual processes of Talmud commentary: entering into the long chain of Talmud commentary12 through understanding the commentary of others and even offering their own. The Penai Yehoshua, written, printed, and published on the eve of the Haskalah,13 potentially stands as a powerful example for my students: located within traditionalist society and traditionalist modes of study and committed to innovation and questioning.14

The Penai Yehoshua: Tradition and Innovation Scholars have located the Penai Yehoshua at the nexus of a significant Eastern European Jewish cultural moment: the rise of textuality and the emergence of textual interpretation in the eighteenth century.15 Instead of reading the Talmud within its tradition of practical halakhic ruling, that is as a source for and link to codified rulings of Jewish law, the Penai Yehoshua focuses on more literary aspects of the Talmudic text: syntactic structure, inner coherence, and intertextual relations.16 While the Penai Yeshoshua 11 Halbertal, People of the Book, 92. 12 Talmud commentary as its own literary genre can be dated to as early as the tenth century. Of course, the Talmud itself is a form of commentary. This is true not only on the larger level of the gemara as commentary on the Mishnah, but also on the smaller level of amoraic explication of specific tannaitic statements and the redactorial recasting of these blocs. On geonic Talmud commentary, see Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 270–74. On the beginnings of post-geonic Talmud commentary see Israel Ta-Shma, “Early Modern Trends in Late West-European Talmud Commentary and Their Influence on Popular Talmud Studies in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2007), 167–69; Israel M. Ta-Shma, Talmud Commentary in Europe and North Africa: Literary History; Part One: 1000–1200 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1999), 26–31. 13 As Israel Ta-Shma argues, the intellectual currents of traditionalist Jewish society should also be viewed within the larger intellectual context of the general Enlightenment, a context of free intellectual criticism of precedent. See Ta-Shema, Vilna Gaon, 181. 14 While there are numerous studies of the historical background and exegetical methodologies of RaShI and Tosafot, I am not aware of any studies from the field of pedagogy of these two formative commentaries. This would be an important project. 15 Reiner, “Beyond the Realm of the Haskalah,” 127. 16 Ibid., 128–29.

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certainly addresses halakhah, formulating halakhic rulings or ensuring that interpretations corresponded to established law were not its main purpose. Indeed, as Yisrael Ta-Shema argue, Falk placed questions at the center of his commentary: That iron pillar of traditional Talmud exegesis—to pacify the student at all costs—was shattered by the Pnei Yehoshua, who was the first among the Akhronim to aim straight at the heart of the issue under debate, thereby positing the question as his main intellectual implement and the answers as secondary in importance. On the whole, his questions are much nearer to the modern conception of criticism than to the traditional attitude of modest perplexity and therein lies their might and the overwhelming power of the book as a whole.17

Questions stand at the center of the Penai Yehoshua to such an extent that subsequent commentators cite the Penai Yehoshua and attempt to answer his questions more than is the case with any aḥaronim that preceded him.18 Published between 1739 and 1780, the four volumes of the Penai Yehoshua distinguish themselves as the first comprehensively textual interpretation of the Talmud. One of the goals of our rabbinical school curriculum lies in helping each student find his or her location within Jewish life and practice. While we insist that students anchor themselves in Jewish tradition—textual and mimetic19—we do not prescribe one path, either individual or communal. Indeed, many of my students struggle to engage the classical language of halakhah with its behavioral dictates. In this they are like many post-Enlightenment Jews: halakhah has lost its resonance as a resource or

17 Ta-Shma, “Late West-European Talmud Commentary,” 172. In this, Falk also sought to counter the more technical and formalistic method of Talmud study known as pilpul. For an extended study of pilpul, see H. Z. Dimitrovsky, “‘Al Derekh Ha-Pilpul,” in Salo Baron Jubilee Volume, ed. Saul Lieberman, and Arthur Hyman (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research). For a concise English summary of pilpul see Jeffery R. Woolf, “Between Diffidence and Initiative: Ashkenazic Decision-Making in the Late Middle Ages (1350–1500),” Journal of Jewish Studies 52, no. 1 (2001): 95–97. 18 Ta-Shma, “Vilna Gaon,” 183. 19 For a discussion of the turn to textual authority over mimetic in contemporary Orthodoxy, see Haym Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 28, no. 4 (1994): 64–130.

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language that compels Jewish practice.20 We do, though, push our students to look backwards toward the key elements that have formed Jewish life and forwards to what may create and sustain contemporary Jewish life, ideally intertwining them into a richly grounded and creative vision. I conjecture that the Penai Yehoshua presents my students with a model of commentary that is explicitly and simultaneously backward and forward oriented, attending to tradition and to innovation. Thus, as Falk writes in his introduction to the Penai Yehoshua: “Because of this, too, my heart trembles and leaps from its place,”21 that I have brought upon myself “this great trouble,”22 by inserting my head amidst the great, lofty mountains of the commentaries of RaShI and Tosafot and the greatest ancients lest I be burned by their flaming coals and be in my own eyes, “as a trickster.”23

Much as Falk, through biblical and midrashic allusions, states his loyalty to and awe of his predecessors, he also expresses his desire to challenge these same authorities.24 This is the goal of the book (mishpat ha-sefer) and what it does: to settle the difficulties raised by Tosafot on the commentary of RaShI in most places, and to explain each one according to its opinion, and thus the teachings will make sense. It also settles that which they had left as a difficulty or unresolved, or instances in which the answer of Tosafot appears very forced. I also have not held myself back from stating in brief language if, from the give and take of discussion, a new difficulty or answer arises that is relevant to the position of the early or later legal decisors.25

Through highlighting Falk’s reverence for the past and his goal of innovation, I seek to challenge my students to articulate explicitly their own 20 On this phenomenon see Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 13–51; and Arnold M. Eisen, Rethinking Modern Judaism: Ritual, Commandment, Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 21 See Job 37:1. 22 See 2 Kings 4:13. 23 See Gen. 27:12. I thank Harvey Bock for assistance with this translation. 24 Falk’s humility can also be seen in the two titles he gives his work, the first (Penai Yehoshua) the same as an earlier halakhic compendium written by his grandfather, rabbi of Krakow, and the second, Apei Zutrei (“Small Faces”), indicating his awareness of his small stature before his predecessors. 25 Introduction to the Penai Yehoshua.

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paradigms of commitment: to which aspects of our past do they feel loyal and which do they seek to change? Much as the Penai Yehoshua acts as a hinge between tradition and modernity, between halakhah and text, I want our students to become “hinge-people,”26 those who can closely read the Bavli in order to untie the knots of our tradition that lie between past and present.

Teaching the Penai Yehoshua: A Woman (and Not a Girl) Is Acquired One of the required Talmud courses I teach centers on the first chapter of tractate Qiddushin, a main topic of which is delineating the legal contours of rabbinic betrothal.27 This Talmudic chapter often brings to the fore many of the issues where my students feel most acutely the conflict between the pre-modern and the contemporary worlds, what Judaism has been and what they feel it should be, particularly in matters of personal status. M. Qiddushin 1:1 rules, “The woman is acquired in three ways: through money, a document, or sexual intercourse (ha-ishah niqneit be-shalosh derakhim: be-kesef, be-shtar, u-ve-biah).”28 Students generally notice the technical language of acquisition to describe the process of betrothal, that a woman is acquired rather than a man, and the ways in which the methods through which a woman is acquired are parallel to the ways in which a Canaanite slave and land may be acquired. A woman is acquired through money, document, and sexual intercourse and Canaanite slaves and land are acquired through money, document, and a legal presumption of own26 I thank Judith Kates for the phrase “hinge-people.” 27 Rabbinic marriage has two components: betrothal (qiddushin or erusin) and marriage (nissu’in or ḥuppah). The first stage, qiddushin, brings the bride and groom into a state of inchoate marriage. The bride is sexually forbidden to all other men, but still remains in her father’s domain. Her father retains economic rights to her labor and the ability to dissolve any vows she might make. In the second stage, nissu’in, the bride moves from her father’s household into the groom’s and the father’s rights and responsibilities now devolve upon the groom. 28 As is common in Hebrew of all periods, m. Qiddushin 1:1 uses the noun with the definite article to refer to a general category. Even though it is awkward in English, I have translated ha-ishah as “the woman” because the definite article is key to the Penai Yehoshua’s argument. English translations of m. Qiddushin 1:1 commonly use “a woman” to convey this sense of the general. On the letter “vav” meaning “or” in the Mishnah see J. N. Epstein, Introduction to the Mishnaic Text, vol. 2 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001), 1062.

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ership (ḥazaqah). Once sexual intercourse is understood as parallel to ḥazaqah, the two lists become identical. If the rabbis do view betrothal of a woman by a man as equivalent to the purchase of land, my students wonder: Why should I continue reading this text and what becomes of this ritual? Why, they ask, should we participate in a ritual, whether as officiants or as subjects, that involves purchasing another person? In introducing the Penai Yehoshua into this conversation, I do not argue that Falk’s views will match that of my students—they will not. Instead, I intend for the Penai Yehoshua to act as an interpretive prod, to provide yet another example of how close and sophisticated reading can transform earlier views. As Sarra Lev argues, we do not need to seek texts that match our sense of morality; the gap between its morality and our own can itself be productive.29 Admittedly, working with this gap involves cultivating patience and acknowledging anger, a process that I engage in throughout the semester.30 Both of these traits are crucial to reading pre-modern (and even many modern), texts and also crucial to rabbinic leadership. As my students learn the Penai Yehoshua, they build not only skills in reading commentary but also pastoral skills for their different rabbinates. In what follows, I explore one comment of the Penai Yehoshua on this opening mishnah of tractate Qiddushin for its pedagogical possibilities.31 29 Lev proposes reading the Talmud as a new genre that she calls a “summons,” impelling us to interact with the Talmud in such a way that we become, “more reflective, understanding, empathetic, discerning, and expansive.” Sarra Lev, “Talmud That Works Your Heart: New Approaches to Reading,” in Learning to Read Talmud: What it Looks Like and How it Happens, ed. Jane L. Kanarek, and Marjorie Lehman (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2016), 177. 30 The cultivation of patience and the acknowledgement of anger in the teaching of rabbinics, and of rabbis in particular, are worthy of their own article. 31 A significant body of literature written by contemporary rabbis and scholars has emerged that discusses both the problems of rabbinic betrothal and possible solutions. Some of this literature proposes ways to reinterpret the classical ritual while some proposes new ritual to replace qiddushin. Talmud class, however, is not where I choose to engage this literature in a significant way or where I choose to use it to help my students address their dilemmas. Instead, I want them to think with the sugyot and its commentators, to work in the frame of Talmudic debate and not halakhic decisionmaking. Much as this approach mirrors that of the Penai Yehoshua, it also mirrors that of the contemporary rabbinate, a vocation that requires a lifelong engagement with the Bavli’s debates and an ability to translate those debates to a communal context—not simply a proclamation of a final ruling. On the problems of rabbinic betrothal, and some possible solutions, see, Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Beacon Press, 1998), 169–217; Steven Greenberg, “Contemplating a Jewish

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Penai Yehoshua to b. Qiddushin 2a (m. Qiddushin 1:1) “The woman is acquired in three ways: through money, a document, or sexual intercourse.” It appears that the fact that the mishnah teaches, “the woman is acquired,” refers to an adult, because it is based on the language of the Torah. And as Tosafot wrote, in the language of the Torah, an unspecified “woman” (stam ishah) refers to an adult and not a minor (gedolah ve-lo qetanah). Because of this [need to distinguish between an adult female and a minor female] it [the mishnah] rules and limits and teaches that she is acquired in three ways, which is not true of a minor, where it is unclear if she is acquired in three ways, since there is [the case of a girl] younger than three who is not acquired by intercourse. With this there is room to reconcile the difficulty of Tosafot in their comment “The woman” (ha-ishah). Normally the Mishnah does not teach using the definite article because a person should always teach his student in the briefest manner. But here [in m. Qiddusin 1:1] it is applicable to teach with the definite article in order to teach us that it refers to a specific woman, which means an adult. And all the more so this works well according to what I wrote earlier in the opening [to Ketubot, sv. umnum] that according to the position of RaShI, may his memory be a blessing, that a minor who has not reached the age of six (‘onat ha-pe‘utot)32 is also not betrothed with a document, as I have written at length.33

Falk opens his commentary on tractate Qiddushin by interrogating the language of the opening phrase of m. Qiddushin 1:1. He posits that the mishnah chooses the word “ha-ishah” (the woman) in order to indicate that the law of betrothal through either money, document, or sexual intercourse applies only to an adult female and not to a minor female, a ruling that is scripturally determined. In support of his contention, Falk cites the tosafist explanation that when the Torah uses the word “ishah,” it refers to

Ritual of Same-Sex Union: An Inquiry into the Meanings of Marriage,” in Authorizing Marriage?: Canon, Tradition, and Critique in the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions, ed. Mark D. Jordan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 81–101; Gail Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphor: Constructions of Gender in Rabbinic Literature (Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009). 32 I follow Falk’s definition of ‘onat ha-pe‘utot in his opening commentary to b. Ketubot (s.v. ho’il). 33 Penai Yehoshua to b. Qiddushin 2a, sv. ha-ishah niqneit be-shalosh derakhim be-kesef u-ve-shtar u-ve-bi’ah.

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an adult and not to a minor.34 The mishnah’s reference to an adult women also explains why it lists three specific methodologies for betrothal: these three are limited to an adult woman and are not applicable to a minor, for a girl under three cannot be betrothed through sexual intercourse.35 Falk now moves on to the core of his argument: differentiating his explanation of the mishnah’s use of the word “ha-ishah” from that of the tosafists. Falk’s citation of the tosafist argument is laconic. Tosafot address a question of language: Why is the Mishnah inconsistent in its use of the definite article in mishnaic passages that are concerned with male-female relationships? For example, m. Qiddushin 1:1 opens with “ha-ishah niqneit” (the woman is acquired); m. Yevamot 15:1, “ha-ishah she-halkhah” (the woman who went); and m. Ketubot 2:1 “ha-ishah she-nitarmelah” (the woman who is widowed). On the other hand, m. Ketubot 1:1 uses the language “betulah niseit” (a virgin is married).36 Tosafot answer their own question by stating that the Mishnah uses the definite article when the woman in question is specifically mentioned in a scriptural verse. Thus, in regard to marriage, the Torah states: “When a man takes a woman” (Deuteronomy 24:1). However, a virgin is never explicitly mentioned in a biblical verse in regard to marriage. In arguing that the Mishnah’s use of the definite article indicates an explicit biblical reference to the law in question, Tosafot seek to link Oral Torah to Written Torah. The Mishnah may not often cite verses, but mishnaic readers should recognize that many of its laws are firmly grounded in the Bible. In this move, Tosafot provide a kind of “midrash halakhah” for mishnaic laws about male-female relationships.37 Nevertheless, after providing this answer, Tosafot undercut it, finding examples that do not follow this premise. Ultimately, Tosafot conclude that the Mishnah does not follow a consistent linguistic principle and instead posits that sages utilized whichever language they found most fluent.

34 Tosafot to b. Qiddushin 2a, sv. ha-ishah niqneit. 35 Of course, as I would state to my students, the idea that the age of three delineates the boundary between permissible and impermissible intercourse with a minor girl is itself terrifying. Asking your patience, I will return to this further on in the main body of the article. 36 I have translated the Hebrew according to the use or non-use of the definite article for clarity of the tosafist argument. Grammatically all refer to a general category. 37 On midrash halakhah as “justified law,” that is providing scriptural proofs for mishnaic rulings, see David Halivni, Midrash, Mishnah, and Gemara: The Jewish Predilection for Justified Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).

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Much as Tosafot provide a linguistic argument, Falk reframes the question as one of halakhic categories. He begins from a different premise than Tosafot. Whereas for Tosafot, normative mishnaic language uses the definite article, for Falk normative mishnaic language does not use the definite article. Thus, while Tosafot tried to explain why exceptional mishnaic passages did not use the definite article, Falk explains the opposite: why exceptional mishnaic passages do use the definite article. Falk explains that, in general, the Mishnah does not use the definite article because a teacher should teach dicta in the briefest manner possible. However, in the case of m. Qiddushin 1:1, it was particularly appropriate to use the definite article in order to indicate that the woman mentioned there refers specifically to an adult and not to a minor. In refuting Tosafot and in providing his own explanation for the language of m. Qiddushin, Falk shifts the discourse from linguistics to law. Falk concludes by supporting his argument that the opening mishnah of Qiddushin must refer to an adult female with a reference to his opening commentary on tractate Ketubot. There Falk cites RaShI’s position that a girl under the age of six cannot be divorced even in the case where her husband gives the divorce document to the girl’s father and not directly to the girl, as would normally be done with an older wife. Since the legal ability of a man to betroth a female with a document38 is derived from his legal ability to divorce with a document, it follows that a female who cannot be divorced with a document also cannot be betrothed with a document. Thus, m. Qiddushin 1:1 which lists “document” as among the ways a man may betroth cannot refer to a minor.39 In bringing in the minor to his discussion of this mishnah, Falk not only shifts the discourse from linguistics to law but also introduces a new legal category, that of age. The mishnah does not necessitate this interpretive choice, but in so doing, Falk reshapes the text.40 In Falk’s reading, the Mishnah’s use of the language “ha-ishah” is a conscious choice to indicate that betrothal of an adult woman differs from that of a minor. To be sure, Falk does not make this point out of a moral concern about the betrothal of a minor. After all, 38 See for example b. Qiddushin 5a. 39 This comment about divorce of a six-year-old raises a whole host of other ethical dilemmas about the marriage of very young girls. The subsequent extended discussion about the age of Batsheva and Shlomo at their first sexual encounter is equally, if not even more, troubling. Passages like these, which can be read as rape narratives, deserve their own full treatment. 40 To be clear, Falk does not alter the legal mechanisms of betrothal.

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Between Tradition and Innovation    JANE L. KANAREK

the following passage in the Penai Yehoshua continues to discuss the case of a girl under three who cannot be betrothed through sexual intercourse yet may be betrothed through money or a document. Nowhere in this passage does Falk interrogate the deep problematics of three as the delineating line between permissible and impermissible intercourse for the purposes of betrothal or the problematics of betrothing a girl under the age of three (or even any minor girl). Yet, we may still read Falk in order to open this question. Following Falk’s model, we can read the opening passage of tractate Qiddushin and interrogate its choice of the word “the woman.” We can ask: What other words might the mishnah have chosen? What in the Bavli’s reading of this mishnah indicates that the Mishnah could have used other vocabulary?41 While we might accept Falk’s answer that “ha-ishah” refers to an adult woman, we might then depart from his proposal and interrogate more fully the concept of age. Why is it important that only an adult woman 41 I hypothesize that Falk’s desire to establish m. Qiddushin 1:1 as definitively about an adult may have been driven by a redactional choice in the opening folios of b. Qiddushin. The opening saboraic sugya (b. Qiddushin 2a-3b, ha-ishah niqneit mai shena’ – ve-ein devar aḥer kortah) mainly discusses the mishnah’s choice to use passive language with the woman as subject while interrogating the biblical proof-texts for betrothal through money. The following sugya on b. Qiddushin 3b-4b (be-kesef minalan –tzrikha) discusses the betrothal of a minor girl. The Bavli then resumes its discussion of the biblical prooftext for betrothal with money. B. Qiddushin 3b-4b, however, is an awkward sugya. It opens by asking for a biblical proof-text that a man may effect betrothal through money and then quotes a mishnah from tractate Ketubot and asks two further questions: “‘A father has authority over his daughter in her betrothal: through money, through a document, and through sexual intercourse (m. Ketubot 4:4).’ From where do we know that she is acquired by money and that the money belongs to her father?” The second query (“that the money belongs to her father”) is intelligible: m. Ketubot 4:4 asserts that a father has authority over his minor daughter’s betrothal money without offering any prooftext. The Bavli now asks for that biblical proof-text. The first query (“that she is acquired by money”), however, is less intelligible. m. Ketubot 4:4 does not discuss a general case of betrothal or ask for the biblical authority for betrothal by money. Indeed, the sense that m. Ketubot 4:4 and the ensuing discussion does not quite fit here in tractate Qiddushin is confirmed by the fact that this sugya is also found in tractate Bavli Ketubot (b. Ketubot 46b). In its Ketubot context, the question that begins our sugya, “And money, from what [biblical prooftext do we know that the betrothal money of a minor female belongs to her father]?” makes sense. There the question is only about the father’s authority. The sugya from Ketubot has been redacted in Qiddushin and reread, albeit awkwardly, to fit its new redactional context. Falk’s caution against reading m. Qiddushin 1:1 as including a minor female fits implicitly within this larger context of the opening passages of Bavli Qiddushin. With this sugya about a minor in the midst of these other discussions about betrothal, one could then read the opening mishnah as also discussing a minor female and not only an adult.

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may be betrothed? How might we critique the concept of betrothal of a minor and why? What in the Bavli’s reading of this mishnah might enable us to critique the very concept of acquiring an adult woman? We might also interrogate what Falk does not criticize and why and what we do want to question. My students, I trust, would add yet more questions.

Reading Possibilities As I wrote earlier, my exploration of the Penai Yehoshua as holding pedagogical possibilities is an exercise in the hypothetical. How might reading the Penai Yehoshua help my students to become simultaneously traditional and innovative readers of the Bavli? How might it help to anchor them within the long tradition of commentary and to see commentary as a genre through which they can bring their own voices and creativity to bear on the Bavli? Admittedly, learning to read the Penai Yehoshua requires a number of technical skills. Students must know how to unpack complex sugyot, mastering talmudic terminology and delineating the pathways of intricate arguments. They must be able to move from the Mishnah to the Bavli to the medieval interpretive tradition. Finally, they must learn to understand the Penai Yehoshua, articulating how Falk understands the Talmudic sugya as well as his medieval predecessors. Yet these more technical skills of translation and parsing arguments act as gateways to interpretive skills. For as my students move from one genre and time period to the next, they should begin to recognize that much as the Bavli makes interpretive choices about the Mishnah, so too do these earlier and later commentaries. Commentators respond to and generate interpretive possibilities; there is no inevitability to their words. As Beth Berkowitz writes about her own students in an introductory Talmud course: I want the students to see that the interpretive path never ends. Each text we encounter is negotiating prior ambiguities and then generating new ones, which future texts will then, in turn, negotiate, and so on. We are learning, in the end, to appreciate the creativity of sense-making, and to see that creativity as happening at every moment, for every creature.42 42 Beth A. Berkowitz, “Stop Making Sense: Using Text Study Guides to Help Students Learn to Read Talmud,” in Learning to Read Talmud: What it Looks Like and How it Happens, ed. Jane L. Kanarek, and Marjorie Lehman (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2016), 26.

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Commentators, as they make sense of older texts, and thus tradition, also create new texts which in turn can become tradition. In this specific passage from the Penai Yehoshua, I would want my students to note how Falk attempts to understand the words of earlier commentators, his use of questions, his shift in discourse from linguistics to law, and the ways in which he relies on textual interpretation to make his point. The Penai Yehoshua is anchored in the past and rereading that past for his present. Yet my students should also be able to articulate where their questions and responses depart from those of the Penai Yehoshua and why.43 In this hinge between past and present lies my hope for my students: I want them to become close readers of the Bavli and its commentaries, to learn to locate themselves in the past, but also to see the meaning of that past as constantly reshaped and reinterpreted. The multiple lenses of commentary should provide my students with a sense of possibility, that they can bring their questions and concerns to the Talmud and reshape its meaning, much as their predecessors have done. Ideally, it should also give them models of how to do so. Standing at the nexus of traditionalist society and the Haskalah, the Penai Yehoshua represents one model of how tradition and innovation may be interwoven. As my students conceptualize how they will join together tradition and innovation, Falk’s work—a model of questions built on commentary built on the Bavli—can provide them with precedent. Commentary should help my students interweave their voices into the Talmudic text itself, giving them the ability to explain, analyze, critique, question and ultimately transform the meaning of this most sacred book.

43 Ideally, we would find ways of writing those questions and answers in the language of commentary. I am only beginning to articulate a model for this process and plan to devote further thought to it.

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Rediscovering the Covenant: The Contemporary Hasidic Thought of Rabbi Shmuel Berezovsky of Slonim

Part 1—Background and Definitions1 Introduction One of the most original and creative Hasidic thinkers of our time is Rabbi Shmuel Berezovsky, the present Rebbe of Slonim, son of the illustrious Rabbi Shalom Noah Berezovsky, author of the wildly popular Netivot Shalom. Rabbi Berezovsky the father is known for his systematic teaching, pedagogic orientation, and clear Hebrew prose. These have made his work one of the most popular introductions to Hasidic thought2 and he is widely recognized as someone responsible for the spread of Hasidic thought in the post-Holocaust 1 The essay introduces the thought of Rabbi Shmuel Berezovsky on covenant through a series of interrelated introductions to the subject matter. The buildup of understanding sets the stage for some of the exciting applications and texts presented in the latter part of the essay. For the sake of the reader who wishes to go to the heart of the teachings and engage some of the “juicy” teachings, I have divided the essay into two parts, allowing the impatient reader to jump to the second part. The patient reader will benefit from a fuller context and understanding of Rabbi Berezovsky’s thought. 2 The recently published David Biale et al., Hasidism: A New History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 779, lists Netivot Shalom as one of only two works in

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Rediscovering the Covenant    ALON GOSHEN-GOTTSTEIN

era.3 His son, Rabbi Shmuel Berezovsky, the present Rebbe of Slonim, author of Darkhei No‘am, is virtually unknown in broader circles, and his fame relies mainly on his activism in certain issues, notably the conflict that surrounded a segregated school in the town of Immanuel.4 Yet, in many ways, he surpasses his father in originality, depth of thought, and mystical experience. He is a rare Hasidic thinker who allows us a glimpse of the mystical life and deep personal experiences as reflected through his teachings and testimonies, a marked contrast with the outward-facing and educationally oriented project of his father’s teachings. I would venture to say that of all Hasidic writers living today, he is, in fact, the only one who not only maintains Hasidic ideology, but also deepens it through his personal mystical experiences.5 I would consequently the entire (recent) Hasidic literature that cross the boundaries of their specific Hasidic community. 3 A series of his writings has appeared in English translation by Sholom Binyomin Ginsberg. Noga Bing at Hebrew University wrote an MA thesis on his teachings and a handful of articles on his thought have been published. 4 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Beit_Yaakov_controversy, accessed Nov. 6, 2017. 5 This appreciation must be nuanced by two factors. The first is with reference to heads of Hasidic dynasties, in other words traditional authorities within the Hasidic world. Rabbi Berezovsky’s creativity certainly stands out against the backdrop of other present day admorim. The second is with reference to the particular form of originality and creativity. Jonathan Garb has studied important contemporary figures in the Hasidic world. See Jonathan Garb, “Mystical and Spiritual Discourse in the Contemporary Ashkenazi Haredi Worlds,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 9, no. 1 (2010): 17–36; Jonathan Garb, “Towards the Study of the Mystical-Spiritual Renaissance in the Contemporary Ashkenazi Haredi World in Israel,” in Kabbalah and Contemporary Spiritual Revival, ed. Boaz Huss (Ben Gurion University Press, 2011), 117–140 and other studies. In order to gain an appreciation for the originality of Rabbi Berezovsky, I have looked at the works of all the figures discussed by Garb, and who may be said to represent contemporary Jewish mystical creativity. In addition to the distinction between more classical leadership represented by heads of Hasidic dynasties and newer forms represented by the figures studied by Garb, there are significant substantive distinctions. The half dozen authors he presents address a wide audience and therefore cover a wide scope of teachings, geared at initiating others into their spiritual world. They are expansive thinkers and synthesis between different strands of Hasidic thought and beyond is a hallmark of their creativity. While the experiential dimension is on the horizon, and they seek to cultivate it, the works do not read like attempts to give over powerful personal experiences, as does R. Berezovsky’s work. Rabbi Berezovsky delivers to a well-defined community, and does not immediately seek to broaden it through his teachings. His work is not as intellectually wide reaching as the works of Rabbis Ginzburgh or Morgenstern. Nevertheless, the ways in which experience and the quest for experience are put in the service of biblical hermeneutics is unique and justifies special mention not only in the context of the present generation but in the broader context of Hasidic and spiritually oriented scriptural interpretation.

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venture to say that he is one of the most creative and original Hasidic thinkers alive. His originality finds expression in the choice of topics, crafting of a new literary form for his derashot, and the creation of an extensive literary corpus, that succeeds in developing a contemporary mystical theology that provides a synthesis between “learning”, in the sense of classical and yeshiva-based rabbinic erudition, and a personal mystical worldview.6 An important aspect of Rabbi Berezovsky’s originality consists of his interpretive strategies. Rabbi Berezovsky develops a mystical, or spiritual, reading of key biblical narratives, in light of spiritual principles. While this has been a tradition for centuries, the attempt to read biblical narrative in light of spiritual principles is developed to an extreme degree and forms the backbone of his hermeneutical approach. I am not aware of any contemporary figure that consistently offers experiential and spiritual criteria as part of a comprehensive and continuous recasting of biblical narrative. This makes his readings of biblical materials original and captivating, providing a special synthesis between personal religious experience, traditional learning, and broad hermeneutic sweep. Part of the uniqueness of Rabbi Berezovsky is that he is actually a reader of the biblical text. Unlike most kabbalistic and Hasidic interpreters, who export their mystical worldview and superimpose it on the biblical text and narrative, Rabbi Berezovsky is an attentive reader of the text. He explores it in and of itself, he identifies new issues and unresolved tensions, and in a manner that harkens back to old rabbinic interpretation, uses the gaps, tensions and queries relating to the biblical narrative to introduce his spiritual agenda. This makes for a much more integrated presentation of biblical text, mystical tradition and personal religious experience than one typically finds. In fact, I am hard-pressed to think of another work that offers such a balance of these factors. Rabbi Berezovsky’s originality owes in no small measure to his personal curriculum of study and personal devotion.7 His study routines 6 Rabbi Berezovsky’s originality stands out particularly within the Slonim tradition. Certainly the subject of the present essay cannot be traced back to earlier links in the dynasty. This is true of many of the key ideas. In part this is due to the fact that he is very eclectic in terms of the sources upon which he draws. Many key ideas are based on other Hasidic authors (the Maggid of Kozhnitz stands out in particular). The subject under discussion picks up directly from biblical cues, without any precedent in Slonim or any other Hasidic literature. 7 I have been close to Rabbi Berezovsky for more than forty years and have shared with him throughout this period many hours of discussion on spiritual matters, including

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include Tanakh and Zohar. This accounts for the heavy appearance of Zoharic materials in his derashot. Even more so, the regular exposure to Tanach shapes his thought. It is not only that he is an attentive reader of the biblical text. He is a thinker who is informed by the biblical text. This is no trivial fact in a society of “learning” that has all but effaced the study of Bible and removed it from its curriculum. In the Haredi, and consequently Hasidic, world, the Bible is studied almost exclusively through its refractions in rabbinic literature, early and late. While there are numerous works of Hasidic derashot, there is not a single proper commentary on the Bible,8 and what there is is almost exclusively focused on the Torah. Rabbi Berezovsky is a reader of the Prophets, and of other parts of the Bible. What starts out in personal piety ends up informing his spiritual teachings and ultimately provides important contours for his theological thinking. The present essay will present one dimension of Rabbi Berezovsky’s thought, where spiritual creativity is closely linked to engagement with the biblical text. One of the key ideas of biblical theology is the concept of the covenant. This notion has all but disappeared from later Judaism, appearing only through its various refractions and later developments. In Rabbi Berezovsky, we find a reader who rediscovers a worldview and fundamental principles that have been all but lost within the Hasidic matrix within which he operates. Against this background, it is both fascinating and refreshing to see a return to biblical theological thinking. A dialectic emerges where covenantal thinking informs his Hasidic worldview, which in turn also gives new shape to biblical covenantal thinking. His rediscovery of covenantal thinking offers a new perspective on Hasidic thinking and his Hasidic thinking, in turn, allows the covenant to speak in a new way to a tradition of Judaism within which it is rarely heard. New structures of thought are integrated through a reading of the appropriate biblical texts, and biblical texts that have been totally ignored in the history of Hasidic hermeneutics, are commented upon intensively. The rediscovery of the covenant in Rabbi Berezovsky’s thought is completely unrelated to the centrality of covenant in twentieth-century Jewish

many that relate to his own path and piety. I believe this equips me not only with relevant information by means of which to appreciate him, but also with the perspective offered in this article, through which his greatness and originality are appreciated. 8 Hence Hasidic attachment to Rabbi Ḥayyim ibn ‘Attar’s Or ha-Ḥayyim, as a kind of substitute for a comprehensive Torah commentary.

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thought.9 His appeal to covenant is thus purely a matter of internal learning processes, and an extension of religious insight and intuition that grow in the hotbed of personal piety and end up shaping a contemporary Hasidic worldview. The notion of covenant is but one theme that allows us to observe the coming together of personal piety, religious insight and theological and hermeneutical creativity. I chose it as an introduction to the thought of Rabbi Berezovsky because it allows us to focus on one theme, and to consider it both through the lens of historical development and in terms of its positioning within the broader theological economy of his work. It is my hope that through this introduction, the first in any language to his thought, this important thinker and mystic may receive broader attention, of which, I believe, he is very deserving.

Covenant in Jewish Thought—A Very Brief History In order to understand the significance of the rediscovery of covenantal thinking and the originality, as well as hermeneutical creativity, of Rabbi Berezovsky’s application of covenant, we must first offer a very brief history of the idea of covenant in Jewish thought. During the biblical period, covenant was the most central theological category by means of which Israel’s relationship with God was expressed.10 Israel’s unique standing and its exclusive relationship with God found expression by appeal to a political category of the day. Israel alone, of all the people of the Ancient Near East, expressed its relation to God by means of this legal and political category. The category provided definition for the mutual responsibilities of both parties, offered a definition for the relation9

The phenomenon is broad. See the review of Neil Gillman, “Covenant and Chosenness in Postmodern Jewish Thought,” in Covenant and Chosenness in Judaism and Mormonism, ed. R. Jospe et al. (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 103–127. For a more extensive discussion, see S. Daniel Breslauer, Covenant and Community in Modern Judaism (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989). For a recent articulation of covenant as framing Judaism and therefore its moral teaching, see Alan Mittleman, A Short History of Jewish Ethics: Conduct and Character in the Context of Covenant (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). 10 This is best captured in Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, vol. 1 (London, SCM, 1961). On this seminal work, see D. G. Spriggs, Two Old Testament Theologies (London, SCM, 1974) and Norman Gottwald, W. Eichrodt, “Theology of the Old Testament,” Contemporary Old Testament Theologians, ed. Robet Laurin (Judson Press, Valley Forge, 1970), 23–62.

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ship and established God as Israel’s God, while they in turn were His people. Israel’s history could be seen and interpreted in light of faithfulness to the covenant. What went well and what went wrong could be seen as blessings and curses related to the covenant, recompense for faithfulness, or lack thereof. Israel alone used the category of covenant to describe its relationship with God and Israel considered that it alone had a covenantal relationship with God. The vicissitudes of Israel’s history reflected its own adherence to the covenant with its God. What is most central in the covenant is the establishment of a relationship, a unique relationship, which in turn appeals to the Torah and its commandments as the primary framework from within which the covenant is appreciated. Israel’s history is thus intimately linked to the Torah and its commandments, and these in turn are tied into a narrative and conceptual framework provided by the covenant idea. Israel’s history is viewed through a history of covenants, beginning with the Patriarchs, continuing with the revelation at Sinai, and extending to moments of covenant renewal in the Torah and prophetic and later literature. History, in this view, is a process of moving from and returning to the covenant and therefore of reestablishing the relationship with God time and again, in faithfulness to the original covenant, or its primary articulation, typically understood as related to Sinai or the Exodus. Because covenant is marked by possible failure and lack of faithfulness, a return and a reaffirmation of the covenant are necessary, and the history of covenants is part of the ongoing quest to conform Israel to God’s will in faithfulness to the covenant. The idea of covenant did not exercise the same hold over all generations of Jewish faithful as they sought to articulate their relationship with God. This is noted first and foremost in the significant decline in the use of the term in later literature.11 Already rabbinic Judaism shows far less interest in the term and in the concept, having almost abandoned it completely.12 It is a matter of conjecture and speculation as to why that might have been the case. One possibility, and one that I personally favor, refers to the 11 The present study is largely based on the use of the term and how it is recast in the writings of Rabbi Berezovsky. Thus, we shall be tracing his working of the term and of earlier references to it, rather than of a thought structure that can be abstracted and called covenantal, independently of the terminological usage. 12 See W. D. Davies, The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 107–108; Joseph Bonsirven, Le Judaisme Palestinien (Paris, 1934), vol. 1, 79 ff. Compare Reuven Kimelman, “The Rabbinic theology of the Physical: Blessings, Body and Soul, Resurrection, and Covenant and

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very fragility of the covenant, as just described.13 The category contains in it its own constant undermining, as it is vulnerable to Israel’s disobedience and the possible loss of their status and special relationship. Later generations, especially following the destruction of the first Temple, would seek to construct Israel’s relationship with God on a much firmer foundation. To this end, elements of the covenant function independently of the covenantal framework. The relationship with God, obedience to the Torah, the promise of the land, the merit of the fathers, reward and punishment—all operate as significant religious motives, but are not tied together by the structure of the covenant. Post-biblical Judaism, in this reading, provides us with substantive continuity with the core messages of biblical Judaism, but without the one central conceptual category that tied it all together for biblical faith. For nearly two millennia the idea of the covenant lay dormant. Of course, it never fell into disuse, because the Bible kept nourishing religious language, imagination and practice. In some groups, the centrality of biblical covenantal thinking found direct expression in how the life of the community was structured. We cannot understand the life of the Qumran community without realizing that this community has kept alive biblical covenantal thinking, leading to ceremonies such as the annual renewal of the covenant and to the overall structuring of their religious life in covenantal terms. For most of rabbinic Judaism, however, the covenant continued to provide a language that was mostly used in specific contexts, outside the framework of a central governing notion and organizing principle of Judaism’s theological worldview. Accordingly, berit could be understood as taking an oath,14 evaluating some significant mitzvah,15 or as a means of God establishing rules and norms of creation.16 For later kabbalistic tradition, the term took on other shadings. These could only be assumed once the overall meaning of covenant, berit, broke down, making room for other linguistic associations and ritual identifications to emerge. Primary among these is the identification of berit with circumcision, the male member and

13 14 15 16

Election,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4, ed. Steven T. Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 996. Due to constraints of space, I will not engage in the present context several other factors that can be related to this theological shift. Mekhilta, shirata 9, and numerous occurrences in rabbinic literature. m. Nedarim 3:11. Note the expression berit keruta in rabbinic literature, for example b. Rosh Ha-Shanah 17b; b. Mo‘ed Qatan 18a; b. Niddah 58a, and more.

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sexual purity, all understood within the kabbalistic framework of the godhead and corresponding to one particular sefirah—yesod. While it is a valuable thought exercise to tie the biblical and kabbalistic senses of berit into a unified structure, we must first acknowledge the fundamental reality of breakdown of the comprehensive system of meaning of berit, that in turn allowed these multiple new emphases to arise, thereby providing theoretical building blocks for a future and altered covenantal theology. This has been the situation for hundreds of years, until the twentieth century. As noted, there has been a significant rise in the use of covenant in twentieth-century Jewish thought. However, this development cannot form part of the present history of ideas, leading up to Rabbi Berezovsky’s work, because he is oblivious of it. He and his school neither read nor otherwise engage the theological developments that have positioned covenant at the forefront of some Jewish theologies. Theirs is an insular religious reality, nurtured by faithfulness to a particular Hasidic lineage. This insularity precludes the possibility of contact and influence by twentieth-century theological developments. This makes the rediscovery of covenant in Rabbi Berezovsky’s teachings all the more remarkable.

Darkhei No‘am—A Methodological Introduction Rabbi Berezovsky’s work appears under the title Darkhei No‘am, pointing to Proverbs 3:17. The work’s title was chosen to complement that of his father, the author of Netivot Shalom, a title that echoes the other part of the verse.  The work consists of a register of all his teachings since assuming office in the summer of 2000. The volumes appear annually, as do various compilations, extracted from the accumulated teachings.17 The size of the corpus at present exceeds four thousand printed pages. The body of knowledge allows us to identify development in his thought, but more importantly to recognize his method and approach to the entirety of the tradition, out of which he crafts his homilies and teachings. I would like to point to several features that characterize his method and that therefore contribute to the centrality of covenant in his thinking. One of the characteristics of the work is a cyclical and repetitive approach to the same sources and themes. At the same time that Rabbi 17 Of these, the most important one is the attempt to present his teachings systematically, along the lines of the original Netivot Shalom. The volume is titled Darkhei No‘am: ‘Inyeney ‘Avodat Hashem (Betar Ilit, 2015).

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Berezovsky continues to surprise with new insights and emphases, one recognizes a foundation that runs through his teachings of certain key topoi, conceptual and textual, which he revisits time and again. The prism by which he views scripture and the yearly cycle is often that of a set of ideas and texts, that provide him with the vehicle for expressing his key spiritual and mystical insights. However, closer study of these ideas reveals that they are rarely simply repetitions. Rather, they are best described as meditations on key ideas, and at every turn the ideas receive a new articulation, a new emphasis. The new reading could potentially conflict with a previous one, but more typically adds nuance to the body of earlier teachings.18 This method is helpful in identifying the central motifs of Darkhei No‘am.19 The more oft-repeated teachings may be seen as the spine of his theoretical work. In the context of the present study, the fact that there is a significant number of teachings that return time and again to the theme of the covenant at fixed times, in line with the key texts that are studied—biblical or rabbinic—is part of what gives covenant its volume and significance within the economy of his thought.20 One of the characteristics of Darkhei No‘am’s use of berit is the continuity with all levels of tradition. Return to the biblical roots of covenant does not in any way come at the expense of continued appeal to later usage. Consequently, appeal to berit in the context of sexual purity remains a central usage, accounting for as much as half the occurrences in the corpus. The shift between this kabbalistic usage, turned pietistic code for a central religious value, and the fuller sense of biblical usage of berit seems to be problem free.21 Not only does one not sense a tension between the different application, but, at various points, they are harmonized and interrelated. 18 See Passover 5774, where awe as the “fruit” of the Omer replaces the earlier and more common reference to love as its fruit. See further Yitro 5774. 19 Arthur Green notes helpfully that this is similar in principle to the cyclical nature of interpretation in the Sefat Emet. The point is even more pronounced considering the Darkhei No‘am offers only one teaching per sermon and it is about ten times the length of a teaching of the Sefat Emet. 20 The most prominent cyclical repetitions are in Bo/Beshalaḥ/Passover with reference to the covenant in Egypt; different dimensions of berit in relation to Sinai, on Yitro; The Omer as covenant, on first day of Passover and Emor; the collective covenant in Nizavim. Pinḥas also witnesses repeated references to berit shalom, but rarely fits into the larger conceptual framework here described. Ps. 44:18 also occupies a central place in his teaching, though it is not associated with a particular reading. 21 Note the shift from one sense to the other in the homilies on Emor and Passover. Beginning in 5771 the emphasis is on sexual purity, where in previous years other

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The Centrality of Covenant in Darkhei No‘am There are several parameters by means of which we can ascertain the centrality of covenant to Rabbi Berezovsky’s thinking. The first of these is quantitative. There are close to two thousand occurrences of the term “covenant” in his accumulated teachings.22 The second is the repetition of key teachings that feature covenant as a central focus, along the cyclical lines described above. The student is thus exposed to covenant in a frequent and repetitive manner. There are other indications of centrality as well. One of them is the insertion of covenantal language even in contexts that are not necessitated by the biblical text under discussion. Such usage indicates the centrality of covenant to his thinking, independently of textual triggers.23 Along similar lines, we note the development of original terminology to describe or relate to the covenant, again not necessitated by the original sources.24 A further indication might be found in two teachings that were offered on Hanukkah 5776. Both, in different ways, play out the theme of covenant, and both without any textual necessity, in relation to the festival. In fact, we come here to a qualitative criterion for ascertaining the centrality of berit. Looking at the body of teaching that is associated with berit, one realizes that some of the Rebbe’s most significant teachings and innovations are attached to the concept. As we shall see below, this includes a view of history, messianism, mysticism, Sabbath, and perhaps above all—the fundamentals of Israel’s relationship with God. The intersection of berit with the most major themes in his teaching reinforces the recognition that we are dealing with a central and formative category in his thought. The point can made in the reverse—a study of the notion of covenant can serve as a prism through which the thought of Rabbi Berezovsky can be introduced and through which we can gain insight into the core of his spiritual teachings.

aspects of covenant were emphasized. That we are not dealing with a change of opinion regarding correct interpretation can be seen from the return on Emor 5776 to earlier interpretations. 22 This study has benefited from an internal version that combines more than sixteen years’ worth of teachings into one word file. This has facilitated research on a subject that is terminologically oriented. Microsoft’s Word search function announces that the number of occurrences of berit is high. QED. 23 See Yitro 5767. 24 See first night of Hanukkah 5776.

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Rabbi Berezovsky’s Originality within Hasidic Thought Rabbi Berezovsky’s use of covenant is totally original within the landscape of Hasidic thinking. Given the overall decline in covenantal thinking since rabbinic times, and in view of the identification of berit and sexual purity, one can safely state that Hasidic thought only appeals to the notion of the covenant on an ad hoc basis, in response to biblical verses and triggers. There is not a single Hasidic author, early or late, who makes covenant a cornerstone of his thinking, or features it in a significant way. The point is as true on the exegetical level as it is on the broader conceptual level. Some of the verses that Rabbi Berezovsky exegetes are virtually ignored in the history of Hasidic interpretation. This is particularly true of his repeated appeal to Jeremiah 31:30, where a covenant at the Exodus from Egypt is juxtaposed with a future new covenant. A study of the history of Hasidic interpretation shows that this verse is simply not commented upon in Hasidic literature.25 Rabbi Berezovsky’s originality thus emerges in clear relief against the background of the history of Hasidic interpretation. It is best accounted for through the impact and direct exposure to the biblical message, leading to his constructing a theological edifice in line with biblical covenantal theology and to the unique synthesis and integration of Hasidic thought and biblical theology that we find in Darkhei No‘am.

Defining Covenant Precisely because the use of covenant is not conventional in Hasidic thought, or even in broader rabbinic thinking, there is a need to define covenant and to spell out what it refers to and what it achieves. This leads to various formulations of how covenant is understood and how it operates. The various formulations reflect the methodology of revisiting a topos time and again, finding new angles and nuances as it is seen from varying angles. Significantly, some of the formulations could be lifted out of a textbook of

25 This emerges from consultation with three electronic databases that reveal the same picture. The number of occurrences of the expression berit ḥadashah, is itself meager. In the Bar-Ilan database, there are only fifteen occurrences, none of which are commentaries on Jer. 31. The single exception in Hasidic literature is R. Nathan of Nemirov, who does appeal to the verse in his Liqqutei Halakhot. This work is off-limits in Slonim, as are all works of Breslov Hasidism. There is therefore no possibility of influence by R. Nathan.

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biblical theology, while others reflect Hasidic thinking, read back into fundamental biblical texts. The fundamental definition of berit is relationship (kesher). By affirming time and again that berit means relationship, the Darkhei No‘am takes berit out of a specific context and elevates it to the highest status within God’s relationship with Israel. Covenant is thus at the foundation of Israel’s relationship with God. While he is unaware of research on biblical theology that makes the same point, based on an analysis of key biblical ideas and their Ancient Near Eastern context, he arrives at the same conclusion, through a phenomenological analysis of berit and by unpacking key metaphors—both biblical and later—for the covenant. “Covenant is a firm bond, a bond of love.”26 A bond, a relationship, is the fundamental concept, and this in turn may be reached through love, or through sacrifice.27 Making a bond and forging a relationship are primary and this allows the Rebbe to explore when the bond was forged and how it should be understood. Consistently, the bond is forged in Egypt. This emerges time and again in teachings relating to Passover and to commentaries on the Exodus story. It is particularly noteworthy that the fundamental covenant dates to the Exodus, while his commentaries on the covenant at Sinai focus consistently on a rabbinic tradition that relates to the covenant not as a key structuring concept, but in light of the rabbinic identification of covenant with particular commandments. Accordingly, teachings on Yitro will relate to Sabbath, idolatry or circumcision as expressions of a relationship, in light of the said rabbinic tradition,28 rather than to Sinai as the moment of forging the bond. Similarly, no effort is made to tie the covenant with the Patriarchs into the broader covenantal framework. Even though there is repeated reference to the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, the covenant is the one made at the Exodus. What is particularly striking is that this is based on a proof-text from Jeremiah 31. The Rebbe gives this prophetic voice primacy over the direct testimony that would emerge from the Torah’s own narrative. In other words, his reconstruction of a covenantal structure is original and does not seek to encompass all relevant biblical 26 Yitro 5770, “kesher amitz, kesher shel ahavah.” 27 Yitro 5775. 28 Mekhilta, ba-ḥodesh, 2. It is clear that Rabbi Berezovsky is well aware of the connection of covenant to Sinai. In some teachings, he harmonizes the two. Exodus is a covenant concerning the relationship; Sinai concerning the keeping of the Torah. See Bo 5769. Given that his fundamental definition is relational, this would account for the pride of place assigned to the Exodus.

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materials. Drawing from a biblical trigger, it constructs a kind of personal biblical theology that gives priority to some biblical covenantal expressions and not to others. The Exodus also provides one of the lead metaphors for the covenant. The metaphor of marriage is drawn from biblical witness, as well as from the continued application of the term berit in contemporary practice in the ceremony of tenaim, an initial stage of forging a marital relationship, prior to formal betrothal and marriage. Making Israel into a bride took place through the making of a covenant between God and Israel, as one notes in Ezekiel 16:8: “And you became mine” is an expression of forging a marital relationship, which is the reality of the bride, accomplished through “I entered into a covenant with you.” The reality of a bride is forged through a covenant, as we note in the formula of tenaim, that are written at the time of shiddukhin, “these are the words of the tenaim and berit,” and as we find in scripture, she is your friend and woman of your covenant (Mal. 2:14).29

This is one oft-repeated metaphor for the covenant. Another is that of friendship, the forging of a bond between friends. The meaning of covenant follows the example of two friends,30 who make a covenant of a bond between them, to strengthen their love, that neither of them should forsake his friend, and he will always seek the company of his friend and feel the pleasure of being in his company. Similarly, God said to Israel: “keep my covenant” (Ex. 19, 5), to seek and pursue his closeness, blessed be He, as it says: and for me, the closeness of God is the good (Ps. 73:28).31

Both metaphors are biblical. Both can also be recognized in life situations. The common denominator is forging a bond of love. This bond then accounts for various details of the biblical text and Jewish religious life, seen through the lens of the bond of covenantal love.

Covenant, Bond and Love It is probably better to consider covenant not through a definition, but through a semantic field. This semantic field allows for various permutations 29 Bo 5769. 30 Literally: “lovers,” but it lacks the sexual connotation of the English. 31 Yitro 5762.

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of covenant, the forging of a bond, that is—the making of a relationship, and love. In some texts, we note the primacy of love as the essential defining feature of covenant. In others, covenant features the forging of relationship, with love as a primary, but not exclusive means of forging such a relationship. Thus, one of the earliest references reads Ezekiel 17, God’s coming into covenant with us, as the forging of a bond of love.32 If covenant is an expression of love, this allows the concept of covenant to stand independently of faithfulness to the law and the entire history and problematics of biblical covenantal theology. Grounded in the depth of Hasidic thought, as well as personal experience of the centrality and the power of the immediate expression of God’s love, covenant emerges as a consequence of this love, and the surety is possesses, rather than as a category that defines Israel’s relationship with God, and that brings together in rich, but complicated ways, God’s love and Israel’s obligations. Thus, the Rebbe can state, in relation to the covenant: “There is nothing that can move a Jewish heart like the manifestation of this [divine] love.”33 Similarly, expressions of love readily translate into covenantal language. Divine love expressed on the Sabbath is grounds for considering the Sabbath a covenant.34 Identifying covenant with love not only allows Rabbi Berezovsky to re-own the idea of the covenant. It also leads him to reconfigure the relationship with commandments in a way that differs from biblical precedent. Rather than commandments being a defining feature of the relationship, they stand in some tension with the very notion of covenant. Elaborating upon RaShI’s reference to God’s covenant with Abraham as a covenant of love,35 the Darkhei No‘am states: The very entry into covenant was not a commandment and an obligation for Abraham. For in reality one cannot command a covenant of love. For the meaning of a covenant of love between friends is that each one seeks to be connected to his friend in his good will and the desire of his heart. But if he is commanded to do so, then it becomes a necessity and something forced, whether he wants to or not. So the entire value of covenant is lost when it is founded upon commandment, for covenant can only be from self will and not forced.36 32 33 34 35 36

Shovavim 5761. Leil Seder 5761. Shabbat Shuvah 5763. RaShI to Gen. 17:2. Va-Era 5764. For the continuation of this teaching, see the next section of the present essay.

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The alternative configuration of ideas sees covenant as something that forms a relationship and that consequently awakens love, rather than being its outcome.37 In still another iteration, a covenant of love is an ideal in and of itself, representing a high point of trust and surrender to God. The fullness of love leads to the fullness of surrender, which expresses and creates a berit of love.38 Here covenant operates independently of the governing notion of covenant, by means of which Israel’s relationship with God is described. A covenant of love is a high point of mystical life and of spirituality, as practiced especially by individuals, following the example of Abraham.39

Applying Lamdanut to Covenantal Thinking One of the hallmarks of Slonim Hasidism is the high premium it places on lamdanut, Talmudic learning in accordance with the sophisticated methodology developed in Lithuanian yeshiva, Slonim itself having part of classical “Lita.” Rabbi Berezovsky was for many years Rosh Yeshiva and has also mastered the Lithuanian learning method.40 It is therefore of interest to see how the classical Talmudic learning, lamdanut, serves him in his attempt to get to the core of covenant and in distinguishing various dimensions related to the covenant. The need to define what is berit is itself a characteristic of Talmudic legal thinking. It becomes more pronounced against the common identification of berit with specific commandments, as a consequence of the overall decline in the place of covenant in Jewish thinking and of the consequent lack of clarity as to what constitutes covenant. The precision of lamdanut allows Rabbi Berezovsky to visit this point on various occasions. We have already noted some formulations of a definition. The contrastive method of lamdanut allows the Rebbe to offer further precision. Following the quote above concerning Abraham’s covenant as something that could only take place through free volition, not through commandment, the Rebbe concludes the discourse saying: “Therefore the 37 Bo 5769. 38 Yom Rishon shel Pesaḥ 5770. See further Yom Rishon shel Pesaḥ 5775. 39 It could be that this emphasis is made possible because Abraham is not fully integrated into Israel’s covenantal history. See, however, below Va’era 5764. 40 His novella on the Talmud has been published under the same title as his other work, Darkhei No‘am ‘al Ha-Shas (Betar Ilit, 2012).

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commandment to Abraham was not on the essence of the covenant, but the commandment concerned circumcision, so that if he wishes to enter into a covenant, he would be commanded to perform circumcision, but if he does not desire the covenant, he is not commanded.”41 Covenant is thus juxtaposed with circumcision, thereby distinguishing commandment from the relational core of covenant. A similar move is made with reference to the Sinai covenant. Typically, one considers the Sinai covenant as the moment of formation of the people, which is closely intertwined with the undertaking of commandments and the receiving of the Torah. The Torah and peoplehood are typically viewed as inseparably bound by the Sinai bond. Here too Rabbi Berezovsky makes a distinction. Citing Jeremiah 31:31 where one finds reference to a covenant at the Exodus, he draws the distinction, makes the ḥiluk, if you will, between two different kinds of covenant. “The covenant at Sinai was made concerning keeping the Torah and obeying it, as we find that the Torah is called covenant . . . but the covenant concerning taking Israel as a people took place already at the Exodus, and then they became God’s people.”42 The Torah and peoplehood are distinguished from one another, highlighting the covenant at the Exodus as a moment dedicated to forming the relationship, unencumbered by the Torah and its reception. Another way of distinguishing the core of covenantal relationship from the acts and deeds surrounding it is by appeal to the legal category of ma‘aseh qinyan. The legal concept is that for a transaction to occur, for something to change ownership, an external deed or action is required to propel the action and move the object from one domain to another. At the core is the relationship between person and object, with a new bond, a new belonging, taking place through an act of sale. Such a transition requires some external act, to affirm a change in status. As in the instances above, we can distinguish between the core reality and its external expressions. In this light, we find various references to the fundamental core of the covenantal relationship and external objective acts that are construed as acts of acquisition, ma‘aseh qinyan. 41 Va-Era 5764. 42 Va-Era 5777. This may account for why the Rebbe does not seek to spell out the terms of this earlier covenant. If it is a moment of becoming a people, such becoming does not seem to require a commitment or conditions. One should note that following RaShI’s commentary on Song. 1:4, the Rebbe portrays the Exodus as a moment of following God unconditionally, based on full trust and love. Conditions and commitments might pale in relation to the intensity of love shown on that occasion.

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We have noted that the relationship with God was formed at the Exodus. According to midrashic tradition, two commandments were required for the liberation of Israel from Egypt—the paschal offering and circumcision, both involving blood. The Rebbe uses classical language of lamdanut to capture the different dimensions: The covenant and the relationship of the people of God find expression in the fulfillment of the commandments. Since they had no commandments at that time, therefore [God] gave them two commandments in which to engage. The reason why he gave them the two commandments of Passover and circumcision is that covenant is closely related to blood. It is the blood that allows the covenant to take hold.43 . . . Even though the Passover involves more than offering the blood, for there is also the commandment of eating the Paschal sacrifice, and similarly regarding circumcision there is also milah and peri’ah and not only the drawing of blood, but the covenant is dependent on blood. And it may be that blood represents faithfulness, saying we will sacrifice for you and offer our blood for you and for the observance of your commandments and this faithfulness forms the relationship.44

The core of the covenant is the formation of the relationship. But in technical terms, which we may also read as mystical terms, the relationship requires an external act by means of which it takes hold. Blood provides the external expression of the covenant. This is a shocking and unusual statement that is born of an attempt to read scripture, to apply to it a categorizing approach of halachic analysis and to also capture the radicality and particularity of biblical ritual. The gap between relational foundations and exterior expressions is bridged once the immediacy of appeal to blood gives way to the symbolic reading that translates blood as sacrifice and faithfulness. This unites the external symbolism with the core of the relationship, which is itself formed through faithfulness.45 In a very creative hermeneutical move, the Rebbe refers to Jeremiah 31:31, where God speaks of the day of making the covenant at the Exodus as the day when he held Israel’s hand, in similar terms. It is, he notes, clearly an expression of affection, but what is the purpose of such handholding? 43 The expression resorts to the language of Talmudic learning (ha-dam hu she-‘oseh et ḥalot ha-berit). See further Va-Era 5777. 44 Va-Era 5775. 45 In another teaching the role of blood in covenant making is expressed as ma‘aseh qinyan; see Bo 5775. This teaching was offered a week after the previous one.

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The Rebbe reads it in line with one of the means of making a qinyan, which is the handshake.46 Handholding is thus transformed into a handshake that has the power to finalize the deed, and make Israel God’s people.47 How deeply ingrained this legal way of thinking is and how closely it interfaces with spirituality and mystical insight we note from its application in contexts that are devoid of exegetical and historical necessity. Regarding Passover, the tradition refers to blood and Jeremiah refers to covenant making. The following passage offers a glimpse into the Rebbe’s religious experience, inasmuch as it lacks any hermeneutical trigger and is therefore a free expression of his personal reality. On Simḥat Torah, in accounting for the meaning of dancing with the Torah, Rabbi Berezovsky states: This is the meaning of dancing with the Torah on Simḥat Torah, which is like a berit to uphold every matter. Since on Shemini Atzeret the relationship is elevated to the exalted degree of powerful love, where Israel want only God and God desires only Israel, one requires a covenantal act to establish the matter, and the covenant is made by dancing with the Torah.48

To the best of my knowledge there is no precedent for thinking of Simḥat Torah in covenantal terms. The Rebbe extends the view of Simḥat Torah (Shemini Atzeret) as a time of relational exclusivity and intimacy, articulated already by the rabbis, to covenantal language and then identifies the external expression of such a covenantal moment—dancing with the Torah, as a covenantal deed, by means of which the covenant is upheld. This is a theological novelty, made possible only through the centrality of covenant as relationship in the Rebbe’s thinking. It further draws on the distinction between relationship and its outer legal expression to give meaning to the activity that defines the day—dancing with the Torah. But it is above all a window that allows us to peer into the Rebbe’s internal world of feeling, devotion and association. This unique reading is as much indebted to the thought structures he develops as it is to the unique intimacy he lives in communion with God.

The Dynamic Covenant The nexus of covenant, love and bond relationship allows for further development and application of the idea of covenant in ways that lend it further 46 Qinyan teqi‘at kaf. 47 Seder Evening 5776. 48 Simḥat Torah 5775.

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existential depth and give further expression to dimensions of the spiritual and mystical life. These dimensions further develop Rabbi Berezovsky’s notion of covenant in unique and original ways, independently of the biblical idea, and in light of spiritual experience, the phenomenology of love and the traces and markers of ideas found in classical sources and amplified through his particular theological and experiential lens. Berit is, for the Darkhei No‘am, a dynamic concept. Its centrality is recognized not in a fixed or formulaic application, but in its capacity to take on shades, to interact with other dimensions of the spiritual life and even to be transcended.49 Consequently, we find several dimensions profiled as essential to covenant, as dimensions of it or as types of covenant. One such dimension is faithfulness. If covenant signifies relationship, then faithfulness to that relationship is a dimension of covenant, as it is indeed already in the Torah. However, if, for the Torah, observance of the commandments defines the scope of the covenant, Rabbi Berezovsky’s highlighting of love and relationship allows him to go beyond formal commandments in seeking faithfulness to the covenant. Hearing God’s voice, in an act of constant listening, beyond the formalities of the law, is thus an expression of faithfulness and relationship.50 Because covenant was defined in terms of love, this leads to a definition of covenant that takes one beyond some in-built limitations of love. For the perfection of service of God, it is not sufficient to have desire of the heart and feelings of love, but one must have, together with the love, also the quality of faithfulness51, that one should be willing to totally abandon oneself for God’s sake52... Love that lacks faithfulness is still lacking and wanting, even if it takes the form of longing for God, this does not make a person worthy of a covenant. Love has to prove itself, to the point that a person is willing to abandon53 himself due to the fullness of love, and it is this expression of faithfulness that leads to the making of a covenant.54

49 See ‘Erev Yom Kippur 5767; Shemini 5771. 50 Yitro 5766. 51 Or: “loyalty.” 52 Literally: “the honor of heaven.” 53 .‫שיפקיר עצמו‬ 54 Quoting Neh. 9:8. Behar-Beḥuqqotay 5766. See also Yitro 5770 where the Rebbe speaks of a covenant of trust and faithfulness (berit shel immun ve-ne’emanut) understood as expressions of love.

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Covenant is envisioned as the ideal relationship and thereby draws to it aspects of a perfected relationship with God that grow from love, but also transcend and complement it. The same is seen in relation to the notion of temimut, trust or surrender.55 Walk before me and be tamim56 and I will place my covenant between myself and yourself. “Be tamim’, in full temimut,57 in the totality58 of mind and the totality of heart, and then I will place my covenant between myself and yourself. A covenant can only be when there is temimut and purity59 of heart, without any [doubting] thought or [critical] question. Then the covenant raises and elevates further the bond of love, as we find with David and Jonathan, where it is said (1Sam 18,3) “And Jonathan and David made a covenant, as he loved him like himself ”. When he loves [God] as himself, there can be a covenant. But if there was, God forbid, any doubt, there is no point in making a covenant. Because when there is an impairment in the fullness of innocence of heart, then the covenant is faulty and has no value.60

The bar is raised very high. It is seen through the lens of personal spiritual perfection, and not through the lens of a category that informs the relationship of the collective and God. Love must be accompanied by total trust and surrender, with no room for doubt or questioning God. Only then can one think of a covenant. Covenant, in this context, is the highest spiritual perfection, going beyond love to the fullest expression of love, surrender and trust of God, made manifest in the life of an outstanding exemplar of faith, Abraham. Once again, this height of spiritual perfection stands in juxtaposition to the fulfillment of mitzvot, conceived narrowly. Accordingly, Rabbi Berezovsky speaks of two covenants with reference to Abraham. The first, which applies also to non-Jews of Abraham’s household, relates to circumcision. The second, exclusive to Abraham and his seed, is the covenant of temimut, total surrender, trust, and innocence.61 The perfection of religious 55 The teachings on covenant and trust always take place in relation to the covenant with Abraham in Gen. 17. 56 Variously translated as blameless, whole-hearted, perfect and more. 57 That is, surrender, innocence, trust, or totality. 58 Or: “perfection.” 59 Or: “innocence.” 60 Emor 5768. 61 Emor 5774. See further Yom Rishon shel Pesaḥ 5769 where the same idea is expressed in terms of a covenant of love and temimut. In an alternative juxtaposition of covenant

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attitude can be conceived not only as an extension or perfection of the covenant but as its own kind of covenant. One dimension of the dynamism of covenant is in the weaving of ideas and in the teasing out of different dimensions and of different covenants. A different dimension of dynamism is found in how covenant is related to processes. We will see below how history and the messianic process are understood in light of covenant. The reality of covenant drives and helps realize historical processes. We have already seen that Israel’s redemption required making Israel into a bride, which in turn was achieved through covenant.62 Because of the close association of covenant and the Exodus, covenant can also be seen as a requirement for redemption. Rather than defining a relationship, this particular achievement within a relational framework is conceived as a condition for the historical process of redemption. “Redemption requires a covenant. In the redemption from Egypt there was a covenant and similarly in the future redemption there will be a new covenant”, citing Jeremiah 31, one of the most quoted covenantal texts in Rabbi Berezovsky’s oeuvre.63 The blood of the covenant is understood as forging a relationship that leads to an infusion and a closeness of the soul that produces luminosity, which, in turn, brings about redemption.64 In order to understand and to attain the Torah one requires a covenantal bond. And in the future there will be a new covenant, because during exile so many qualities and new forces were added to Israel that have not yet been revealed, and in order to bring them into manifestation the previous covenant is insufficient, but one requires a new covenant of the soul coming close, in order to effect redemption, for only it can reveal and bring into manifestation what was contained in potential in Israel.65 and commandments, Rabbi Berezovsky refers to covenant as a dimension of various commandments. Covenant, then, is a qualitative dimension of commandments, rather than being defined or contained by them. See Yitro 5769. 62 Bo 5769. A complementary line of thinking is developed in Bo 5776. The Exodus requires a covenant because Israel worships idols in Egypt. Only an immense effusion of divine love, that in turn generates a similar response in Israel, can facilitate the redemption. Covenantal love is the foundation for transcending Israel’s moral and spiritual standing, thereby effecting the redemption. 63 Tazria‘-ha-ḥodesh 5765. 64 The association of Jer. 31 and blood is astounding. Rabbi Berezovsky is totally unaware of the Christian associations. This is a wonderful illustration of the emergence of ideas independently of historical influence and borrowing. 65 Ibid.

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Redemption is closely associated with revelation, as both are expressions of covenant, and as the teaching illustrates—a covenant of blood. The revelatory power of covenant draws forth luminosity and understanding, thereby driving Israel’s process, and its history of self-revelation and revelation of the Torah forward. Covenant as a driver of redemption, which turns out to be closely related to revelation, is therefore an active force in Israel’s history, a motif that will be presently developed.

Part 2—Applications of the Covenant Covenant, History, and Messianism The quote above gives us a taste of how the reading of biblical covenant provides a key to reading history, and sets the stage for messianic expectation. The fulfillment of historical processes cannot be exhausted by the exterior dimensions of the covenant, involving faithfulness to its commandments, but is closely related to mystical processes and to the spiritual life. This web of themes takes up an important place in Rabbi Berezovsky’s homilies. One of the indications for how vital the notion of covenant is in his thought is in how it provides a key to understanding Jewish history, past, and future. Biblical covenantal theology is deeply historical, with covenant providing the inner key to understanding Israel’s history. The move away from covenantal thinking in rabbinic and later Jewish thought leads to a dissociation of berit and history. Rabbi Berezovsky reestablishes the connection between covenant and history, in how he assimilates the notion of covenant in his spiritual thinking and in his hermeneutic application of biblical sources. Covenant is the key to understanding Jewish history and its particularity. Jewish suffering and enduring the attitudes of other nations are understood in terms of covenant and faithfulness to it.66 Covenant holds the key to confronting Jewish suffering and structures the meaning of Jewish history. 66 Shovavim 5761.

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“For Your sake we face death all the day long” (Ps. 44:2), is to be understood . . . with reference to the totality of the covenant of love that God concluded with Abraham, in relation to circumcision, as it says: “I will place my covenant between myself and you” (Gen. 17:2). This covenant of love that God concluded with Abraham and his progeny is the cause and reason for the hatred of the nations to the Jewish people. There is no explanation and reason and meaning for the eternal hatred of the eternal people, except that it is a hatred founded upon jealousy for God having elected Abraham and his progeny to love them more than all the nations. And even though [the nations] do not recognize it, their higher consciousness recognizes it.67 The celestial ministers of the nations cannot withstand their jealousy for this covenant, and this is what leads to the hatred of Israel by the nations below. This covenant has led to our being raised above all tongues, Israel has ascended higher than the entire world. This covenant divided the world into two, as it says (Deut. 32:8): “When the most high gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind.” Since he separated us from the nations, the world is divided to circumcised and non-circumcised, which are two different kinds of human beings.... and this too is cause for the hatred of the nations, for it is the nature of humans to hate someone who is foreign and different. And there is no nation that is foreign and different like Israel.... and due to this hatred we face death all the day long. The entire history of the Jewish people, since its formation are one block of for your sake we face death all the day, considered as flock to the slaughter, through forced conversions and harsh and cruel decrees, with the exception of short breaks between one decree and another.... and this is why we say during the ritual of circumcision “I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood” (Ez.  16:6). The plain sense of the verse refers to the past, the time of the Exodus from Egypt, but the grammatical construct also allows us to read it with reference to the future. Because the collectivity of Israel is permanently in a state of “kicking about in your blood.” The entire history of the Jewish people is saturated with rivers of blood. This is why it was necessary to coax68 Abraham to enter into the covenant, because for this covenant we have paid, and continue to pay an extremely heavy price.69

67 Literally: “their astral sign,” based on b. Megillah 3a. 68 Or: “convince.” 69 Va-Era 5764.

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This passage offers a lachrymose reading of covenantal history. It is a history of suffering, but one grounded in faithfulness. If indeed Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism shift away from covenantal thinking due to covenantal failures, faithful adherence to the covenant after two thousands years of suffering allows a return to covenantal thinking. Significantly, highlighting faithfulness comes at the expense of the obvious biblical explanation for suffering—covenantal failure and ensuing punishment. It is interesting that the suffering is never presented as a consequence of unfaithfulness. Lachrymose Jewish history is the history of the faithful, not the sinners. The future-looking orientation sees all suffering not simply as consequences of an original covenant, but as preparation for a future covenant. Basing himself on Jeremiah 31, the Rebbe considers the suffering of the Galut as building blocks of a future relationship. Faithfulness is the key to the formation of the new relationship between God and Israel. Precisely because it is founded on faithfulness, it defies and transcends reason, thereby sidestepping issues of theodicy, and highlighting the faithful endurance of historical suffering. Israel’s history is unique. Israel’s suffering is unique. The Shoah is the culmination of a history of suffering, aimed at forging a new relationship, a new covenant. Both the reason for why a new covenant must be based on manifestation of faithfulness and what exactly the form of the new covenanted relationship looks like remain hidden, a secret. It is a new creation, that cannot be comprehended by the tools of understanding we presently possess. Exile, suffering and the Shoah are tests of faith, and going through them is aimed at maintaining faithfulness, leading to the new creation and the formation of the new relationship. Keeping the secret a secret and not querying and doubting God are the keys to faithfulness. Including the Shoah in a history of testing for faithfulness leads to the recognition that one must already be at the end point, for nothing worse could be imagined. Under these conditions, waiting is itself the test of faith. We do not understand why Messiah tarries, but this patient waiting is itself the perfection of the trial of patience and trust.70 A lachrymose reading of history is not the only one offered by Rabbi Berezovsky. Complementing this view that sees suffering as the foil against which faithfulness is measured is a more positive and creative view of history, pointing to a covenantal culmination. Building on RaShI’s understanding

70 For the entire above, see Va’era 5772.

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of the Song of Songs as a song of longing in exile,71 the Rebbe takes the expressions of love in the Song as mystical expressions, grounded in a history of suffering and therefore as their fruit. Accordingly, there is a mystical dimension to historical suffering that opens up to a positive and creative reading of Jewish history: The entire description of the Song of Songs is, “All night long on my bed, I yearned for the one my heart love, I yearned for him, but found him not” (Song 3:1). This is a description of someone whose heart burns and is torn by the intensity of longing,72 a description of someone who in the midst of distance and exile—on my bed at night—“in times that I dream that your bondage might end, I become like a lute for your songs.73 And even though this pain is immeasurable, the pain of the father who exiled his sons and of the children who were exiled from their father’s table,74 but this pain leads to burning longing, and the intensity of longing is far greater than when they are together. This fire that is present in the Song of Songs exists only when she yearns for her husband, and the heart is torn by longing. And had we not had exile, where would we have had such a song as the Song of Songs? These yearnings of exile lead to a new relationship between God and Israel, a relationship that did not previously exist, and that will be renewed at the time of redemption.75 All this is built by the yearnings of exile, from the power of the fire of the Song of Songs . . . this fire of the faithful of Israel whose heart burns with yearning and is torn by yearning is the fire through which God will rebuild the future building.76 From this the collectivity of Israel will be built. From this will be built the spirit of Messiah. This is the essence of exile, which purifies Israel. The yearning that it brings about leads Israel to a very high level, to a new covenant, a renewed relationship between God and Israel, to an exalted degree that did not previously exist. In light of this, the day on which the Temple was destroyed is the day during which the first step of preparation for redemption began, the first step in the long journey that prepares and leads Israel towards the revelation of the light of Messiah. On this day Israel went into a long journey 71 The Song of Songs in RaShI’s understanding is another foundational text that shapes Rabbi Berezovsky’s homilies. 72 Song 5:6–8 is cited here. 73 Citing R. Yehuda Halevy’s “Won’t You Ask After, O Zion.” 74 b. Berakhot 3a. 75 Here, Jer. 31 is cited again. 76 Citing the Naḥem prayer from the liturgy of the 9th of Av.

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of dark exile, a journey that lasts already thousands of years, during which the internal essence of the people of Israel is purified and distilled. On this day a new period in the relationship between God and Israel was begun, a period of the fire of yearning of the Song of Songs, that did not previously exist.77

The history of suffering is really a history of burning love, a constructive internal transformation, a constructive act by means of which Israel, its future relationship with God and the light of Messiah come to be. The positive reading of history, as a consequence of suffering, read in light of covenant history and its future realization, finds a different expression in the following teaching that emphasizes the light of Torah and its knowledge, not only the burning and yearning heart. Taking his cue from the particulars of biblical covenant, now devoid of their original context, and set forth in new conceptual frameworks, the Rebbe begins by querying the need for an additional covenant before entering the land, in addition to the Sinai covenant.78 The notion of curses and rebuke, which are fundamental to biblical covenant, is inexplicable to an understanding that sees covenant as a variant and expression of love. This leads to the following statement: The purification that Israel underwent changes the face of the world. When Israel went into the last exile, Torah developed to an extreme that did not previously exist. New treasures of Torah opened, that were not previously revealed, in the manifest Torah79 and in the hidden Torah, the tannaim, the amoraim, the yeshivot, the methods of learning that shine the light of Torah that came down to the world. The more the purification through suffering increased, so the light of Torah grew and became greater. It is close to two thousand years that the wellsprings of the light of Torah flow and expand with no limit, until our very days, in the expansion of yeshivot, and the flowering of the world of Torah in a marvelous way, that did not exist in times of old. . . . through the rebuke and the suffering of exile a new covenant was concluded with Israel, a new relationship was formed between God and Israel, a new light, a light of the Torah that did not previously exist, and was revealed in the last exile through the purification of suffering.80 77 78 79 80

Masa‘ei 5768. Deut. 28:69. In other words: halakhah, commentaries and all non-kabbalistic aspects of the Torah. Ki Tavo 5775.

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It is noteworthy that new covenant is presented here as already in effect. The flowering of Torah learning is in fact a realization of a new covenant, concluded through the suffering of history, but realized in its midst. It is noteworthy that in this construction, the continual revelation of Torah does not take on messianic coloring. Still, the messianic focus of covenantal thinking is a center point of Rabbi Berezovsky’s thought. Messiah will conclude the new covenant and it will be based on faithfulness. Significantly, and in a manner representative of Rabbi Berezovsky’s thought, a small community that stands in for the entirety of Israel may enact this faithfulness. This, I believe, is a clear reference to the community he seeks to develop. Rather than seeking to realize his vision of spirituality and devotion in all of Israel, he envisions a small remnant81 that realizes the vision of extreme faithfulness, thereby ushering in the new covenant for all of Israel.82 The close relationship of covenant, faithfulness, and suffering leads, as we have seen above, to an insistence on avoiding, or rather, transcending questions, doubts and the attempt to understand God’s method of creating Israel’s new reality by means of suffering. Transcending rational-critical thought is made possible only through powerful religious experience, powerful enough to supplant and transcend critical and doubting thinking. In our times, who knows where we stand in the stages of the process of exile and redemption. But this we do know. The covenant and relationship that were concluded at the Exodus sustain Israel in their exile, and thanks to it they maintain their faithfulness to God under all circumstances. Furthermore, we 81 The notion of “remnant” is becoming increasingly important in Rabbi Berezovsky’s thought, as he battles in recent years with technology and academization of education. While politically he does not uphold a mentality of separation and segregation, the combination of a mystical elite community and practical battles (shared by all of Hasidic society) against the intrusion of contemporary society, do strengthen the notion of “remnant.” This does create a sense of theoretical separation. I would argue we are dealing with elitist educational and spiritual separation, rather than with social and sociological separation. The former could develop, under social pressures, into the latter. 82 Behar-Beḥuqqotay 5766. See further first night of Hanukkah 5776. Rabbi Berezovsky is an interesting case for studying the relationship between mysticism and messianism. The messianic hope is alive for him. It informs his vision of creating a choice community that would allow for the redemption. Yet, his strong mystic consciousness also tempers any form of active messianism, political or practical, such as found in other sectors of Israeli or Jewish society. Messianism provides an impetus for creating a mystical community, rather than mysticism being channeled, in theory or in practice, towards messianic goals.

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also know that “as in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show them wonders” (Mic. 7:15).83 This is the secret of Israel’s hope, that the great day will come when the liberated ones will come to Zion with joy, and when the time comes, when we see the results, there will be no more queries. One will only say, “I will give thanks to you Lord, for you were angry with me” (Is. 12:1), for everything, including the Shoah. Just as during the Exodus no one had complaints and queries concerning what they had gone through— for even following all the explanations that suffering was necessary for the new creation, one can still query this very fact—why must it be in this way, and there is no answer to explain the matter fully to the human mind. But when redemption came, no questions were asked. So it will be when the time comes, when “they see with their very eyes the return of the Lord to Zion” (Is. 52:8). There will be no questions, and therefore they will not need any answer. Answers are required only when there are questions but then there will be no questions. For just as Israel at the Exodus were crazed from love, joy and gratitude... crying out in abnormal ways, so it will be in the future, when I will show them wonders just as during the Exodus, and once again it will be “a nation I have formed for myself ” (Is. 53:21), and “I will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new covenant” (Jer. 31:30). There we will sing a new song and rise in joy.84

Making a new covenant involves a particular emotional reality, an intensification of love, joy and gratitude to the extent that all mental questioning ceases. A rise beyond the conscious and mental domain to the realm of experience and love85 suggests that in experience, mystical experience, is found in the ultimate fulfillment of the covenant. This leads us to an examination of the association of the covenant and mystical experience.

83 This verse provides the pattern for future redemption following the precedent of the Exodus in various ways. See Va-Era 5777. See further Bo 5776 where it is made contemporary, reaffirmed annually, thereby lending immediacy to these messianic teachings. 84 Bo 5775. 85 In terms of anthropology, the Rebbe understands this as an ascent from the realm of mind to the realm of soul, where mental questioning ceases. I know from him that he considers the teaching that has been placed at the opening of Darkhei No‘am to be constitutive and representative of his thought. See the essay titled Ve-Nishmat Shadai Tevinem, 5761.

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Covenant and Mysticism The following passages draw forth a conclusion that is implicit in the Darkhei No‘am’s thought structure. If covenant is relationship and relationship is the intensification of love, covenant is properly understood through the reality of the most intense personal religious experiences of love, intimacy and trust. Differently put: covenant is best appreciated through the entry into the highest aspects of the spiritual life. Covenant is thus inextricably bound with the mystical domain. Biblical theology provides us with the relational category. The mystical teachings of hasidism are the way of attaining and fulfilling this relationship. While biblical theology struggles with the vulnerability of the covenant,86 mystical teachings and experiences are the ultimate guarantors of the covenant’s endurance and validity. Let us begin by considering how mystical teachings provide an answer to the challenges of biblical covenant theology. The fundamental challenge is concern for keeping the covenant and remaining faithful to it. Biblical covenant history is one of violation, failure and the need to reestablish the covenant or compensate for its violation. This challenge is projected back to the moments preceding the giving of the Torah, described in Exodus 19:5 as a covenant. The process of obedience and failure is expanded beyond covenantal contexts to the narrative of Israel’s relationship with God. If following the splitting of the Red Sea, Israel could fall into temptation, what guarantee do they have to be able to receive the Torah and remain faithful to the covenant? Exodus 19:4—being elevated on eagles’ wings to God’s presence—provides the answer. A recurring theme in Rabbi Berezovsky’s mystical theology is ascent, rising above lower reality and entering a higher realm. Ascent of soul to the divine presence is the sole guarantee for rising above the conflicts with evil and fulfilling the covenant. The answer provided draws on an experiential dimension that is conditioned on entry into a higher state of consciousness, associated with the reality of soul. This ascent is the guarantor of covenantal obedience.87 86 In some of the Darkhei No‘am’s teachings, the very need for covenant is accounted for in light of the possibility of waning of love. If love is the foundational reality of the relationship, a covenant is a means of assuring the relationship endures, despite vicissitudes of love. See Nitzavim 5768 and Va-yaqhel-Pequdei/ha-ḥodesh 5777. 87 Yitro 5773.

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The problem of violation of covenant is made explicit in the following teaching, as its starting point Leviticus 26:44: “I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them.”88 Mention of not violating my covenant with them is the reason why I will not reject or abhor them. Because I cannot break my covenant with them, because the eternity of Israel will not lie.89 Israel are something eternal, and their relationship with God is eternal and it is impossible to break the covenant with them. One can punish Israel and place upon them hardships and sufferings for their sins...but there is a boundary that cannot be crossed, the eternity of Israel cannot be annulled, and “my covenant with them will never be broken” . . . But what is the advice in such a situation, when Israel are in the depth of lowliness, to the point that they deserve to be rejected and abhorred, God forbid, when all the punishments of suffering . . . no longer apply . . . and suffering will not purify them, yet the covenant cannot be broken, what will be of them? The only way under such conditions is to reveal within Jews the hidden internal point, that has the capacity to change and transform their entire reality. The souls of Israel are a “portion of the divine above” . . . when this interior point becomes manifest in a Jew, whatever his condition may be, this brings him to repentance and elevation of soul, and as a consequence his entire reality changes. Now this light is always hidden and concealed. . . . so to what end was it planted in Israel? But it is designed for such emergency situations, when there is no other advice how to raise them. . . . so precisely because they are in such a lowly condition, therefore the hidden treasure is revealed and shines in them. . . . and this brings Israel to repentance, no matter what their condition. And in particular it brings in them elevation of the soul in the highest degree, a degree that cannot be attained under normal circumstances.

The impasse between covenantal faithlessness and enduring validity is broken through a realization of the divine within Israel. This is conceived as a revelation, a transformative experience. Touching and recognizing the

88 Eighth night of Hanukkah 5776. 89 1 Sam 15:26, read in relation to the people of Israel, rather than with reference to God.

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hidden divine holds the key to personal and collective transformation, and upholds the covenant.90 It is noteworthy that the language and the experience are couched in terms of the individual. Indeed this is appropriate for a text that describes a mystical experience. Yet the challenges the text addresses, grounded as it is in the biblical covenant, pertain to the collective. The interface between mystical experience and covenantal thought perforce pushes covenantal thinking to the realm of the individual, and as we shall presently see, often to the outstanding spiritual individual. This will become apparent in the following passages, which present the covenant as a peak in the mystical life. Reflecting, as he does almost annually, on the passage in the Mekhilta, on Exodus 19:5, where keeping the covenant is posed as one of the conditions for receiving the Torah, the Rebbe considers the different answers offered by the tannaim—Shabbat, idolatry and circumcision. Being God’s chosen people, a treasured nation, assumes a high spiritual degree, such that would allow for comparison with God’s own sanctity.91 This is ultimately a state of (near) divinization, as the proof text from Psalms 82:6, applied in the midrash to Sinai, suggests. Attaining a degree of being “like God” is not possible through mere human effort. One cannot attain [it] either through human effort or the understanding of the mind, only through divine inspiration92, as it says “the spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him”93, “the spirit of the Lord will rest on him”94, as the Pri Ha-Aretz95 expresses it: “the life of God that extends into his soul”. Divine light is the light that contains all delights, perfections and exaltations of soul, and when the divine light is extended and illumines the soul of a person, this leads him to be a “holy nation”, as it says “Do not take Your holy spirit from me”96 . . . when divine life spreads into his soul, and God’s spirit dwells in him, one might have thought a person could attain

90 This teaching can be brought into dialogue with the understanding of the Shoah above. It may explain how historical suffering, culminating in the Shoah allows for a new creation. 91 Yitro 5770. The comparison emerges from Sifra, qedoshim, 1. 92 To be understood in context also as dwelling. 93 Judges 14:6. 94 Is.12:1. 95 A Hasidic classic by R. Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk that is much cited by the Darkhei No‘am. 96 Ps. 51:11.

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a sanctity that is godlike, yet since a human person is nevertheless in a body, God’s sanctity remains above that of the person. This degree of “the spirit of the Lord will rest upon him” is an extremely exalted state, and only someone with a strong and powerful bond with God can attain it. And this is what scripture intends in referring to “keep my covenant”. Covenant is a powerful bond, a bond of love, a bond that elevates a person to the level of “you are Godlike”.

The different rabbinic views of what covenant Exodus 19:5 refers to are divergent opinions on what brings a person to the point of having the divine spirit dwell upon him. But they all share in the common view of covenant as a summit of the spiritual life, understood as receiving the divine spirit, a bond that is equated with near-deification. Similarly, in another context, the intensity of love, leading to the fullness of surrender and trust in God, is key to fulfilling the covenant, understood simultaneously as sexual purity and relational perfection.97 Once again, perfection cannot be attained only through human effort, but requires divine protection, the emphasis on protection being a consequence of reference to the perfection of sexual purity. The identification of covenant with mystical perfection raises the obvious challenge of the universal applicability of these teachings. The tension is built into the situation in which these teachings are offered. These teachings express a highly individual experience. In fact, I would argue that Rabbi Berezovsky is one of the few living teachers whose abstract teachings are grounded in and are a report of his own mystical experiences. This first-person presence is often dominant.98 This highly personal mys97 Yom Rishon shel Pesaḥ 5775. 98 This point deserves a study of its own. The question is of personal experience can only be posited once we assume a highly experiential hermeneutic as a key to understanding his work. The point is, in part, based on an insider’s knowledge of the author, and is therefore shared by other figures in the school who confirm this approach. It is, in part, obscured by internal editing, if you will—censorship, processes. To take the most recent example, as of two weeks prior to the revision of the present note. On Leil Seder 5778, Rabbi Berezovsky offered a highly original interpretation of Elijah’s ,‫קול דממה דקה‬ 1 Kings 19,12. The transcript does not record the following expression that was said by him on that occasion: “What a qol demamah dakah is I have experienced, but I do not have experience of what is meant by dakah.” The teaching of an experience of encounter with God that leads to the cessation of all thinking is then suggested as the content of the experience. This is clearly a highly personal interpretation, grounded in experience. Rabbi Berezovsky uses repeatedly the expression: “Whoever hasn’t experienced this,” he is talking based on his personal experience. The traces of personal experience are numerous

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tical theology is communicated to a broader community, in the process of attempting to create a mystical elite, a community that is a spiritual avant garde, ushering in the ultimate mystical reality associated with messianic times. Yet, not all his listeners are able to rise to the heights of his vision, a challenge that is compounded over the years, as the community grows more numerous from year to year. Rabbi Berezovsky is aware of this tension. He therefore offers repeated expressions of how the teaching which is the true meaning of scripture, commandment and the spiritual life, cannot be attained by all. “These degrees are very exalted, and belong to the remnants that God calls.”99 These probably exist in every generation. Let us hope that we can have a something of a something of closeness to this degree.”100 The Rebbe positions himself not as someone who experiences this, but as someone who, along with his disciples, seeks to have even a small taste of the teaching offered—dancing with the Torah as a form of dancing with God himself, thereby concluding a covenant with Him. Yet, such humility is commensurate with affirmation of personal attainment of the stated insight, as the basis for sharing with others. Both the expressed humility and the struggle to realize the teaching in reality are appropriate for the teaching context. The discussion above of counting the Omer as a means of fulfilling the berit101 concludes with the following observation: “While every Jew counts the Omer, on some it has impact more than others. But the commandment of the Omer was designed to bring about Jews who fulfill perfectly and you shall keep my covenant.” The ultimate purpose of the commandment is to attain mystical heights. It is understood that only some will reach the true intended purpose of the commandment.

The Covenant—Community and Individual Identifying the covenant with intense personal mystical experience, and the conscious struggle and articulation of the tension between the universality of performance and the much narrower range of individuals who are and the challenge is to develop criteria for distinguishing expressions of experience from other experiential descriptions that may not be personal, such as descriptions of fall, despair, sinfulness etc. I suspect these are articulated based on intuition, but in any event do not derive from experiential descriptions in earlier literature. 99 Echoing Joel 3:5. 100 Simḥat Torah 5775. 101 Yom Rishon shel Pesaḥ 5775.

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able to fulfill the true intention of the commandment, in fact to realize the covenant itself, leads us to the final chapter in this study. The more the covenant is identified with spiritual experience, the more it is personalized, moved from the realm of the collective to the realm of the individual. This is an inevitable conclusion of the thought structure and processes described herein. And it is also a significant indicator of the centrality that covenant has in the Darkhei No‘am and its assimilation to Hasidic thought. Spiritual literature, of necessity, focuses the ideals of the collective in the experience of the individual. The process of individualization of biblical religion begins with rabbinic literature and extends through the history of Jewish spirituality.102 That covenant is integrated with the most intimate and exalted moments of the spiritual life is a further marker of its integration in the Hasidic worldview of Rabbi Berezovsky. The question of the covenant and its individualization is, I submit, an interesting point of tension in the Rebbe’s teachings. We may encounter here a gap between at least some of his stated views and the actual functioning of covenant in his theological and experiential framework. On several occasions Rabbi Berezovsky affirms that covenant belongs to the collectivity, not to individuals. This would be totally in keeping with biblical emphases. While the Bible does know of divine covenants concluded with individuals, these are of a promissory type where God promises a particular gift.103 Though the covenant with Abraham might have been considered a covenant with an individual, because it is closely related to the nation that comes from Abraham and to its history it is viewed as a collective covenant.104 The Rebbe therefore affirms that the fundamental covenantal reality belongs to the collectivity of Israel, not to individuals. God’s covenant is with the collectivity of Israel, not with individuals. Therefore concluding a covenant is a matter that does not pertain to individuals, in and of themselves, but to the collectivity of Israel, united as one person with one heart.105 102 The process of individualization of religion in post-biblical times is one of the important contributions of G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927). See various references in the index s.v. individualizing. 103 See Moshe Weinfeld, “The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 90, no. 2 (1970): 184–203. 104 See Nitzavim 5768. 105 A reference to Mekhilta, ba-ḥodesh, cited in RaShI on Ex. 19:2.

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Consequently the reference to covenant in Deuteronomy 29 is intended for the collectivity and not for individuals, and the use of singular language is intended to address the people as a whole as an individual.106 Accordingly, moments of renewal of the covenant are considered in relation to the collective. Based on a teaching of the Netivot Shalom, Rosh Ha-Shanah is understood as a time of covenantal renewal.107 Similarly, Passover is viewed as a time of covenantal renewal.108 The reference to the wicked son excluding himself from the collectivity goes hand in hand with the understanding of Passover as the time of creating a new level of relationship, that of a bride, which applies only to the collective. The counterpoint to the formal association of covenant and the collectivity is the actual application of covenant, how it works in the spirituality of the Rebbe. Here theology and spirituality may be at odds with each other. We have already noted the association of covenant and mysticism, which certainly tends towards the association of covenant and the individual. In fact, for educational purposes and for finding continued meaning in the covenant, it seems impossible to limit the covenant to the collective. Time and again we note how the discourse shifts, even in contexts that theoretically apply to the collective, to the individual. Consider some of the following: we have noted that the sense of circumcision as covenant is deeply intertwined in Rabbi Berezovsky’s thought with the totality of the covenant. But circumcision is the most individual act, even if it is carried out under the conceptual umbrella of a collective covenant. Hence expressions such as: “Circumcision brings a Jew to a covenant with his God, and brings to attachment to God and to closeness of God.”109 Circumcision is a covenant that one makes with God, to offer his soul to God, to love him to the point of martyrdom. It is a sacrifice of will, wherein he offers his soul to God.110 It is hard to think of more personal expressions of covenant making. In fact, the problem with circumcision is that it is practiced upon an eightday-old child, thereby depriving the individual of the conscious offering that would be associated with circumcision.111 This leads to the challenge 106 On hermeneutical grounds, the proof-text could have been brought to support the opposite conclusion, affirming the covenant on an individual level. 107 See Nitzavim-Va-yelekh 5766. The reading of Deut. 29 close to Rosh Ha-Shanah readily leads to this association. 108 See Leil Seder 5776. 109 Bo 5766. 110 Ibid. 111 Tzav-Shabbat Ha-Gadol 5766.

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of how “a Jew” (in other words, the individual) can prepare himself nowadays for our redemption and salvation of soul? What will he who covers his circumcision and is drawn to the abomination of Egypt do? How will he attain the salvation of his soul from all enemies?112 Such a challenge could not arise if one did not seek to translate the theological principle into the domain of individual spirituality. The point is not limited to the blood of circumcision. The receiving of the Torah in an act of faith, whereby “we will do” precedes “we will hear,” is also translated to the level of the individual. Implicit in the rabbinic notion of two crowns for each individual who willingly receives the Torah at Sinai is the individualization of this acceptance of Torah. The Rebbe associates the acceptance of Torah with mental readiness for martyrdom, certainly something that is practiced through individual intention.113 The tension between the theological and its spiritual application, between the collective theory and individual application is not only an interesting and constructive tension. In fact, it is one more prism through which we observe how deeply covenant is integrated not only into the theory of religion developed by Rabbi Berezovsky, but also in its application in the life, aspiration and intentions of the individual.

A Personal Conclusion and Dedication This study has suggested that the encounter with foundational texts can generate not only a contemporary theology but also a language by means of which the spiritual life is expressed. Personal experience and scriptural reading come together to create one of the most original articulations of covenantal thinking in the history of Jewish covenantal reflection. The person and his experiences are inseparable from the texts he engages, and creativity is the outcome of their coming together. Here, as in many other places in the Rebbe’s teachings, love is the glue of ideas, the bond of the spiritual life and the ultimate goal, shaping faithfulness, culminating in mystical experience. One of the fundamental metaphors for this love is the love of friends, which is why this essay is, for me, such a perfect tribute to my friendship with Nehemia. We have been friends for nearly forty years. If I had to 112 Ibid. 113 Leil Shavu‘ot 5766.

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describe our friendship, in light of the Slonimer’s teachings, it is a covenantal friendship that seeks to share the mystical heights of faithfulness and the love of God, through the common human and communal bonds on which it grows. The interplay of personal experience and scriptural interpretation establishes the parameters for our friendship and for the sharing we have enjoyed for all these years, individually and among families. What we do when we get together is to engage texts. And the horizons of such engagement are the growing close to God. And in the process we have, on one level or another, become as one person and one heart. If covenant is styled in light of the human friendship metaphor, it also provides the language and framework for understanding what has driven my friendship with Nehemia for all these years. Deep down, our common quest is that very attachment to God that lies at the heart of the Slonimer’s vision and message. It is my prayer that through our friendship we can continue aiding each other in reaching towards such heights. May this contribution honoring Nehemia be one more expression of this common quest.

Or N. Rose

Protest or Discernment? Divine Limitation & Mystical Activism in the Qedushat Levi

Introduction Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev (d. 1809) is celebrated in Hasidic lore and more broadly in modern Jewish folk culture as a heroic figure, whose passionate love for the Jewish people led him to defend his community against any would-be foes, earthly or heavenly. Reminiscent of such biblical figures as Abraham and Moses, or the rabbinic sage Ḥanina ben Dosa, the Berditchever (as he is affectionately known) is remembered as a great sanegor or melitz yosher (advocate or defender), a courageous leader who would even take God to task for mistreating the Jewish people. This spirit of “protest within faith” is conveyed in several tales about Levi Yitzḥaq and liturgical creations attributed to him.1 Perhaps the best-known text of 1 For a sampling of such materials, see Samuel Dresner, Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev: Portrait of a Hasidic Master (Bridgeport, CT: Hartmore House, 1974), 77–90. Among the hagiographical sources Dresner draws on are: Mendel Citron, Shivhei Tzaddiqim (Warsaw, 1883); Shalom Gutman’s Tiferet Beit Levi (Jasi, Romania: 1909); Israel Erlich’s Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq mi-Berditchev (Tel Aviv: Giora, 1947). See, also, Martin Buber, “Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev,” Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters, translated by Olga Marx (New York: Schocken Books, 1947), 203–234. Elie Wiesel, “Rabbi Levi-Yitzḥaq of Beditchev,” Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), 89–112; Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Netanel Miles-Yepez, A Merciful God: Stories and Teachings of the Holy Rebbe, Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010).

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this type is Din Toyre mit Goyt (The Lawsuit with God), also called “Levi Yitzḥaq’s Qaddish”: Good morning to You, Master of the Universe. I, Levi Yitzḥaq, son of Sara, from Berditchev, come to You with a din Torah on behalf of Your people Israel.

The legal claim that the Rabbi brings forth is leveled against the Almighty for allowing the undeserved suffering of the Jewish people. As the Berditchever goes on to say, while the other nations of the world proclaim their rulers supreme—Czar, Kaiser, or King—the Jews insist that there is only one true Sovereign—God. And yet, this faithful remnant languishes at the hands of these wayward and recalcitrant peoples. How could this be? The Berditchever continues by declaring emphatically that he will not “budge” from his place until the Divine changes this unjust situation. According to legend, he composed this piece spontaneously during the High Holy Days, thus intensifying the language of din Torah by reversing the classical roles of God and the human being as judge and defendant so central to the liturgy of the season.2 Inspired by these popular images of Levi Yitzḥaq, in this essay I explore how this famed mystical master conceives of the power dynamic between the Hasidic holy man and God in his own teachings. I focus here on his major homiletical work, Qedushat Levi. Unlike many other Hasidic texts, whose authorship is uncertain,3 the Berditchever disseminated parts of this collection in his own lifetime, and his children published a much larger manuscript shortly after his death.4 Further, the Qedushat Levi is widely 2 On the history of this liturgical creation, including different recensions of it, see Ze’ev Kitzis, “The ‘Kaddish’ of Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev: Incarnations of a Cry,” in Zvi Mark and Roee Horen (editors), Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev: History, Thought, Literature, and Melody (Rish LeZion, Israel: Yedioth Achronoth & Chemed Books, 2017) [Hebrew], 397–425. In two fascinating examples of cultural migration, the African American entertainer, Paul Robeson (d. 1976), and the secular Jewish composer, Leonard Bernstein (d. 1990), each recorded versions of Levi Yitzḥaq’s Qaddish. See Jonathan Karp, “Performing Black-Jewish Symbiosis: The ‘Hasidic Chant’ of Paul Robeson,” American Jewish History 91, no.1 (March 2003): 53–81. 3 On the publication of Hasidic books in this period, see Zeev Gries, The Book in Early Hasidism: Genres, Authors, Scribes, Managing Editors and its Review by Their Contemporaries and Scholars (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1992) [Hebrew]. 4 Levi Yitzḥaq published Sefer ha-Zekhirot, a brief commentary on six matters to be recalled each day, in 1794, and a collection of homilies on the miracles of Hanukkah and Purim in 1798. Following his death in 1809, his children published a second, much larger body of sermons on the weekly Torah portions and the Jewish calendar cycle

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considered a classic within the Hasidic world: it is often quoted by later masters and has been reprinted numerous times over the generations. In examining these teachings, I seek to understand how the Berditchever speaks about the relationship between the Divine and the mystical leader in shaping the life of the Jewish community and the world(s) beyond? To what extent is the theme of protest a part of his sermons? Does he confront God, or express the need for the tzaddiq to do so? As I hope to demonstrate, Levi Yitzḥaq’s approach to these matters is quite nuanced and involves an interconnected set of exegetical, magical, and pastoral strategies, with the subjects of protest and confrontation arising infrequently. While he does speak passionately about the need for the Hasidic master to act boldly on behalf of his community, including interceding with God in various ways, the theological foundation of this work is more complex than the Qaddish or related tales of protest might suggest. Building on the teachings of his beloved mentor, the Maggid of Mezeritch (d. 1772),5 the Berditchever repeatedly states that God wants the tzaddiq to intervene in the workings of the cosmos, including, paradoxically, overturning negative divine “decrees” issued against Israel. For Levi Yitzḥaq, the Hasidic holy man’s ability to discern what the Divine truly wants of him in a given situation is essential to his efforts at guiding, protecting, and uplifting his people.

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entitled Qedushat Levi ha-Shalem (1811). Other teachings attributed to the Berditchever appeared over the generations, including in Shemu‘ah Tovah (1938), which also contains materials attributed to the Great Maggid. Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch (the “Great Maggid”), was a close disciple (later in life) of the spiritual founder of Hasidism, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba‘al Shem Tov (d. 1760). On the question of succession in early Hasidism, see, Ada Rapoport-Albert, “Hasidism after 1772: Structural Continuity and Change,” in Hasidism Reappraised, edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1998), 76–140. On the relationship of the Great Maggid to Levi Yitzḥaq and other members of his circle of disciples, see Arthur Green’s introduction to Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from around the Maggid’s Table, edited by Arthur Green with Ebn Leader, Ariel Evan Mayse, and Or N. Rose (Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights, 2013), 1–74. On Levi Yitzḥaq’s relationship to other Hasidic leaders of his generation, see Avraham Avish Shor, “Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev among the Tzaddiqim of His Generation: Debates and Approbations,” in Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev: History, Thought, Literature, and Melody [Hebrew], 45–61. On Levi Yitzḥaq’s role as a rabbinic leader in Berditchev, see Yohanan Petrovsky-Stern, “The Drama of Berditchev: Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq and His Town,” Ibid., 15–44. This is an expansion of an earlier essay published in English in Polin 17 (2004): 83–95.

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Entreaty, Defense, and Challenge I begin this exploration by analyzing three texts from the Qedushat Levi in which the Berditchever calls on God to act compassionately with Israel. While none of these pieces possesses the hard, confrontational edge of the Qaddish and related tales, they do clearly reflect the Master’s deep care for his people, and his belief that the tzaddiq must serve as a vocal defender and advocate for them before God. As we will see, in enacting these roles, Levi Yitzḥaq usually adopts a beseeching tone, using the power of persuasion to make his case: “Not for us, YHWH, not for us, but for Your name give honor, for Your kindness and for Your truthfulness” (Psalm 115:1). We would happily endure poverty in this world, if instead of cursing us for it, the nations would understand that our portion is reserved for the world to come.6 But this is not the way of the nations. When they observe the hardships of Israel, they continue to blaspheme, saying: “Where is their God” (Psalm 115:2)? Therefore, we do seek the good things of this world. For even though by right we have no share in them, You should give them to us, O Lord, in order that Your name not be profaned. This is the meaning of the verse, “Not for us, YHWH” . . ..Not for our sake do we seek these good things. “But for Your name give honor” . . ..Help us with the good things of this world, so that Your name not be cursed, Heaven forbid, but sanctified.

Like in the hagiographical materials, here Levi Yitzḥaq addresses God directly about the plight of his people and the malevolence of the non-Jewish world. However, he does not speak of God’s failure to properly care for the Jewish people. Rather, he justifies his petition by claiming that he does so only for the Lord’s sake, to protect God’s name. In the face of such blasphemy and insolence the Berditchever feels compelled to call for divine intervention.7 Rather than accusing God of any wrongdoing, he seeks to persuade the Creator to act for Israel as a response to all those who would sully God’s reputation. 6 He bases this idea on the oft-cited rabbinic teaching that Jacob and Esau agreed to divide the blessings of life such that the younger brother and his offspring would receive the bounty of “the world to come,” while Esau and his progeny would enjoy the gifts of the “material world.” See, for example, Bereshit Rabbah 44:21. 7 This is a strong reading of the Psalm since the ancient poet does not explicitly ask God for anything, but calls on the House of Israel to remain faithful to the Divine, affirming that the Lord will bless those who “fear” Him.

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Building on the words of the psalmist, the Berditchever implores the Divine to uplift Israel from its drudgery and to provide it with the “good things of this world” (as opposed to “the world to come”) as evidence of the Almighty’s providential power.8 While Levi Yitzḥaq may have been disappointed or angry with God while crafting or delivering this sermon, he chooses not to say so explicitly here, opting instead to present his request as a defense of his Maker. However, this text does feel like a rather transparent attempt by the Berditchever to petition God on behalf of his people, without appearing to be undignified or overly concerned with earthly matters.9 While in the previous text God’s reputation among the nations is of great concern to Levi Yitzḥaq, in the following brief commentary on Numbers 27:16 he openly critiques the Divine: “Let YHWH, the God of the spirit of all flesh, appoint a man over the assembly.” Just as God has given the soul the power to serve Him, so too, could He have given the body the strength to make the service of God its primary desire. Therefore, we have a claim (ta’anah) against the Holy Blessed One to pardon us for our sins, since He has the power to give the body the strength to compel it to serve Him.10

As in the Qaddish, the Berditchever states that he has a “claim” against God. Rather than confronting the Divine directly, however, he addresses his flock, explaining to them why the Divine should show them compassion. In making his case, he boldly states that it is God—the Creator of all life—who is ultimately responsible for human sinfulness. After all, God could have fashioned them differently; He could have made them more refined beings, with physical bodies better equipped for spiritual service (like in the vision 8 The issue of God’s treatment of the Israelites and His reputation among the nations of the world is raised elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible. See, for example, Numbers 14:13–19. 9 This piece calls to mind various early Hasidic sources in which the preachers instruct worshippers not to pray for their own needs, but for the sake of the Shekhinah—the indwelling divine Presence most susceptible to the ills of corporeality. Like in our text, in those cases any blessing that might come upon Israel is secondary, since the primary focus of this process is God and not human beings. See Louis Jacobs’ discussion of this subject in his classic study, Hasidic Prayer (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), chapters 7–8. See Levi Yitzḥaq’s thoughts on this dynamic in his comment on the words, “Thus shall you bless the Children of Israel” (Num. 6:23); QL, vol. 2, nasso, 204. This appeal may also be motivated by the Master’s attempt to respond to Christian claims of supersessionism and of the “necessity” of Jewish suffering. 10 QL, vol. 2, pinḥas, 74.

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of Ez. 36). I presume that our preacher intended for God to “overhear” his words, and it may be that in the original oral version he acted in a more dramatic manner, perhaps even addressing the Almighty directly. But in this brief written version—which is among the strongest criticism of God I have found in the Qedushat Levi—the Master delivers his message with obvious restraint and brevity.11 Interestingly, in a second commentary on the very same biblical verse, Levi Yitzḥaq returns to his more common mode of defense and entreaty: This verse instructs us to speak well of the people of Israel. For if they are unable to do the will of the Creator at all times, as angels do, it is only because of the hardship they face in providing for their families. This is how Abraham Our Father, a man of compassion (ish ḥesed), acted, always finding 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. Therefore, Moses said, “Let YHWH, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the assembly.” Meaning, just as You are a judge and guide who will always be merciful with Israel because You understand their fleshly needs and frailties, so may You “appoint a man over the assembly” who will understand, defend, and guide them as a shepherd does with his flock.12

The Berditchever deftly uses this ancient narrative about the leadership transition between Moses and Joshua to assert a key element of his own leadership agenda. Simply put, the tzaddiq must lovingly advocate on behalf of his people before the heavenly court. It is not clear to me if in this text Levi Yitzḥaq actually thinks God needs to be reminded of Israel’s virtue and vulnerability (as the angels clearly need to learn), or if the God of 11 Since the Hasidic masters do not usually date their sermons or speak openly about communal or personal matters, the reader is often left wondering if a particular biographical or historical event may have inspired or influenced a teaching. See Arthur Green’s comments on this matter in his essay, “The Hasidic Homily: Mystical Performance and Hermeneutical Process,” in As a Perennial Spring: A Festschrift Honoring Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, edited by Bensi Cohen (New York: Underhill Press LLC, 2013), 237–65. 12 Ibid., vol. 2, 73–74. Whether intentional or not, this depiction of the ideal Jewish leader stands in stark contrast to the biblical figure of Pinḥas—the namesake of this Torah portion—who distinguished himself before God and his people through his violent vigilantism (Num. 25:6–13).

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ḥesed wants, even expects, the tzaddiq—the “man of ḥesed”—to speak out on behalf of his community (more on this below). What is clear, is that the Berditchever is not only addressing God in this sermon, but other hasidic and mitnaggedic leaders, and the many ordinary Jews either listening to or reading his words. As in the tales, Levi Yitzḥaq the preacher exemplifies great care for and understanding of his people.

Discerning God’s (Hidden) Will While criticism of and confrontation with the Divine are not major motifs in the Qedushat Levi, our preacher does speak extensively about God’s desire for the mystical leader to intercede in the heavens on behalf of Israel and to “draw forth” bounty from above. Drawing creatively from a small selection of biblical and rabbinic sources, Levi Yitzḥaq repeatedly claims that unlike human beings, the Holy Blessed One experiences great joy when the mystical leader “rules over” or “defeats” him.13 While texts like the Qaddish portray the Berditchever crying out to God spontaneously in moments of anguish, in the Qedushat Levi we learn that the holy man’s prayerful petition, exegetical creativity, and theurgic interventions are all rooted in a theological worldview in which the Divine awaits such human assertiveness. In exploring the subject of the tzaddiq’s role as an active intermediary between heaven and earth, I turn to the Berditchever’s treatment of the biblical figure of Noah. Like many classical Jewish commentators, he is quite critical of Noah, even though the latter is the only person described as a “tzaddiq” in the Torah. Here is the core of Levi Yitzḥaq’s criticism: Even though Noah was a great and blameless tzaddiq, he was very small in his own eyes, and he did not have faith in himself that he was a ruling tzaddiq who could overturn the decree [of the flood]. It was, in fact, just the opposite: he thought he was like the rest of his generation, saying to 13 As Arthur Green has noted, the rabbinic expression, “The Blessed Holy One issues a decree, but the tzaddiq annuls it” (b. Mo‘ed Qatan 16b) is among the talmudic phrases Levi Yitzḥaq cites most often. As we will see below, the Berditchever also invokes the well-known story of the “Oven of Akhnai,” which includes God delightfully exclaiming, “My children have defeated me” (b. Bava Metzi‘a 52b). See Green’s essays, “Around the Maggid’s Table: Tsaddik, Leadership, and Popularization in the Circle of Dov Baer of Miedzyrzecz,” and “Levi Yitzḥaq on Miracles,” both can be found in his volume of collected essays, The Heart of the Matter: Studies in Jewish Mysticism and Theology (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2015), 119–66 and 254–265.

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himself, “If I will be saved in the ark and I am no more righteous than my contemporaries, they too will be saved.” Therefore, he did not pray for his generation.14

Levi Yitzḥaq goes on to explain that when God says to Noah, “I am about to destroy them [humankind] with the earth” (Gen. 6:13), the intention of this ominous statement is: “I will do as I wish because there is no tzaddiq praying to annul the decree.” Despite the complexity of the interaction, Levi Yitzḥaq clearly believes that the Divine desires the holy man to step forward and reverse this punishing edict, causing hesed (mercy) to rain down instead of the punishing waters of gevurah (judgment). While humility is a great virtue for this teacher and his Hasidic compatriots,15 misplaced modesty can have devastating effects. Noah’s lack of faith in his unique powers as a righteous advocate led to the death of countless people. Interestingly, the Berditchever does not comment on the content or style of the tzaddiq’s prayer, only on the need for him to act boldly in this moment of crisis. We do not know what the holy man is supposed to say or how he is to say it. Should the tzaddiq focus on God’s great mercy, on humanity’s latent goodness, or some combination of these or other virtues? How demanding or beseeching should he be, or does God want him to be? What we do know is that the mystical leader must intervene on behalf of others. Compare Levi Yitzḥaq’s critique of Noah with the following laudatory description of Abraham (a common juxtaposition in Jewish biblical exegesis): And you shall be a blessing (ve-heyeh berakhah) (Genesis 12:2). The letters yod heh [in ve-heyeh] allude to the Holy One, and the letters vav heh to Israel [together forming the Tetragrammaton, YHWH]. Until Abraham, there was no one to arouse the outpouring of divine blessing from above, and the flow of blessing derived solely from blessed Holy One; in that sense, yod heh preceded vav heh. But from the time of Abraham there was an arousal of the blessing from below, and vav heh preceded yod heh. This is the meaning of ve-heyeh berakhah.16 14 Ibid., vol. 1, Noah, 22. 15 See, for example, Ibid., vol 1, shemot, 202–204. See, also, Moshe Idel’s comments on the importance of humility as both an ethical virtue and as a gateway to mystical experience in the teachings of Levi Yitzḥaq and his colleagues in Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), 128–129. 16 QL, vol. 1, lekh lekha, 32–33.

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Here Abraham is depicted as the model tzaddiq, the first person to harness his pneumatic powers and cause blessing to gush forth from the heavens. In so doing, the Patriarch causes the Divine to experience great joy. For that to happen, however, this spiritual iconoclast must upend the existing cosmic order, which is signified in this homily by the reordering (or misspelling) of God’s sacred name. When one compares Levi Yitzḥaq’s treatment of these two biblical figures, it becomes clear that the notion of “arousal from below” and the need for tzaddiqim to reverse negative divine decrees are intersecting elements of his larger vision of Hasidic leadership, in which God longs for the tzaddiq to cause divine bounty to flow between heaven and earth. Decades ago, the pioneering scholar of Hasidism Joseph Weiss wrote the following about the theology of Levi Yitzḥaq’s beloved mentor, the Maggid of Mezeritch: The will of God as expressed in His decrees is not identical with His innermost will, for the personal God has an affective aspect that transcends His volitional aspect and it is precisely with a consent operating at this level of His nature that He awaits the active intervention of the Saddik, or indeed, of man in general. One could go further and say that His highest satisfaction is obtained when man changes His will!17

As we saw above, Levi Yitzḥaq follows in his mentor’s footsteps in this regard, urging the mystical leader to carefully discern God’s “innermost” 17 Joseph Weiss, “The Saddik—Altering the Divine Will,” Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism, edited by David Goldstein (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 185. To learn more about the thought of the Great Maggid, see (Ariel) Evan Drescher Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch,” PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 2015. See, also, Tsippi Kauffman, In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2009) [Hebrew]; Ron Margolin, The Human Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005) [Hebrew]; Haviva Pedaya, “The Baal Shem Tov, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, and the Maggid of Mezhirech: Outlines for a Religious Typology,” Da’at 45 (2000), 25–73 [Hebrew]; Mendel Piekarz, Hasidic Leadership: Authority and Faith in Zadikism as Reflected in the Hasidic Literature (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999); and Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and The Magnes Press, 1993). See, also, Netanel Lederberg, “Play and the Theatrical According to Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev, Against the Background of the Teachings of The Maggid of Mezeritch,” in Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev: History, Thought, Literature, and Melody [Hebrew], 262–291.

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desire. In a recent essay on the Maggid’s mystical circle, Arthur Green argues that Levi Yitzḥaq is, in fact, more forceful than Dov Baer in his preaching about the power of the tzaddiq to assert his will in the heavens and bring blessing upon Israel. As Green points out, there are several teachings in the Great Maggid’s oeuvre in which he speaks equivocally about the power of the holy man to truly influence the Divine, and in which he expresses concern about promulgating this doctrine among the masses, lest people view him and his disciples as rogue magicians acting without proper intention or sanction.18 Levi Yitzḥaq does not voice the same hesitancy on these issues in the Qedushat Levi. In fact, in his comparison of Noah and Abraham, he distinguishes between two types of holy men: the tzaddiq le-‘atzmo (“for himself ”) and the tzaddiq le-aḥerim (“for others”). Unsurprisingly, the Berditchever strongly favors the latter type, identifying Abraham as the model of such leadership. And as I am arguing, this involves a combination of prayerful advocacy, textual innovation, and magical intervention.19 One context in which the Berditchever speaks at length about the joy God experiences from the tzaddiq’s activism is in his reflections on the revelation at Sinai. In the following text, he weaves together the need for the holy man to exercise both his exegetical and theurgic skills: A basic principle in the service of our blessed Creator is that we Israelites are obliged to have faith in two Torahs—Written and Oral . . . The Oral Torah was given to Moses in the form of commentary, including “what every faithful student was ever to find anew” (y. Peah 2:6). That is to say, the Oral Torah was so given that whatever the tzaddiqim of a particular generation say would come to pass. This was the great power that the blessed Creator gave to us, out of His love for His chosen people Israel. All the worlds were to be conducted according to their will, as derived from Torah. Of this the sages said, “God issues a decree but the tzaddiq annuls it” (b. Mo‘ed Qatan 16b).20

18 See Green, “Around the Maggid’s Table: Tsaddik, Leadership, and Popularization in the Circle of Dov Baer of Miedzyrzecz,” in The Heart of the Matter, 119–166, especially 130–136. 19 QL, vol. 1, noah, 20–21. It is for this reason that Green speculates that Levi Yitzḥaq was among those students of the Maggid who was “bursting at the seams” to go forth from his master’s study house to build a popular religious movement with the tzaddiq at the center of this enterprise. See, Ibid., 131. 20 Ibid., vol. 1, yitro. My translation of this passage is based on Arthur Green’s rendering of it in his essay, “Teachings of the Hasidic Masters,” Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts, ed. Barry W. Holtz (New York: Summit Books, 1984), 376–386.

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Levi Yitzḥaq transforms the meaning of “Oral Torah” here: it is no longer a reference to the foundational works of rabbinic literature, but to an ongoing process of interpretation across the generations; a process led by the great tzaddiqim (notice the swift change from the rabbinic “talmid ḥakhham” to the Hasidic tzaddiq in this text) in every age. Further, the Berditchever boldly expands the interpretive landscape to include “reality itself.” He does so by stating that just as the tzaddiq has the authority to offer novel interpretations of Torah based on his understanding of life, so, too, does he have the power to alter life based on his understanding of Torah. Commenting on this intriguing text Arthur Green writes, “As the Torah mirrors the changing cosmic situation, the cosmos itself is moved by the will of the tzaddiqim as they interpret the Torah.”21 And this sacred work necessarily requires the holy man to overturn negative “decrees,” whether it be outmoded readings of Torah or physical threats to the Jewish community. Paradoxically, these innovations—exegetical and existential—were always a part of God’s inclusive Torah, of God’s creation, and were given to Moses as “commentary” long ago at Sinai. Therefore, the Infinite is not surprised or upset by these new interpretations, but delights in their discovery by the great spirits in each generation. However, as Levi Yitzḥaq is careful to state in the continuation of the homily, only the true servant of the Lord, the one who humbly dedicates himself to “serving the great and glorious King” (like Moses did), is worthy of serving as a transformative interpreter of Torah and of the human condition.22 Again, we see that discernment is a key virtue for 21 Ibid., 377. 22 Ibid., 377–378. While Levi Yitzḥaq and his companions often speak of the importance of hiddush (innovation), they tend to be much more daring in their psycho-spiritual readings of classical texts than in their approach to halakhah (Jewish law). Still, the Hasidim did introduce certain behavioral changes, mostly in the realm of minhag, “custom,” that challenged established local convention and raised the ire of rabbinic authorities. On the interface of halakhah and Hasidism, see Maoz Kahana and Ariel Evan Mayse, “Hasidic Halakhah: Reappraising the Interface of Spirit and Law,” AJS Review 41, no. 2 (2017): 375–408. See, also, Arthur Green’s introduction to Speaking Torah, 44–49; and Mordecai Wilensky, “Hasidic-Mitnaggedic Polemics in the Jewish Communities of Eastern Europe: The Hostile Phase,” in Gershon D. Hundert, editor, Essential Papers on Hasidism: Origins to the Present (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 244–271. It is important to remember in this context that Levi Yitzḥaq served as both the rebbe (Hasidic master) and rav (Jewish legal authority) of Berditchev. See, Petrovsky-Stern’s essay cited above in footnote #5. See, also, Levi Yitzḥaq Cooper, “‘Rabbinate, Law, Erudition: Unknown Aspects of the Life of Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev,” Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev: History, Thought, Literature, and Melody [Hebrew], 62–130.

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the tzaddiq: it must be operative in his reading of Scripture, of the cosmos, and of his own heart (which are integrally connected in this mystical worldview). As a pioneering religious leader, who challenged the rabbinic elite of his day by advocating for the unique role of the Hasidic tzaddiq, it is not surprising that Levi Yitzḥaq emphasizes the need for humility and of God’s desire for such daring human action. This may be designed as a defense against his opponents and doubters, but it could also be a warning to his Hasidic colleagues and to himself about the dangers of ego, ambition, and power.

Tzimtzum & the Unfolding of History Building on this discussion about Sinai and the power of interpretation, one way in which Levi Yitzḥaq emphasizes the need for the Hasidic tzaddiq to take an active role in the affairs of his community is by introducing an historical gloss to the teaching of divine limitation and human agency. There are a few texts, for example, in which the Berditchever speaks of matan Torah (the “giving of Torah”) as a liminal moment in which God recedes from the visible plain of human affairs, and encourages Israel to step forward and play a more active role in shaping its destiny. In one sermon comparing the theophany at Sinai with God’s miraculous intervention at the Sea of Reeds, he describes the former as an example of revelation through tzimtzum, divine self-limitation. For at the Sea, the Almighty—imagined as a young warrior—overturned the natural order, while at Sinai, the Divine— now envisioned as a wise elder—maintained it.23 Why these two forms of revelation at these two moments in ancient Israelite history? The answer is that at the Sea of Reeds God wished to demonstrate His unparalleled might to Israel and to the nations of the world, whereas at Sinai He wanted to induct the Children of Israel into a life of Torah. And to do so, the seasoned Pedagogue had to carefully weigh and measure—that is, “garb”—His teaching, providing these new pupils with a Torah they could take hold of and work with as independent interpreters and actors.24 Using imagery both from the midrash and from Lurianic Kabbalah to emphasize his point 23 QL, vol. 1, yitro, 297. The images of God as a young warrior and as an older sage are taken from Pesiqta Rabbati 25:1, which serves as the inspiration for the homily. See, Arthur Green, “The Children of Israel and the Theophany at the Sea,” reprinted in The Heart of the Matter, 87–100. 24 In a complimentary reflection on matan Torah (Ibid., vol. 1, 276–278), Levi Yitzḥaq imagines a conversation between God and Moses, in which the Divine teaches the prophet about the importance of providing the Israelites with a version of Torah they

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about tzimtzum, Levi Yitzḥaq playfully depicts God at Sinai as a wise elder (zaqen), who is both robed and bearded (zaqan).25 In a second, provocative text on the theophany at Sinai, he writes as follows: Our rabbis of blessed memory taught, “The Torah was given as black fire on white fire (Devarim Rabbah 3:13).” One might say that because of the Giving of the Torah Israel possesses [great] power, as in the saying of our sages, “You decreed from below and the blessed Holy One will fulfill it from above” can comprehend and enact, as opposed to the Torah he might wish to acquire for himself as a unique visionary: “And Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob and communicate to the children of Israel’” (Exodus 19:3) . . . Behold, Moses our Teacher, may he be blessed, prepared himself extensively so that God would speak to him at such an elevated rung that no other person would understand. But God said to him, “Do not undergo the great preparations you desire, because if you do so you will be unable to teach the children of Israel. And this is the meaning of the verse: “And Moses went up to God.” [The text] wished to say that Moses prepared himself so extensively that he reached God to speak on a divine rung; but the Holy Blessed One did not want this . . . And therefore [it is written in Exodus 19:9] “And the Lord called to Moses from the mountain,” that is, from a low rung. God’s intention was [for Moses] to speak to Israel, His beloved people. And it further states: “Thus shall you say,” meaning, if I speak to you at this level you will be able to “say to the house of Jacob” and “communicate to the children of Israel.” And this is the meaning of the verse “I hereby come to you in the thickness (av) of the cloud, so that the people will hear as I speak to you” . . . “The thickness of the cloud is the language of lowliness (aviyut) . . . “I come to you so that the people will understand what I will say to you.”



This appears to be a thinly veiled warning to the contemporary mystic—Hasidic or mitnaggedic—who might wish to ascend to great spiritual heights, forgetting his responsibilities to the community at large. While Moses, or the tzaddiq, might want to climb to the summit of the mountain, God does not allow him to do so; for if he goes too high, the leader will not be able to return to the foot of the mountain and communicate effectively with the masses. And they, in turn, will not be able to absorb the Torah and live in covenantal relationship with God. One might describe this as a teaching about imitatio Dei, as the tzaddiq, like God, must undergo a conscious act of tzimtzum for the sake of his people. 25 QL, vol. 1, yitro, 297. See, also, Elliott S. Horowitz, “The Early Eighteenth Century Confronts the Beard: Kabbalah and Jewish Self-Fashioning,” Jewish History 8, no. 1–2 (1994): 95–115.

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(b. Ta‘anit 23a). Now the color white includes all other colors, for it absorbs all colors. This alludes to YHWH, who is inclusive of all. This is not the case, however, with the color black, for it does not include the other colors—it is simply black. This is an allusion to the human being. And this is what it means that through the Giving of the Torah the Children of Israel merited that the black fire would be “on”—that is above—the white fire: Israel would be above [God], so to speak. The words of Israel would be more operative (yoter po‘el) than the words of the Divine, as in the saying of the rabbis: “The Holy Blessed One issues a decree, but the tzaddiq annuls it” (b. Mo‘ed Qatan 16b).26

While human beings are finite, and cannot, therefore, ever manifest the full breadth or depth of God’s infinite wisdom—the “white light”—nonetheless, the Divine willingly steps aside and allows His creations to enact the Torah to the best of their ability, even if always imperfectly. Why does He do so? For Levi Yitzḥaq, the answer is that God’s greatest joy comes when human beings, especially tzaddiqim, exercise their free will and creative ingenuity to enact the Torah to the best of their ability. In a related text, Levi Yitzḥaq uses the example of the ancient sages in the famous talmudic story of the “Oven of Akhnai” (b. Bava Metzi‘a 52b) to justify the freedom of contemporary tzaddiqim to “interpret the meaning of the Torah as they desire, even if it is not so in heaven.” Speaking with great confidence, the Berditchever adds, “And so it is with all other matters—they have the power to change the Upper Will from a negative decree, heaven forbid, to a positive one.” With this homiletical surge, Levi Yitzḥaq once again braids together the exegetical and theurgic powers of the tzaddiq. And what does God think of such audacious human action? Like in the original rabbinic story,27 the Divine experiences great pleasure from the creative and impassioned efforts of these latter day holy men.28 26 Ibid., vol. 2, shavu‘ot, 13–14. See, also, Moshe Idel’s related essay, “White Letters: From R. Levi Isaac of Berditchev’s Views to Postmodern Hermeneutics,” Modern Judaism 26, no. 2 (2006): 169–192. 27 For a helpful discussion of this well-known story, see Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Rabbinic Stories (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2002), 80–84. For a broader discussion of human challenges of God in rabbinic literature, see Dov Weiss, Pious Irreverence Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017). 28 QL, vol. 2, liqqutim, 272–273. Interestingly, in making use of this Talmudic story, Levi Yitzḥaq does not emphasize the importance of maḥloket (debate), as in the original version. Unlike his younger colleague, Rabbi Naḥman of Breslov, the Berditchever does not valorize this rabbinic practice in his teachings. Rather, he usually speaks of the

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Levi Yitzḥaq carries this teaching about tzimtzum and the unfolding of Jewish life a step further in several teachings in which he juxtaposes Moses and the Wilderness Generation with the Hasmoneans and Mordecai and Esther.29 Levi Yitzḥaq views the latter as particularly important spiritual models because, they lived in times of heavy divine veiling and still managed to discover God’s light in the darkness and to play active roles in shaping their lives. This, in comparison to the Wilderness Generation, who basked in the glow of God’s brilliant light and passively benefitted from His great “signs and wonders.” Commenting on the special addition to the ‘amidah prayer during Hanukkah—“‘al ha-Nissim” (“Concerning the Miracles”)—Levi Yitzḥaq writes: “In the Shemoneh Esreh we say ‘for Your miracles that are with us daily.’ Read the word ‘imanu (‘with us’) literally, that is, the miracles that we actualize through our deeds.”30 To further demonstrate his point, he concludes this teaching by turning to the central ritual of Hanukkah—candle lighting—reminding us that as part of this brief liturgical performance one traditionally includes the following excerpt from the last verse of Psalm 90: “Let the pleasantness of YHWH our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands—yes, establish the work of our hands!” For Levi Yitzḥaq, this text alludes to the fact that “the miracle of Hanukkah occurred in some small measure because of the work of our hands.”31 “tzaddiqim” as a unified group or of the individual leader’s relationship to God and the folk. My thanks to Professor Shaul Magid for raising this issue with me several years ago in a discussion of early Hasidism. See his essay, “The Intolerance of Tolerance: Makhloket and Redemption in Early Hasidism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 8 (2001): 328–368. 29 See Arthur Green’s brief comments on the influence of Naḥmanides and the MaHaRaL on Levi Yitzḥaq thinking on the subject of “revealed” and “hidden” miracles his essay, “Levi Yitzḥaq on Miracles,” in The Heart of the Matter, 254–65. See, also, Shahar Rahmani, “Israel’s Advocate: The Intellectual Foundation for Levi Yitzḥaq’s Advocacy of Israel in the Writings of the MaHaRaL of Prague,” in Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev: History, Thought, Literature, and Melody [Hebrew], 229–61, and Bezalel Safran, “Maharal and Early Hasidism,” in Hasidism: Continuity or Innovation, ed. Bezalel Safran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 47–144. 30 QL, vol. 1, ḥanukkah, 147–48. 31 As Green notes, the Berditchever is not entirely clear or consistent about the nature of the “hidden miracles” of these holidays. It involves different phenomena, including God acting “behind the screen of military activity” in the Hanukkah story and “within the heart of the king” in the Purim tale. Complicating matters further, Levi Yitzḥaq seems intent on communicating to his community that all of life is, in fact, miraculous since God’s creative presence (even if veiled) vitalizes it moment to moment. See, 258– 63 in The Heart of the Matter.

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It is noteworthy that among the limited number of teachings Levi Yitzḥaq printed in his lifetime were his reflections on the miracles of Hanukkah and Purim (1798). While I do not know the details of this unusual publishing choice, he clearly viewed these two holidays as particularly important to Jews living in an era when God’s presence likely felt cloaked and “revealed” or “supernatural” miracles unlikely. One can also see that these (late) canonical tales of improbable Jewish triumph could help enliven a new religious revival movement that hinged on a vision of spiritual quest and increased human agency. Mordecai appears to be a particularly important leadership figure for the Berditchever because, according to tradition, this ancient hero was a liminal figure, who bridged the worlds of the prophets and the rabbis (b. Megilah 10b, 15a; b. Ḥullin 139b). Like Mordecai, the Hasidic tzaddiq is required to step forward and boldly lead his community, using a blend of talents and skills to inspire, guide, uplift, and protect the Jewish people as they work to maintain their spiritual fortitude and physical wellbeing in an age of intensified tzimtzum.32 While Levi Yitzḥaq does not say so explicitly, his teachings on tzimtzum and the tzaddiq together serve to respond to a set of profound theological questions: Where is God today? Is He involved in human affairs? Why is it that the Divine once acted supernaturally but does not do so now? What does this say about God, the Covenant, and the Jewish people? The Berditchever—who is a preacher and not a systematic theologian—seeks to offer an ennobling pastoral response that encourages his community to see themselves as beloved children of God, who can, with the guidance of the tzaddiq, not only survive, but also thrive in the midst of tzimtzum. After all, if the ultimate purpose of creation and of the giving of the Torah is to empower the Jewish people, to allow them to grow into spiritual adulthood (using the Great Maggid’s language), then they need the “space” to exercise their free will and act with independence.33 This does require them to 32 In the same essay noted immediately above, Green points out that among the many tales told about Levi Yitzḥaq, he has not seen any that involve the Master performing miraculous feats. See, Ibid. 264–65. Green speculates that this might be a reflection of the Berditchever’s ambivalence about the actual work of the tzaddiq, as opposed to the stronger theoretical claims he makes in the Qedushat Levi. I look forward to exploring this matter further with my teacher in our ongoing explorations of Levi Yitzḥaq’s life and work. 33 In an extended reflection on human free will and religious devotion, Levi Yitzḥaq uses the Wilderness Generation as a counter-example (based on Shemot Rabbah 32a), arguing that God experienced limited pleasure from their service because they had

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reckon with the pain and suffering of living in a hostile world, but they are not alone: God is present, even if more hidden, and the Hasidic holy men have emerged from the shadows (or cloistered study houses) to lead the way.34

Channeling and Shaping God’s Blessing In keeping with the theme of divine self-limitation and human agency discussed above, Levi Yitzḥaq also uses the term tzimtzum about the work the tzaddiq must do to properly channel and give shape to God’s bounty.35 The following teaching on the very first word of the Torah—“Bereshit” (“In the beginning”)—serves as a helpful entry point into this discussion: Read the word “Bereshit” as Bet Reshit (two beginnings). The Holy Blessed One pours forth bounty (shefa‘) and we, through our prayers, limit and shape (‘osim tzimtzum) this bounty, each of us according to our will (ratzon). One person forms the letters of the word “life,” a second forms the word “wisdom,” and yet another the word “wealth.” And so it is with all good things, each [is shaped] according to a person’s will . . .36

In this reflection, not only does the worshipper take responsibility for shaping the divine plentitude, but there is no mention of the Divine will whatsoever. While God releases the bounty, the person praying must direct limited freedom, unlike subsequent generations of Jews who must exercise greater independence and actively combat the “evil inclination.” See, QL, vol. 2, shelaḥ, 40–41. See, also, Louis Jacobs, “Hasidism and the Dogma of the Decline of the Generations,” in Hasidism Reappraised, 208–13. 34 These teachings on tzimtzum and the tzaddiq anticipate various discussions in modern Jewish thought about revelation, providence, suffering, and human agency. One contemporary example is Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, who writes about different epochs of Jewish life, and the shifting roles of God and the Jewish community in these historical periods (including the use of the term “tzimtzum”). While these two rabbis live in very different times and places, and have significant differences of opinion on a range of issues, they both seek to understand the unfolding relationship of God and the Jewish people and issues of theodicy, broadly conceived. See Greenberg’s classic postHolocaust theological reflection, “Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity, and Modernity after the Holocaust,” Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? Reflections on the Holocaust, ed. Eva Fleischner (New York: Ktav, 1977), 7–55; 441–46. 35 This is related to, but distinct from, the discussion above about Moses sharing an appropriate version of Torah with the masses. See, for example, the text cited above about the theophany at Sinai. 36 QL, vol. 1, bereshit, 4–5.

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it for “life,” “wisdom,” or “wealth.” Interestingly, in this case Levi Yitzḥaq describes this work as the responsibility of every worshipper, not only the tzaddiq, who is often singled out in other teachings as the conduit (tzinor) or pathway (shevil) through which divine and human energies flow together.37 In a lengthy reflection on Jacob’s experience at Bethel (Gen. 28), Levi Yitzḥaq returns to the same model of tzimtzum, this time focusing on “the righteous of the generation” and their influence on the Divine: The general principle is as follows . . . The Blessed Creator created all the worlds and all living beings above and below, and the Creator enlivens them and provides them with all of their needs because of His great mercy and kindness. This is the case even with those who hate Israel, since it is the Creator’s way (darkho) to be good to them. But the righteous of the generation have the power to draw forth bounty as they choose, so that it will only go to the one who truly serves God, but not to the wicked, since they do not carry out God’s will. Through their good deeds, the righteous stir the Creator to dress, as it were, in the attribute of pride (ga’avah)… [As a result,] He will not bestow goodness on the wicked… only on the righteous who serve Him in truth.38

As in the previous text, it is the responsibility of the human agent to properly direct God’s goodness. Here, however, the tzaddiq does not simply shape the divine bounty into specific forms of blessing, but directs it towards or away from other people by awakening in the Creator a level of discernment that was not operative before the holy man’s intervention. Left to His own devices, God would simply pour forth goodness indiscriminately among the righteous and the wicked.39 It is the tzaddiq who must interrupt this outpouring and arouse God’s pride, which in turn, introduces a measure of judgement (din) into the process.

37 On this concept, see Idel, Hasidism 189–208. 38 QL, vol. 1, va-yetzei, 109. 39 In this case, Levi Yitzḥaq does not differentiate between Jews and non-Jews. Elsewhere, however, he insists that God apportions or wishes to apportion His blessing in very different ways to Israel and the nations of the world. I discuss this issue at length in my forthcoming essay, “Hasidism and the Religious Other: A Textual Exploration and Theological Response,” in A New Hasidism: Branches, eds. Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2018).

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This teaching calls to mind Levi Yitzḥaq’s repeated use of Psalm 121:15, in which he quotes or paraphrases the Ba‘al Shem Tov (d. 1760)40: The BeSHT’s interpretation . . . of the expression “YHWH is your shade” is well known, for the shadow does everything that a person does, and so it is with the Blessed One, so to speak. For, every action a person carries out below stimulates an action above, and the Holy Blessed One acts on the example of the person. When one performs an act of charity it causes the Holy One to release loving-kindness and charity.41

While in the previous text, the focus was on channeling the divine flow as it emerges from the Godhead, in this case it is about stimulating different forms of divine blessing from below. However, what they share in common is that in both scenarios God acts exactly as the adept does, without any sign of deliberation or hesitation. Elsewhere, Levi Yitzḥaq speaks about the mystic making contemplative journeys into the Godhead, eventually leading to the realm of ayin.42 It is in this realm of pure, undifferentiated potential that the adept can draw forth bounty for himself and his community. Following the Great Maggid, Levi Yitzḥaq teaches that to make such a mystical-magical voyage successfully, the tzaddiq must negate himself (thus entering a state of ayin) and merge with the Divine in an experience of unio mystica.43 Thus, there is an experience of passivity, if you will, built into the broader activist journey. However, there are also cases in which Levi Yitzḥaq states the exact opposite, insisting that the mystical leader maintain his self-awareness throughout his ascent to God, so that he does not forget to work on behalf of his 40 For discussions of the life and work of this legendary historical figure, see: Rachel Elior, Israel Baal Shem Tov and His Contemporaries: Kabbalists, Hasidim, Sabbateans, and Mitnagdim (Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing, 2014 [Hebrew]); Immanuel Etkes, The Besht: Magician, Mystic, and Leader (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005); and Murray J. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996). 41 QL, vol. 1, purim, 349–50. 42 On the history of the concept of ayin in Jewish mysticism, see Daniel C. Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism,” in The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy, edited by Robert K. C. Forman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). See, also, Rachel Elior, “The Paradigms of Yesh and Ayin in Hasidic Thought,” in Hasidism Reappraised, 168–79. 43 On this aspect of the intellectual-spiritual patrimony of the Great Maggid, see, Weiss, “The Saddik,” 183–93; Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, 144–67; Moshe Idel, Hasidism as Mysticism, 111–26; and Ariel Evan Mayes, “Beyond the Letters,” 490–93.

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community. In one fascinating teaching, Levi Yitzḥaq describes two types of adepts: a “lesser tzaddiq,” and a “greater tzaddiq.” The “greater tzaddiq” forgets about all his earthly concerns as he rises through the heavens, eventually merging with the Infinite. The “lesser tzaddiq,” however, maintains his awareness throughout the whole contemplative journey. Levi Yitzḥaq argues in defense of the “lesser tzaddiq” because this leader is “more active” (yoter po‘el, as in the text above about the white and black fire of Torah), drawing forth bounty from the Godhead for his people.44 Having raised the issue of self-negation and passivity, I wish to add that there are several teachings in the Qedushat Levi that speak of the importance of accepting suffering as part of God’s transcendent design. Among the models the Berditchever turns to in these cases is the rabbinic figure of Naḥum Ish Gamzu, as an exemplar of equanimity (b. Ta‘anit 21a). Like the legendary sage, the hasid is to understand that “this too” (gam zu) is for the good. Reflecting on this quietistic disposition, Levi Yitzḥaq writes, “In this way he [Ish Gamzu] sweetened the judgements and transformed evil into good.” Rather than attempt to transform one’s outer reality, the devotee is to shift his consciousness, recognizing that this experience of immediate hardship is part of a greater divine plan. In an extended comment on the biblical phrase “in the land where his father dwelt” (eretz megurei aviv) from Genesis 31:1, the Berditchever states, Jacob always sought to accept, calmly and with equanimity, that all was for the good, even in the land where his father dwelt (megurey)—even when surrounded by fear (magor) and trepidation, the characteristic attribute of his father Isa ac. Jacob’s righteousness and faith in God provided him with a sense of calm and equanimity, accepting all that befell him.45

While Levi Yitzḥaq advocates here for quiet acceptance of God’s will, he still argues that a person has agency amidst his or her suffering. One can “sweeten” the harshness of the judgment by responding to it serenely. Still, this approach is quite different from the ones explored above in which there is a strong emphasis on altering one’s external situation. Perhaps the 44 QL, vol. 2, liqqutim, 213. Years ago, in her book Hasidism as Mysticism (88–89), Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer identified Levi Yitzḥaq as displaying a particularly strong “activist” bent relative to other early Hasidic masters. See, also, Jerome Gellman’s critique of Schatz-Uffenheimer’s fuller thesis about quietism and Hasidic spirituality in his brief essay, “Hasidism as an Activism,” Religious Studies 42, no. 3 (2006): 343–49. 45 QL, vol. 1, va-yeshev.

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message is that both the tzaddiq and the hasid must do all they can—each at his or her own “rung”—to faithfully activate and shape God’s blessing, and then let go and trust in the Infinite. While Levi Yitzḥaq clearly believes in the transformative powers of Israel, and especially of the Hasidic holy man, he also insists that there is Another, whose depths (or “heights,” to use the vertical imagery more common in the Qedushat Levi) can never be fully penetrated by any human being. Therefore, trust in the Divine remains a core part of the Berditchever’s theological worldview. As he teaches, while God wants only to bestow goodness upon humankind (like the cow who “wishes to suckle” even more than the calf “wishes to suck,” b. Pesaḥim 112b), the unfolding of this process can be more complex than mere mortals can fathom.46 Much as the Berditchever is drawn to abstract mystical language about the Godhead—including voyages into ayin or of the shaping of divine bounty—he does not let go of his personal relationship with God. In this panentheistic worldview, the Creator lovingly invites the mystical leader to participate in shaping life, and revels in the creative efforts of the tzaddiq. And yet, there are limits to this relationship. God is infinite, and the human being—even the tzaddiq—is not. The devotee must, therefore, abide the mystery of YHWH.47 In this context, I am reminded of the words of the twentieth-century theologian and activist, Abraham Joshua Heschel—and a direct descendent of Levi Yitzḥaq—who stated that “Beyond all mystery is meaning,” and God alone bears this transcendent meaning.48

46 Ibid. 47 Commenting on the importance of epistemological humility, Levi Yitzak teaches that at the Burning Bush (Ex. 3) Moses proves himself worthy of the role of Israelite leader when he humbly asks God, “Who am I  that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt (Ex. 3:11)?” In an intentional misreading of the next verse, the Berditchever explains that in answering Moses, God states, “. . . this is the sign . . . ,” meaning that Moses’ self-effacing remark is itself the “sign” that the prophet is the right person for the job. Levi Yitzḥaq continues by saying that throughout his life, Moses was “always aware of his lack,” knowing that he did not fully comprehend God (appropriately the Divine describes Himself as “ehyeh asher ehyeh” in this biblical episode) or the ultimate “purpose” of his service to the Holy Blessed One. Expanding on this example, Levi Yitzḥaq states emphatically that all “true tzaddiqim” know that they have but a partial understanding of the Infinite, that they must continuously strive to reach a higher intellectual-spiritual “rung,” and that this growth process “has no end.” See, Ibid., shemot, 204. 48 Abraham J. Heschel, Who is Man? (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1965), 76–77. See also Arthur Green, “Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns,” Modern Judaism 29, no. 1 (2009): 62–79.

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Conclusion The aim of this presentation has been to investigate how Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev understands the power dynamic between the tzaddiq and God in the Qedushat Levi, specifically as it relates to the roles each plays in shaping the life of the Jewish community. This exploration emerged from a desire to understand to what extent the images of this early modern Jewish folk hero as a master of indignation and protest accords with the Master’s own teachings on leadership. As we have seen, the Berditchever rarely speaks disapprovingly of God or of the need for the tzaddiq to confront the Divine. However, as in the hagiographical literature, Levi Yitzḥaq does speak passionately about the obligation of the tzaddiq to defend and advocate vigorously on behalf of his community—as embodied creatures, living in a harsh world. When doing so, he adopts a more beseeching tone, rather than chastising God. There are several more teachings in which the preacher calls on the holy man to draw forth God’s blessing from above (“arousal from below”) and to upend negative heavenly decrees (“God decrees, but the tzaddiq overturns it”). Building on the teachings of his beloved mentor, the Great Maggid, Levi Yitzḥaq argues that God delights in such bold human initiative, even if it does not always appear to be the case from a surface perspective. Dovetailing with this subject are the Berditcever’s teachings on tzimtzum and “natural” miracles. The holidays of Hanukkah and Purim serve as important touchstones in this context, as they point to God’s veiled presence in the world and His subtle action in human affairs. Further, figures like the Maccabees and Mordecai and Esther demonstrate the need for the mystical leader to play a pivotal role in shaping the destiny of the Jewish people in an epoch of divine concealment. In the Qaddish and related tales, the Berditchever is depicted as a daring and impassioned figure, whose is courageous enough even to face down the Almighty to protect the Jewish people. In the Qedushat Levi, the tzaddiq is no less loving or valiant, but his power ultimately rests in his nuanced understanding of God’s deep desire for the holy man to act boldly on behalf of Israel. It is within this theological framework that the Hasidic leader arouses, induces and pleads with the Divine, drawing forth blessing and overturning harsh edicts for his, and God’s, cherished people.

Ebn Leader

Leadership as Individual Relationships: A Close Study of the No‘am Elimelekh

The No‘am Elimelekh, both as a book and as a figure, is generally recognized as one of the formative influences on the development of later Hasidic leadership.1 Notably, it is in his teachings that the term tzaddiq most clearly and consistently becomes the descriptor of a social role rather than or alongside a description of personal piety.2 While many studies have been dedicated to the No‘am Elimelekh’s teachings on leadership, it is my hope to add something to our understanding of the relationship between his model of leadership and the leadership models of the Hasidic masters in the generation that preceded him. 3 1 Rabbi Elimelekh Weisblum of Lizhensk (1717–1786/7). The book was first published in Lvov, 1788. All citations of the No‘am Elimelekh (henceforth NE) in this article refer to the Gedalyah Nigal edition (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978). We do not have much historical data about the life of R. Elimelekh. See Nigal, No‘am Elimelekh, 9–11. 2 On this transition in the use of the term see Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 88–139. Arthur Green, “The Zaddik as Axis Mundi in Later Judaism” JAAR 45, no. 3 (1977): 327–47; and idem, “Typologies of Leadership and the Hasidic Zaddiq”, Jewish Spirituality, ed. Arthur Green, volume 2 (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1989), 130–36. 3 See Gedalyah Nigal, Hasidic Doctrines in the Writings of Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizensk and his Disciples, PhD dissertation, Hebrew University 1972, and the introduction to his edition of No‘am Elimelekh; Louis Jacobs, “The Doctrine of the Zaddik in Elimelech of Lizansk,” in Their Heads in Heaven: Unfamiliar Aspects of Hasidism (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005), 73–89; Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, “On the Essence of the Zaddik in Hasidism,” Molad 144–45 (1960): 365–68 [Hebrew]; and Mendel Piekarz, The Hasidic Leadership (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute 1999), 136–64 [Hebrew]. See also Rachel Elior, “Between Yesh and Ayin: the Doctrine of the Zaddik in the Works of Jacob Isaac, the Seer

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Recent study of Hasidic leadership in the generation following the Ba‘al Shem Tov (BeSHT) has mostly focused on the differences between Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch and Rabbi Ya‘aqov Yosef of Polnoye, the author of Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef (henceforth R. Ya‘aqov Yosef).4 In terms of social outlook, the most significant difference seems to be that R. Ya‘aqov Yosef understands the tzaddiq (though he rarely uses the term) to be functioning in a spiritually stratified society.5 It is only the rare few who have the unique qualities that allow them to engage in the most intense practices of close relationship with God, in this case, devequt and bittul. The majority of the people do not have the capacity to engage in such practices and must therefore draw close to God by attaching themselves in various ways to the individuals who do have such capacity. Movement of individuals between the two categories is extremely rare, if it is indeed at all possible.6 In contrast, the teachings of the Maggid do not describe such a stratified society.7 The same practice may be offered to the tzaddiq in one sen-

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of Lublin,” in Jewish History, Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada RapoportAlbert and Steven Zipperstein (London: Peter Halban, 1988), 393–455. Piekarz and Elior have articulated slightly different understandings of the sense in which the NE functions as the turning point between early and later leadership in Hasidism. For Piekarz later leadership, beginning with the NE, is devoted to the material wellbeing of the people. For Elior the distinction is mainly about the growing distance between the tzaddiq and the community, as in later Hasidism only the tzaddiq has to work for shefa—everyone else gets it by his merit. See Haviva Pedaya, “The Development of the Social-Religious-Economic Model in Hasidism” in Dat ve-Kalkalah, ed. Moshe Ben Sasson (Jerusalem, 1995), 311–24 [Hebrew] and her summary of the earlier research in Ibid., 316–17; Ron Margolin, Mikdash Adam (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005), 379–426 [Hebrew]; Arthur Green, “Around the Maggid’s Table: Tsaddik, Leadership and Popularization in the Circle of Dov Baer of Miedzyrzec,” Zion 78 (2013): 77–90 [Hebrew]. Margolin adds Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz as a third significant model that seems to share some significant elements with the NE. Mor Altshuler, The Messianic Secret of Hasidism (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), argues for Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel of Zlotshev as another important figure in the development of the model of the tzaddiq in that generation. In addition to the sources mentioned in above, see Gedalyah Nigal, Leader and Community (Jerusalem: Yehuda Publishing, 1962), 58–81 [Hebrew], who attempts to harmonize the statements about the gap with statements about raising the masses, at one point proposing that the joining of the two groups is an ideal that will only be realized in messianic times (60). Joseph Weiss has described this social outlook as characteristic of the pre-Hasidic maggidim of that generation. See Weiss, “The Early Development of the Hasidic Way” Zion 16 (1951): 84–85 [Hebrew]. An exception to this reading is Ada Rapoport-Albert, “God and the Zaddik as the Two Focal Points in Hasidic Worship” History of Religions 18, vol. 4 (1979): 296–325; and

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tence and to “all of Israel” in another. Overall the impression from the teachings of the Maggid is of one set of spiritual expectations even if not all people will realize them at the same level.8 It is, however, not entirely clear if this unified expectation expresses primarily an egalitarian outlook or a limited interest in expanding the teaching beyond the inner circle of disciples.9 Either way, responding to the actual growth of such an intense spiritual practice group into a mass movement is one of the main challenges to the leadership of the Maggid’s disciples.10 It is in this context that I would like to understand the leadership model of the No‘am Elimelekh. While some researchers think that the No‘am Elimelekh’s response to this challenge is to adopt R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s outlook,11 Ibid., “Hasidism after 1772: Structural Continuity and Change” in Hasidism Reappraised ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 84–87, assuming R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s social outlook for both the BeSHT and the Maggid though she does not base this in any of the Maggid’s writings. 8 Of course, the fact that some people devote themselves to the practices much more intensively then others creates differences both in their spiritual achievements and in their social roles. See for example the description of the master-disciple relationship in the teachings of the Maggid in Ariel Evan Mayse, Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezrich, PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 2015, 465–476. 9 See Joseph Weiss, Studies in Bratslav Hasidism (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974), 104 [Hebrew] and the critique of this position in Ada Rapoport-Albert, “God and the Zaddik,” 318–19. This disagreement is further echoed in the difference between Pedaya, “The Development,” 323–24, who thinks the Maggid is the driving force behind his students bringing Hasidism to the masses; and Green, “Maggid’s Table,” 85–86, who thinks that the Maggid reluctantly acquiesced to his student’s desire to do so. 10 See Pedaya’s interesting application of Victor Turner’s concepts of “structured” and “anti-structured” social movements to describe the challenges of a Hasidic movement transitioning from a ḥavurah (“an intentional group”) to a ḥevrah (“a society”); see Pedaya, “The Development,” 324–28. See also Miles Krassen, Uniter of Heaven and Earth (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), 163–216. Krassen offers the book Yosher Divrei Emet as one of the earliest responses to this process from a writer who presents himself as a follower rather than as a leader of the movement (p. 189). See also Ze’ev Gries, “From Myth to Ethos—Outlines for the History of Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk,” in Uma Ve-Toldoteiha, Vol. II, ed. Shmuel Ettinger (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984), 117–46 [Hebrew]. Green’s The Maggid’s Table is based on these premises, and offers a framework for charting the different disciples’ responses to this challenge. This framework is applied by Tsippi Kauffman, “Typology of the Tzaddiq in the Teachings of R. Abraham the Angel,” Kabbalah 33 (2015): 239–72. My work here should be seen in the context of that project. 11 Margolin, Mikdash Adam, 397, 425, and with a slightly different emphasis in Piekarz, The Hasidic Leadership, 141, 148. Piekarz writes: “For R. Elimelekh, as for R. Ya‘aqov Yosef and all the Hasidic masters that followed them, the religious and moral importance of the relationship to the tzaddiq is grounded in an elitist and extremely deterministic

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my impression is that he is actually attempting to articulate practical means by which to create communities modeled after his own experience sitting at the Maggid’s table. Ze’ev Gries has highlighted the centrality of mutual love and care in the circle of the Maggid, and how R. Abraham Kalisker attempted to reproduce this model in less than ideal circumstances.12 For the No‘am Elimelekh recreating an environment of love and shared purpose for a large community meant training tzaddiqim who were first and foremost teachers who share the same journey with their followers, accepting that each person is on a different stage of the path.13 In this article, I will try to demonstrate that the No‘am Elimelekh understands the capacity of the tzaddiq to bring about change in people’s lives to be dependent on the tzaddiq’s own inner work channeled through personal relationship and the sense of shared journey. When I say that for the No‘am Elimelekh, a tzaddiq is first and foremost a teacher, I mean that his primary investment is in bringing people to do the work themselves rather than doing the work for them. “Every person must work well himself to achieve true unity (yiḥud) . . . you must do it yourself and cannot (use) something done by others.”14 Elsewhere, the No‘am Elimelekh makes this point in relation to the well-known Talmudic social approach” (148). Careful reading of the sources Piekarz brings to support that claim demonstrates neither a deterministic social attitude, nor an understanding of the tzaddiq as doing the people’s spiritual work by proxy. I would never claim total consistency in the teachings of the NE, but although the teachings Piekarz cites emphasize the importance of connecting to the tzaddiq, in most of them the tzaddiq either teaches or inspires people to do their own work. “Their [the tzaddiqim] actions ignite people’s’ souls with love and fear of the blessed Creator” (NE, ki tissa, 276); “To connect to the tzaddiqim and learn from their holy deeds to be careful and vigilant and to understand truth” (NE, tazria‘, 309–10). Also, regarding one of the teachings Piekarz seems to accept Nigal’s claim that kelalut yisra’el functions as one of the names the NE uses for the tzaddiq; see Nigal, Hasidic Doctrines, 72. However, in this particular teaching (NE, devarim, 471–472) it can only mean the entire Jewish people. The teaching opens with the reminder that no person is without sin, and therefore a person should cleave to the entirety of the people of Israel, which are the tzaddiqim, “...which is called in the holy books—primordial Adam [i.e. Adam Kadmon—the divine Anthropos].” Clearly the NE is not calling here for cleaving to any individual person, but rather for a sense of belonging to the Jewish people. 12 Ze’ev Gries “From Myth to Ethos.” See also Mayse Ariel, “Moving Mezritsh: The Legacy of the Maggid and the Hasidic Community in the Land of Israel” in Jewish History (forthcoming). 13 In this I follow Nigal, who lists “the democratic element of the doctrine of devequt” as one of the elements the NE took from the Maggid. See Gedalyah Nigal, “Origins and Originality in the No‘am Elimelekh” in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies, ed. Avigdor Shinʾan (Jerusalem, 1973), vol. 3, 296. 14 NE, va-yishlaḥ, 97. This may also be the meaning of his teaching in ibid., devarim, 476.

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text—“The entire world is sustained for the sake of my son Ḥanina.” The No‘am Elimelekh’s reinterpretation of this text is striking, because in early Hasidic circles this is one of the classic texts used to describe the tzaddiq as a channel through which shafa‘ flows to the people:15 “Abraham was old, come into days . . .” (Gen. 24:1) This verse can be understood based on a Talmudic teaching: “The entire world is sustained for the sake of (bi-shevil) my son Ḥanina, while Ḥanina my son is satisfied with a bushel of carobs a week” (b. Berakhot 17b). I have heard people explain that the word bi-shevil means that Rabbi Ḥanina ben Dosa created a pathway (shevil) that opened up channels through which the whole world is sustained. This fits our way of interpretation, reading the text as it relates to our service of God. We see that some tzaddiqim engage in severe ascetic practices for many years. Through this they achieve great levels of piety. But there are others who do not follow such strict regimens and they too attain great piety and wholeness. The truth is, however, that they too have reached this place because of the [first] tzaddiq’s efforts. His strict discipline served to remove the separating barrier, sweeping aside the thorns, brambles, and briers that lay in the way, all the external elements that kept people from following this pathway to God. The tzaddiq’s efforts create the path, a distinct approach to serving the blessed One. The way provided by this path makes it easier for others to approach holiness and to walk in God’s ways. . . .This is the meaning of the verse: “Abraham was old, come into days.” “Old” refers to one who has attained wisdom (b. Qiddushin 32b). “Come into days” means that he has brought about unceasing compassion, for the word “day” implies compassion, as is known. . . . Our father Abraham, through his service, removed the great separating barrier, making it easier for others to approach God in this way. That is what any tzaddiq wants and longs for—that people be enabled to walk in God’s path.16

15 On the centrality of this rabbinic text in early Hasidism and its roots in the kabbalah of Cordovero see Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 198–203 and the earlier research cited there. Margolin in Mikdash Adam, 385 and 398, analyzes the use of this text separately by the Maggid and R. Ya‘aqov Yosef. Arthur Green notes significantly that in the Maggid’s teaching the tzaddiq is the channel not only for downwards flow (which is emphasized by Idel) but also for people to rise through him to God; see Green, “Axis Mundi,” 396. However, even the Maggid’s upward direction is very different than this teaching of the NE. 16 NE, ḥayei sarah, 56; translated in Arthur Green, Ebn Leader, Ariel Mayse and Or Rose, Speaking Torah (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013), vol. 1, 111.

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Although the No‘am Elimelekh opens with the teaching that the world is sustained by means of the path that is Ḥanina ben Dosa, he subtly re-interprets it to mean the world is sustained by following the path which Ḥanina ben Dosa has created. The tzaddiq has thus become the path breaker who should be followed by all others on their way to becoming tzaddiqim.17 This insight is key to understanding the place of the No‘am Elimelekh in the debate about leadership. The researchers who argue that the No‘am Elimelekh is adopting R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s social outlook18 seem to be reading the statements about the tzaddiq in the No‘am Elimelekh as descriptive. In their reading, the audiences of the teachings are the masses and the No‘am Elimelekh is describing the powers of leaders that they will follow. I propose a reading of the No‘am Elimelekh in which his teachings about the tzaddiq are read as prescriptive, addressed to people who are on the path to being tzaddiqim themselves, and prescribing that path to them. This reading of the No‘am Elimelekh is based on three characteristics of his teaching as represented in the book No‘am Elimelekh. First, as in the teachings of the Maggid, the No‘am Elimelekh lacks a clear distinction between instructions for tzaddiq and instructions for all people.19 This tendency is joined by many teachings that chart the path for the development of a tzaddiq from the beginner to the most advanced levels,20 and finally the description of the tzaddiq’s table as a place which sustains other tzaddiqim, 17 Though he clearly does not mean that people should imitate the tzaddiq, as the tzaddiq’s work has made it unnecessary for others to engage in the specific difficult practices that the tzaddiq has adopted. See also my comments on imitating the tzaddiq further on in this article. Of course this teaching should be seen in light the known tension between the NE’s ascetic tendencies and the anti-ascetic teachings from the BeSHT’s heritage. On asceticism in the NE, see the short treatment in Nigal, Hasidic Doctrines, 139–42; idem, “Origins,” 297, and Schatz-Uffenheimer, “The Essence of the Zaddik,” 369–70. The NE has a complex relation to ascetic practices, at times proposing that they may be appropriate at a particular stage of spiritual development (NE, bo, 192) or for particular personalities (NE, va-yyiqra, 292, inter alia) and he is aware of the dangers of engaging in such practices (ibid and qedoshim, 337). Another part of his complex attitude to asceticism are the stories about his own radical ascetic practices, see Yisrael Berger, Zekhut Yisra’el (Jerusalem, 2001), vol. 2, 1:2–5, 22–23. Perhaps in-line with the teaching cited here, the NE’s disciple, R. Qalonymus Qalman Epstein of Krakow reported that the NE ruled that asceticism was an inappropriate spiritual practice for the current generation except for unique cases. See Ma’or va-Shemesh, in the beginning of Haftarat Shabbat Shuvah. 18 See above. 19 Nigal, “Origins,” 296 and ibid., Hasidic Doctrines, 60–61. 20 This is a continuous theme throughout the entire book. See, for example, the beginning of NE, shelaḥ, 394–396, where Moshe is depicted as training the spies and guiding them

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who then go out and provide shefa‘ for others.21 The summary of all this is that in the No‘am Elimelekh we have a teacher addressing all people,22 calling them to advance on the path of the tzaddiq23 and a book that should be read as instructions for “becoming a tzaddiq and functioning as one.”24 As such it is not surprising that the No‘am Elimelekh has much to say about the role and quality of the social interactions between the tzaddiq and the community. Our focus on the social interactions will help highlight the ways in which the No‘am Elimelekh’s project is to train tzaddiqim who function in the social dynamic imagined by his teacher the Maggid, rather than the stratified society imagined by R. Ya‘aqov Yosef.25

The Personal Relationship Weiss pointed out that in its early stages (presumably meaning the BeSHT26 and R. Ya‘aqov Yosef), Hasidism adopted an understanding of the social through the process of becoming tzaddiqim, while emphasizing that this path is open to all people. 21 NE, va-yera, 44–45. This teaching is mentioned by Green, “The Maggid’s Table,” 97 n. 86. The fact that the NE uses the act of feeding students at the tzaddiq’s table as the image for Hasidic leadership supports Pedaya’s claim that one of the significant innovations of Hasidic leadership was that the tzaddiq fed his followers as opposed to the earlier maggidim who were fed by the people they served. See Pedaya, “The Development,” 352. See also NE, devarim, 475–76. 22 Though, of course, with the caveat that he was addressing Jewish males. 23 Which according to the NE begins with the person who breaks out of their qelipot (NE, yitro, 223–24) and continues through the highest spiritual rungs where the most basic battles must still be fought (NE, shemot, 170). 24 Green, ibid. For more on the differences between this approach and the approach of another student of the Maggid—Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi—see below. 25 Dubnov already characterized the Maggid as “educating teachers for Hasidism” as opposed to R. Ya‘aqov Yosef who created books. Shimon Dubnov, The History of Hasidism (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1944), 93 [Hebrew]. Although it is indisputable that the disciples of the Maggid became the next generation of Hasidic teachers, there is little in the writings of the Maggid to tell us that training teachers was central to his project, and if it was—how he went about it. It is only in the NE that we have a theory of teaching and leading articulated in instructions to the next generation of Hasidic leaders. 26 Etkes has demonstrated, that at least in relation to the work the BeSHT does in the supernal worlds, he sees himself as responsible for the entire Jewish people. His argument that the BeSHT’s reported positions on social issues such as the challenges facing Jewish leaseholders, Hasidic sheḥitah and his respect for simple people reflect the same sense of responsibility, while it may be true, is less convincing. The stories Etkes brings may well be an expression of a caring and compassionate relation to the people the BeSHT interacts with, which is important in itself but not identical to being

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context of the tzaddiq that was typical to the maggidim, or “preachers,” of that time. “The social unit of their theory of leadership is not yet the limited Hasidic community. It is rather the entire nation, the entire generation.”27 However, by the generation of the disciples of the Maggid it is generally accepted that each tzaddiq has a unique relationship and responsibility towards his followers.28 The first significant theological articulation of this relationship comes from the No‘am Elimelekh:29 “And he should take [a sheep] together with a neighbor who is near his home, based on the number of people” (Exodus 12:4). Why is it that sometimes people feel very close to each other and like each other very much, and sometimes many people are attracted to one individual, and yet sometimes we see even scholars who distance each other? The reason for all this is that people who were neighbors in Gan ‘Eden, whose souls sat together, will be responsible for all of Israel. See Immanuel Etkes, The Besht: Magician, Mystic and Leader (Waltham, Mass: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 79–112. Shachar adds the Maggid to the list of those who uphold one tzaddiq for the generation, though he does not develop that claim. Isaiah Shachar, Social Criticism and Communal Leadership in the Mussar and Darush Literature of 18th Century Poland (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Dinur Center 1992), 74–78 [Hebrew]. Rapoport has argued convincingly for the lack of central leadership from the beginnings of Hasidism, though even she acknowledges that there may be cases where we must distinguish between theological statements about one central tzaddiq and the political acceptance of a different reality. See particularly her discussion on centralist tendencies after 1772 in Rapoport, “Hasidism After 1772,” 109–119. 27 Weiss, “The Early Development,” 73. 28 This new structure is described by Schatz-Uffenheimer, “The Essence of the Zaddik,” 375–377; Nigal, No‘am Elimelekh, introduction, 22; and Rapoport, “Hasidism after 1772,” 101–140, particularly her discussion following page 126 which cites some of the same texts I bring here. Both Weiss, “The Early Development,” 8–60, and Pedaya, “The Development,” 322, comment on the importance of the Maggid’s shift from the wandering leadership of the pre-Hasidic maggidim, to a leadership anchored in one place to which the Hasidim travel. Pedaya has even proposed that this may be a result of the Maggid’s physical limitations, which presumably made travel difficult for him. Be that as it may, this structural shift may have been a contributing factor to the development of what Piekarz has called “tzaddiqist pluralism.” It is however important to note that when addressing the differences between Hasidic rebbes, Piekarz treats all ideological explanations, including this one, as de-facto justifications for an unfortunate situation; see Mendel Piekarz, Between Ideology and Reality (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1994) [Hebrew], 194 and The Hasidic Leadership, 52–54. 29 Although Rapoport writes that this teaching “is formulated in parallel in the teachings of several Hasidic leaders” her other examples are from R. Naḥman of Breslov and R. Qalonymous Qalman Epstein of Krakow, both later than the NE, the latter being his student; see Rapoport, “Hasidism after 1772,” 128 and n. 200.

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close and will like each other in this world as well. The verse “he should take with a neighbor” teaches that if you are a tzaddiq, and people follow you, and dwell with you in total love, this is a sign that [they were] “near his home”. That is to say, it is because they were close to your home, your dwelling place in Gan ‘Eden. And the verse goes on to explain that the “home” it is referring to is “based on the number of people”. That is to say, it is the chamber known as “guf” where the souls are all accounted for, and where they dwell until it is time for them to be created and enter the world. If people follow you, this is a sign that you are a tzaddiq.30

The No‘am Elimelekh’s explanation of the relationship between a tzaddiq and his followers is based on the Lurianic doctrine of the mutual responsibility of specific souls derived from a single root. While all souls are part of a primal “soul of Adam Ha-Rishon” (the primeval anthropos), that universal soul breaks down into smaller units, which are called roots, from which individual souls (or soul sparks) grow. Ada Rapoport has already pointed out that in Vital’s writings the responsibility derived from a shared root is manifest mostly in relation to transmigration—gilgul and ‘ibbur.31 The most important development of this idea in relation to the No‘am Elimelekh, is that these soul connections are manifest in social and emotional connections between people in this world.32 The No‘am Elimelekh instructs the per30 NE, bo, 198. 31 Gilgul in Vital’s writing refers to the migration of a soul-spark into a new soul configuration prior to a person’s birth. ‘Ibbur on the other hand describes the situation in which a soul spark joins another soul in the midst of a person’s life. See Rapoport, “Hasidism after 1772,” 127–28. 32 Vital alluded to this possibility when he writes of a spark being the Talmid Ḥakham surrounded by the smaller sparks of the same root which are “the mitzvah-doers, the merchants and the ignorant people” (Sha‘ar Ha-Gilgulim, 11 and ibid., 4). However this social aspect is not developed greatly and most of the practical interaction of soul-sparks for each other seems to happen at the soul level through various forms of reincarnation. See Gershom Scholem, On the Mystical Shape, 228–41. Bracha Sack traces the sources of Vital’s notion of mutual responsibility to the teachings of Cordovero, though in that context the primary sense of responsibility seems to be national and smaller contexts of responsibility are created de facto as when ten people gather for a minyan; see Bracha Sacks, “The Human as a Mirror and the Concept of Mutual Responsibility,” Da’at 12 (1984): 37–45 [Hebrew]. It is important to distinguish this notion of mutual responsibility deriving from a common soul-root from the teaching of raising an individual’s soul-sparks, described by Scholem, On the Mystical Shape, 228–50; and Moshe Idel, “The Tsadik and His Soul Sparks: From Kabbalah to Hasidism”, The Jewish Quarterly Review 103, vol.2 (2013): 196–240. Although both are rooted in Lurianic kabbalah, and both have been used to describe the relation between the Hasidic tzaddiq and his followers (see, for example, Tzofnat Pa‘ane’aḥ (Brooklyn,

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son seeking help in reviving her service of God to find a tzaddiq with whom she has a soul affinity, for “someone who is a “brother” in this world but distant in the supernal world will not be able to help you at all. It is only the tzaddiq who shares a soul-root with you that can be your true ­redeemer.”33 The transformative aspect of the No‘am Elimelekh’s teaching is that this soul affinity is identified by the feelings of love the two people have towards each other.34 This focus on the emotional relationship creates an additional shift in emphasis. In the Lurianic doctrine a soul-root relationship is set before the souls enter the world, and can be identified only by one who knows the secrets of the spirit world.35 In the No‘am Elimelekh’s description, recognition of the soul relation is derived from the emotional or spiritual experience of connection, even if theoretically it is predestined.36 Thus the recognition of a soul relation serves as de facto theological affirmation of the experience of a unique connection. In this light, we should also underNY: 1991) vol. 1, shemot, no. 8, 40, and the text from R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s Ben Porat Yosef cited in Idel, “The Tsadik,” 222)—the dynamics of the relationship are significantly different. The image of raising sparks that belong to a person’s soul is applied mostly to challenges facing the practitioner as manifest in one’s enemies, and to property and livestock. Tellingly, R. Ya‘aqov Yosef in the Tzofnat Pa‘ane’aḥ text cited above refers to the masses as the enemies of the tzaddiq, a sentiment not found in the NE. As such the person “at the center” is the only spiritual subject, acting upon the other figures and objects. Such an image of students could indeed be compatible with R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s social outlook. The NE however is tapping into a notion of mutual responsibility and support in which the tzaddiq is useful to others of his root primarily because he has advanced further along the path of spiritual development. 33 NE, be-har, 350–51, cited in Rapoport, “Hasidism after 1772,” 126. Elsewhere the NE seems to imply that the prayer of a tzaddiq on behalf of another person can only be effective if they share a common soul-root; NE, va-yeḥi, 142–143. This stands in contrast to Idel’s assertion that he has not found texts that connect the tzaddiq’s drawing down shefa‘ to the soul family of the Hasidim; see Idel, Hasidism, 206. 34 In both teachings mentioned above, the NE identifies this teaching as something found ba-sefarim. His source may well be the commentary of Or Ha-Ḥayyim on Ex. 32:27 as cited in the notes to the Sod Yesharim printing of the No‘am Elimelekh (Monsey, NY: Eastern Book Press, 2012), vol. 1, 103, 147. This source is much closer to the NE’s articulation than anything I have found in the Lurianic writings. 35 On Luria fulfilling this role see Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), esp. 150–86 and 300–58. 36 In the NE’s various descriptions it is not only the people who are thought to have an emotional response to the tzaddiq. The tzaddiq is also expected to have an emotional relationship to the people—he is distressed at their troubles, cannot bear to see them suffering, and loves every individual. It is however not always clear when the NE is discussing a general character trait of the tzaddiq (i.e., “he loves every person”) and when he is discussing concrete relationships. See for example NE, shemot, 161; ibid., qoraḥ, 422; va-yishlaḥ, 92–94.

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stand the closing sentence of this teaching. Rather than advocating for simple populism, the No‘am Elimelekh is saying that if people experience this kind of relation to you, you can (and probably already) serve in the role of tzaddiq for them.37 In describing the interactions of leaders with the people, R. Ya‘aqov Yosef famously contrasts “people of form” with “people of matter” and “the scholar” with “the masses.”38 The No‘am Elimelekh rarely uses such terms.39 The No‘am Elimelekh most commonly speaks of the relationship between the tzaddiq and Yisra’el—Jews—or Adam, a person.40 It is important to note that these terms are inclusive insofar as the terms Yisra’el and Adam also apply to the tzaddiq himself.41 By using these terms, the No‘am Elimelekh is emphasizing the role of the tzaddiq as a member of the community rather than in contrast to it. These terms could also be understood to imply the role of the tzaddiq in relation to the entire generation (and at times, the No‘am Elimelekh, indeed, uses them in this way). However, the centrality of 37 It is important to remember that for the NE being a tzaddiq is both a personal journey and a social role. For example, when defining the point at which a person becomes a tzaddiq (as in NE, yitro, 223–224), he defines the tzaddiq in terms of personal piety. There the NE says that when a person turns away from the vanities of time, overcomes herself, shakes off their dust and invests great effort in serving God they immediately achieve a great rung and they are a complete tzaddiq. It is interesting to note that this definition focuses on the spiritual process the person is engaged in, rather than the achievement of any kind of perfection. I would claim that even in this case the NE has his eye on the social role of the tzaddiq, defining his personal achievements in such a way that allow for common experience with the people she is serving. On the importance of common experience, see below. 38 Samuel Dresner, The Zaddik: The Doctrine of the Zaddik According to the Writings of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoy (New York: Abelard-Schuman Press, 1960), 136–137; Nigal, Leader and Community, 58–65. 39 I have found the terms hamon (“the masses”) and peshutim (“the simple people”) in their various forms no more than 10–15 times in the entire book. Nigal offers a list of descriptions used for the broader community, though he confusingly includes peshutei ‘am as both a rare and a common name; see Nigal, Hasidic Doctrines, 72. 40 Most often in the sense of a Jewish individual. These terms are used dozens of times. Another term the NE uses frequently is ‘olam, which means “world” in Hebrew, though he is often using it in the Yiddish sense of ‘oylem, meaning “masses” or “community.” See Green, “The Maggid’s Table,” 85 n. 45. This was already noticed by Nigal, Hasidic Doctrines, 72 n. 2. This use is especially clear when the NE uses verbs in the plural form referring to the singular ‘oylem. For example: “When the tzaddiq is separated and distant from all worldly matters, it is difficult for the ‘oylem to be elevated by him, for he has nothing in common with them”; see NE, qoraḥ, 416. 41 See above. Regarding the term Yisra’el, see NE, shemot, 160; qedoshim, 326, and many others.

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the personal relationship in the No‘am Elimelekh leads me to understand his use of Yisra’el and Adam in a more limited way, relating to the specific community he is serving, and emphasizing the commonality with the people rather than defining the role as serving the entire generation.42

Commonality Another expression of the centrality of the soul-root relationship to the role of tzaddiq in the No‘am Elimelekh is his emphasis on the importance of shared experience and connection between the tzaddiq and the community. This emphasis creates the particular shade of the No‘am Elimelekh’s use of the term ‘averah lishmah—“a sin for God’s sake,”43 and the theory of the descent of the tzaddiq, both of which he shares with the Hasidic leaders and maggidim of his era. When talking about the capacity to influence and bring about change, the No‘am Elimelekh often returns to the principle that “something can be activated only by something that is similar to it.”44 When applied to the work of the tzaddiq, this means that a tzaddiq’s capacity to change anything in another person’s life depends on having “commonalities and a connection”45 to that person. This kind of connection is possible only when the tzaddiq and the person share at least the most basic dynamic of spiritual life—the struggle with sin: The tzaddiq facilitates the flow of blessing. A tzaddiq who wants to benefit people must cleave to them in order to bring about the good that they need. Any person who wants to benefit another cannot do so fully unless 42 It is worth mentioning that the phrase tzaddiq ha-dor never appears in the NE. The notion of a great tzaddiq in a generation does appear a few times in his teachings, but it interchanges with the plural—the great tzaddiqim of the generation. The tendency to speak of “the tzaddiqim of the generation” as both plural and singular, has been noted in relation to other early Hasidic masters by Weiss, “The Early Development,” 84, and discussed by Rapoport, “Hasidism after 1772,” 87 n. 33. 43 On the origins and development of this term in rabbinic literature see Yuval Blankovsky, Sin for the Sake of God: A Tale of A Radical Idea in the Talmudic Literature (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2017) [Hebrew]; and Scholem’s classic article—“Redemption through Sin,” The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York: Shocken Books 1971), 78–141. See also some comments on the later development of the concept in Tsippi Kauffman, In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah Be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009) 220–223 [Hebrew]. 44 NE, liqqutei shoshanah, 529. 45 NE, shemot, 163.

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they are connected in total unity. A tzaddiq must therefore connect to all the people of Israel in order to benefit them. Yet how can the tzaddiq do this with a sinner (Heaven forbid)? Even a sinner needs the divine flow and vitality, but how can the tzaddiq connect completely to the sinner? This is why the Talmud speaks in praise of “a sin for (God’s) sake.” For the tzaddiq also sins, albeit in God’s service, and through this creates the possibility of a connection with the sinner and can help him as well.46

It is important to recognize that in the context of the struggle with sin as a common basis, ‘aveirah lishmah, a sin for God’s sake, is only one of the modes of connection that the No‘am Elimelekh offers the tzaddiq. In many teachings he requires that the tzaddiq find this common ground through self-awareness. “Because of the primordial sin, caused by the serpent, it is impossible to be perfect” and therefore the tzaddiq “must always find in himself shortcomings, sins and transgressions. As a result of this investigation of his own deeds he will be attached to the world (community) below, and through this connection bring down to them all the good they need.”47 The tzaddiq’s self-awareness of his own shortcomings is what allows him to connect to the people he is serving and benefit them. The No‘am Elimelekh emphasizes again and again that the tzaddiq himself is always in process.48 More than any other personal trait, the No‘am Elimelekh is concerned with 46 NE, nasso, 377. Translation in Green, et al., Speaking Torah, vol. 2, 13. 47 NE, mattot, 458–59. See a very similar teaching in NE, tzav, 299–300. 48 This is highlighted multiple times throughout the book. In one teaching he strikingly applies the image of the burning bush that is never consumed to the ongoing struggle of the tzaddiq with his weaknesses: “An angel of Y-H-V-H appeared to him in flaming fire. . . . The evil urge is also called an angel or messenger of God. It shows itself to the tzaddiq all wrapped in fiery enthusiasm, as though fully transformed into goodness. From amid the thorn bush: from formerly having been such a “thorn” in his life. He looked and saw that the bush was burning in fire. Even though you see that evil urge all dressed up in passion for the service of God, know that the bush is not consumed. Watch out for it until your dying day. . . .”; see NE, shemot, 171; trans. Green, et al, Speaking Torah, vol. 1, 172. This image of the tzaddiq contrasts strongly with the teachings of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi who presents the tzaddiq primarily as a person who has resolved his inner struggles. See for example the first chapter of his Sefer HaTanya and the discussion in Moshe Halamish, “The Tzaddiq-Community Relationship in the Teachings of Shneur Zalman of Liadi” in Society and History, ed. Yehezkel Cohen (Jerusalem: Ministry of Education, 1980), 78–92 [Hebrew], including the distinction he makes between the Tanya and the other writings of Shneur Zalman. See also Naftali Lowenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 54–58; Immanuel Etkes, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi: The Origins of Habad Hasidism (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2015), 103–4; and Arthur Green, “The Maggid’s Table,” 103–5.

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arrogance, among other reasons, because a misguided sense of achievement creates a gap between the tzaddiq and the people he is serving and undermines his ability to impact their lives in any meaningful way.49 Close to these teachings on self-awareness are the teachings regarding a sin that God sends or that “happens” to the tzaddiq. These can be explained in relation to the spiritual process of the tzaddiq himself or in relation to the tzaddiq’s interaction with the people. At the personal level, unintentional sin is useful as a reminder to the tzaddiq not to rely on his previous achievements and as a counter-force to the tendencies of self-satisfaction and arrogance.50 Sin can also “happen” to the tzaddiq as a result of his interaction with sinful people, a category Weiss has described as “circumstantial sin,” caused by the connection to the people, as opposed to “purposeful sin” engaged by the tzaddiq in order to create the connection.51 In one place, the No‘am Elimelekh teaches, “After the tzaddiq achieves the [spiritual] rung we have described, he must rebuke others. However, the reality of rebuking 49 In contrast to this, most of the studies on the place of humility in Hasidism focus on arrogance as an impediment to devequt, which is of course also very present in the NE. Notably Mendel Piekarz, Between Ideology and Reality. See Margolin’s critique of Piekarz in Mikdash Adam, 178–179 [Hebrew]. To Margolin’s critique I would add that Piekarz assumes a priori that all Hasidic leaders espouse a deterministic elitist social outlook that leads to a rather harsh, and not always, justified (as I hope I have demonstrated in relation to the NE) reading of their teachings about the tzaddiq. See particularly, Piekarz, Between Ideology and Reality, 199–227. See also Margolin’s analysis of the place of humility in the teachings of the Maggid in Mikdash Adam, 188–189; and R. Ya‘aqov Yosef in ibid., 248–50. Cf. Idel, Hasidism, 107–14. 50 This is true whether the sin originates in the personal shortcomings of the tzaddiq as in NE, shelaḥ, 393 or it originates in his connection with sinful people as in NE, lekh lekha, 27. This is distinct from the category of sinning for the purpose of repentance discussed by Piekarz mainly in that in the context of personal development the NE deals only with unintentional sins and never condones sinning for the sake of personal elevation. See Mendel Piekarz, The Beginning of Hasidism: Ideological Trends in Derush and Mussar Literature (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1978), 175–203. The NE is probably explicitly rejecting such a position when he writes in the context of ‘aveirah lishmah: “The first step of the evil-inclination’s tempting those who do evil, is to tell them that doing this is a mitzvah when in truth it is a great sin”; NE, toledot, 63. In this he echoes many in his generation and earlier who addressed this idea as a temptation of the evil inclination. Piekarz, Beginning of Hasidism, 185, 195, 198. 51 Weiss, “The Early Development,” 82–88. Piekarz, focusing on R. Ya‘aqov Yosef, distinguishes between the tzaddiq’s willful sins and those that are forced upon him (yeridah me-onnes). The latter category makes sense in the context of R. Ya‘aqov Yosef who believes in the concept of tzaddiq ha-dor who is inevitably responsible for the entire people of Israel. It seems less relevant for the NE for whom the sins of the tzaddiq, although originating from the connection to the sinners, are the result of the decision to enter the relationship. See Piekarz, Beginning of Hasidism, 296–298.

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others is that their strange thoughts (maḥshavot zarot) fall [into the mind] of the one rebuking.”52 This would seem to evoke the well-known parable of the BeSHT demonstrating that a person cannot clear away the garbage without getting dirty.53 But more characteristically the No‘am Elimelekh describes the sin of the tzaddiq not as a result of the connection with the people but rather as enabling the connection with the people, even when the initiative comes from God. “Out of great compassion, the holy blessed One sends a sin to the tzaddiq so that he too can enter the state of qatnut.54 And following, when the tzaddiq invests great effort in raising himself back to his sanctity, he raises the rest of the world/community with him.”55 This is because, for the No‘am Elimelekh, the departure from the supernal worlds in order to engage with the people and their needs is not in itself a sin: The tzaddiq ascending spiritual rungs may be in constant attachment (devequt) to the blessed Creator. In this state of attachment to God the tzaddiq’s mind is totally disconnected from people. As a result, the tzaddiq cannot respond to people’s needs, for he is not part of this world at all. The tzaddiq must give up the attachment to God from time to time to be able to respond and act for human needs. This could be in prayer—praying for physical health, or providing financial needs or other sorts of benefit— they are all the tzaddiq’s responsibility. So when the tzaddiq occasionally relinquishes his attachment to God he is actually doing a great mitzvah and fulfilling God’s will.56

52 NE, va-yera, 44 and 47 (though later in that teaching the NE offers a different possibility). 53 The parable itself does not appear in the NE, although it is quoted in his name (quoting the Maggid, quoting the BeSHT) by Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman Epstein, Ma’or va-Shemesh, shemini. For more on the context of this parable see Kauffman, In All Your Ways, 532–534, and Yehudah Liebes, On Sabbateanism and its Kabbalah: Collected Essays (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute 1995), 264 [Hebrew]. 54 On the use of the terms “qatnut” and “gadlut” in the NE see Schatz-Uffenheimer, “The Essence of the Zaddik,” 369. 55 NE, va-yeḥi, 146. The same principle is articulated in ibid., shemot, 162–63; qoraḥ, 416–17, and others. 56 NE, shelaḥ, 401. See also NE, toledot, 64–65; vayeḥI, 147; and nasso, 376–78. In all these teachings the NE refers to the tzaddiq’s engagement with people positively as it‘aruta de-letata, arousal from below, which brings about the realization of God’s intention in creating the world. See also his description of Avraham wondering if it is permissible to relinquish dveikut for the needs of Israel, and realizing that he must; see NE, va-yera, 48.

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While relinquishing devequt may feel dangerous and may cause great sorrow to the tzaddiq,57 defining it as a mitzvah and as God’s will reflects a different approach than focusing on the interaction with people in and of itself as the tzaddiq’s downfall.58 For the No‘am Elimelekh, downfall and sin are not inherent to the connection itself.59 The tzaddiq has a responsibility to occasionally disengage from devequt to create the common ground which enables the connection, whether at his own initiative or by means of a God-sent sin. This brings us to the most radical descriptions in which the No‘am Elimelekh utilizes the term ‘aveirah lishmah—a sin for God’s sake—to describe the tzaddiq initiating sin in order to create the connection with the people. Yuval Blankovsky has helpfully articulated two ways in which the term ‘aveirah lishmah is understood in Jewish tradition and scholarship. The first, which he calls a cautious reading of the term, understands ‘aveirah lishmah as a two stage process in which a transgression creates the possibility of fulfilling a mitzvah. This understanding does not undermine the fundamental distinction between the categories of commandment and transgression. The radical reading of the term undermines that distinction by proposing that, under certain circumstances, committing a sin is

57 See his description of leaving devequt: “He goes down to Egypt—mitzrayim which is also the letters of metzar yam—sea straits. The supernal holiness which had been for him [expansive, like] an ocean, now feels to him narrow and tight” in NE, lekh lekha, 27. 58 See Weiss, “The Early Development,” 77–78, who describes the connection to the people as the essence of the tzaddiq’s descent. This is also Nigal’s understanding of R. Ya‘aqov Yosef whom he understands as limiting the sins of the tzaddiq to actions and thoughts that happen in the context of the sermon. Nigal, Leader and Community, 79–91. See, however, Kauffman’s critique of Nigal (and Dresner) for not acknowledging the more radical expressions of this idea by R. Ya‘aqov Yosef. Kauffman, In All Your Ways, 542. Note however the teaching in Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef (New York: 2001), vol. 5, ki tetze, 264, which speaks of the arrogance involved in reaching out to sinners as Hasidut. 59 Whether the interaction with people poses a danger to the tzaddiq or not, depends on the individual tzaddiq. See NE, shelaḥ, 403–404. The one exception to this principle in the NE might be his explanation of the meaning of Yonah fleeing from God as his disconnecting from devequt, and defining Yonah’s action as ‘aveirah lishmah. However, even in that case the sin may be the resulting inability to deliver the prophecy rather that the act of disconnection itself. It is also worth noting that the NE condones relinquishing devequt for the purpose of connecting people to God while in this story Yonah is relinquishing devequt to keep the people of Ninveh disconnected from God (through this benefiting Israel); see NE, shelaḥ, 396–398.

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fulfilling God’s will. This is a single-stage understanding, for the transgression itself has a positive outcome without necessitating a follow up act.60 In relation to early Hasidism, much of the research has focused on understanding the relationship and differences between the uses of the term in Sabbateanism and Hasidism. While most Sabbatian uses clearly belong in Blankovsky’s second category, the situation in early Hasidism is less clear.61 The No‘am Elimelekh, however, would seem to belong clearly in the first category. I have not found that he ever recommends sin as a path of personal growth, nor does he speak of sparks or divinity that can be found in sin.62 The only cases I have found in which the No‘am Elimelekh offers some justification for sin are when the transgression creates a connection that allows the tzaddiq to raise another person. Even in those cases the No‘am Elimelekh does not hold that the transgression is transformed into a mitzvah. Transgression is a sacrifice that the tzaddiq takes upon himself out of love for another person. “Even if the tzaddiq thinks there is an element of sin in a particular action, he will do it, as long as it is for the good of Israel. He is even willing to be in purgatory (Gehennam) for their sake, for he desires nothing but their good.”63 The No‘am Elimelekh’s teachings on this topic continue to emphasize the personal relationship. It is not enough for the tzaddiq to have a general experience of sin. It is rather necessary for him to be able to experience some aspect of the sins of the particular person he is trying to help: “Behold, I have set you as a god to Pharaoh . . .” (Exodus 7:1) The words behold and God in this verse need some explanation. There is a principle that applies to a tzaddiq who wants to elevate a lowly person, and separate that person from his low and meaningless ways. A misguided attachment can only be disrupted with something of similar nature. This means that the tzaddiq must descend from his rung, and approach [the misguided person] with something similar [to the mistake of the person]. RaSHI, in 60 Blankovsky, A Sin for God’s Sake, 10–14. 61 See the analysis of the earlier scholarship on this topic in Kauffman, In All Your Ways, 523–540. Kauffman has analyzed the use of the term in the teachings of the BeSHT, the Maggid, R. Ya‘aqov Yosef, R Efrayim of Sudilkov, and R Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl, focusing on the relation between ‘aveirah lishmah and the notion of divine immanence; see ibid., 530–71. 62 Kaffuman notes that both notions can be found in the writings of both the Maggid and R. Ya‘aqov Yosef. The NE often speaks of raising sparks as a justification for engagement with the material world, but never as a justification for transgressions. 63 NE, balaq, 448.

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his comment on the verse “he goes out to the water” (Exodus 7:15) explains that Pharaoh claimed that he was a god. That is why the blessed One told Moshe—“I have set you as a god for Pharaoh”, meaning that you must behave god-like, and bring about signs and miracles in Pharaoh’s presence. By this means you will overcome his misguided notion—that he is a god, for he will think that you are a god. But you have to be very careful not to get caught up in pride, heaven forbid. This is the application of the rabbinic teaching—“a sin for God’s sake is greater.”64 A tzaddiq must descend from his rung and do a sin for God’s sake in order to shatter the misguided notions of a lowly person. For example: if a person habitually lies, the tzaddiq can break this (behavior pattern) only with something similar. Heaven forbid the tzaddiq should actually lie, but our rabbis taught that it is permissible to change one’s answer in relation to questions about learning, or in this case the tzaddiq could say that he is not a tzaddiq—which is of course a lie. But he is committing a sin for God’s sake in order to break the power of falsehood.65

Although it is important for the No‘am Elimelekh to minimize the actual transgressions that the tzaddiq takes upon himself, it is clear that in this case, as in the following teaching, the tzaddiq is initiating a sinful action in order to establish common ground with the person to whom he is reaching out: “Or if one touches a human impurity, anything which causes a person impurity, and it be hidden from him, [when later] he knows and is guilty . . .” (Lev. 5:3). This alludes to an evil person who has become impure through sins and mistakes. This gives power and vitality to the supernal persona of unbounded evil. The tzaddiq wants such a person to turn back from sin, and not transgress any more. This is achieved by “Or if one touches” meaning that the tzaddiq must “touch”—approach this matter himself, as explained previously. Further, the verse teaches us that it is to be done in this way: “and it be hidden from him”—do it in secrecy and hiding. . . . “[When later] he knows”: This process it will become known to the sinner, who will feel the sin and be overcome by a great fear and motivation for repentance. . . . “And is guilty (ve-ashem)” this means the same—the person will be devastated (meshomam) and confused by the act done, and will not do it again.66 64 b. Nazir 23b. 65 NE, va-era, 185. The NE uses speaking falsehood as an example for aveirah lishmah also in ibid., toledot, 63. 66 NE, va-yyiqra, 291–292; based on the translation in Green et al., Speaking Torah, vol. 1, 254.

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In the previous paragraph, the No‘am Elimelekh had explained in more general terms that the way to deal with evil is to come in contact with that evil and work on rectifying it internally. This paragraph offers the practical implication of that principle in relation to another person. The phrase “mateh ‘atzmo”—to approach this matter himself—is the same phrase used in the teaching from parashat va-era quoted above. The No‘am Elimelekh is therefore teaching that sharing the sin is not enough in itself to raise the sinner, though it may create a common language. The tzaddiq can help another person by struggling to raise himself from the very same sin, or at least something similar. It is interesting to compare this teaching with the parable often brought by R. Ya‘aqov Yosef to address the same question. In that parable, the king’s son is so immersed in village life that none of the nobles can convince him to come back to the palace. Finally, one of the nobles dresses up as a villager and is able to engage the King’s son in conversation long enough to convince him to come home.67 In this parable, the wearing of the garment is a ruse. It may be uncomfortable for the noble and he may desire a hot shower afterwards, but it does not require inner transformation. In some ways, the understanding of the descent as a costume actually reinforces the difference and gap between the tzaddiq and the people.68 The No‘am 67 This parable appears multiple times in the writings of R. Ya‘aqov Yosef. See the discussion in Dresner, The Zaddik, 177–80, and Kauffman’s interesting comment on the prevalence of the garment image in R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s discussions of this topic; see Kauffman, In All Your Ways, 543 n. 52. 68 This aspect of the teaching as presented by R. Ya‘aqov Yosef has been noted by Kauffman, In All Your Ways, 543. It is fascinating to compare this teaching of the NE to another teaching of R. Ya‘aqov Yosef which Dresner, The Zaddik, 193, cites as an example of R. Ya‘aqov Yosef requiring the tzaddiq to “understand that the sin he sees in others is in himself too.” Careful reading of that text (found in Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef, vol. 5, ki tetze, 215–16) reveals that the main subject of the teaching is the tzaddiq, not the sinner. For the NE the attempt to connect to the sinner and help her up leads the tzaddiq to search for a similar sin in herself, and perhaps even initiate one. For R. Ya‘aqov Yosef, witnessing another person sin is God’s way of notifying the tzaddiq that he must repent for a sin that he may not even be aware of. This is in line with R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s notion of students as sparks belonging to the tzaddiq, who is the only true religious subject, as discussed above. This may also explain why, for R. Ya‘aqov Yosef, it makes no sense to initiate sin in order to raise another person. Piekarz was troubled by the contradiction in R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s teachings between his strong expressions against the tzaddiq practicing intentional sin and the few places that he affirms such a practice. I have noticed that in all the texts Piekarz cites, R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s strong objections to intentional sin are in the context of sinning for the sake of the people, while the few places he affirms this practice he is discussing the inner

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Elimelekh’s requirement that the tzaddiq struggle with sins similar to the sins of the person he is addressing reflect a deep sense of shared journey and mutual responsibility. “By awakening his own inner [self] their inner [self] is awakened and they can approach holiness together.”69

Bringing Down Shefa‘ Another interesting element in this description of the tzaddiq bringing about change in another person is the indirect nature of the impact. As opposed to R. Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s parable, in which the sinner’s connection with the prince is created because he perceives the nobleman as a villager, in the No‘am Elimelekh’s teaching, the tzaddiq’s sin and the work on it is hidden from the sinner. The No‘am Elimelekh often expresses the opinion that the most significant part of the work of the tzaddiq is hidden from the person being impacted. This is true whether the tzaddiq is facilitating the flow of fear and love, repentance, children, health and sustenance, sweetening harsh judgments or annulling decrees. In all these cases there is an external interaction with the person, but the real result comes from the internal process the tzaddiq engages, which may have impact only over time.70 His attitude to rebuking sinners is a good example of this dynamic. The tzaddiq must do the work of entirely connecting himself to the sinner, and struggling with the same sin in himself as described above. But the external rebuke is not necessarily directed towards the sinner at all. It is directed either toward the community at large or by the tzaddiq to himself71 and by virtue of the internal work done by the tzaddiq impacts process of the tzaddiq. Nigal, Leader and Community, 79, does not note this distinction in his analysis of the text from Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef, presumably assuming that both intentional and unintentional sin discussed by R. Ya‘aqov Yosef in that teaching are in service of the people. I see no real justification for this reading, as the service to the people is mentioned only in the sections where he affirms unintentional sin. A possible exception to this general rule might be Tzofnat Pa‘ane’aḥ, shemot, vol. 1, no. 8, 40–47; see Piekarz, The Beginning of Hasidism, 291–298. 69 NE, shemot, 163. 70 This should be distinguished from the reference to hidden and revealed service of God, which Kauffman has shown in the Maggid. In the text cited by Kauffman the service of God done by an individual is hidden from others by virtue of being enacted in the material world. Thus the entire process is internal. In the NE the tzaddiq is hiding from another the processes that will impact their life. Kauffman, In All Your Ways, 343. 71 NE, emor, 341 where the tzaddiq rebukes the entire community for the sake of one person. NE, shelaḥ, 393 and shemini, 303, where the tzaddiq rebukes himself for his own sins in the presence of the community to inspire them. Cf. NE, emor, 341–42

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the person who needs to hear it. Still, the No‘am Elimelekh teaches, it is important to remember that real impact is the result of the ongoing relationship (consistent and regular conversations) rather than a single intervention or rebuke.72 As I intend to demonstrate, versions of the same dynamic exist in the No‘am Elimelekh’s description of channeling material benefits. It is the merger of internal and external processes that leads me to propose that ideas about indirect communication may offer a helpful framework for understanding the impact of the tzaddiq, alongside the magical or mystico-magical model described by Moshe Idel and Jonathan Garb.73 While Idel’s articulation of the mystico-magical model and Garb’s framing of the tzaddiq as part of the conversation on shamanism are helpful in understanding certain aspects of the No‘am Elimelekh’s teaching, neither brings into consideration the impact of the relationship between the tzaddiq and followers. While the discussions of drawing down effluence and trance explain the tzaddiq’s function as “a cosmic magician,”74 they are not as helpful in understanding the ways in which the tzaddiq brings specific benefit to specific people.75 For Idel, magic is “a system of actions and beliefs that assumes the possibility of material gains using techniques that cannot be empirically where the tzaddiq confesses publicly to other’s sins as if they were his own. For the NE’s students testimony of such indirect rebuke see the quotations in Avraham Bonem, Ohel Elimelekh (Brooklyn, NY: 2003), 19, 23, 51. One story, preserved in ibid., 124, tells that besides rebuking himself for others sins, he would also direct rebuke at his greatest students for the same purpose, though not all were capable of taking that role. The NE also considers the dangers in this mode of speaking. The tzaddiq’s words are open to ungenerous interpretation, and people may lose respect for the tzaddiq who presents himself (or his students) as a sinner. Still, the NE teaches, these considerations should not deter the tzaddiq from speaking in this way; see NE, liqqutei shoshanah, 582, and ibid., 580. 72 NE, bo, 187. 73 See Idel, Hasidism, passim; and Jonathan Garb, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 74 Idel, Hasidism, 203. 75 An exception to this would be Garb’s discussion of magical healing, Shamanic Trance, 91–96. Idel, Hasidism, seems to allude to this issue twice in the book (133 and 206), claiming that it must be addressed as part of the practical life experience of Hasidim rather than the theoretical presentations in the teachings. This may be related to his assumption that: “the theoretical literature reflects mainly the mystical relationship between the tzaddiq and the divine, whereas the narrative part of the Hasidic writings reflect the social dimension of Hasidism, namely the relationship to his community of the mystic who returns to this sphere in order to contribute to its improvement”; see (ibid., 8–9) At least in relation to the NE, I have tried to show that this is not the case.

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explained” and whose “actions are by nature vague.”76 My argument is that the centrality of the relationship in the No‘am Elimelekh creates additional possibilities for understanding the process of bringing about gains “that cannot be empirically explained.”77 One such possibility is articulated in discussions of Kierkegaard’s notion of indirect communication as applied to education, and to religious education in particular. Although a comparison to Kierkegaard’s theory of indirect communication is beyond the scope of this paper, I have found specific elements useful in understanding the dynamic described by the No‘am Elimelekh. In particular the notion that true religious growth is not best served by direct communication. Rather, within the relationship between teacher and student indirect modes of communication allow room for authentic growth, or in religious terms, for revelation to become an element of teaching.78 As we will see, according to the No‘am Elimelekh material gain is related to spiritual gain, so the connection to educational theory may not be that farfetched. Of course, the No‘am Elimelekh uses the language of mysticism and magic, but this has to be understood in the larger context of Hasidic use of such language.79 It is in relation to this framework that I understand the No‘am Elimelekh’s insistence that there is always a hidden aspect in the communication of the tzaddiq and the follower. 76 Moshe Idel, “Judaism, Jewish Mysticism and Magic,” Mada‘ei Ha-Yahadut 36 (1996), 40 [Hebrew]. See also his discussion in idem, Hasidism, 212–15. 77 It worth noting that in her analysis of the NE’s leadership model Rivka Schatz made strong claims regarding the non-magical nature of the tzaddiq’s work in the NE. SchatzUffenheimer, The Essence of the Zaddik,” 372, 375. See also Garb’s proposal to utilize psychoanalytic research into nonverbal transmissions of affect in this context. 78 On Kierkegaard see Roger Poole, Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication (Charlottesville VA: University of Virginia Press, 1993). I found James Whitehill, “The Indirect Communication: Kierkegaard and Beckett” in Art and Religion as Communication, ed. James Waddell and F. W. Dillistone (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1974), 79–93, especially helpful. For application to religious education see Sara Little, To Set One’s Heart: Belief and Teaching in the Church (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1983), 59–66; and Maria Harris, Teaching and Religious Imagination (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), 66–75. I hope to continue to develop this framework in the future. 79 In other words, in reading the NE’s theory of leadership one has to go beyond the psychologizing of kabbalah to the “sociologizing” of kabbalah. Rivka SchatzUffenheimer, “The Essence of the Zaddik,” 377, wrote as much: “In this case the tzaddiq addressed the social realm, which is the lower realm of his mystical activity. Addressing this realm brought about a shift in the meaning of concepts such as the tzaddiq’s descent or fall. These concepts were transferred to the social realm and thus became contact points which could be used to explain the relation between the absolute and the corporeal, God and humanity, a mystical mission and a social one.”

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For the tzaddiq to function as the channel of flow, he must “grasp both heaven and earth.”80 As has been noted,81 the No‘am Elimelekh does not focus much on ayin and the ecstatic nullification of self, and he may not have added much to the articulations of “grasping heaven” or devequt as offered by his teacher the Maggid. The No‘am Elimelekh’s innovations are in the articulation of the significance of “grasping earth”—the practice of devequt with the people who are the recipients of shefa‘: To understand how it is that the tzaddiq prays, and that his prayer is responded to . . . When the tzaddiq prays for another person, he prays with his entire 248 limbs and 365 sinews without any external thought. And he connects to the 248 limbs of the person he is praying for and sanctifies him.82 This prayer evokes a response, because—why is it that a person lacks anything? It must be a punishment for a sin committed with one of the 248 limbs. But when the tzaddiq envelopes and covers the person together with himself, the limbs of the person become one with those of the tzaddiq. As a result the person is re-established, and as the sin has been fixed the punishment goes away.83 The holy blessed One said to Moshe: All Israel should bring themselves to you and unite with you as one person. And you, the tzaddiq who contains them all, through giving your life and achieving unity work . . . to make it all whole and complete.84

This teaching offers a few interesting insights on the process of bringing down shefa.‘ First, as mentioned above, the cleaving to the person is as crucial an element as the cleaving to God. The tzaddiq must invest in creating unity with the person he is praying for just as he must invest in creating unity with the One he is praying to. Having established the importance 80 Zohar 1:31a, inter alia. This expression is commonly used in the writings of the circle of the Maggid though it does not appear explicitly in the NE. 81 Idel, Hasidism, 116. 82 This seems to be an application of the Lurianic practice of cleaving to the souls of dead tzaddiqim while prostrating on their graves. Of course, the major difference is that in this case both people are alive. Regarding the Lurianic practice see Sha‘ar ha-Yiḥudim 4:4, Paul Fenton, “Sufi Influences on Safadian Kabbalah” Maḥanayim 6 (1994): 170–79 [Hebrew] and Fine, Physician of the Soul, 259–77. 83 NE, emor, 344–45. See similar descriptions in ibid., mi-ketz, 126; and va-yetze, 79–81. The latter teaching is interesting in that is seems to be emphasizing the emotional content of the connection, literally “warming himself to them.” 84 NE, ḥuqqat, 437. This sentence appears at the end of a teaching describing the means by which the tzaddiq brings health, children and sustenance to the people, focused mostly on the unification with God.

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of the relationship to the work of the tzaddiq, the second teaching quoted demonstrates that this is not a one sided process, but rather that the people also reach out to unite themselves with the tzaddiq. The other thing to highlight is the connection between the spiritual transformation and the material gains. Throughout the book, the boundaries between these two kinds of impact are fluid.85 As articulated in this teaching, the flow of bounty is ever-present, depending only on the absence of sin to manifest in one’s life.86 As a result, the process of bringing material shefa‘ into people’s lives always has more than one layer of interaction. In some cases the tzaddiq may be explicitly engaging with people about their material needs while working on internal transformation. Other cases may call for explicit work on spiritual development, while the agenda of material gain remains hidden: There are times that the tzaddiq must engage in external acts and draw the interiority into them. For example: When a person needs sustenance or healing, the tzaddiq says—you will have sustenance or healing. But the tzaddiq is drawing into him [the person] the blessed name YHVH, by means of his [i.e., the tzaddiq] intention and prayer. Then God affirms the tzaddiq’s [external] statement.87 The tzaddiq who wants to draw down bounty for the community must hide that from the prosecutor in words of Torah. Hopefully you can find even one tzaddiq like that in a town . . . The tzaddiq must hide the speech of what he needs to do so that it is not examined by the prosecutor. In this way he can bring great bounty for all of Israel.88 85 When Piekarz discusses the NE’s positive attitude to material benefits, he emphasizes the ways in which material benefits lead to spiritual benefits. As I demonstrate here, it is also true to say that in the NE’s thought the spiritual change leads to material change, which is why I think the relation between these types of benefit is best described as fluid. Piekarz, Hasidic Leadership, 141–146. See also Garb’s discussion on the connection of material and spiritual benefits in his Shamanic Trance, 94–95. Note however that the NE’s student, R. Ya‘aqov Yitzḥaq of Lublin explicitly objects to working on teshuva prior to facilitating material benefit. See the texts cited by Elior and her conversation, including the necessity for further study on understanding the relation between the teachings of the NE and those of the his disciple; see Elior, “Yesh and Ayin.” 86 In one place the NE may actually say that in order to facilitate this flow in a person’s life the tzaddiq must change the person—not external factors. See NE, va-era, 184. There the NE explains that the speech of the tzaddiq to the person is all that is needed to bring salvation from foreign powers, and there is no need to engage with those powers at all. 87 NE, va-era, 181; and ibid., devarim, 474–75. 88 NE, ‘ekev, 494; cf. ibid., va-yeḥi, 150 and ḥuqqat, 434.

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The subtle, unspoken layer of the interaction is communicated through the tzaddiq’s investment in connecting with the people, and the people’s connection careful attention to both what the tzaddiq says and what he does not say. To receive from the tzaddiq you must attune yourself to the internal processes of his spiritual life of which only the external results are visible. This involves watching as well as listening: “Moshe would take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far from the camp . . . and whomever sought God would go out to the tent of meeting . . . and when Moshe went out to the tent all the people . . . would watch, until he entered the tent” (Exodus 33:7–8). The tent alludes to holiness and to the shekhinah which is called “a tent”. Our master Moshe worked at elevating holiness and the shekhinah. “And pitched it outside the camp”, meaning that even things that are outside the camp, material things that are external to holiness, Moshe would tilt them towards, and bring them into holiness . . . “and whomever sought God would go out to the tent of meeting”, of course, all God-seekers went out and worked on this path themselves. How did they do this? “and when Moshe went out to the tent, etc.” The most important thing to learn from a tzaddiq are his actions. Watch and pay attention to his holy deeds and this will awaken holiness in your heart as well, to begin serving the blessed One.89

However, because the tzaddiq cannot do a person’s work for them, it is very important to distinguish between being inspired by the actions of the tzaddiq and imitation. This necessitates a subtle observation of the tzaddiq and the ability to distinguish between the physical actions and the spiritual orientation driving them. “You might think that the (physical) movement itself is beautiful, and it is an art of its own. This is not so, rather the movement is the result of the great effort of soul cleansing and the tremendous desire to serve God. The beautiful and comely movement is a byproduct of this work.” Imitating the behavior of the tzaddiq without this distinction is not only prohibited, it is akin to idolatry.90 But careful attention to the hidden layers of the tzaddiq’s speech and presence will help bring about personal transformation, which in turn will open you to the shefa‘ you want to receive. 89 NE, ki tissa, 280–81. The NE also discusses the inspiration one can receive from seeing the face of the tzaddiq and from just being in the tzaddiq’s presence; see NE, liqqutei shoshanah, 560 and elsewhere. Garb, Shamanic Trance, 112, brings this up in the context of telepathic transmission, but the descriptions in the NE seem very different than the Lurianic practices he described in Jonathan Garb, “The Cult of The Saints in Lurianic Kabbalah,” Jewish Quarterly Review 98, no. 2 (2008): 209–210. 90 NE, emor, 347. See also ibid., qedoshim, 330–31; and ki tissa, 278.

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Conclusion In this paper I have tried to demonstrate the importance of personal relationship and love to the leadership of the tzaddiq as described in the No‘am Elimelekh. The No‘am Elimelekh ascribes a great deal of power to the tzaddiq, which has led some researchers to the assumption that the No‘am Elimelekh accepts the social outlook of R. Ya‘aqov Yosef, in which the tzaddiq is a different category of person than the followers. In my understanding, the No‘am Elimelekh is attempting to create a model of leadership that preserves the love and sense of shared journey he experienced with the Maggid, while serving a much broader community that is less invested in the spiritual work. As such one of the most powerful tools the tzaddiq has for impacting people’s lives is his indiscriminate love: You could still ask: Why is a tsaddik’s prayer more effective than the prayer of any other person? Indeed the sages wrote: “if there is a sick person in your home, you should approach a sage to pray” (b. Bava Batra 116a). Why couldn’t any person pray and reconfigure the letters? This is because the Torah was created with love, as we say “the One who chooses the people Israel with love.” A tsaddik also loves both God and every person in the world. For example, R. Yoḥanan said: I greet every person in the marketplace, including gentiles, before they have a chance to greet me (b. Berakhot 17a). Most people are not like this, and therefore they do not have the power to reconfigure the letters. Only a tsaddik who loves everyone has that power.91

This particular model of leadership seems to have been very difficult to apply, and may have led some of the No‘am Elimelekh’s students to adopt R.  Ya‘aqov Yosef ’s social outlook.92 Still, even as the tzaddiq came to be understood as categorically different from the followers, the establishment of love at the core of the relationship between the tzaddiq and his followers may have become the No‘am Elimelekh’s most enduring contribution.

91 NE, va-yishlaḥ, 93, translated in Green, et al, Speaking Torah, vol. 1, 130–131. See my analysis of this NE teaching in Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections, eds. Lawrence Fine, Eitan Fishbane, and Or N. Rose (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2010), 119–28. 92 This is at least the implication of current understandings of the role of the tzaddiq in the writings of R. Ya‘aqov Yitzḥaq of Lublin. See Piekarz, Hasidic Leadership, 165–90, and Rachel Elior in “Yesh and Ayin.”

Naftali Loewenthal

Letter to Riga: Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn’s Meditative System for a Young Woman

In January, 1939, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880–1950), the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, then resident in Otwock, near Warsaw, wrote a letter to a young woman in Riga, Chaya Sima Michaelover (or Michaelson). The letter was a response to her recent missive to him, in which she asked what she could do “to fill the emptiness of action.”1 Chaya Sima2 was a member of the Aḥot ha-Temimim group, which had been set up in Riga in 1937 as an educational format in which girls could 1 Her phrase, as quoted at the beginning of the letter, is “le-malot et ha-reiqut be-ma‘asim”. See Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Scheersohn, Iggerot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1983), vol. 4, 468–472. 2 I regret that I have not been able to discover her date of birth, nor what happened to her in the course of the war. One fears the worst. A photo of the Aḥot ha-Temimim group in Riga exists, in Yahadut Latvia, Sefer Zikaron, ed. B. Eliav, M. Bubah, A. Kremer (Tel Aviv, 1953), between pages 240–241, no.67. This photo was reprinted in Yiddishe Heim of Kislev 5757 (Dec. 1996) vol. 32, no.3: 121 in an article (pages 23–28) based on a phone conversation with Pessia Pizov in Krasniarsk, with indication of the names of each of the girls in the group, one of whom was Chaya Sima (2nd from left in front row; Pessia Pizov herself is on the extreme left of the back row). Regarding the establishment of the Riga group of Aḥot ha-Temimim, see Rabbi Shalom Ber Levin’s introduction to Iggerot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 4, 10–13, and Naftali Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic of Spirituality in Hasidism” in Within Hasidic Circles, Studies in Hasidism in memory of Mordecai Wilensky, eds. David Assaf, Israel Bartal, Elchanan Reiner (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1999), *7–*65, particularly *44–*49.

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study Ḥabad Hasidic teachings. Some two decades after Sara Schenirer’s founding of Beit Yaakov in Krakow, which did not include overtly mystical material on its curriculum, Aḥot ha-Temimim was breaking new ground. The girls studied the spiritual talks and discourses of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak and may have also studied Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi’s Tanya.3 Shortly before writing her question about ‘the emptiness of action’ to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, Chaya Sima had been involved in translating a letter by him from Hebrew to Yiddish.4 In 1938, this Yiddish translation was published in Riga with the title “On the Moral and Educational Significance of Ḥabad Hasidism, a reply by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to a letter from Germany.” It is helpful to consider the contents of this letter as providing a form of introduction to Chaya Sima’s spiritual path. In some ways, R. Yosef Yitzchak’s tract on meditation, addressed directly to her, seems to function as a response to issues that are raised in this earlier letter, which she translated. The “letter from Germany,” from a correspondent who has not been identified, asks R. Yosef Yitzchak how to bring about a spiritual rejuvenation for “assimilating and enlightened” German Jewish youth, for whom the Jewish religion is “dry,” and enquires whether the Hasidic teachings of Ḥabad could be used for this purpose. R. Yosef Yitzchak’s reply presents two contrasting features of the Ḥabad perspective on Judaism. On the one hand, there is a strong insistence on the need for practical observance of the mitzvot, emphasizing the virtues of simplicity and purity of heart without any intellectualist ramifications. On the other there is a striking depiction of early Ḥabad Hasidism as a path of intense, otherworldly spirituality. The Ḥabad followers of the first Ḥabad leader, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, are described as “spending several hours of the day in hitbodedut (a term which usually means solitary meditative thought) for a number of days—and especially nights—of the week . . . each according to his ability.” What was this hitbodedut? R. Yosef Yitzchak continues: 3 The girls in the Brooklyn group of Aḥot ha-Temimim set up in 1938, studied Tanya with Rabbi Yohanan Gordon. See Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic,” *49. 4 .See the introduction to volume 4 of R. Yosef Yitzchak’s letters, 12, no. 25. The Hebrew letter, dated Nisan 5696 (1936) is in Iggerot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1983) vol. 3, 532–542. It was published three months later in the Tammuz 5696 issue of Ha-Tamim, 47 (189), a Ḥabad rabbinic journal published in Warsaw under the aegis of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, helped by his son-in-law Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson.

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Letter to Riga    NAFTALI LOEWENTHAL

This hitbodedut was not an affliction of the body, nor a melancholy penance, on the contrary, it was delightful for them in a remarkable way, effecting a spiritual joy and a sublime love... Through this [i.e. hitbodedut], not only did they move away from the swamp of materiality, but they would ascend into a realm of purity and translucence where they would gaze at the beauty of the Divine with a clarity of mind and understanding.5

R. Yosef Yitzchak goes on to say that some of these early Hasidim lost all personal interest in worldly life; the fulfillment of their sexual responsibilities as married men became the expression of duty and “benevolence” towards their wives, rather than physical desire. These highly elevated Hasidim, says R. Yosef Yitzchak, were few in number; but they had considerable influence on the other followers of Rabbi Shneur Zalman, so that all the Ḥabad Hasidim saw the essence of life as “Form overcoming Matter” (tigboret ha-tzurah ‘al ha-ḥomer), the spiritual overcoming the physical. R. Yosef Yitzchak writes that this slogan applies to each person according to his situation, “for every person should long for that which is beyond them, and should desire and yearn to rise from level to level in doing good, in thought, in speech and action, acquiring good personality traits, and [spiritual] ideas.” Continuing his description of the first generation of Ḥabad, R. Yosef Yitzchak goes on to say that this slogan influenced large numbers of both men—and women. We will consider below the effect of this interesting comment. As regards the “assimilating and enlightened” Jewish youth of Germany, R. Yosef Yitzchak states that while the study of Ḥabad thought is open to them, with its implicit spiritual and otherworldly quest, a sine qua non is the practical observance of the mitzvot. Thus, says R. Yosef Yitzchak, although during the century and a half since the publication of Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s Tanya the teachings of Ḥabad had spread “world-wide,” nonetheless: “this study requires initial preparation of fear of Heaven and observance of the practical mitzvot, which are the basis of the Torah . . .” This proviso, which is emphasized again at the close of his letter, indicates that R. Yosef Yitzchak was worried that Ḥabad thought, studied by contemporary German Jews, could easily be treated as a form of abstract philosophy, without being anchored in Jewish practice. It is interesting that in a second letter to the same recipient he does offer to enter into 5 Iggerot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 3, 539.

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correspondence with anyone who wishes to enquire about Ḥabad teachings, implying that this offer stands regardless of that person’s level of observance.6 However the basic message is that full adherence to the practical mitzvot is expected before one embarks on the path of Ḥabad spirituality. At this point we will not consider the interesting implications of this text as regards the religious rejuvenation of westernized Jewish youth, nor the question of the nature of R. Yosef Yitzchak’s depiction of early Ḥabad Hasidism, particularly his inclusion of women in the spiritual quest. Rather let us simply consider the possible effect of this tract for Chaya Sima Michaelover, the young woman in Riga who is studying it, translating and publishing it in the late 1930s. There is the path of simple, dedicated action of the mitzvot; and there is another path, entailing hitbodedut, solitary meditative thought, the transcendence of material desires, and a constant yearning to rise higher. The text provides a teasing hint that this path might be relevant also for a woman, who generally might be seen as excluded from the spirituality of Hasidism.7 6 Iggerot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 3, 543–4. 7 On the question of the role of women in Hasidism, see Nehemia Polen’s “Miriam’s Dance: Radical Egalitarianism in Hasidic Thought,” Modern Judaism 12 (1992), which includes a critical response to Ada Rapoport-Albert, “On Women in Hasidism, S.A. Horodecky and the Maid of Ludmir Tradition,” in Jewish History: Essays in honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: Peter Halban, 1988), 495–525. See also N. Polen, translation with introduction and commentary The Rebbe’s Daughter: Memoir of a Hasidic Childhood, Malkah Shapiro (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2002); idem., “Rebbetzins, Wonder-Children, and the Emergence of the Dynastic Principle in Hasidism” in Steven T. Katz, ed., The Shtetl: New Evaluations (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 53–84. See also Marcin Wodziński, “Women and Hasidism: A ‘Non-Sectarian’ Perspective.” Jewish History, vol. 27, no. 2/4 (2013): 399–434. Regarding women in Ḥabad see Stephanie Wellen Levine, Mystics, Mavericks and Merrymakers: An Intimate Journey Among Hasidic Girls (New York and London: New York University Press, 2003); Naftali Loewenthal, “Womanhood and the Dialectic of Spirituality in Hasidism”; idem., “From ‘Ladies’ Auxiliary’ to ‘Shluhot Network’: Women’s Activism in 20th Century Habad,” A Touch of Grace: Studies in Ashkenazi Culture, Women’s History, and the Languages of the Jews, presented to Chava Turniansky, ed. Israel Bartal, et al (Jerusalem, 2013), 69*–93*; Ada Rapoport-Albert, “The Emergence of a Female Constituency in Twentieth-Century HaBaD,” Hasidic Studies: Essays in History and Gender (Liverpool: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2018), 368–426; and idem, idem., “From Woman as Hasid to Woman as ‘Tsadik’ in the Teachings of the Last Two Lubavitcher Rebbes,” Hasidic Studies: Essays in History and Gender (Liverpool: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2018), 427–470. See also Tsippi Kauffman’s contribution to the present volume.

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Letter to Riga    NAFTALI LOEWENTHAL

At this point we can consider the direct personal communication between Chaya Sima and R. Yosef Yitzchak. The background of the earlier text helps us understand the force of her question about what should she do in order “to fill the emptiness of action.” In R. Yosef Yitzchak’s earlier letter the Ḥabad path was being presented in a dual form: simple action of the mitzvot, contrasting with intense personal spirituality. Is she completely barred from the latter? Or is it in some way relevant to her? We can imagine her thinking: after all, the text did mention women. As an active member of Aḥot ha-Temimim, Chaya Sima no doubt fulfilled the preliminary requirement: she did observe the practical mitzvot. Yet she longed for more. Could she go further? The Rebbe responded to her request with what amounts to a tract on meditation in study, imparting a method to “be bonded with the soul . . . with the essence” of the teaching one is studying, aiming to achieve an inner ethical transformation and cerebral delight.8 R. Yosef Yitzchak employs a phrase found in the letter to Germany: that Form should overcome Matter. According to that letter, this defined the general goal of Ḥabad Hasidism in its first generation. R. Yosef Yitzchak presents this to Chaya Sima as the goal for which she should strive. At the same time he makes the claim that the meditative system expounded in this tract would link the outermost level of the person, their actions—of the mitzvot—with the inner level, the point at which the soul delights in the unity of the mind with the idea—iḥud ha-masig ve-ha-musag. R. Yosef Yitzchak’s letter is, in a sense, about Torah study. But he dismisses conventional modes of traditional study, which, he says, emphasize either covering a great quantity of material, or focusing on detailed niceties of the text, why this word is written plene and another written defectively, or why a certain two words are juxtaposed. He recommends, by contrast, a mode of study in which one explores the same theme repeatedly, seeking to reach ever more profound levels within it or beyond it. The main content of his tract for Chaya Sima concerns the method for reaching these depths. However, it begins on a different note, that of seeking inner ethical transformation.

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Iggerot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 4, 468–72.

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Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s Letter (translation) By the Grace of G-d 20 Tevet [5]699 [January 11, 1939] To the student Miss Chaya Sima, ‘may she live’9 Otwock Blessing and peace10

Replying to your11 letter of the fourteenth of this month [i.e. 14 Tevet, or January 5, 1939], [asking] what you should do to fill the emptiness of action (as you put it). It is hard for me to understand to what you are alluding, and it is well known that a clear answer can come only in response to a clear question. If you will express your question in detailed terms then with the help of G-d, an answer will come12. Now, as regards one’s general service through which a person strives to improve his attitudes and emotional qualities, it is necessary to have a wellfounded basis and a clear path. In one of the Siḥot (whether handwritten or printed)13 this has already been discussed. Just as one has to know one’s deficiencies, one also has to

9 A conventional phrase blessing the person mentioned. This form or its masculine equivalent began to be employed by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s father, Rabbi Shalom Dovber (1860–1920). It became standard practice in the letters of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak and of his successor Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel. 10 Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s convention is to use this phrase when addressing a woman, but “Peace and Blessing” when addressing a man. See Shulḥan ‘Arukh, even ha-‘ezer, 21:6. The phrase “Blessing and Peace” occurs in the liturgy. Cf. the blessing Ahavat ‘Olam before the morning Shema, and the passage added during the Days of Penitence to the final blessing of the ‘amidah. 11 In the Hebrew, the third person is used at several points in this text: e.g., “her letter.” For ease in comprehension this translation uses the second person instead. However, the translation follows the text when it employs the masculine gender and does not substitute phrases signifying gender equality. 12 This statement could be seen as an invitation to the recipient to continue the correspondence with him and to speak more freely about specific issues that troubled her. 13 The Siḥot mean Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s own talks, which were being transcribed and published in pamphlet form, often in Yiddish. Many were later collected in Liqqutei Dibburim (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1957). The reference to handwritten teachings might indicate the presence of manuscript transcriptions of his talks, which may have been copied and disseminated among his followers.

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Letter to Riga    NAFTALI LOEWENTHAL

know one’s good points.14 Someone who thinks he has no good quality is as mistaken as one who thinks he has no deficiency.15 Each person inasmuch as he is a human being, must have both positive and negative qualities, whether in his intellect or his emotions and the task of man is to heal his deficiencies, and to make Form dominant over Matter—as regards one’s soul-powers16 and senses, [as expressed] in one’s emotions or negative habits. The beginning of the healing is the knowledge and the intellectual recognition of what is truly good, and what is truly bad. [Then] one should criticize oneself,17 in all soul-powers, senses, emotional qualities, and the ‘garments of the soul’18 of thought, speech, and action. [This criticism] should be like that of a craftsman examining the parts of an object which needs repair. He notes to himself which of the parts require repair, and which need to be changed. The repair can only be achieved through very careful and organized effort with just one [of the parts] at a time, not with all of them together. When one part has been fixed, one proceeds to the second part, and so on. True recognition of good and bad comes through devoted study and meditative attention. For example, [consider someone] who is studying an intellectual topic which is relevant to putting right his deficiencies. The theme of study might be either the negativity of that deficiency or the positive gain implied by the corresponding good point, that is, the opposite of the deficiency. After one knows that topic well, so that it is clear in all its 14 Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak often presents this idea. Rabbi Shalom Ber Levin, the editor of the Hebrew text, cites a number of references including Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s Iggerot Qodesh, vol. 1 (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1982), 66; ibid., vol. 2, no. 515, 306; ibid., vol. 3, no. 776, 318; and no. 825, 485. 15 Note the parallel concept of the “good point” within each person, taught by Rabbi Naḥman of Breslov (1772–1810). See his Liqqutei Moharan (Jerusalem, 1969) 1:282. 16 Simply “powers” in the text, but meaning the “ten powers of the Soul” which in Ḥabad thought and elsewhere in Hasidic literature mean the ten Divine Attributes (the sefirot) as they are expressed in a person’s soul. See Tanya, part 1, ch. 3; and ibid., part 4, sec. 15. The ten ‘powers’ are Wisdom (inspiration/a starting point of knowledge), Understanding (contemplation), Knowledge (commitment), Kindness, Severity, Mercy, Endurance, Submission, Dedication, Fulfilment. 17 Self-criticism is an important theme in Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s thought and can be seen as a point where his Ḥabad theosophy joins with Mussar. See his Principles of Education and Guidance, trans. E. Danziger (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1995), chapters 3–5, 5–11. 18 This way of perceiving a person’s behavior—that his or her thought, speech and action are to be considered as ‘garments’ whereby the soul expresses itself—is presented in Tanya, part 1, ch. 4.

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details, and one can speak about it in broad terms,19 then is the moment to return to consider that topic with deep intellectual effort. This meditative attention (‘iyyun),20 leads to the unification of the thinker and the idea. Then the desired healing [of the deficiency] follows.21 Many mistakenly think that the right way to learn is to study a great amount: the person learns a great quantity of material, whether many pages or many topics. In truth this is not the case. The main [expression of] devotion to study is to study one topic many times over, until that topic is clear to the person in all its smallest details, so that one can speak about it as if, with the skill of one’s words, one were painting a scene. And many mistakenly think that truly deep study is when one examines the words which are written defectively, or which are plene, or one considers which words are adjacent to each other, or the occurrence of puns, and similar. But in truth this is not the case. Deep cerebral study is when one joins with the soul of the idea, which is the essential nature of the idea. Every idea and concept must have a body and a soul: the body of the idea and concept, the soul of the idea and concept.22 Although even the bodies of ideas and concepts are spiritual, nonetheless, thank G-d for His kindness that He has graced us with Wisdom (Ḥokhmah), Understanding (Binah) and Knowledge (Da‘at), and our sacred teachers [the earlier Ḥabad leaders] have taught us how to use Wisdom, Understanding, and 19 This is an interesting way to define mastery of an intellectual topic. See the discussion below, following the translation of the letter. 20 This attempts to convey the meaning of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s term ‫עיון‬. It implies deep cogitation and has mystical overtones. See Tanya 1:49 70a, “as it says in Etz Haim that the unity of the kiss yiḥud ha-neshiqin is mainly in the unity of HabaD with HaBaD, and that is ‘iyyun of Torah’.” Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak also uses the term in the simpler sense of ‘study’. 21 During the 1930s Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak encountered a number of doctors and spent time in various sanatoria (see his Iggerot Qodesh, vol. 3, introduction, 7–8). He may well have encountered innovative therapeutic techniques and it is possible that the idea expressed here, that through intellectual cogitation, inner psychological transformations take place, was informed by this experience. At the same time one can also see this idea as expressing a root concept in Ḥabad thought: that tiqqun ha-middot (“repair” of one’s inner traits) comes about through the process of contemplation. But usually that process concerns rechanneling an emotion or drive in a positive rather than negative direction. The formulation as presented here, of a cognitive process leading to a seemingly instant transformation, is unusual. 22 Compare with the formulation of Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel (known as the Tzemaḥ Tzedeq) in his Derekh Mitzvotekha (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1991), viddui u-teshuvah, ch.1, 38b, which describes a transgression as having a body and a soul. The Zohar speaks of the body and soul of the Torah (Zohar 2:152a).

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Letter to Riga    NAFTALI LOEWENTHAL

Knowledge.23 Thanks to all these it is within our power to recognize and distinguish one spiritual [aspect] from another. [Thus we can define] true ‘iyyun, which is unification with the soul of the idea. The path to reach this kind of meditation (‘iyyun) is through practice: one trains one’s mind to focus deeply on one concept with great depth and for a considerable time. Gradually this practice will become second nature. Then one will find delight for one’s soul in the unity of one’s consciousness with the concept (be-iḥud ha-masig ve-hamusag). The main delight is that through much practice one will be able to use this power whenever one wishes. How can a person train himself to dig down [inwardly] and reveal this wonderful skill? So that he will be able to use it whenever he wants, just as he uses his most ordinary faculties? The Sages of blessed memory have already said, on the verse(s) “it is not in heaven... and it is not across the sea” (Deut. 30:12–13) “it will not be found in the proud of spirit, or in one who broadens his heart like the sea.”24 This “pride of spirit” and “broadening of the heart” are not the forms of these qualities which are to an extent included among despicable traits which a person, inasmuch as he is a human being, has to distance from himself and uproot like a poisonous leprosy which has an indelible effect on anyone who touches it.

23 Emphasis added to convey the sense of the original. The author might be referring to the process described in Tanya Part 1 ch.3, fol.7b, which leads from an initial stage of simple cognition termed ḥokhmah (Wisdom), through binah Understanding, contemplative investigation of the idea, to da‘at (lit. Knowledge) internalization and commitment to the implications of the idea (as in the scriptural phrase ‘and Adam knew Eve’, Gen. 4:1). 24 See b. ‘Eruvin 55a: “Rava said: ‘It is not in the heavens’—[Torah knowledge] will not be found in one who exalts his mind about it like the heavens, and it will not be found in one who broadens his mind about it like the sea. Rabbi Yoḥanan said: ‘it is not in the heavens’—it will not be found in the proud of spirit, ‘and it is not across the sea’, it will not be found in merchants and traders [NL’s trans.]” We see that Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak has combined the statements of Rava and of Rabbi Yoḥanan, and has also substituted ‘heart’ for ‘mind’. He several times uses the specific formulation we find here: see Sefer ha-Ma’amarim (5)704–5, 6–7—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1986), 32 (para. 13 of the series of discourses beginning Min Hameitzar, 5705), a discourse of 1944, and in ch. 6 of his last discourse Bati le-Gani (Sefer ha-Ma’amarim (5) 710, Brooklyn: Kehot, 1970), 120, published in 1950.

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[By contrast], this [variety of] pride of spirit and breadth of heart can be found also in [certain] Torah scholars, of whom our rabbis of blessed memory say, that true Torah will not be found among them.25 But, rather: ‘the thing is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart to do it’ (Deut. 30:14). This means, that by understanding the concept of the three garments of the soul: Action, Speech, and Thought, it becomes very easy to achieve ‘iyyun.26 Behold, in each of the three garments of the soul—Thought, Speech, and Action—there is the quality of Radiance and Vessel.27 Although, at first sight, in each of them the radiance—which is the radiance of Intellect—is the same, the vessels of Thought, Speech and Action are different from each other. The Vessel of Action is something which is not of the nature of the person. That means that the radiance of the Intellect, which is an expression of the spiritual forces within the person, is enclothed in something which is not the actual person. The Vessel of the garment of Speech is composed of letters. They are of the nature of the person, but they are separate from his essence, and they are manifest on an external level. The Vessel of the garment of Thought are letters which are from the Essence of the nature of the person. Not only are they not manifested externally, they are hidden from other people and are only revealed to the person himself. These three Vessels are distinguished from each other in their material expression: thus we could say that the material of the Vessel of Speech is more pure than the purity of the material expression of the Vessel of Action, which is comprised of the flesh and bones and veins of the hand; or that the material expression of the Vessel of Thought is more pure than 25 This statement relates back to the passage in b. ‘Eruvin translated in the previous note, which concludes a discussion of approaches to Torah study. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak seeks to demonstrate that these pejorative terms mean not bad personality traits, but mistaken approaches to Torah study. 26 The verse is being interpreted as advice on achieving ‘iyyun, through considering the three aspects hinted in the words ‘your mouth and in your heart, to do it’ namely: speech, thought (the heart), and action. These are the three garments of the soul. See n. 18 above. 27 The theme of radiance and vessel is, of course, central to kabbalistic thought. Applying this dichotomy to Thought, Speech and Action is unusual.

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the material expression of the Vessel of Speech. But even more, these three Vessels are also distinguished from each other in terms of their inner function. For the Vessel of Action signifies power (ḥozeq), the Vessel of Speech signifies revelation, and the Vessel of Thought signifies concealment. There is a known principle in every example of radiance and vessel, that they correspond to each other. Hence even though at first glance the difference between Action and Speech, and Speech and Thought, is only in the Vessel and its inner meaning, one must actually say that also the Radiance within each of these Vessels is different, even though the Radiance is spiritual. Hence there are distinctions between the Radiance which shines into the Vessel of Action, and the Radiance which shines into the Vessel of Speech, and the Radiance which shines into the Vessel of Thought. It is also known, that these three, Thought, Speech, and Action, are each triple in nature. That means that each of them is made up of three. In Action there is Thought of Action, Speech of Action and Action of Action. In Speech there is Thought of Speech, Speech of Speech and Action of Speech. And in Thought there is Thought of Thought, Speech of Thought and Action of Thought.28 Going deeper, each of these tripartite divisions is itself divided in three, and each of those three is also divided in three. This [repeated division into three] can only be considered by the eye of the Intellect, like an essential Point which is without length of breadth and is only a Point in imagination.29 It is unnecessary to explain that in each of these three there is the main aspect, and the extended perspective. The main aspect is one, while the

28 For this division in the case of Thought, see Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s Tanya, part 4, sec.  19, 129a; Liqqutei Torah (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1999) shir ha-shirim, 34c, and the Tzemaḥ Tzedeq’s Or ha-Torah—Devarim, vol. 6 (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1985), 2238. Applying this schema to Speech and Action as well as Thought may be original to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak. 29 This seems to mean that there is no practical representation of the repeated levels of tripartite division of each of Thought Speech and Action, it can only be conceived as an abstract idea like a dimensionless Point. Note that two of the sources in the previous note give realistic examples of the different levels of division of Thought: the passage in Tanya states that thinking about the letters of the Torah Scroll is Action of Thought, thinking about something that one hears is Speech of Thought, and pure ‘thinking’ is Thought of Thought. By contrast the passage in Liqqutei Torah defines Thought of Thought as deep reflection, Speech of Thought as more casual thinking of words, and Action of Thought as simple musing on what is tangibly visible around one.

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extended perspective comprises three.30 Thus concerning Action: the main aspect is one and is simply Action. The extended aspect comprises three which are Thought of Action, Speech of Action and Action of Action. The same is so for Speech and Thought. In the extended aspect, the specific qualities [of Thought, Speech, and Action] do not vary from their essential nature. Action does not become Speech and Speech does not become Thought. Nonetheless the special quality of each of them depends on the nature of the main aspect.31 Explaining this further: [considering] Thought, Speech, and Action which comprise the extended aspect of the garment of Action, although they do not change from their essential nature, nonetheless they are [specifically] Thought, Speech, and Action of Action.32 Similarly also in the case of [the triple divisions of] Speech which is higher than Action, and Thought which is higher than Speech. For this reason, although the [three elements] which extend the main aspect, emphasize it, enlarge it and make it more distinctive, nonetheless the main aspect remains the principal thing. And just as, in the case of Action, although its emphasis, enlargement and its becoming more distinctive come through the fact that it is extended by Thought, Speech, and Action, nonetheless Action remains its main aspect, so too in the case of Thought: although its emphasis, enlargement and its becoming more distinctive are a result of the Thought, Speech and Action which extend it, its quality as Thought remains the main aspect.33 We thus see that each individual process [of Thought, Speech, and Action] whether it acts as the main aspect, or as an extended aspect, even though it remains what it is essentially, it also adapts, according to its role, whether as essential aspect or as extension. This characterization applies to the existence and nature of each of the three garments of Thought, Speech, 30 The Hebrew terms translated as “main aspect” and “extended aspect” are ‘iqqar and miluy. Miluy is a term used for spelling out a letter in full. Thus the letter Alef can be spelled Alef, Lamed, Peh, and this is the extended aspect, the miluy. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak is applying this concept to his repeated tripartite division of each of Thought, Speech and Action. 31 Thus while in the triple division of, for example, Action, the distinctive categories of Thought of Action, Speech of Action and Action of Action remain distinct and do not intermingle, each is firmly colored by the fact that it is a tripartite element of Action rather than of Speech or Thought. This is spelled out in the next paragraph. 32 Emphasis added by NL. 33 Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak does not specifically mention the same point as regards the effect of the extended aspect of Speech, but this seems to be implied.

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and Action, in their triple form, from the very beginning [at the level of] Action of Action to the highest attainment of Thought of Thought.34 Regarding the subject at hand, most interesting is the garment of Thought. [We want to] understand it in its essential nature, and [to understand] the Thought, Speech, and Action which extend it, enlarge it and make it more distinctive. Thought of Thought is the Thought of the Idea, in which the Letters are not recognizable at all. Speech of Thought is [the level at which] the essential Letters which come into being with the Idea are recognizable. Action of Thought means that the Letters can be tangibly felt, which means that one can ‘feel’ [i.e., appreciate] their appropriate expression of the specific intellectual Idea.35 The Thought of the Idea is the cleaving to the Idea itself, as it is in itself. Feeling/appreciating the Idea means feeling the Idea as it is, in itself. That means one does not feel the Letters at all. This expresses transcending Action of Thought. [Further,] one does not even recognize the Letters, which means one is transcending Speech of Thought. Now this [level of Thought of Thought] is the first step of true ‘iyyun which brings—in its second and third triad—to a true unity of the one who is thinking with the Idea on which one is meditating.36 34 Thus each process has an essential unchanging quality but it can also assume differing applications depending on whether it functions as the main aspect or as an extension of another process. 35 For the theme of “Letters” in early Ḥabad thought, see Rabbi Dov Ber Shneuri’s Shaar HaYihud, printed in Ner Mitzvah ve-Torah Or (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1974), ch. 38, fol. 28b-29a. “Behold, before the source of the Simple Will and Simple Delight comes into being, there are letters included in the essence of the soul. After the Will has come into being, they emerge so as to reveal the Will, and they are called ‘Letters of the Will’. This reveals the Will in a tangible way. Indeed, this is the main significance of the letters in the essence of the soul: they achieve the expression of the radiance of the essence of the soul on whatever tangible level one is considering. Through the letters, that which is hidden becomes revealed. . . Through this, the Will can be expressed in the Intellect. . . Similarly, in the Intellect of the Will . . . there are letters through which it descends from one mode to another, becoming Emotion of the Will . . . and similarly there are letters of Emotion . . . until [one reaches] the Will of Thought, Speech and Action: all of them have letters. . . Thus we find that through the letters there is the downchaining from one level to another from the essence of the soul to the final level of action”. For the relationship of ‘letters’ to an intellectual concept, see Rabbi Shalom Dovber Schneersohn Sefer ha-Ma’amarim (5)670 (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1974), 190. 36 The step of going to the highest level of Thought of Thought, beyond the barrier of the Letters, at which one reaches the Idea as it is in itself, beyond Letters, is intensified in the second and third triad, the level of Thought of Thought of Thought of the idea.

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The introduction to this is diligent study, without learning too much in quantity or peering at [inconsequential] details as mentioned earlier, but rather to learn each topic many times one after the other, until it is clear in all its details. Then one repeats it many times in one’s thought. For, after one knows clearly all the smallest details of the topic, every time one thinks it over again in one’s mind, one goes yet further beyond the tangibly felt Letters—which are Action of Thought—and also beyond the recognizable Letters—which are Speech of Thought—and one comes closer and closer to Thought of Thought, which is the essential Thought. Thus one comes to the first step in true intellectual ‘iyyun. When a person trains himself to work with ideas in this organized fashion, taking an intellectual concept—at first, a brief concept, and later one will be able to take a more extended concept—and studying it in the way described, then in the course of time the structure of one’s brain and intellect will adapt themselves to this method, so that this approach will become natural regarding every intellectual concept, and one will always use this method.

Discussion Let us begin by considering this letter as presenting an approach to Torah study, and then proceed to its meditative aspect. As an approach to Torah study, there are some interesting points of comparison with a letter written by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak some three years earlier, also concerning Torah study for girls in Riga. This was addressed to Rabbi Mordechai Hefetz (d.1940) in connection with establishing what became known as the Aḥot ha-Temimim study group for girls, mentioned at the beginning of this essay. The orthodox Jewish communal leader Mordechai Dubin (1889–1956) had asked Hefetz to teach his future daughter-in-law Ḥabad Hasidic teachings. Hefetz had written to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak in Otwock concerning this request, and as a result, the Aḥot ha-Temimim group was eventually founded. Before this materialized, Rabbi Hefetz began giving private lessons to the young woman, reporting back to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak on their progress. In response, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak sent Hefetz a letter, which included advice on the correct approach to Torah study for his pupil.37 Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak criticizes Hefetz for his 37 Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Iggerot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 3, 522–525.

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initial choice of subject for study with her, which was “very deep” and had been studied “too quickly.”38 He writes of the need for a slow and thorough approach: “every kind of study, even the easiest, needs time for it to be absorbed by the student and become one with his intellect. Then the student will be able to speak about the entire topic he studied in his own language and style.” Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak recommends a specific tract of his teachings for them to study together.39 He also gives instructions how it should be studied: Each chapter should be studied two or three times, till it is properly absorbed, and she will be able to speak about it in her own style, with her own independent expression. Surely she also revises what she studies several times by herself; if not, she has to get used to doing so. She also has to get used to studying by herself, and what she doesn’t understand, you should explain to her.40

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak continues that after studying each topic well, she should “write it down (in the language in which she writes her own personal things), and try to explain it to herself in written form. It would be good if at the beginning she would write and explain some story (and its import) from one of the Siḥot.”41 38 Ibid., 523. The subject studied was Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s talk on Simḥat Torah, 1929, in New York. This has a certain similarity with the theme of our letter. It speaks of the difference between haskalah and hasagah (intellectually conceiving, and understanding). The haskalah is the building (“framework”), which is illuminated by the hasagah. This can be applied to the theme of “question and answer.” The question provides the building/framework while the answer is the illumination. Citing the idea that “the question of a wise man includes half the answer,” this perspective is then applied to the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s question to the Messiah (expressed in his famous Sacred Epistle) “when are you coming,” and the response “when your fountains burst out to the outside.” Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s talk was later printed in Liqqutei Dibburim (Kfar Habad: Kehot, 1973, 4th edition), vol. 2, 286b–301b. See 286b–287a. 39 This was Ma’amar Qinyan ha-Ḥayyim (Discourse on the Acquisition of Life), published as a booklet in 1928 with a covering letter by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak. The discourse focuses on the approaching Rosh Ha-Shanah festival, and is strongly ethical in nature. In his letter, the author states that “it speaks of Repentance and Prayer, through which a person can acquire life.” It was later republished at the beginning of Sefer ha-Ma’amarim Quntreisim—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1962), vol.1, 1a–15b. See the author’s letter, fol.1b. 40 Iggrot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 3, 523. 41 Ibid., 524.

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An echo of this approach is seen in our letter, in which Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak instructs Chaya Sima to internalize what she is studying “so that it is clear in all its details, and one can speak about it in broad terms,” and again, a paragraph later, “to study one topic many times over, until that topic is clear to the person in all its smallest details, so that one can speak about it as if, with the skill of one’s words, one were painting a scene.” Another aspect of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s instructions to Hefetz, which also has an echo in our letter, is that he links intellectual understanding with ethical progress. Comparing the process of study to that of planting and nurturing seeds in the ground, he states that “first and foremost one has to make preparation, which is through ploughing, to plough the heart of stone, to soften it through words about fear of Heaven and deep feeling, [speaking] feelingly and with warm liveliness.”42 Our letter also begins with a strong ethical thrust, with an emphasis on self-criticism. One might think that Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak began his letter to Chaya Sima on a conventional ethical note, and then changed direction, focusing on the unusual meditative approach that makes this letter so remarkable. Comparison with the earlier letter to Hefetz suggests that the ethical dimension is the necessary prelude to the meditative, spiritual step. Further, we note that within our letter the ethical demand achieves fulfillment through ‘iyyun, the meditative dimension: after being able to speak about the ethical topic “in broad terms,” the next step is “to return to consider that topic with deep intellectual effort. This meditative attention, ‘iyyun, leads to the unification of the thinker and the idea. Then the desired healing [of the deficiency] follows.” From here on, our letter becomes a more mystical tract on the nature of this ‘iyyun. We understand from the earlier letter that the ethical and the spiritual are intertwined. Now let us briefly consider the meditative dimension of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s letter, also in terms of his own writings of the same period. First, it should be made clear that the meditative system sent to Chaya Sima is, to the best of my knowledge, highly unusual in Ḥabad teachings, or even unique. Normative Ḥabad contemplation, as expressed in the opening chapters of the second section of Tanya, “Gate of Unity and Faith,” is to consider the divine life-force which continuously gives existence to the universe, and which is therefore its essential reality. Contemplating this inner 42 Ibid., 523.

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aspect of existence, the immanent radiance of the Divine, inspires a person to feelings of love or awe. Or, closer to the theme of our letter, the kernel of the contemplative process might be an ‘idea,’ which one takes initially in its pure form, Ḥokhmah, Wisdom, and then focuses on its details and ramifications in the contemplative process of Binah, Understanding, which can lead to intense awe or love, as described in the first part of Tanya, chapter 3. This describes the final stage of the contemplation process as Da‘at, literally “knowledge” but signifying personal commitment. Varieties of this approach (sometimes in a “general” form of the contemplative theme, sometimes “in detail”) are expressed in Ḥabad teachings through the generations. The system described in the letter to Chaya Sima does not follow this kind of pattern. However, the interbellum period in which Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was writing, resident in Otwock, near the intellectual ferment of Warsaw, provided an atmosphere conducive to “experimental” modes of application of Hasidic thought. The contemplative and visualization techniques presented by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (1889–1943), as described by Nehemia Polen, are an example.43 Further, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak had long had a highly innovative way of presenting spiritual teachings, of which the letter to Chaya Sima is but one instance.44 A letter by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak which might aid our understanding of the meditative system he imparted to Chaya Sima is one written in the winter months of 1935–36, around the same time as the letter to Mordechai Hefetz discussed earlier. This was to Rabbi Haim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov (1992–1993), who was later to become the closest aide to Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson. At this point he was a significant (if controversial) figure in Riga, since in 1934, after Kārlis Ulmanis’s seizure of absolute power, he had become the government-appointed superintendent 43 See Nehemia Polen The Holy Fire, The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1994), 3–5. See also Arthur Green “Three Warsaw Mystics” in Kolot Rabim, The Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer Memorial Volume, ed. Rachel Elior and Joseph Dan (Jerusalem, 1996), vol. 2, 1*–58*. 44 His talk discussed in n. 38 above provides another example of his innovative thought. There might be roots for his ideas in earlier Ḥabad teachings (or Jewish thought in general) but his mode of developing them was highly original. His father, Rabbi Shalom Dovber, also had a remarkably innovative approach to the teachings of his predecessors. See Naftali Loewenthal, “‘The Thickening of the Light’: The KabbalisticHasidic Teachings of Rabbi Shalom Dovber Schneersohn in their Social Context,” in Habad Hasidism, History, Thought, Image, ed. Jonatan Meir and Gadi Sagiv (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2016), 7*–43*.

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of Jewish education.45 When Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak moved to Riga in 1927, Rabbi Hodakov, whose father had been a close follower of Rabbi Shmuel,46 (the MaHaRaSh, 1834–1882), the fourth generation leader of ḤabadLubavitch, had been strongly attracted to his path. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s letter to him starts by mentioning that his recipient had informed him that he had recently begun to have study sessions in Ḥabad Hasidic teachings with a prominent Hasidic figure in the Riga community.47 The Rebbe expresses his pleasure at this, and then presents a depiction of the nature of Hasidic contemplation that can be seen as providing a background to his later letter to Chaya Sima: There are three kinds of contemplation: a) contemplation in study b) contemplation before prayer c) contemplation during prayer. These three kinds of contemplation, although they concern the same concept, are quite different from each other. a) Contemplation in study means that after studying the topic well and understanding it clearly with a full grasp.... as one might understand a discussion in the Gemara, one then contemplates the depths of that topic until its intellectual dimension is illuminated for him [the text repeats the idea in Yiddish: der sikhly laykht ba ihm]. The more he contemplates [that topic], the more does its intellectual dimension shine for him, until it is fixed in his mind and heart. b) Contemplation before prayer. This means feeling the life-force (ḥayut) of the subject one had studied. For in contemplation during study, although there is great radiance, nonetheless the whole idea of feeling— geshmak un gefil—is in the intellectual aspect. But in contemplation

45 This was probably a result of Hodakov’s close relationship with Mordechai Dubin, head of the Agudas Yisrael party, who was a strong supporter of Ulmanis. For a critical view of the orthodox involvement with Ulmanis, and of Hodakow’s role, see Mendel Mark, Di Yidish-Veltlekhe Shul in Letland (New York, 1973), 261. Further information on Rabbi Hodakow is provided by Baruch Oberlander and Elkanah Shmotkin, Early Years: The Formative Years of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, as Told by Documents and Archival Data, 1902–1929 (Brooklyn: Kehot, 2016), 263–4. 46 Information from Rabbi Shmuel Lew, who had a close relationship with Rabbi Hodakov. 47 Only his initials (A.A.) appear in the text of the letter. Rabbi Shalom Ber Levin, editor of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s letters, tentatively identifies him as Avraham Elya Asherov (see Index of Names of People and Places printed in Iggrot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, 589). Concerning Asherov, see Yahadut Latvia, 370.

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before prayer, the main thing is feeling the life-force, [in Yiddish] feeling the life-force of the topic. c) Contemplation during prayer. This means feeling the G-dliness which is in the topic one studied . . . The level of true understanding needed for contemplative prayer, which is the service of the heart, in addition to the two previous kinds of contemplation… will affect the level of one’s contemplation during prayer and its influence on one’s prayer, and also on one’s daily life, on one’s behavior as regards both spiritual and practical matters. These three kinds of contemplation are relevant for every intellectual concept, whether it is an exalted, abstract, and remarkable concept, or something minor, tangible and everyday. For these three kinds of contemplation are three rungs on the ladder of feeling. Without them, it [cannot be considered] a divine understanding, and it does not have any use in fulfilling the purpose of one’s soul descending into one’s body. Only by the grace of G-d does one sometimes sense G-dliness without any service at all.48

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak then gives an example of the process of contemplation. The theme is a specific verse: “know the G-d of your father and serve Him with a whole heart” (1 Chron. 28:9). He explains that the first part of the verse refers to the mind, while the second part, by contrast, concerns the emotions. The initial contemplative process, as he describes it, involves a lengthy internal discussion on the relationship between mind and emotion.49 He then says, in terms similar to those he would later use in the letter to Chaya Sima: When one studies the topic and knows it clearly . . . so that one is able to explain it to another person with a sense of enjoyment in its meaning, then one has to contemplate the topic, thinking deeply for a long time. The main thing about this thinking is that it is the thought of the Mind, which means not only does he think about the Letters of the idea...50 inwardness of the idea, until sometimes one does not notice the Letters of the idea at all, and 48 Iggrot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 3, 525–6. 49 Ibid., 526–7. A brief summary of this idea was presented by Rabbi Menaḥem Schneerson in his HaYom Yom (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1943), entry for 4 Elul. The earlier part of this letter, on the three kinds of contemplation, is also briefly summarized in this volume in the entry for 20 Tammuz. 50 At this point there is a lacuna in the text.

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there is pure thought of the Mind, as if it were abstracted from Letters and is just a revelation of the Mind. This thinking with thought of the Mind, causes tremendous delight, and brings the one who is thinking in this way to forget time and place. This means that while thinking, he rises above time and above place, for time and place are totally irrelevant to him, and the more he goes deeper into the idea, the greater the delight.51

This, however, is only the first stage of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s depiction in the earlier part of the letter: the intellectual dimension, revealed as Mind. He now continues with brief descriptions of the further stages: the “life-force” which is revealed through contemplation before prayer, and the “G-dliness” which is revealed through further contemplation during prayer.52 This final stage leads to him feeling: . . . a sense of G-dliness [repeated in Yiddish] he feels G-dliness. And this feeling draws his total being . . . and puts him in a radiant realm, [where] the radiance of Torah and the lamp of the mitzvah [see Prov. 6:23] shine to him in all his activities, whether spiritual or practical.53

While kabbalistic-Hasidic thought had always stressed the existence of different “levels,” deeper and deeper, as in the concept of the Four Worlds, and indeed of the sefirot, this letter to Rabbi Hodakov emphasizes the existence of levels within an idea. In its depiction of the power of thought to go beyond “definitions,” for which the term “Letters” is employed, it seems to be developing channels of Ḥabad teaching which exist in earlier Ḥabad texts,54 but which had never yet been taken so far. The later letter to Chaya Sima, a young unmarried woman, seems to take this process to a yet further level of development, in its depiction of an intensity of thought rising higher and higher, beyond definitions, with delight. We are fortunate that this remarkable letter has been preserved.

51 52 53 54

Iggrot Qodesh—Admur Yosef Yitzḥak, vol. 3, 527–8. Ibid., 528–9. Ibid., 529. See the sources in n.28 above, and also Rabbi Shalom Dovber, Be-Sha‘ah she-Hiqdimu (5)672 (Brooklyn: Kehot, 2017), vol. 3, sec. 290, 805, which describes the “inwardness of thought” as “thinking the [pure] intellectual idea”, transcending the “Letters” which define it.

Tsippi Kauffman

Hasidic Women: Beyond Egalitarianist Discourse

The question of women in Hasidism has been addressed from many different angles: whether a woman could be a Hasidah, and in what sense;1 whether a woman could be a tzaddiqah, and how;2 what is written about women in Hasidic philosophy and stories;3 how tzaddiqim and Hasidim

1 See Shmuel Abba Horodezky, Ha-Ḥasidut ve-ha-Ḥasidim (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1953), 65–71. For discussion of women’s access to the tzaddiq, see Ada Rapoport-Albert, “On Women in Hasidism: S. A. Horodecky and the Maid of Ludmir Tradition,” in Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: P. Halban, 1988), 495–525 and the Hebrew version of the same article: Ada Rapoport-Albert, “On Women in Hasidism: S. A. Horodecky and the Maid of Ludmir Tradition,” in Zaddik and Devotees: Historical and Sociological Aspects of Hasidism, ed. David Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2001 [Hebrew]), 520–21 (Appendix A of the article in Hebrew is not included in the English translation); and idem, “The Emergence of a Female Constituency in Twentieth-Century HaBaD,” Hasidic Studies: Essays in History and Gender (Liverpool: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2018), 368–426. See further Naftali Loewenthal, “‘Daughter/Wife of Hasid’ or ‘Hasidic Woman’,” Mada‘ei ha-Yahadut 40 (2000): 8*–21*. 2 Rapoport, “On Women,” 500–509; Nehemia Polen, “Miriam’s Dance: Radical Egalitarianism in Hasidic Thought,” Modern Judaism 12 (1992): 1–21; Justin Jaron Lewis, Imagining Holiness: Classic Hasidic Tales in Modern Times (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2009), 183–206; and Nathanial Deutsch, The Maiden of Ludmir: A Jewish Holy Woman and Her World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 3 David Biale, “A Feminist Reading of Hasidic Texts” in Lift Up Your Voice: Women’s Voices and Feminist Interpretation in Jewish Studies, ed. Renne Levine Melammed (Tel Aviv: Yedioth Ahronoth, 2001 [Hebrew]), 125–44; Moshe Rosman, “Al nashim ve-ḥasidut: he‘arot le-diyun,” in Yashan mi-penei Ḥadash, eds. Rapoport-Albert and Assaf (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2009); Gedalyahu Nigal, “Nashim be-Sefer Shivḥei ha-Besht,” Molad 6 (1974): 128–45; Rivkah Dvir-Goldberg, “The Sound of a

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regarded their wives and women in general;4 whether, with regard to women, there are differences among the various Hasidic groups and different periods;5 and so forth. What is common to almost all studies published to date is that they develop a discussion initiated by the brief and pioneering chapter on “The Jewish Woman in Hasidism” in Horodezky’s book Ha-Ḥasidut ve-ha-Ḥasidim, and are all based, whether openly or implicitly, on the question that he poses. Horodezky asserts that Hasidism awarded women “complete equality in religious life,”6 and proposes several proofs to support this. Ada Rapoport-Albert refutes each of these proofs, but still relates to the same fundamental question that Horodezky set out to answer: did Hasidism give women “complete equality”—for example, whether the Hasidism of women is equal to that of men.7 Several articles have appeared since then, all seemingly revolving around the question of feminine Hasidism from the same theoretical perspective: whether or not there is equality with men. Nehemia Polen, in an attempt to temper Rapoport-Albert’s arguments and present a more nuanced view, identifies in Hasidism a limited strand of what he termed “radical egalitarianism.”8 Rapoport-Albert responds by presenting this ideal as a utopian vision of the End of Days, which fails to advance equality in the present and lends legitimacy to the problematic reality.9 These scholars, along with Gedalyahu Nigal, Moshe Rosman, David Biale, Marcin Wodziński, Naftali Loewenthal, Rivka Dvir-Goldberg, Justin Lewis,

Subterranean Spring: Characterization of a Woman in a Hasidic Tale,” in Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore XXI (2001): 27–44 (Hebrew). 4 Rapoport-Albert, “The Emergence”. For the attitude of leaders of Ḥabad to the woman’s place in Hasidism, see also Naftali Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic,” 7*–65*. See further Nigal, “Nashim be-Sefer Shivḥei ha-Besht”; Rivkah Dvir-Goldberg, “Ha-Besht u-‘maḥbarto ha-tehorah’: Ha-yaḥas le-nashim be-siporet ha-ḥasidit,” Massekhet 3 (2005): 45–63; Polen, “Miriam’s Dance”; David Biale, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 121–145. 5 Loewenthal, “Daughter/Wife.” 6 Horodezky, Ha-ḥasidut, 68. 7 Rapoport-Albert, “On Women,” 502, argues that the question is not whether there existed exceptional women who were active on some level as tzaddiqot, but rather “[W] hether or not the phenomenon of independent female leaders was integrated into the ideology and organization of Hasidism and considered legitimate,” concluding that the answer is firmly in the negative. 8 Polen, “Miriam’s Dance.” 9 See Rapoport, “The Emergence,” n. 12, 11–12.

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and others, keep returning to a focus on the Hasidism of women as measured against the Hasidism of men.10 Over the past several decades, gender discourse in different spheres has engaged in fundamental debate over the proper questions to ask. The issue of equality launched the debate on the status of women and led to the protests of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the opening of institutions of learning and employment opportunities to women, and the great achievement of the right to vote and to stand for election. Since that first wave of feminism, however, questions have arisen about the distortion inherent in the very question of equality, which assumes that the man is the neutral yardstick in relation to which the status of women should be measured. The second wave therefore brought cultural feminism, which attempted to characterize femininity using its own yardstick to determine feminine needs, feminine ethics, feminine sexuality, and so on, and then to examine diverse spheres of discourse from feminine perspectives. This influenced the spheres of discourse in many different areas, including religious studies, producing different proposals and formulations of the essence of feminine religiosity, how women experience their religious world, and so on. Obviously, this discourse of femininity impacted masculine realms, which until then had been viewed as neutral totalities, identifying their patriarchal bias and inherent relativity. Thus, feminist criticism exposed not only the external, overt aspects of the exclusion of women and femininity, but also its more profound, covert expressions, including such fundamental structures as language and symbolism. As far as I am able to ascertain, the only scholar of Hasidism who has used gender theory to subject the question of women and Hasidism to more complex analysis is Naftali Loewenthal.11 He borrows the method of Chava Weissler12—based on that of Joan Wallach Scott—and calls for a focus on 10 In a rather exceptional departure, Deutsch, in his book about the Maiden of Ludmir, sets aside the discourse of equality. He claims that the Maiden of Ludmir, in her person and her actions, reflects elements of a feminine religiosity, and not just of a ‘woman Rebbe’ (as her admirers view her) or a ‘pseudo-male’ (as her critics would have it). See Deutsch, The Maiden of Ludmir, 108–112, 128–143, 190–201, 222–224. However, Deutsch acknowledges that a central aspect of the Maiden of Ludmir is her functioning (according to the accounts) as a (male) Hasidic tzaddiq, and that it was this specific aspect that drew both admiration and opposition. 11 Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic.” 12 Chava Weissler, “The Religion of Traditional Ashkenazic Women: Some Methodological Issues,” AJS Review 12, no. 1 (1987): 73—94.

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feminine religiosity as the point of departure for a redefinition of the religious phenomenon in its entirety.13 However, in his article Loewenthal examines feminine religiosity in twentieth-century Hasidism, ultimately focusing once again on institutional and masculine aspects. The core of his article is the change that transpired with regard to women in Ḥabad Hasidism.14 This change brought a new attitude towards women as a group, and attempts to organize them (Aḥot ha-Temimim, for example), to teach them Hasidic literature (including Liqqutei Amarim—Tanya and other works), and to offer them an educational and leadership position as “shluḥot,” parallel to their husbands, the “shluḥim.” In other words, the nuclei of feminine religiosity addressed by Loewenthal are Torah study and Jewish mysticism, communal organizations, and social activism. Loewenthal devotes some attention to the Ḥabad ideological principle of a “Lower Unity” (i.e., an attempt to relate in positive spiritual terms to material, external reality) as opposed to “Higher Unity” (i.e., a world-avoiding spirituality), which, to his view f­acilitated these new opportunities for women. Nevertheless, it is difficult to view the afore-mentioned activities as feminine spheres. At most, one might posit that the unique philosophical, social and historical circumstances of Ḥabad converged to produce broader cultural processes that allowed women within this Hasidic group quicker and fuller entry into the masculine sphere. In this article, I wish to propose that the question of women in Hasidism be evaluated on the basis of a different set of fundamental assumptions than those that have guided the research thus far. I wish to ask new questions and to suggest new possible answers, as shall be developed below. The second wave of feminism, which rejected the call for equality, has itself been overtaken by new trends. Feminist theories of the 1990s and 13 Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic,” 12. 14 He also addresses Sara Schenirer’s innovative practices in her Beit Yaakov girls’ school, including dancing with her students and taking them to visit the graves of righteous individuals, both manifestations of education toward spirituality. Concerning the dancing, Loewenthal writes (“Women and the Dialectic,” 12) that the religious fervor experienced by Schenirer and her students was comparable to that of a tzaddiq’s court. He views this as a reflection of Schenirer’s own upbringing within a Sanz Hasidic environment. In any event, the article as a whole deals with the twentieth century, and focuses on Ḥabad women. See also his article, “Daughter/Wife,” 23, where he asks, “Now we come to the next category: the woman who is a Hasidic follower in her own right. Does she exist?” From his answer, it is clear that the only yardstick for defining a woman’s Hasidism is the Hasidism of men, and therefore women become “Hasidic followers in their own right” only in Ḥabad, where they are active within the institutionalized Ḥabad system.

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onward are harshly critical of cultural feminism, accusing it of essentialism that cements women in a clearly defined and fixed concept of femininity while excluding women who do not match that definition, as well as excluding people who do not meet the definition of absolute femininity or masculinity. The third wave of feminism therefore proposes doing away with the male/female and sex/gender binary systems, arguing that sexual identity is not an inner core that projects outward, but rather an external praxis that includes gender structures and is projected inward to create an illusory identity. Queer theories developed these ideas further, once again impacting extensive areas of human sciences, including religious sciences. Nevertheless, I would like to consider the question of women in Hasidism from within the theoretical perspective of cultural feminism. This theoretical approach does not necessarily assume essentialism, since we might point to women’s social and cultural marginality as sufficient basis to create distinctly feminine patterns of thought and behavior. Likewise, as we shall see, for the purposes of the current discussion I do not intent to depict feminine Hasidism as fundamentally different and separate from masculine Hasidism, but rather to focus on certain aspects from within the whole that is Hasidism, which are accessible to women and men alike, and have been since the movement’s inception. I wish to argue that these aspects offered women a source of religious identification and spiritual empowerment. Many religious movements have both personal and public dimensions, both internal and external aspects, and both spontaneous and institutionalized expressions. There is usually an inherent tension between these opposing aspects. On one hand a central goal in a religious world is a connection between the individual and God, which might be hidden in the recesses of the individual psyche. On the other hand, the individual’s religious and spiritual world is nourished by institutionalized personal or communal practices, and is expressed through them. The Hasidic movement emphasized the internal, spiritual dimension, but at the same time it created new social institutions which served both as catalysts for inner processes and as an expression of them. Paradoxically, these institutions functioned at the same time as restraints on internal, spiritual personal processes, both out of choice15 and out of necessity.16 15 See, for example, Arthur Green, “Hasidism: Discovery and Retreat,” in The Other Side of God: A Polarity in World Religions, ed. P. L. Berger (Princeton, NJ: Anchor Press, 1981), 104–30. 16 See, for example, Ada Rapoport-Albert, “God and Zaddik as the Two Focal Points of Hasidic Worship,” History of Religions 18 (4) (1979): 296–325.

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The study of Hasidism in general examines theological, spiritual, internal aspects17 as well as institutional, external aspects.18 When it comes to women in Hasidism, however, the emphasis is on the latter. Before reviewing sources that open a window onto the religious and spiritual world of Hasidic women, it must be clear what women certainly were not part of: the tish, the court, the prayer quorum in the synagogue, and so on. For Rapoport-Albert, this is proof of a lack of equality. In Marcin Wodziński’s view, this is proof that there are no female Hasidot. This is a far-reaching claim that deserves careful reconsideration.

“Women are not Hasidot” In two recently published articles, Marcin Wodziński argues that the question of the place of women in Hasidism is fundamentally misguided, since scholars regard Hasidism as a sect, and as such it encompasses the family as a single unit.19 His position is that Hasidism should be regarded as a sort of fraternity in which there is no place for women.20 He writes, “I am inclined to agree with the tzaddiq Meir of Opatów, when he said during the 1824 investigation that ‘women generally are not Hasidim.’”21 Wodziński brings several proofs to support this claim: a) No woman referred to herself as a “Hasidah,” nor was she referred to in this way by others; b) In the domestic sphere, a woman from a non-Hasidic family could 17 See, for example, Moshe Idel, Hasidism Between Ecstasy and Magic (New York: University of New York Press, 1995); Ron Margolin, The Human Temple: Religious Internalization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005 [Hebrew]), 206–10; Tsippi Kauffman, In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009 [Hebrew]). 18 See, for example, Jonathan Garb, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2014); Haviva Pedaya, “Le-hitpatḥuto shel ha-degem ha-ḥevrati-dati-kalkali be-ḥasidut: ha-pidyon, ha-ḥavurah, ve-ha-aliyah le-regel,” in Religion and Economy: Connections and Interactions, Collected Essays, ed. Menahem Ben Sasson (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 1995). 19 See Marcin Wodziński, “The Question of Hasidic Sectarianism,” in Framing Jewish Culture, Boundaries and Representations, ed. Simon J. Bronner (Oxford: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 125–48. 20 Marcin Wodziński, “Women and Hasidism: A ‘Non Sectarian’ Perspective,” Jewish History 27 (2013): 399–434. 21 Marcin Wodziński, Hasidism and Politics: The Kingdom of Poland, 1815–1864 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2013); Wodziński, “Hasidic Sectarianism,” 125–48, 223.

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marry a Hasid without changing her previous customs, except where they would affect her husband; c) In the public sphere, women did not take part in Hasidic prayer services, in the Hasidic custom of daily immersion in a mikveh (ritual bath), in Hasidic gatherings, or in organized visits to the tzaddiq on holidays. Wodziński emphasizes that even when women wrote kvitlekh (personal notes with requests) to the tzaddiq, the request was made in the name of their husbands; while some tzaddiqim held audiences for women, especially in the wonder-working context, this damaged their own reputation as tzaddiqim; many Hasidic synagogues were designed for men only, and more.22 I will first address Wodziński’s proofs relating to the exclusion of women from the Hasidic fraternity. Then I will focus on other elements of Hasidic identity that lie outside the scope of Wodziński’s discussion owing to his definition of Hasidism, which relies on the methodology of social history. With regard to the title “Hasidah,” we find women referred to in this way in a range of Hasidic sources. For example, in the book Ḥayei Moharan,23 there is a description of a couple from Medvedevka: “She was more of a Hasidah than her husband was [a Hasid].” Similarly, in Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh we find: “Our teacher [Rabbi Naḥman of Breslov] once said, ‘Why do you not reach out to your wives and make them into Hasidot, too?’”24 In some of the stories about Temer’l Sonenberg-Bergson, the patron of Polish tzaddiqim, she is referred to as a Hasidah. In a later tradition, Malka Shapiro, in her autobiographical work, mentions Temer’l as “the distinguished 22 According to Wodziński, even Temer’l Sonenberg-Bergson, a well-known patron of Polish tzaddiqim, should not be regarded as a Hasidah. While Temer’l did support tzaddiqim, at the same time she distributed charity to Christians. Thus, he argues, financial support is no proof of full identification and affiliation with the Hasidic movement, especially where other identity features are absent. See Wodziński, “Women and Hasidism,” 422–424. On Temer’l, see Tsippi Kauffman, “Outside the Natural Order—Temer’l, the Female Hasid,” Studia Judaica 19 (2016): 87–109. 23 Natan Sternharz, Ḥayei Moharan (Bnei Brak: Nequdah Tovah), addenda, #61. Here we have not only evidence of a woman referred to as a Hasidah, but also the possibility of a situation where she is a Hasidah to a greater degree than her husband is a Hasid— despite her exclusion from institutionalized Hasidic practice. 24 The continuation of this exhortation reads, “For then it is easier for the man to conduct himself in the way of proper Hasidism and fear [of God]”; nevertheless, the repeated focus on men as the target in no way excludes the call to nurture and encourage the Hasidic orientation of the women. See further Yitzḥaq Bender, Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh, VI (Jerusalem: Agudat Meshekh ha-Naḥal, 2000), #321.

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Madame Temerel . . . a devoted Hasidah of the house of Mogielnica.”25 A book about Rabbanit Rivka Schneersohn describes her wedding, which was attended by “three thousand Hasidim and many Hasidot.”26 A Hebrew newspaper published in Russia describes how “a situation may arise where a man and his wife will not eat from the same plate, because the man is a mitnagged and his wife is a Hasidah.”27 There are many other examples. As to Wodziński’s claim that the spiritual aspirations of a man did not necessarily affect those of his wife—this in no way proves that there were no women Hasidot. If Hasidic identity is a matter of personal choice, then it is quite possible for a woman to be more strongly identified with Hasidism than her husband. An example of such a situation is the case of Yekhezkel Kotik and his wife.28 Thus, the fact that a woman is a Hasidah can be a significant identity in its own right, independently of her identity as the wife of a Hasid. As for the public sphere, it is true that women were not part of the public Hasidic fraternity. They did not, by and large, visit the rebbe’s court, did not participate in the tish, and so forth.29 However, even in this context, I believe that Wodziński is too easily dismissive of a phenomenon which was very dear to the women themselves: for them, receiving a blessing from a vayberisher rebbe30 could be a most significant experience; to write a ­“kvitel” was a way of communicating with the tzaddiq, even if the husband 25 Malka Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter: Memoir of a Hasidic Childhood, trans. with an introduction: Nehemia Polen (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002), 112. 26 Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit Rivka Schneersohn, from the notes of Admor Yosef Yitzḥak Schneersohn (Brooklyn: Karney Hod Torah, 2003 [Hebrew]), 23. 27 Ha-Melitz, May 31, 1888, 1135–1136. 28 Wodziński, “Women and Hasidism”, 429–430. See Yekhezkel Kotik, Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik, ed. David Assaf, trans. Margaret Birstein (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), 361–70. Wodziński claims that Kotik’s wife was eager to be the wife of a Hasid, though I don’t see why this negates her own self-perception as a Hasidah from early childhood, as Kotik narrates, thus wanting her husband to also identify with the movement. According to Kotik, his wife was distraught over his transformation from Hasid to mitnagged, which reveals the importance of this issue in her eyes. Kotik also describes a situation in which his father “talks with her about Hasidism” (361), and, further on, he regrets not having spoken to his own son about Hasidism (365). There is no reason to assume any essential distinction between these two conversations. For another example see above, note no. 23. 29 See David Biale, Eros and the Jews, 145–48. 30 Wodziński, “Women and Hasidism,” 413, 418.

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was mentioned at the beginning of the text; peeping through the doorway and observing the men sitting around the rebbe’s table could be a significant way of taking part in the event, albeit in a limited way.31 Beyond this, as Rapoport-Albert shows, women had access—albeit limited, and sometimes not face-to-face—with various tzaddiqim, including Ḥabad leaders throughout the generations, who no one would refer to as vayberishe rebbes. Along with localized attention to Wodziński’s proofs, I wish to propose two fundamental assertions that are mutually complementary. Firstly, no identity answers to a rigid and unequivocal definition. Any human identity is in fact a continuum into which a person places himself or herself; it is not a binary category. This applies to the Hasidic identity, too. It does not comprise a uniform list of elements such that only someone who fulfills all of them may be called a Hasid(ah). Gadi Sagiv demonstrates how, even with regard to tzaddiqim—the most representative bearers of the Hasidic identity—their identity, as tzaddiq, does not include a fixed set of mandatory characteristics. A Hasidic tzaddiq may or may not be a wonderworker, have the status of a learned scholar, preach to the masses, abstain from speaking in public, and so on. “Both the tzaddiq status and the Hasidic identity include broad cultural repertoires, and a person may be called a tzaddiq or a Hasid by virtue of his adoption of even just a few elements of the respective repertoire.”32 This is all the more true of Hasidot. Some of the Hasidic repertoire was closed to women. Other parts were open to them, in different ways—not always, not to all of them, not in their entirety, but nevertheless open.33 Secondly, from the perspective of feminist criticism, we might view the scholarly argument that women are not Hasidot as an illustration of Rita Gross’s assertion that scholars of religions tend sometimes to exclude women to a greater extent than does the religion in question. In other 31 Wodziński, “Women and Hasidism,” 419, analyzes a 1929 sketch by Maier Schwartz as further proof of the clear division between men and women in Hasidic space. 32 Gadi Sagiv, Dynasty: The Chernobyl Hasidic Dynasty and Its Place in the History of Hasidism (Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center, 2014), 31. 33 In Shmuel Werses, “Women in Hasidic Courts as Reflected in Mitnagdic Polemics and Maskilic Satire,” Gal-Ed 21 (2008): 21, we find two expressions of Maskilic criticism of Hasidism. On one hand, there is criticism of Hasidim who leave their wives behind when they go to the tzaddiq. On the other hand, there is criticism of women who themselves go to the tzaddiq, seeking blessings, spending their money on him, and so on. The text as a whole conveys a loathing for Hasidot, and works of this type reflect the misogyny of their authors. Indirectly, Werses demonstrates the centrality of the tzaddiq in the world of the Hasidah.

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words, the scholarly perspective on the question of what is important, what is significant, and what represents spiritual power in a certain religious context, can cast its own patriarchal shadow on the community that is being studied.34 In our case, the women’s relative portion in the social aspects of Hasidism was, for them, one hundred percent of their Hasidic identity. At the same time, attention should be paid to a different part of the Hasidic identity repertoire, which was accessible to women to exactly the same extent as it was to men: the personal, inner, existential and also day-to-day aspect.35

“In all your ways know Him”: The All-encompassing Commitment of Hasidism Once equality as a value and a criterion is set aside, we may redefine the question of what Hasidism gave to women, and in what way women were Haidot. This brings us back to Rita Gross’s call to examine feminine religiosity from within itself, and not from within the dominant patriarchal perspective.36 I wish to address a number of sources that depict feminine Hasidism in three different Hasidic courts. None of these instances involves a tzaddiqah, a female Hasidic leader, but all three women are close to a tzaddiq. Scholars who have tried to demonstrate equality have sometimes used examples of the wife or daughter of a tzaddiq who ends up functioning as a tzaddiqah in some manner. Other scholars reject such instances as proof, arguing that because of the connection between these women and the tzaddiq, they cannot be viewed as tzaddiqot in their own right. If we examine these women as Hasidot rather than as tzaddiqot, we arrive at a different understanding of their Hasidism. The connections these women had to the tzaddiq’s court allowed them greater access to Hasidim, and this offers us significant 34 Rita M. Gross, Feminism and Religion: An Introduction (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 67–71. 35 Wodziński grants that women might have identified emotionally with Hasidism, but this possibility is not developed further, nor does Wodziński attach much importance to it. See Wodziński, Hasidism and Politics, 223–24. Even Sagiv, Dynasty, who attaches importance to elements of identity rather than viewing identity as an integral essence, emphasizes that the repertoire relevant to the definition of identity is the social one. 36 The call for a paradigm shift is echoed in this context among other feminist scholars, too. See Ursula King, ed., Religion & Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 1–38. King mentions Gross, inter alia, as having contributed to this shift.

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information about them. They drew extensively from the repertoire of Hasidic identity that was available to women. Other women, about whom we have no information, may likewise have drawn elements of Hasidic identity in various measures from these women relatives of tzaddiqim or from their own Hasidic husbands/parents. The elements we shall address here are the story and its role; the inner work of character-improvement (‘avodat ha-middot); prayer and divine inspiration; and divine service in the physical realm (‘avodah be-gashmiyut).

The Story as Generator of Hasidic Identity Hasidic women listened to Hasidic stories and also recounted them. Women are sometimes the heroines of these stories,37 and, as narrators, women become partners in molding the literary work. Already in Shivḥei ha-Besht we find a story (one of the longest in the book) recounted by Gittel, daughter-in-law of the Maggid of Mezeritch.38 Many other women are recorded as having told stories about tzaddiqim who were members of their families, and themselves: Sara, daughter of R. Naḥman of Breslov, discusses her relationship with her father;39 Perl, daughter of the Maggid of Kozhnitz, recounts her wondrous dreams;40 Malka, wife of R. Shalom Roke’ah of Belz, talks about the tzaddiq and herself;41 Rabbanit Miriam, sister of R. Shmelke, tells R. Yehoshua Heschel of Apta about her eminent brothers;42 Shmuel Abba Horodezky testifies that he heard stories about the Maiden of Ludmir from elderly women who had known her;43 Malka 37 Once the criterion of equality has been set aside, a quantitative comparison with stories told by and about men is irrelevant. At the same time, we might note that the more one looks, the more stories appear that were recounted by women and about women. See below. 38 Scholars have treated this story extensively. See, for example, Biale, Eros and the Jews, 138–139; Biale; “Feminist Reading,” 139–43; Dvir-Goldberg, “The Sound”; Margolin, The Human Temple, 206–10; Yemima Hovav, Maidens Love Thee: The Religious and Spiritual Life of Jewish Ashkenazic Women in the Early Modern Period (Jerusalem: The Dinur Center, 2009 [Hebrew]), 275–77. 39 “I heard from my father . . . who heard it from a certain man, who heard it directly from her” (Sternharz, Ḥaye Moharan, 163). 40 Yisrael Moshe Bromberg, Toldot ha-Nifla’ot (Warsaw, 1899), 2b–3b. 41 Avraham Haim Simha Bunam, Dover Shalom (Pashmishel, 1910). For example, “I also heard from my mother . . .” (story 25), and elsewhere. 42 Cited in Lewis, Imaging Holiness, 9–11. 43 See Deutsch, The Maiden of Ludmir.

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Shapiro, daughter of the tzaddiq R. Yehiel Moshe Hopstein of Kozhnitz, describes a gathering of Hasidim that included women belonging to the tzaddiq’s family, where the rabbanit tells everyone stories about righteous women.44 The Sixth Rebbe of Ḥabad, R. Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, wrote down narrative traditions that he had heard from his grandmother Rivka. These traditions speak of the greatness of their family members, men and women alike, with an emphasis on the inspiring Rabbanit Rivka herself.45 Of course, one might downplay each of these examples. In almost every instance there is a male tzaddiq at the center—even if a great woman stands at his side. Almost every one of these stories was transmitted and mediated by men. In almost every case one might cast doubt on the degree of reliability, and so on.46 I wish to take the opposite approach and to ask to what extent the Hasidic story functioned as a device for disseminating Hasidic ideas and values—especially for women (who were excluded from the derashah [the homily or scholarly sermon]), but not only for them.47 I shall address the story itself, the significance of the act of recounting it, and its broader circle of influence.48 In Breslov traditions, we find the story of Feige, the mother of R. Naḥman, on the night of his conception. One version reads as follows: 44 Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 23–24. See further 101–114, describing the Admor surrounded by a group of Hasidim, while his mother sits at his side and tells them stories from her childhood, and 171–182, describing the departure of the Shabbat at the Rebbe’s home, where, in the presence of “the old friends of the family,” the Rebbe’s wife tells everyone a story. 45 Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit Rivka. 46 Justin Lewis adopts this approach in his book, Imagining Holiness; see, for example, 180–182 and more. 47 See Nigal’s conclusions in his article “Nashim be-Sefer Shivḥei ha-Besht,” 45: “It is difficult to overestimate the importance of stories in Hasidic outreach in general, and the attraction of the Hasidic movement for women in particular.” 48 Rosman, “Al nashim ve-ḥasidut,” identifies, both in Shivḥei ha-Besht and R. Naḥman’s Sefer Ma‘asiyot, a more positive perception of women, and posits that in the early nineteenth century there were “new trends” with regard to women that had not yet become manifest at the end of the eighteenth century. To my mind, the point is not when the books were printed, but rather the narrative genre itself: women have more of a presence in stories, they also take part in retelling them, and they have an affinity for the narrative religiosity reflected in them. However, there is also misogyny in these stories, and therefore I propose viewing them as an expression of tension rather than as a trend in an unequivocal pro-women direction. For the story as a “marketing” device, on one hand, while on the other hand going against the marketing goal, see Glen Dynner, “The Hasidic Tale as a Historical Source: Historiography and Methodology,” Religion Compass 3 (2009): 655–675.

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Once our teacher, R. Natan, was speaking with followers of our master and teacher, of blessed memory [R. Naḥman] . . . about the great and awesome holiness of our master and teacher. The illustrious Feige, R. Naḥman’s mother, walked by, and heard them speaking of his holiness. She spoke up and said to them, “Let me tell you what caliber of Rabbi you have. . . . Once, my husband, the tzaddiq R. Simḥah, went on a journey for about two weeks, having told me that he would come home for the holy Shabbat. As that Shabbat approached, I got up before daybreak to prepare the holy ḥallah loaves for Shabbat, and as I separated the requisite portion of dough I sought to envision where he was, to know whether he would be home for the holy Shabbat” (for she was like one of the prophetesses, as we know from her brother, the holy R. Barukh of Mezhbizh [Medzhibuzh], of blessed memory, who called her a prophetess . . .). “But I did not see him. . . . And this happened a few times, and that night was the night of my scheduled immersion, and I deliberated as to whether or not to go, and I went to immerse myself, and once again I sought him but did not find him. When I lit the candles in honor of the holy Shabbat I sought him again but did not see him.” (Her custom was to light candles in honor of the Shabbat many hours prior to the set time.) “After lighting candles I lay down on my bed, in my great anguish, and fell asleep. My righteous mother, Adel, came to me, with all the matriarchs—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. They said to me, “Do not be grieved, for today, the eve of the holy Shabbat, your husband will be home!” They took me and led me to the hall of souls, and I saw a soul that emanated a very great light, and I asked them, “Who is this soul?” They told me, “This is the soul of your grandfather, the Ba‘al Shem Tov, of blessed memory.” Then they led me further, and I saw a soul whose light was exceedingly, immeasurably great, and I asked them, “Who is this soul?” And they told me, “This soul they wish to give to you.” 49

This tradition concerns the conception of the tzaddiq. As is explained at the outset, the whole story comes to be told in the context of a discussion about the holiness of the tzaddiq, R. Naḥman. At the same time, the tradition is also full of praise for R. Naḥman’s mother, Feige. She is characterized as a prophetess, “searching” for her husband with prophetic vision and experiencing a revelation of the four biblical matriarchs and a tour of the “hall of souls.” The story describes her in typological fashion as being meticulous in observing the three commandments given to women: she separates ḥallah, immerses in the mikveh, and lights Shabbat candles. A later portion of the 49 Sternharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Addenda, 4, #6.

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story, not cited here, explains why Feige did not find her husband when she searched with her visionary powers: there was a decree that the soul of R. Naḥman would not come into the world. According to this addition, R. Shimon bar Yohai appeared to her, comforted her, and promised that he would do what he could to ensure that the soul of R. Naḥman would indeed be born. In a different version of the story, Adel, daughter of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, gives her daughter, Feige, special kavvanot upon which to focus her intentions while she kneads the dough for the Shabbat loaves; they are meant to help her locate her husband, R. Simḥah, but she has no success. When she lights her candles, too, her mother gives her kavvanot, but once again, they are not effective. According to this version, Feige, in bitter sorrow, goes to prostrate herself on the grave of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, and communes with him via her prayer; the Ba‘al Shem Tov assures her that her husband will return before Shabbat begins.50 In each of the versions, Feige is described as a woman who possesses prophetic powers (ruaḥ ha-qodesh) and is able to communicate with significant male spiritual figures from the past (the Ba‘al Shem Tov, R. Shimon bar Yohai) as well as feminine figures who offer their support and guidance (her mother, the daughter of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, or the matriarchs of the Jewish People—Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah). The value of this story, and others like it, goes beyond recording the existence of a rare feminine character with special spiritual qualities. Each story like this was told and retold in Hasidic circles, among men and women alike. Both men and women would learn about a woman’s spiritual powers, and every such story would be a particular model for emulation by hasidic women: it offered spiritual heights to which one could aspire, and traditional practices that one could apply (kneading dough for the Shabbat loaves “before the light of dawn,” lighting Shabbat candles early, etc.). The power of the story lies not only in the narrative itself but also in the attitude of Hasidic tradition toward the very act of telling the story. The attitude toward storytelling as a sacred ritual with set times and possessing value that had not been attached to it prior to the advent of Hasidism, make this a most significant channel of transmission.51 Storytelling itself is a religious and spiritual act. Malka Shapiro, for example, describes her mother recounting the story of her encounter as a young girl with the sim50 See Bender, Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh, V, #67; VIII, #101. 51 See Kauffman, “The Hasidic Story—A Call for Narrative Religiosity,” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 22 (2014): 101–26, esp. 102.

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ple Hasid who experienced a revelation of Elijah the prophet: “I listened to a story that my mother, the Rebbetzin, used to tell with a sense of wonder and holy awe.”52 R. Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn describes his grandmother as knowing a wealth of stories (Ba‘alat shemu‘ot, a master of such oral traditions) and emphasizes the pleasure he derived from her recounting of them: “Every story, as told by her, was well-organized and alive . . . one could feel that she was reliving it in her memory.”53 The reason for this was the holiness that she attached to the Hasidic story: She told him that she endeavored to tell stories only at a time of rest and quiet, having learned this practice from two teachings that her father-inlaw the Rebbe, the Tzemaḥ Tzedeq, had conveyed to her, which glorified the hasidic story.54

The grandson of Rabbanit Rivka, R. Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, writes that his grandmother made a set time when he would visit her to hear stories.55 She told him that at the age of nine, she had received from her mother a manuscript written by her father, with stories about the Ba‘al Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and others, and that she read from this precious book every day. For her wedding, her mother had given her two more books—one containing traditions about the Admor ha-Zaqen (R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi), while the other contained other stories along with documentation of the customs that her father had observed his father-in-law, R. Dov-Ber Schneersohn, performing. In addition, Rivka would hear stories from her aunts, and she wrote them down: Then I would gather little girls from our family and tell them different stories that I knew, about the holy Ba‘al Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and our own great-grandfathers—the Admor ha-Zaqen and the Mitteler Rebbe (R. Dov-Ber).56

Rabbanit Rivka was an extraordinary woman, but her practice of storytelling was not unusual. Hasidic women told many stories, since that was the genre available to them. In fact, the narrative genre had been the most accessible to women even before the advent of Hasidism, as Chava Weissler 52 Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 172. 53 Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit Rivka, 107. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 106. 56 Ibid.

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points out.57 The religious literature written for women—Mayseh-Bukh, Tzei’na u-R’eina and more—included stories from the Bible, Midrash, and rabbinical legends.58 In Hasidism, however, this genre came to assume ritual significance and magical powers,59 and became a channel for instruction in Hasidic teachings. As I have argued elsewhere, the Hasidic story should be viewed both as an expression of and as educating toward “narrative religiosity.”60 In other words, it promotes a religious consciousness in which every moment invites a meaningful encounter with the Divine within life itself; every moment is a setting for a Hasidic story. In a society that subscribes to the idea that “there is no place that is empty of Him” and that educates toward closeness to immanent Divinity in its infinite manifestations in this world, every Hasidic story testifies to a special moment of such closeness within the real world. The narrative religiosity represented and generated by the Hasidic story may be especially significant for women, who are excluded from normative spiritual arenas created by the Hasidic movement, and at the same time are profoundly involved in the reality of this world. In other words, the significance of the story for women may be not only glorification of the tzaddiq and/or his mother/wife/daughter, but also, at the same time, an imbuing of each and every moment of reality with a spiritual or divine dimension. I shall elaborate on this point below in the section on divine service in the physical realm.61

57 Weissler, “The Religion”, esp. 82–83. 58 The Gemara itself contains halakhic discussions that have normative as well as narrative elements. In the generations following the redaction of the Talmud a split developed between the normative knowledge in the Gemara, which became central to (masculine) study, and the narrative knowledge, which was taught mainly to women and the simple masses. 59 See, for example, the story about R. Naḥman of Breslov healing his daughter by means of a story, following which his daughter used the same story to heal others; Sternharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Addenda, #60. 60 Kauffman, “The Hasidic Story.” 61 The distinction between teachings and stories is not absolute and clear-cut. For example, Malka Shapiro’s stories suggest that the tzaddiq’s communication with the close and more extended family circle also included homiletical content, teachings, kabbalistic ideas, and so on. The tzaddiq would deliver a long address full of theological and theosophical ideas within the close masculine circle, but central ideas and homiletical insights would be conveyed to the broad family circle of men and women alike, and would then be disseminated further. See, for example, Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 32–33, 67, 79–80, concerning homiletical ideas that were passed amongst

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Work on Character Traits Working to improve one’s character traits (‘avodat ha-middot) is a central topic both in Hasidic homiletical literature and in Hasidic stories. One of the main goals of the tzaddiq’s teachings is to arouse his listeners to work on themselves—to rid themselves of anger, to become more humble, to cultivate love and fear of God, kindness, joy, gratitude, and so on. Many Hasidic stories describe incidents in which some or other trait is manifested, whether by the tzaddiq or by a simple Jew. Various Hasidic traditions about women likewise point to this central aspect of Hasidism. As noted, each such tradition speaks about one woman whose religious life was oriented towards working on her character in the spirit of Hasidism; at the same time, the story functions as an educational device to disseminate a message, as a source of inspiration to men and women alike. In one of the stories in Shivḥei ha-Besht, the Ba‘al Shem Tov meets Frume Rivele, the saintly woman from Stanov. Rapoport-Albert claims that this character is “an authentic model of a righteous woman . . . who unequivocally conforms with traditional feminine qualities.”62 Challenging Horodezky’s assertion of equality, Rapoport-Albert argues, quite rightly, that the story of this woman contains not a hint of women’s liberation or recognition of her ability as a charismatic leader. At the same time, a deeper look at the story, setting aside expectations of equality or liberation, does allow us to identify qualities that were especially emphasized in Hasidism. Alongside charity and kindness, modesty and compassion, Frume Rivele exemplifies the ideal of extreme self-abnegation as well as the power of judging others favourably, which is a most central principle in the teachings of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, as Rivka Dvir-Goldberg has pointed out.63 At the same time, the “traditional feminine qualities” were also given extra emphasis in Hasidism. The tzaddiq is immersed in performing kindness and sweetening divine decrees (which is a specific way of intensifying ḥesed), and arouses his followers—men and women alike—to follow his example. The “femininity” and “traditionalism” of these qualities in no way detract from their centrality to Hasidism. family members, and also 171–81, describing different Hasidic approaches based on kabbalistic sefirot, etc. 62 Rapoport-Albert, “On Women,” appendix 2, 523. 63 Dvir-Goldberg, “Ha-Besht,” 48. For a different reading of the story see Biale, “Feminist Reading,” 136–38.

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There are Breslov traditions indicating the importance that R. Naḥman attached to bequeathing Hasidic values to his daughters, too, and not only to his followers. In Ḥayei Moharan there is a description of Sara, his daughter, receiving a letter from him. R. Naḥman writes that he longs “to receive words of wisdom and fear [of Heaven] from you,”64 depicting his daughter as a myrtle bush in the desert, with no one to benefit from its pleasant fragrance. In response, the daughter weeps, convinced that if her father is praising her, she must be spiritually weak, since he usually praises those in need of encouragement.65 A different tradition describes the toothache suffered by Sara, R. Naḥman’s daughter: And our rabbi, of blessed memory, told her that she should be joyful, and she said, “But I am in pain,” and he said that she should pretend to be joyful. He told her, “In time this will lead you to be so joyful that you will dance, and then you will have healing.” And so it was: great joy came to her, such that in the middle of the day she closed the shutters and danced, and she was healed.66

In another tradition, R. Naḥman advises his daughter Adel “to picture in her mind that all is well with her . . . for thoughts have great power; if you imagine it, that is how it will be.”67 These traditions describe R. Naḥman’s daughters as being concerned with their spiritual level, and R. Naḥman as guiding his daughters in making use of the power of thought and imagination, generating joy “artificially” and thereby healing themselves. The fact that these messages were transmitted in the form of personal example, a statement, or a letter, rather than in a complex teaching, in no way diminishes the aspiration of these women and their efforts to attain a positive outlook or joy. And through the stories about them, other women were similarly inspired. One of the characters about whom Rabbanit Rivka Schneersohn told her grandson, R. Yosef Yitzchak, was her own grandmother, Rabbanit Leah. She is described as being especially careful to avoid anger. Once, Rivka tells her grandson, Leah’s granddaughters tried to test her. They reported that the cook was not exercising the proper care in observing the laws of mixtures of meat and milk. The Rabbanit approached the cook gently, attempting to 64 Sternharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Avodat Hashem, #581. 65 Ibid., #582. 66 Sternharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Addenda, #163. 67 Ibid., no. 261.

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clarify the matter calmly, “and then they saw that there was simply no way to make her angry.”68 This tradition depicts a clash between strict observance of the laws of kosher food and strict self-control, distancing oneself from anger. This great woman, Rabbanit Leah, was a role model not only for her granddaughters, but also for her granddaughter’s grandson, R. Yosef Yitzchak, in his own inner work—and, via him, for all those who heard his story. Throughout the book about Rabbanit Rivka, the narrator repeatedly emphasizes her fine qualities.69 He also records, based on his grandmother’s word, that in addition to her naturally fine qualities, her husband, the tzaddiq, would also instruct her in “refining her character.”70 At the same time, the book describes how she herself would rebuke the Hasidim for laxity in Divine service, commenting that they needed to hear Hasidic teachings constantly in order to progress, while the earlier generations of Hasidim had sufficed with few words.71 Just prior to her husband’s passing, he went into her room to bless her and to receive her blessing, and told her that they would continue to be together, only in different worlds: he would continue to progress in the World of Truth, while she would continue to progress in this world.72 In descriptions of other women, too, we find repeated reference to their sterling qualities.73 Inner work is a central concept in Judaism, just like repentance, prayer, and so on. Nevertheless, the Hasidic movement placed heavy emphasis on self-improvement in such areas as kindness, love, judging others favourably, humility, patience, and more. These traditions, too, document great women who viewed themselves as Hasidot and embraced a central aspect of daily Hasidic religious service that was personal and did not belong to the movement’s public, institutionalized dimension. It must be remembered that a central goal of the Hasidic establishment—the bond 68 Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 16–17. 69 For example, Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 99, stating that her qualities were “an example even for the greatest of the Hasidim.” Among these qualities the narrator mentions her many acts of charity and kindness; see, for example, 111–12. 70 Ibid., 48 71 Ibid., 50 72 Ibid., 114. 73 For instance, the wife of the Admor of Piacezna; see Uziel Fuchs, “Miriam ha-nevi’ah ve-eshet ha-admor: Derashot ha-Admor mi-Piacezna al Miriam ha-nevi’ah,” Massekhet 3 (2005): 65–76. See also with regard to the wife of R. Elimelekh of Grodinsk; Malka Shapiro, Me-Din le-raḥamim: Sipurim me-ḥatzerot ha-admorim (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1969), 179. For another example see the story of Rabbanit Raizily, Kauffman, “The Hasidic Story,” 122–124.

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with the tzaddiq, religious lectures, singing, public prayer, and so on—is to motivate and inspire the individual Hasid to engage in personal, inner work. In the context of work on character traits, special attention should be paid to a concept that is integral to the world of Hasidic values: the “sweetening of judgment” (hamtaqat ha-dinim). This kabbalistic concept, emphasized by the Ba‘al Shem Tov and his followers, pertains to the ability of every individual to recognize the Divine “judgments” that manifest in a certain situation, to accept the situation as given, and to act, from within this acceptance, to identify the mode of action that will elevate these judgments to their Source and thereby balance the relationship between divine judgment and mercy. An example of this work is recounted in the traditions about the crisis that the Ba‘al Shem Tov experienced on his journey to the Holy Land.74 This incident, and the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s reaction to the crisis, led him to be loving toward every person. R. Naḥman of Breslov described this trait as the basis for the idea of judging oneself, one’s situation, and also others, in a favorable way.75 In this context it is fascinating to see how Rivka Schneersohn describes her grandmother, Rabbanit Leah: “Her entire essence was about finding the good in everything. Even in suffering, heaven forfend, she would find something good.”76 As someone who experienced the death of each of her children in her lifetime, Rabbanit Leah is an example of a woman of sublime spirit. In Hasidic language, she is described by the Tzemaḥ Tzedeq as having “a wondrous consciousness [da‘at].”77 Da‘at is one of the kabbalistic sefirot, combining mercy and judgment. When Rabbanit Leah chided her husband for his sadness as they led their grandson to the wedding canopy (the groom’s father—their son—having died long before), she asked him, “Where is your da‘at?” urging him to thank God for the children that their son Aharon had left.78 This trait also seems to be attributed to Rabbanit Rivka herself, for it is said of her that she used 74 See Tsippi Kauffman,” The Ba‘al Shem Tov’s Journey to the Land of Israel” (Hebrew), Zion LXXX(1) (2015): 7–41 . 75 Sternharz, Liqqutei Moharan, Tinyana, no. 48. For extensive discussion of judging favourably see Liqqutei Moharan, Kama, no. 282. 76 Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 92. 77 Ibid., 96. 78 Aharon himself is described as having had a ‘jubilant’ nature, ‘a wonderful comfort to anyone of bitter spirit . . . finding the goodness in every type of suffering, and he was greatly humble.’ The author adds that this trait was unquestionably inherited from his mother; ibid., 18.

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to say, “The main thing is acceptance.”79 This motto serves as her own explanation for why, in comparison with her siblings, she adjusted more easily to the affliction that they experienced after the death of their mother (their father having died before).

Prayer In a variety of traditions about women Hasidot, prayer appears as a central religious act. This is not surprising, considering that Hasidism placed prayer at the center of religious service. Nevertheless, in academic discourse about women in Hasidism, the emphasis has mainly been on classic exclusion of women—for example, their exclusion from the public prayer service, and the fact that not all Hasidic synagogues had a section designated for women. I wish to emphasize the centrality of prayer for women in Hasidism, in terms of participation (within the patriarchal boundaries) in public prayer as well as the place and power of individual prayer. From various sources we learn that there were women who were punctilious in attending prayer services in the synagogue on the Sabbath and even during the week.80 An interesting tradition about Perl, daughter of the Maggid of Kozhnitz, describes her urgent call for women to pour their heart on the eve of Yom Kippur in order to save the community from a planned attack.81 Various traditions describe collective women’s prayers upon the 79 Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 33. 80 In the story about the wife of R. Avraham ha-Malakh, in Shivḥei ha-Besht (In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov. Shivhei ha-Besht: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1970, 94–99) mention is made of her mother returning from the synagogue; later on, she also goes to the synagogue. Bender, Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh I, #468, describes a section of the study hall where women would pray in the mornings. In a different story (ibid., II, #1–14) we read of R. Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl, who was visiting his father-in-law on the Sabbath after the prayer service. His father-in-law tells him, “I would offer you Kiddush, but my wife, the Rabbanit, is not yet back from the synagogue.” Further on in the story, R. Menaḥem Naḥum expresses a lack of regard for women’s prayer, but R. Naḥman of Breslov in response, tells him that “women’s prayers are greatly important to the Holy One, blessed be He.” In The Rebbe’s Daughter, 51, Shapiro describes women walking to the women’s section of the synagogue to pray. She also describes (185–86) the childhood experience of prayer in the women’s section. In Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 68, it is noted that even at the very end of her life, at the age of seventy-nine, in bitterly cold winter weather, Rabbanit Rivka continued to visit the synagogue every morning for prayers. 81 This tradition is recounted by Shapiro’s mother, as part of a series of stories about righteous women. See The Rebbe’s Daughter, 24.

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graves of tzaddiqim.82 Of course, the women prayed on a daily basis in private, including both the set prayer service and personal supplications.83 In one story about Rabbanit Rivka, she is described as never eating before her morning prayers. When she was ill, her husband, the tzaddiq, asked her to eat before praying. When her condition improved, she went back to praying before eating, but her husband tried to prevent her from doing so, arguing that her prayers were precious to him and that it was better that she eat in order to pray, rather than praying in order to eat.84 Seemingly, there is nothing new in all of this. Jewish women have always prayed, and it is notable that the Talmudic sages chose the biblical Hanna’s prayer as the model from which the laws of prayer are deduced. However, in the context of women in Hasidism, it is important to note that the Hasidic emphasis on the power of prayer, and the sophisticated and extensive attention to the challenge of foreign thoughts invading one’s prayer and ways of achieving closeness to God during prayer, are not the exclusive province of men. The traditions recording the devotion to prayer among women members of the tzaddiq’s family—whether in the synagogue, at the grave of the tzaddiq, or at home—testify to the centrality of prayer in their lives, and serve as a model for emulation by women who heard these stories. Moreover, these traditions speak not only of prayer itself, but also of its mystical and/or magical quality.85 According to the story about Perl, daughter of the Maggid of Kozhnitz, the souls of tzaddiqim revealed themselves to her, both in dreams and during prayer.86 Feige, mother of R. Naḥman, prostrated herself on the grave of the Ba‘al Shem Tov in prayer, and experienced a revelation in which he gave her guidance.87 In other stories, the mystical experience includes prayer or serves as a catalyst 82 See Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 34–35, 140–41; Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 72–3, 91. Concerning the importance of the custom of visiting the graves of tzaddiqim for women in general, see Weissler, “The Religion,” 81, 88; see also Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic,” 32–33. 83 See Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 29, where the sick mother asks her children to pray for her. 84 Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 53–54. 85 The traditions convey the idea that a prayer or blessing of a woman with spiritual powers has an effect in reality: examples include Perel, daughter of the Maggid of Kozhnitz, who saved the community through her prayer (see above); the blessing of Malka, wife of R. Shalom Roke’ah for the recovery of a sick man (Bunam, Dover Shalom, story 42); the blessings of the Rabbanit of Kozhnitz, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 129–30. 86 Bromberg, Toldot ha-Nifla’ot, 3a, #8. 87 Bender, Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh V, #67.

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for prayer, rather than appearing as the result or climax of prayer.88 In other words, Hasidic traditions about wives and daughters of tzaddiqim who are devoted in prayer, and about the Divine or prophetic spirit that they experience and its connection to prayer,89 reinforced the status of prayer and the spiritual qualities accompanying it, among the women’s circles in which these stories were recounted.

Service of God in the Physical Realm Serving God within the physical realm (‘avoda be-gashmiyut) is a central value in Hasidism, and is considered one of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s most significant conceptual innovations.90 In general, Hasidism is regarded as a mystical movement that embraces the material world, in contrast to the asceticism that characterized Hasidim (“pious ones”) prior to the Hasidic movement.91 Admittedly, even after the Ba‘al Shem Tov taught the Jewish world the centrality of the principle, “In all your ways know Him,” and a range of applications and instructions encouraging religious service in the entirety of human existence—eating and drinking, work, everyday conversation, and so on—there is still profound ambivalence within Hasidism as 88 For example, Gittel, wife of R. Avraham ha-Malakh, dreams that she arrives at the Heavenly Court, where she prays for her husband’s life, and her prayer is accepted. Rabbanit Schneersohn, prior to her death, experienced herself in the World of Truth, arousing mercy for her children, who were destined to be orphaned (Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 31). Sara, wife of R. Aharon, the son of Rabbanit Leah, prostrates herself on the graves of tzaddiqim and communes through prayer with the soul of R. Schneur Zalman and the “Middle Admor,” R. Dov-Ber, who are active on her behalf (Ibid., 91–92). 89 On some occasions women are said to experience Divine inspiration without any specific connection to prayer. See Sternharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Avodat Hashem #583, where R. Naḥman says that his daughters have Divine inspiration. See also the range of traditions about his mother, Feige (Ḥayei Moharan, Mekom Yeshivato u-Nesi‘otav, 114; Ḥayei Moharan, Addenda, 4). There are also stories about Perel, daughter of the Maggid of Kozhnitz (Bromberg, Toldot ha-Nifla’ot, 38–39). Bunam, Dover Shalom, story 5, describes the “prophetic” perceptive powers of Eideli, daughter of R. Shalom Roke’ah of Belz. For more about women in Hasidism and Divine inspiration, see Deutsch, The Maiden of Ludmir, 216–18. 90 See Kauffman, In All Your Ways, and the overview, 236–48. 91 See Philip Wexler, Mystical Sociology: Toward Cosmic Social Theory (New York: Peter Lang, 2013); Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba‘al Shem Tov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 27–41. See also Avraham Yizhak (Arthur) Green, “Buber, Scholem and the M`eor ‘Eynaim: Another Perspective on a Great Controversy” (forthcoming).

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to the value of this world and the manner in which the concept of serving God in the physical realm should be implemented. In this context it is interesting to consider the influence of this idea on the spiritual world of Hasidic women. As Biale has argued, since the woman has generally been identified—both in the general culture and in the kabbalistic tradition—with the physical or material realm, we might have thought that the concept of Divine service within the physical realm would enhance the woman’s prestige.92 It is interesting that Biale’s main question concerns the male attitude towards women and the feminine body. His article implicitly examines women, their sexuality, their family role, their bodies and their spirituality from a perspective in which the man is the sole subject. From a perspective that focuses on the woman as subject, we might ask: in what way did women experience in their own lives—anchored, as they were, far more firmly in the physical and material realm than were the men—the idea of service within the physical realm? Did it function as a principle that imbued their routine activity with religious value? Did women serve God through the physical realm? Did women who cooked, fed, cleaned, worked for a living, maintained households, gave birth, nursed, and nurtured, view this service as a way of drawing close to God and cleaving to Him? A Breslov tradition recounts: When our Rabbi was once asked why the Ba‘al Shem Tov held his daughter, Adel, our Rabbi’s grandmother, in such esteem, he answered: “Because all day she would go about with longing for the blessed God, and would ask herself, ‘What more can I do that will be pleasing to Him?’”93

This longing is the essence of the Hasidic experience; it is the aspiration to live a life of “In all your ways know Him,” a life of religious totality. R. Naḥman of Breslov, in telling his followers about Adel, daughter of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, sketches a figure who is worthy of emulation by men and women alike. He does not emphasize some or other specific act that Adel performed, but rather her existential state of total religiosity, leading this woman to an elevated spiritual existence. 92 Biale, “Feminist Reading,” 132–33. Biale’s feminist reading is sharply critical of the Hasidic movement and misogynic Hasidic literature. While his argument is unquestionably justified, in a certain sense his article, too, represents support for Gross’s claim that the research sometimes goes further in structuring a religious phenomenon as patriarchal in nature than does the religious mechanism itself. 93 Bender, Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh II, #72.

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The same existential state is reflected, for example, in Shapiro’s description of her mother cooking goose fat, some of which will be preserved for Pesach, some for Hannukah, and some given to the poor: “She was immersed in her work, silently praying: ‘May it be Your will that we will be found worthy to partake of the sacred offerings in the holy temple’. . .”94 The book The Rebbe’s Daughter as a whole is enveloped in an atmosphere of intensive religiosity. Every commandment is an event that involves all the senses; each everyday act demands maximum attention. When the young Bat Tzion (the heroine, modelled on the author) approaches her father, the tzaddiq, to greet him in the morning, “she always tried hard to remove all distracting thoughts from her pounding heart.”95 In the spiritual atmosphere surrounding the girl in the tzaddiq’s court, all of reality is experienced as being imbued with God’s presence: “The canary’s sweet song poured into the bedroom, which was bathed in the morning’s dim light . . . The bird’s song injected tangled feelings into young Bat-Zion’s heart, pleasure and pain whirling in confusion . . . She imagined them to be a song of praise to the Creator or perhaps a distressed soul’s outpouring of prayer.”96 To borrow Polen’s terminology, it is clear that Shapiro’s description of the Hasidic court, while offering a nostalgic look at a past that will never return, is also an “exemplar of a woman’s spiritual autobiography.”97 This feminine religiosity is characterized by its connectedness and harmony: harmony with the past, with others, with the natural world, and with every moment of existence. It is a mode of existence where the emphasis is not on climaxes, dramatic turnarounds, or moments of religious ecstasy, but rather on the mundane everyday routine, imbued with spirituality. The figures described in the book, many of them women, are depicted as “holy individuals who strive for elevated states of inner piety.”98 As Polen writes, “For Shapiro, Hasidism means to take the time to experience deeply, to immerse oneself so fully that the waters of holiness seep through the very pores of the skin.”99 Shapiro depicts an outer and inner reality that are suffused with divine Presence, a reality of the kabbalistic-cum-Hasidic adage

94 Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 15. 95 Ibid., 5. 96 Ibid., 81. 97 Ibid., XLII. 98 Ibid. 99 Ibid., XXVIII.

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of “there is no place that is devoid of His Presence,” without stating this explicitly in Hasidic or kabbalistic terms. At the same time, Shapiro’s stories raise clear conflicts between the harmonious view of existence and the dichotomous distinction between the material and the spiritual. The tzaddiq R. Yehiel Moshe used to afflict his body and fast, and was disdainful of the family’s material needs, transferring the money he received from his followers for the purpose of rebuilding his home, which had burnt down, to communal needs. Throughout the book, his mother tries to talk him out of weakening his body through fasting, and to persuade him of the importance of rebuilding his house.100 In one of their conversations, the tzaddiq says, “What Mother wants me to do is self-contradictory: to aim for physical comfort and to bring the redemption closer.” Later on, the author places in his mouth a call to seek the root of the redemption “in all our material activities.”101 In the conflict between negative and positive perspectives on the body and this world, the tzaddiq’s mother represents the latter. There are other Hasidic traditions in which the woman’s position negates asceticism and self-affliction. In the Hasidic context, a rejection of the ideal of asceticism means internalization of the concept of serving God through the physical realm. For example, in the story about Gittel, wife of R. Avraham ha-Malakh, in Shivḥei ha-Besht, there is clear criticism of R. Avraham for abstaining from sexual relations with his wife. The young Gittel is described as experiencing mystical visions and as being a Hasidah of the Maggid of Mezeritch, who would meet with her and advise her in his lifetime and continued to help her through revelations after his death. Gittel approaches her husband in the wake of the Maggid’s revelation to her and asks him to move into her room—in other words, to maintain a full conjugal relationship. After R. Avraham refuses, persists in his asceticism, and dies, Gittel recounts a dream in which her late husband appears to her and asks her forgiveness for his abstinence from her. This Hasidic story, told in a woman’s voice, expresses vehement criticism of sexual abstinence and reflects a view of life of this world as proper and positive.

100 Ibid., 69, 104, 113–114, 135–137. This unquestionably reflects a mother’s concern for her son, but in the Hasidic context, and in view of the public manner in which these exhortations were expressed, the mother was also making a statement about proper values. 101 Ibid., 113.

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Ron Margolin views this story as evidence of a new approach to corporeality that was adopted by the Maggid of Mezeritch under the influence of the Ba‘al Shem Tov. It should be noted that along with the Maggid, Gittel is also a presence throughout the story, and she is the narrator. As a main character in the story Gittel represents a life of sanctity and Divine inspiration (ruaḥ ha-qodesh), specifically within this world, and not in association with “angelic” asceticism.102 In one of the versions of the story cited above about the night of R. Naḥman of Breslov’s conception,103 his father is described as a meditating ascetic who often journeyed far from home. His grandmother, Adel, helps her daughter, R. Naḥman’s mother, to bring her husband home using special kavvanot that she gives her for meditating upon as she kneads the dough for ḥallot. In this tradition, while R.  Naḥman’s mother is characterized as serving God within the physical realm (acting to bring her husband home on the night of her immersion, using special kavvanot as she prepares the ḥallot), there is implied criticism of her husband’s separation from her. Among the various categories of Divine service within the physical realm that appear in Hasidic teachings, we find what we might call the “preparatory” model.104 This model is set forth already by Maimonides, but has a stronger presence in Hasidic traditions concerned with connecting all areas of existence with religious consciousness (devequt). In relation to other models of Divine service from within corporeality, in which the physical realm itself is identified as Divine immanence clothed in a “garment” of physical appearance, the “preparatory” model is not particularly innovative and is not awarded a central place. However, we might dwell on it in light of its special relevance to the lives of women. Hasidic women (like most women) were usually accustomed to serving the men in their lives, both materially and spiritually. A well-known Talmudic dictum teaches that women achieve life in the World to Come by virtue of having ensured that their children and their husbands attended the synagogue and the study hall.105 Many justifications have been offered over the course of Jewish history for the inferior feminine status. However, along with modern criticism, we cannot ignore the fact that the Hasidic 102 At the end of the story R. Avraham asks Gittel not to remarry, and thus forces abstinence on her as well. For different readings of this complex story, see above, n. 38. 103 Above, n. 50. 104 See Kauffman, In All your Ways, 356–81. 105 B. Talmud Berakhot, 17a.

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quest—for men and women alike—is to identify within every action its religious value, and often the value of an action is the preparation that it represents for some other action that is more directly or more manifestly connected to the religious sphere. We cannot ignore the fact that many women in Hasidism attributed value and religious meaning to their own actions in the physical realm, which facilitated their husbands’ spiritual work. Among the praises heaped on Malka, wife of R. Shalom Roke’ah, who was a spiritual personality in her own right, the Hasidic tradition includes her devotion to her husband in the early years of their marriage, when she would wake him each night to study; her lowering him out of the window so that no one would be aware of his actions; her sale of her jewelry to finance his studies, and so on.106 Adel, daughter of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, is described as urging her father to conclude a conversation with someone so that he would be able to maintain his custom of “arising at midnight” (tiqun ḥatzot).107 The granddaughter of the Maggid of Kozhnitz arises herself at midnight to darn the socks of the Hasidim.108 This last example deserves special attention, since it reflects the paradox of any critical discussion of women’s religiosity. In Shivḥei ha-Besht we find the story of a shoemaker whom the Ba‘al Shem Tov observes with wonder one morning. Upon meeting him the BeSHT asks him a great many questions, in order to understand what sort of person he is. What is unique to this story is the fact that the shoemaker is described throughout the story as a laborer who is careful in his work; he does nothing that is unusual. His religious greatness lies in his everyday life, the soundness of his actions, his devotion. This man is the Hasidic version of the kabbalistic “Enokh the shoemaker.”109 He is not busy unifying the Holy One and His Shekhinah with each stitch—perhaps for the simple reason that he is ignorant of the entire concept. Nevertheless, he performs the same unification through the very fact of his full presence in what he is doing, in the joining of thought and action. Could this story be read in the same way if the shoemaker had 106 Buman, Dover Shalom, story 5. 107 Bender, Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh III, 602. 108 Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 7. 109 According to mystical traditions, Enoch, who did not die but was taken by God (Gen. 5, 24), was a shoemaker that performed a mystical union through each and every stitch. Namely, while busy with such lowly objects as shoes, his intention was directed to the higher divine spheres. This legend became very central in early Hasidism, because it served as an ancient example for ascribing religious meaning to worldly and mundane issues. See Moshe Idel, “Enoch—the Mystical Cobbler,” Kabbalah 5 (2000): 265–86.

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Hasidic Women: Beyond Egalitarianist Discourse    TSIPPI KAUFFMAN

been a woman? Might a critical view of Hasidism attribute positive meaning to the religious value attached to “women’s work,” or must this work be denounced categorically as just another way in which the patriarchy maintains the inferiority of women while offering supposedly spiritual justification for it? My intention is not to decide the question one way or the other, but merely to present it, suggesting that an all-encompassing picture of the situation of Hasidic women cannot ignore the ways in which they experienced and expressed their own religiosity, even if these ways are perceived, from a feminist perspective, as oppressive. With regard to the story of the woman of Kotzhnitz and the socks, attention should be paid to the fact that it appears as part of a talk in which the tzaddiq’s wife mentions her aunts, who would get up early in the morning to study Torah. In response, one of the Hasidim recalls the granddaughter of the Maggid, who got up early in order to darn the socks of the Hasidim. The tzaddiq comments, “There is no greater character trait than kindness to others, but there is also virtue when a woman studies Torah for its own sake.”110 In other words, the tension between classic religious service in the form of Torah study, and service in the physical realm, arises as an issue within the talk itself. In the tzaddiq’s response, the darning of the socks is identified as “loving-kindness”—in other words, a religious act in its own right. Even if the Hasidic call, in principle, for serving God in the physical realm creates, in practice, a complex and paradoxical message which has been understood in different ways, it must be acknowledged that Hasidism opens an entire spectrum of possibilities for a sanctified view of the material world and activity within the realm of the seemingly profane. This space allowed different women to place themselves within the Hasidic consciousness and to attach themselves to the Hasidic system of values, even within the constraints and exclusion that they faced within society in general, and in their religious world in particular. Service of God within the physical realm is essentially an inclusion of the broad margins of neutral human existence within the system of religious meaning. Their inclusion elevates these margins from their marginality, along with the people (women and the unlearned, simple folk) inhabiting them. We might almost say that the idea of Divine service within the physical realm was created for women, who were all but drowning in 110 Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 7.

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the compelling demands of material existence, and offered them full partnership—perhaps even a dominant role—in “broadening the bounds of sanctity.”111 Admittedly, the tzaddiq, who teaches a way of life of “In all your ways know Him,” generates, through his charisma and his intensive religious life, a religious hierarchy in which there is a religious center and margins. The fact that he addresses only male followers likewise indicates that women were not the main target population of the idea of serving God in the physical dimension (nor any other values of Hasidism). Nevertheless, Hasidic women absorbed this message through different channels: stories about the tzaddiq; stories about the women in his family; religious ideas that they heard from him or cited in his name; the indirect message that was conveyed when the tzaddiq attended to the physical and material needs of his flock; and more. This message might have resounded in the hearts of Hasidic women who longed for closeness to God but were excluded from the public arenas of Hasidism. The reality was that most women were occupied with the basic necessities of life, perhaps the very challenge of survival, with little time for or openness to spiritual pursuits. The same was true for many men. From amongst the repertoire of elements of Hasidic identity there were men who chose to consult with the tzaddiq, to put their faith in his wonderworking abilities, or to partake of the religious experience in his court, but did not aspire to all-encompassing religious life. Nevertheless, there were those— both men and women, as the above traditions demonstrate—who absorbed the idea of serving God in the physical realm as a central religious value that colored their entire daily routine in spiritual hues. We may assume that it was specifically the women, who were excluded from the institutionalized masculine Hasidic fraternity, but nevertheless took in the religious intensity offered by Hasidim and were drawn to it, who may have embraced the concept of serving God through the physical realm as a way of imbuing their lives with meaning and spirituality. The closer a woman was to the Hasidic court, the more she was exposed to these ideas and to other women who lived them, and she would convey this inspiration on to others.

111 This expression occurs repeatedly in Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl’s Me’or ‘Einayim.

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Hasidic Women: Beyond Egalitarianist Discourse    TSIPPI KAUFFMAN

Sisterhood Is feminine Hasidism solely a manner of private and personal expression of religious life, or does it have a public dimension, too? The information available to us concerning private feminine religiosity is rather meager, and there is even less with regard to religious sisterhood. This does not mean that there was no women’s solidarity; rather, it mainly reflects the fact that almost all the written records reflect masculine perspectives.112 The moment we are exposed to feminine traditions, it turns out that, naturally enough, women retold traditions to one another,113 studied together, celebrated, offered each other guidance, and so on.114 The exclusion of women from the tzaddiq’s court and from his table meant that they remained at home while their husbands were away, such that the women relied on each other for companionship.115 There is no denying that there were women who suffered when their husbands undertook their journeys to the tzaddiq.116 Nevertheless, the descriptions of women’s gatherings exist, and we need not assume that their activities consisted of nothing but bemoaning their abandonment. A Breslov tradition describes a festive meal held in Uman by Adel, daughter of R. Naḥman, attended by “the wealthy ladies from the city.”117 The meal took place at the same time as that of the men who were with R. Naḥman. In her description of the women’s dining room in the court at Kozhnitz, Shapiro emphasizes that the “the rebbetzins were immersed in their prayer books and joined the table melodies excitedly, as did the women seated at the table singing between the courses.”118 This women’s gathering was arranged because of the gathering in the men’s

112 See, for example, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2001), 95–100, regarding the lack of poetic descriptions of friendship between women. 113 See, for example, Sternharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Addenda, 61, which records a tradition “told by Tzirel, who had heard it from her grandmother Feige.” 114 We have already referenced the story of Perel, daughter of the Maggid, who summoned all the women to pray for the deliverance of the community; Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 24. 115 Some of the wives of Breslov Hasidim today, whose husbands travel to Uman for Rosh Ha-Shanah, describe how, owing to circumstances, this holiday has become a time of feminine partnership and solidarity. 116 See Rapoport-Albert, “On Women,” 497–98. 117 Steinharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Addenda, 254. 118 Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter, 67. I have amended the translation here.

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dining hall, and the women listened to what was happening there, but their own gathering is still significant in its own right. In the stories that women tell about themselves, there is women’s solidarity and there is feminine continuity.119 There are also women’s gatherings for study. Loewenthal, who identifies the “Lower Unity” as a seminal Ḥabad principle that facilitated women’s involvement in Ḥabad in the twentieth century, asserts that within the framework of this “Lower Unity” a woman would live her life as an “exemplar of the spiritual ideal.” The realization of this ideal, he claims, is dependent on access to Hasidic sources—that is to say, in the Ḥabad context, study of the Tanya.120 According to this view, women could not have internalized the principle of serving God through the physical realm, or delved deeply into character improvement, or attained devotional prayer, without access to the literature of Hasidic teachings. Loewenthal also posits that Ḥabad women did not get together for study purposes prior to the change that occurred in the attitude towards women under the leadership of R. Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn.121 However, a review of Schneersohn’s Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit shows the many and varied ways in which Ḥabad women learned from one another without studying Tanya: through storytelling, both spontaneous and on occasions meant especially for this purpose; through personal example; and through gatherings for study—to the extent that this was possible for women in a patriarchal tradition. R. Yosef Yitzchak testifies that “Rabbanit Rivka used to say: ‘Tze’ena u-Re’ena is our [women’s] “reading of the Torah” . . . All that is good is to be found here.’”122 Specifically where the focus is on Hasidism, a movement that broadened the concept of “study” in so many ways, we must look at the full spectrum. The story is told of R. Zusia, who could not maintain a study 119 As in the story mentioned above, about the birth of R. Naḥman, and the support that Feige, his mother, receives from Adel, her mother, and from the four matriarchs of the Jewish People; Steinharz, Ḥayei Moharan, Addenda, 4. See also the story of the night of immersion of the Maggid’s wife: Tsippi Kauffman, “Birth in Hasidic Literature: Gendered Readings” (Hebrew), Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 27 (2014): 67–101, esp. 97–100. See also throughout Shapiro, The Rebbe’s Daughter and Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit. 120 See Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic”, 12–13. In any case, Loewenthal claims that this change occurred only in the twentieth century, with the establishment of Aḥot ha-Temimim and other women’s associations. See also his discussion of the women’s study group at Beit Yaakov, ibid., 32–38. 121 Ibid., 26. 122 Schneersohn, Divrei Yemei ha-Rabbanit, 108.

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Hasidic Women: Beyond Egalitarianist Discourse    TSIPPI KAUFFMAN

partnership with R. Schmelke, the scholar, because his renewed and childlike contemplation of the very first word of the Talmud became an intense religious experience: he read the opening words, “Me-ematai qorin et shema‘ . . .” (“from what time can one recite the shema . . .”) and was struck by a reading that replaced a single vowel in the first word— “me-emati” (“with fear of Me”). Whereupon he fell upon his face to the ground in fear and terror, thereby embodying the meditative and catalyzing study preached by the Ba‘al Shem Tov.123 In significant ways, R. Zusia represents a “feminine” figure: he is a marginal character, unable to study, excluded from the public masculine space124 and unable to be part of the establishment; he is intensely emotional, experiences everything viscerally, physically; he weeps, he is humble. In many ways, as I have demonstrated in the past, R. Zusia represents the original, “authentic” Hasidism, expressing something of the spirit of the Ba‘al Shem Tov in a generation in which Hasidism was dealing with the challenges of institutionalization and dynasties while seeking to preserve charisma, spontaneity and authentic religious feeling. A “feminine” man such as R. Zusia could function among “masculine” Hasidism as a model for emulation, and as a subversive and even critical voice. Women—and there were unquestionably actual women whose Hasidism was comparable with that of R. Zusia—could not function in the same way within the Hasidic patriarchal social structure. In the research of Hasidism, it is important to overcome the tendency to dismiss any feminine religiosity as being of lesser value, especially where this tendency has its source not in the patriarchal Hasidic position, but rather in criticism of it.

Conclusion Penelope M. Magee writes about the sacred/profane contrast and its significance in the context of religion and gender.125 She relies on Nancy Jay’s criticism of the logical picture of the world, which forces different realities into binary categories, as well as on the distinction that Anthony Wilden draws 123 See Tsippi Kauffman, “On the Portrait of a Tzaddiq: R. Zusia of Annopol” (Hebrew), Kabbalah 30 (2013): 273–301, esp. 279–285. 124 Kauffman, “On the Portrait,” esp. 285–289. 125 Penelope M. Magee, “Disputing the Sacred: Some Theoretical Approaches to Gender and Religion” in Ursula King (ed.), Religion & Gender (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 101–20.

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between analogically encoded information and digitally encoded information. Wilden argues that most of the information in the world is analogic—in other words, continuous, unbroken information about relations rather than things, in which there are no states of nothingness or negation. Nevertheless, the limitations of language and culture create a situation in which much information is digitally encoded, generating an epistemology of contrasts and identities. King applies these insights to the foundational concepts of “sacred” and “profane,” arguing that from a feminist point of view this binary contrast should be challenged and replaced with religious thinking within a framework of analogic continuity. This feminist insight matches the Hasidic demand to “broaden the boundaries of holiness,” which was applied in the marginal areas in which women had freedom to roam. We have reviewed stories testifying to the fact that in the circles close to the tzaddiqim there were Hasidic women who were intensively engaged in character building, prayer, mystical visions, storytelling as a means of educating and for healing, and serving God within the physical realm. Although they did not participate in the Hasidic social structure, they were not alone; there is evidence of women’s solidarity centered on their spiritual work. Once we move beyond the women who were part of the tzaddiq’s family, the picture is less clear. We can only assume that since the women close to the tzaddiq were not a closed, detached group, they must have had some influence on the broader social context. As proposed above, with regard to the question of Hasidic identity itself there are solid grounds for rejecting the binary view in favor of a continuum along which every Hasid and Hasidah is able to position himself or herself. Within a more fluid and flexible space for identity definition, we need no longer focus exclusively on the question of equality. I have tried above to demonstrate that from within a fluid identity perception that values elements of identity that are fragmentary and not necessarily public, a different image of feminine Hasidism emerges from the one reinforced in the research. The testimonies available to us are few and far between, but they are the tip of an iceberg, testifying to phenomena which, for the most part, are undocumented. With this in mind we might set aside our occupation with Hasidic women alone, important as it may be, and think about how turning our gaze to feminine Hasidism makes more room for men, too, and for their diverse expressions of religiosity and Hasidism.

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Toward the end of the nineteenth century, and especially during the twentieth century, there appeared various different forms of thought and implementation under the heading of “neo-Hasidism.” Close attention reveals that neo-Hasidism is focused mainly on “feminine” aspects of Hasidism, as described above. So long as these aspects were the province of the wives and daughters of tzaddiqim, their Hasidism was regarded as partial, defective, or even non-existent. Once male philosophers began drawing partial elements of identity from the world of Hasidism, this phenomenon became a movement in its own right. Its name testifies to newness and innovation, and it exists, it is visible, and it is subjected to scholarly research. When Martin Buber glorifies the Hasidic story, presence in the moment, and engagement in this world—or, to express it in very general terms, the feminine aspects of Hasidism—he generates discourse. It is important to note the roots of this discourse in the existential experience of Hasidic women, even if their voice emanates only weakly. One final comment: I noted above that discussion of the place of women in Hasidism has thus far been undertaken mainly from the perspective of the first wave of feminist criticism. The present discussion focuses on the second wave: the quest for paths of expression of feminine religiosity, what King and others refer to as the “paradigmatic turn.” At the same time, the quality of Hasidic religiosity that is exposed from the perspective of cultural feminism conforms to a significant degree with the insights of the third wave of feminism. In other words, we are speaking of a quality of ‘queer’ religiosity that seeks to blur binary boundaries of sacred and profane, central and marginal, spirituality and materiality, and to make place for all those seeking closeness to God. This religious quality characterized certain women—as discussed above, and also certain men. It reverberates with the grandeur of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s vision and the religious longing for a place where boundaries (including those of gender) fall away.126

126 For a broader discussion see, for example, Kauffman, “Hasidic Performance.”

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Daniel Reiser

Prophecy and Imagination in the Teachings of R. Tzadoq ha-Kohen of Lublin, R. Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, and R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira

Preface Eliezer Schweid has examined one of the more surprising phenomena of the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century—the renewal of prophecy: At the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century a new surprising phenomenon stood out in the modern denominations *

I would like to thank Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse, together with the anonymous referees, for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. This essay is based on the sixth chapter of my book Vision as a Mirror: Imagery Techniques in Twentieth Century Jewish Mysticism [Hebrew] (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2014) and served as the basis of a more detailed discussion which has appeared in the fifth chapter of my book Imagery Techniques in Modern Jewish Mysticism (Berlin and Jerusalem: De Gruyter and The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2018). I am grateful to Prof. Daniel Abrams who gave me permission to publish this essay.

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Prophecy and Imagination in the Teachings    DANIEL REISER

of the Jewish nation: the rise of spiritual leadership possessing a renewalmissionary awareness, which adopted the biblical prophetic figure of Moses and the later prophets .  .  . as a model. This phenomenon characterized a large, one may even say the more influential and distinguished, part of Jewish literature in Yiddish and German of that era, and specifically in the fields of philosophy and poetry.1

Schweid explored the renewal of prophecy as a national and societal mission, in the writings of twentieth-century figures like A. D. Gordon, A. I. Kook, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, A. J. Heschel, and others—who lived with prophetic consciousness and spoke in its name. They spoke in the name of God, based on the unmediated revelation of his will and commandments for the individual and especially for the nation, and from the certain knowledge that soon a historic event of global proportions embedded within a spiritual cataclysm would occur.2 Schweid identified this phenomenon with catastrophic historic events, such as the crisis of humanism in the first half of the twentieth century, the threat of destruction emanating from Germany, and the pan-European rise of antiSemitism. These manifestations required a new thinking about the future of mankind and the Jewish people, its place, culture, and purpose.3 Likewise other events pregnant with significance, like the return of the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland and the founding of the Zionist movement (for some, linked directly to previous phenomena) intensified the intuition of a number of prophet-thinkers that the Jewish people were on the threshold of a new era and that the murmurings of redemption could be heard.4 1 Eliezer Schweid, Prophets for their People and Humanity: Prophecy and Prophets in Twentieth-Century Jewish Thought [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999), 9. 2 To this list of figures, we can add Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942), a neo-Hasidic mystic. See in English: Arthur Green, “Three Warsaw Mystics,” in Kolot Rabbim: Essays in Memory of Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer [Hebrew], ed. R. Elior (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1997), 1–58; idem, and Ariel Evan Mayse, “‘The Great Call of the Hour’: Hillel Zeitlin’s Yiddish Writings on Yavneh,” In Geveb (March 2016): Accessed August 23, 2017. For a collection of Zeitlin’s most significant works translated into English, see Arthur Green’s edition of Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin (New York: Paulist Press, 2012). 3 Ibid., 9–11. 4 A clear connection can be located between the revival of the Zionist movement and the revival of prophetic consciousness in the thought of Ha-Nazir (R. David Kohen, 1887– 1972), a student of R. Kook. See his words in Mishnat ha-Nazir [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Nezer David, 2005), 71: “But prophecy shall surely come, the renewal has begun, the return to Zion has begun, and God has returned his captured people.” Also see ibid., 42–43, as well as his book Qol ha-Nevu’ah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Nezer David, 2002),

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Scholars of the Bible and mysticism have primarily presented two parallel competing models for the characterization of biblical prophecy: the ecstatic model and the emissary model. Prophecy in the ecstatic model is typified as a subjective experience in which the person experiences the effacement of his corporeality and internally senses the divine presence and potency. In contradistinction, prophecy in the emissary model is characterized as belonging to the public domain, in which the prophet serves as God’s messenger in order to reproach the community and to improve its moral character.5 Schweid described the phenomenon of the modern prophetic awakening in a similar fashion to the biblical emissary model—prophecy is cast as a mission striving for a concrete redemption upon the stage of the Jewish people’s national history. Yet the reawakening of prophecy and its cresting in the twentieth century requires further clarification. Even Schweid does not purport to explain this phenomenon in its entirety and, despite his excellent historical explanations, more remains hidden than revealed. The appearance of prophecy in the twentieth century persists as an enigma without a comprehensive solution. Is this model of prophecy in the twentieth century exclusive? The answer is, no. Parallel to the revival of emissary prophetic consciousness there was also a renewal of a striving for ecstatic prophecy in the twentieth century. The scope of this was no less than what has been discussed until now, and we also lack an extensive explanation for this renewal. Understanding such complicated historical and religious phenomena in full is a very difficult task indeed, and the aim of the present study is more modest: to describe this reawakening and to offer a few different hypotheses for this renaissance, even if a complete summary remains beyond the horizon. Ecstatic prophecy, as opposed to emissary prophecy, makes extensive use of the imagination as a central and important instrument, whether in the process of developing skills for acquiring prophecy or prophesizing itself. One 5, §7; 318. See the words of a different student of R. Kook, R. Jacob Moses ben Zebulun Ḥarlap, who identified the twentieth century as the era of “the footsteps of the Messiah” and said that “in the footsteps of the Messiah a powerful demand for the disclosure of prophecy is awakened” (Mei Marom: On Maimonides’ Eight Chapters [Hebrew] [Jerusalem: Bet Zevul, 1982], VI:208). 5 This differentiation starts with Friedrich Heiler’s distinction between “Mystical” and “Prophetic” prayer and continues with the works of Yehezkel Kaufmann, Henry Wheeler-Robinson, Binyamin Uffenheimer, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Haviva Pedaya and more. For a survey of the different scholarly approaches to biblical prophecy, see Reiser, Vision as a Mirror, 79–92; Ron Margolin, Inner Religion: The Phenomenology of Inner Religious Life and its Manifestation in Jewish Sources (from the Bible to the Hasidic texts) (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011), 154–60 (Hebrew).

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may say that this element is the crucial difference between the two types of prophecy. Obviously, individuals who undergo a state of emissary prophecy may have a vision as well, but this is markedly different than the imagination of a concentrated effort to see a picture, a full script with figures and a plot. Emissary prophets achieve a general picture, a vision that does not require clear visualization of a specific image. Furthermore, the vision in emissary prophecy is not a technique—which the person uses in an intended fashion as an instrument. In contrast, in ecstatic prophecy the imagination plays a central role as an intentional tool in the hands of the person, as a medium in the prophetic process itself and not only as a stationary target in front of the prophet’s eyes.

Prophetic Imagination in the Teachings of R. Tzadoq ha-Kohen of Lublin and R. Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook According to the sages, prophetic inspiration ceased with the dawn of the Second Temple era.6 Simultaneously, the men of the Great Assembly abolished the desire for idolatry.7 The author of the medieval Sefer Ḥasidim links these two phenomena, and in his opinion, the temporal proximity of these events is not arbitrary, “there is no holy spirit in the world [in order] to be prophets as in the Second Temple period, for during the Second Temple the desire for idolatry was destroyed.”8 R. Elijah b. Solomon Zalman, the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797), saw a clear connection between the cessation of prophecy and the destruction the evil inclination, “since they killed the evil inclination, prophecy was nullified.”9 Many reasons have been suggested for the simultaneous decline of prophecy and the obliteration of idolatrous desire from the midst of the Jewish 6 b. Sanhedrin 11a. See Ephraim E. Urbach, The World of the Sages: Collected Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2002), 9–49; For an overview of studies devoted to the cessation of prophecy see Nehemia Polen, “The Spirit Among the Sages: Seder Olam, the  End of Prophecy,  and Sagely Illumination,” in  “It’s Better to Hear the Rebuke of the Wise than the Song of Fools” (Qoh 7:5): Proceedings of the Midrash Section, Society of Biblical Literature, vol. 6, eds. W. David Nelson and Rivka Ulmer (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2015), 83–85. For more, see below, n. 14. 7 b. Sanhedrin 64a; b. Yoma 69a. 8 Judah ben Samuel he-Ḥasid, Sefer Ḥasidim, eds. Judah Wistinetzki and Jacob Freimann [Hebrew] (Berlin: H. Itzkowski, 1891), §544, from the Hebrew section of Bezalel Naor,  Lights of Prophecy (New York: Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, 1990), 2. 9 Ibid.; Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, Seder ‘Olam ‘im Perush ha-GRA [Hebrew] (Warsaw: Israel Alapin Press, 1876), ch. 30.

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people.10 Among the most profound is the reason offered in the teachings of R. Tzadoq ha-Kohen Rabinowitz of Lublin (1823–1900), a creative mystical thinker who was a member of Izbica-Radzhin Hasidism and later in his life even led it. His works were widely read by various Hasidic groups in the twentieth century.11 R. Tzadoq argued that prophecy did not spontaneously end; rather, its decline was a product of crisis and mental transformation that necessitated its disappearance. The rise of rationality displaced prophecy and the study of the Oral Torah characterized by intellectualism and reason took its place.12 Religious worship in biblical times, says R. Tzadoq, was expressed both temporally and spatially. The prophet who foresaw the future manifested the temporal dimension. The spatial dimension was exhibited by the priests who served God in his place—the temple. R. Tzadoq notes that the Bible offers no paradigm of a study hall or religious worship by means of in-depth interpretation of texts. In contrast, after biblical times and especially after the destruction of the Second Temple, a third model of religious leadership developed, neither prophet nor priest, but rather sage. The development of the Oral Torah intensified in the first millennium of the Common Era, and study was transformed into the primary factor in religious worship. R. Tzadoq argues that this shift toward the cerebral happened not only in the Jewish sphere, but was an axial shift across the Western world. The rise and spread of Greek philosophy and intellectualism in the world demystified the religious landscape of magic and sorcery and together with them prophecy. Not only did prophets disappear, but Egyptian sorcerers and magicians as well, and, henceforth, rationality and reason became the primary instruments for the subsequent development of Western culture. According to R. Tzadoq magic, sorcery, ecstasy, and prophecy disappeared together, for they are all structured upon the same element—the imagination. In contrast, rationality is based on causality and systematic logic: In the Greek [period] the principle of in-depth study (pilpul) of the Oral Torah was spread by Shimon the Pious, who was a remnant of the Great Assembly. Alexander of Macedonia lived in his time, and Greek wisdom emerged as well, 10 See Urbach, above. 11 Concerning R. Tzadoq’s influence on the musar movement in general and this topic specifically see Elijah Eliezer Dessler, Mikhtav me-Eliyahu, vol. 3 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Sifriyati, 1992), 277–78. 12 Shimon Gershon Rosenberg, We Walk in Fervor [Hebrew] (Efrat: Yeshivat Siaḥ Yitzḥak, 2008), 252–53.

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for in Babylon there were still prophets. And so as in Egypt, when it was time for the revelation of the Written Torah, there was something corresponding (le-umat zeh) in the husk—Egyptian wisdom, based on sorcery and the like, which does not follow the intellect [and] derives only from the potencies of impurity. And so, in Babylon, when there were still the later prophets among the men of the Great Assembly, there were corresponding magicians, exorcists, and dream interpreters who acted not according to the intellect but the potencies of impurity. But later, when the primary spread of Oral Torah began from the intellect of the sages which manifested in them, then correspondingly the intellectual Greek wisdom emerged.13

Elsewhere we read: Just as the Torah directs Israel, so too does God direct all the worlds; even the nations are directed according to the principle of correspondence (zeh leumat zeh). All increase of idolatry, as well as of magicians and sorcerers, took place when there was a revelation of the divine Presence (gilui shekhinah) and prophecy in Israel. Once it (i.e., prophecy) departed, the Oral Torah emerged and for them Greek wisdom—that is, human wisdom—began. For the men of the Great Assembly began at the dawn of the Greek empire, which was the end of prophecy.14

The ascension of Greek wisdom, contemporaneous with the rise of the Oral Torah, parallel to the abstention of prophecy was not an arbitrary process. The principles of rationality, whether they are of Greek wisdom or Jewish Oral Torah, are diametrically opposed to the principles of prophecy and the relation between them is one of symmetrical correspondence (zeh le-umat zeh). 13 Tzadoq ha-Kohen Rabinowitz, Peri Tzaddiq, devarim, 12; idem, Peri Tzaddiq le-Ḥanukkah, 1. See Polen, “The Spirit Among the Sages,” 85–94 where, from a passage in Seder ‘Olam which discusses Alexander of Macedonia, he demonstrates in an original, fascinating, and compelling manner, in contrast to all other studies, that according to Seder ‘Olam prophecy is continuous, and there is no clear line of demarcation between the period of prophecy and rationality. According to Polen, the rabbinic sages of the tannaitic period did not only decide matters with the use of logic, but also with the use of divine inspiration. Either way, ultimately, Polen admits that this change did occur, however at a later period. 14 Tzadoq ha-Kohen Rabinowitz, Resisei Lailah, 56. In the identification of prophecy and imagination in the teachings of Rav Tzadoq, see Tzidqat ha-Tzaddiq (Jerusalem, 1998), no. 203: “The power of imagination is one of the powers founded by God in the mind. The entire essence of prophecy stems from it .  .  . And so, in the Guide of the Perplexed, [it is explained] that prophecy is a portion of the wisdom, and it is taught in b. Bava Batra 12a.” On the Maimonides’ theory of prophecy and its influence, see below.

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The rise of one presupposes the descent of the other, and vice versa.15 One of the foundations of prophecy is vision, say R. Tzadoq, for the prophet gazes and beholds a vision of God.” The rise of rationality necessitates the disappearance of this vision: As man’s virtue and perfection, so he has an equal corresponding deficiency, according to his level. From the days of Adam’s sin, everything is a mixture of good and evil, for God made them be in confusion .  .  . and since the desire of idolatry was dominant, so the light of prophecy was revealed so to see visions of God with the eye, from this the evil inclination was drawn to make other gods that are visible to the eye. And therefore, [the sages] stated in [b.] Yoma [69b] that when the men of the Great Assembly nullified [the evil inclination], it written, “We want neither him, nor reward through him”— the meaning of reward is the perfection drawn from it, for prophecy left Israel from the time that the desire for idolatry was uprooted. When there is no deficiency, there is no perfection to recognize the presence of God through visual truth, but only through concealment.16

The foundation of idolatry and prophecy are the same—vision. The desire for prophecy, which is the yearning for a vision of the divine, flows from the same desire and yearning “to make other gods visible to the eye.” When the desire for idolatry was nullified the element of vision disappeared and then prophecy was no longer accessible. This “vision” is understood by R. Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook (1865– 1935) as the imaginative faculty. Although R. Kook does not relate to R. Tzadoq’s words on this matter directly, we should note that R. Kook knew his writings and makes reference to his works.17 Similar to R. Tzadoq, R. Kook identified the decline of prophecy and the imaginal elements within it as a necessary dialectical reaction for the ascent of rational, scientific, and objective thought, which deny the place of the subjective imagination. Likewise, he identified the foundation of prophecy and the foundation of idolatry with 15 For more on the symmetrical evaluation of history in R. Tzadoq’s teachings see Yaakov Elman, “The History of Gentile Wisdom According to R. Zadok Hakohen of Lublin,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 3, no. 1 (1993): 153–87; Alan Brill, Thinking God: The Mysticism of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2002), 348–49. 16 Ibid., 13. Also see idem, Divrei Sofrim, 38. Emphasis mine. 17 See ‘Olat ha-Re’iyah (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1996), vol. 2, 494. See also Isaiah Hadari, “Two High Priests,” Me’at la-Tzaddiq: An Anthology on Rabbi Tzadoq Ha-Kohen, ed. Gershon Kitsis (Jerusalem: Bayit, 2000), 77–95 (Heb.).

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the same faculty—the imaginative.18 However, R. Kook also proclaimed the opposite move. He identified in his era the return of the imaginative faculty, and therefore announced the possibility of a prophetic revival: The imaginative faculty had to be somewhat repressed and eclipsed by the influx of the spirit of the higher knowledge (ha-da‘at ‘elyon) .  .  . Nevertheless, the basic foundation of the imagination remained in Israel; its inner ingredient is truly the source of all beauty and is revealed through prophetic vision, in which the light of holiness is garbed: By means of the prophets I have spoken in images .  .  . until the imagination was disempowered in Israel. The drive for idolatry was captured in a “lead pot”’ and “slaughtered.” By the same token, there is no more any prophet… Until at the End of Days, the traces of power of imagination are revealed and the love of the Land is aroused. The thing appears with its dregs, but it is destined to be purified. The smallest will become a thousand, and the youngest, a powerful nation, I am the Lord, in its time I will hasten it.19

The “end of days,” in which the imaginative faculty will be revealed in a refined manner without the evils of idolatry, and prophecy will be able to manifest in utter purity—initiates the return process of the imaginative faculty in an imperfect and unrefined manner. R. Kook identified this period with the twentieth century. This century is characterized in his writings as one of revolution, in which the imagination overtakes rationalism. From R.  Tzadoq’s symmetrical principle of zeh le-umat zeh, R. Kook identified this process, even with the antithesis phase in it, as a process heralding the 18 See Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, Orot ha-Emunah (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1945), 60, “In the world of secular knowledge, until the advent of Aristotle, inner vision dominated external rationality . . . Israelite prophecy was still vital .  .  . The inclination for idolatry derived sustenance therefrom; while on the side of holiness, inner greatness of soul and sublime faith coupled with the substance of life prevailed. The cessation of prophetic inspiration in Israel, established in the secular sphere the superiority of rationality .  .  . Subsequent Greek Philosophy was unable to encompass the realm of the spirit.” Translation from Naor, Lights of Prophecy, 27–28. Also see idem, Ma’amarei ha-Ra’ayah: Qovetz Ma’amarim (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1984), 492, in which R. Kook identifies the evil inclination with the natural desire for belief, concerning this motif see Mordechai Pachter, “The Kabbalistic Foundation of the Faith-Heresy Issue in Rav Kook’s,” [Hebrew] Da’at 47 (2001): 69–100. Lastly, see Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook, Orot ha-Qodesh, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1994), 262, regarding the use of the imagination as a preparation for divine inspiration. 19 Idem, Orot (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1985), 35–36. Translation from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, Orot, trans. Bezalel Naor (Spring Valley, NY: Orot; New Milford, CT: Maggid Books, 2014), 205–207.

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revival of prophecy. According to R. Kook, twentieth-century culture was characterized by imaginal spirit, specifically in art, poetry, and drama.20 With the ascent and flourishing of these disciplines, analytical philosophy lost its standing. Men of imagination influenced society, whereas the voices of analytic and rational thinkers went unheard. The loss of rationality and rise of the imaginative faculty had disastrous consequences specifically in the field of morality: All of contemporary culture is built on the foundation of the imaginative faculty. This is the pagan legacy of the civilized nations caught up in the imaginative faculty, from which developed physical beauty, both in action and in representation. The imaginative faculty progresses, and with it, the applied and empirical sciences, and in proportion to the ascendance of the imaginative faculty and its hold upon life, the light of intellect recedes, because the entire world supposes that all happiness depends on the development of the imaginative faculty. So things continue gradually, until the remains of reason in the spirit of secular wisdom are also converted to the imaginative faculty. The speakers and raconteurs, the dramaturges and all engaged in les beaux arts, assume prominence in society, while philosophy hobbles and totters because pure reason disappears. As much as reason recedes, so “impudence increases, and the wisdom of sages rots, the sin-fearing are reviled and truth is absent, and the face of the generation is as the face of a dog.” That inner gentleness, which comes from the spirit of wisdom, disappears. The longing for spirituality and transcendence, for divine communion, for the higher world, for the clarity of ethics in the apex of its purity, for the concepts of intellect in and of their eternal selves, becomes a rare spectacle. This global phenomenon is reflected proportionately in Israel vis-à-vis divine inspiration and love of Torah with an inner spirit and essential freshness of faithful Judaism. There rules in the world a material spirit. Woe unto you, O land, when your king is a lad and your princes eat in the morning!21 20 On the Zeitgeist surrounding R. Kook and his reaction to it see Yehudah Mirsky, Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), especially 92–120. 21 Ibid., 34–35. Translation from Kook, Orot, trans. Naor, 203. Cf. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1983), 139–143, n. 4, where he identifies the tragedy of the Holocaust with the loss of rationality and the rise of Romantic philosophy in the years preceding the Holocaust, “First, the entire Romantic aspiration to escape from the domain of knowledge, the rebellion against the authority of objective, scientific cognition .  .  . and from the midst of which there arose in various forms the sanctification of vitality and intuition, the

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Indeed, in his unique way R. Kook has also identified here a process, the end of which, together with its negative aspects, is both positive and necessitated. The return of the imaginative faculty heralds the return of prophecy. The departure of the imaginative faculty from the nation was an expression of the shekhinah’s departure, and the reinstitution of the imaginative faculty allows for the renewed manifestation of the Holy Spirit. The imaginative faculty prepares the heart to receive God’s spirit: But all of this is a far-reaching plan, the Lord’s plan to perfect the imaginative faculty, for imagination is the healthy basis for the supernal spirit that will descend on it. As a result of the ascendancy of the spiritual perception that came early in Israel, the imaginative faculty was forced to collapse, weakening the position of the supreme divine spirit destined to come through King Messiah. Therefore, now the imaginative faculty is being firmly established. When it is completely finished, the seat will be ready and perfect for the supernal spirit of the Lord, fit to receive the light of the divine spirit, which is the spirit of the Lord, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and awe of the Lord.22

The understanding of the imaginative faculty as constituting the foundation of prophecy has precedence,23 yet its presentation as able to be presently actualized and achieved was silenced for years, as we will see below. This is perhaps the reason for the flourishing of prophetic techniques in the twentieth century: conceptions of prophecy, which treat it as presently attainable are liable to stir practical engagement for the purpose of its realization. In the thirteenth century there was a practical, and not theoretical, engagement with the imaginative faculty and prophecy within Abulafia’s thought, and indeed, the central topics of his works are the mystical techniques through which one may attain prophecy. Abulafia was primarily interested in the experiential-practical aspect of prophecy and less in the veneration of instinct, the desire for power, the glorification of the emotional-affective life and the flowing, surging stream of subjectivity .  .  . have brought complete chaos and human depravity to the world. And let the events of the present era be proof! The individual who frees himself from the rational principle and who casts off the yoke of objective thought will in the end turn destructive and lay waste the entire created order.” Ibid., 141, n. 4. 22 Kook, Orot, 34–35. Translation from Kook, Orot, trans. Naor, 203–5. 23 The conception of the imagination as a central potency in prophetic inspiration appears in the thought of R. Judah Halevi and is further developed in Maimonides’ thought. See Reiser, Vision as a Mirror, 47–58, as well as the references to current scholarship.

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theoretical-essential aspect of prophecy.24 The prophetic ideal he inherited from Maimonides, however the mechanisms by which to achieve it were quite different.25 At the end of the nineteenth and during the twentieth century, after years of relative silence, one may find again, in an exciting manner, an enhanced engagement with and development of techniques for the attainment of ecstatic prophecy.

Imagination and Prophecy in R. Shapira’s Thought R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczner Rebbe (1889–1943), one of the foremost Hasidic thinkers of the twentieth century, was also immersed himself in the study of prophecy.26 There can be no doubt that R. Shapira was well aware of R. Tzadoq’s teachings, which were widely available in Warsaw, and that he was acquainted with the work of R. Kook.27 On this particular subject, R. Shapira does not refer to R. kook nor to R. Tzadoq, but he did not disregard the resurfacing of the imagination in the twentieth century and the attempts to develop prophetic ability. Moreover, he developed an organized prophetic teaching and techniques, which utilized the imagination in order to prepare and advance the prophetic ability in man.28

24 Moshe Idel, “Definitions of Prophecy—Maimonides and Abulafia,” [Hebrew] Da’at 64–66 (2009): 1–2. 25 Ibid. On techniques for the acquisition of prophecy see ibid. n. 2. 26 For scholarship in English see, Nehemia Polen, “Divine Weeping: Rabbi Kalonymos Shapiro’s Theology of Catastrophe in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Modern Judaism 7, no.  3 (1987): 253–69; idem, “Sensitization to Holiness: The Life and Works of Rabbi Klonymos Kalmish Shapiro,” Jewish Action 50, no. 1 (1989–1990): 30–33; idem, “Miriam’s Dance: Radical Egalitarianism in Hasidic Thought,” Modern Judaism 12, no. 1 (1992): 1–21; idem, The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994); Don Seeman, “Ritual Efficacy, Hassidic Mysticism and ‘Useless Suffering’ in the Warsaw Ghetto,” Harvard Theological Review 101, no. 3–4 (2008): 465–505; James A. Diamond, “The Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe: Diverting God’s Gaze from a Utopian End to an Anguished Now,” Modern Judaism 30, no. 3 (2010): 299–331; Daniel Reiser, “Esh Kodesh: A New Evaluation in Light of a Philological Examination of the Manuscript,” Yad Vashem Studies 44, no. 1 (2016): 65–97. 27 See Daniel Reiser, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira: Sermons from the Years of Rage [Hebrew], vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Herzog College, World Union of Jewish Studies and Yad Vashem), 19. 28 Regarding the nature of prophecy in Shapira’s thought and his desire to make it manifest in the twentieth century see Daniel Reiser, “‘To Rend the Entire Veil’: Prophecy in the Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira of Piazecna and its Renewal in the

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Nefesh Geluyah (A Revealed Soul) In order to understand the connection between the imagination and prophecy in Shapira’s thought we must first discuss the concept he termed gilui ha-nefesh (“revelation of the soul”) or nefesh geluyah (“a revealed soul”), which served as a foundational concept in his practical-prophetic thought in which the imagination plays a central role. The concept of nefesh geluyah appears multiple times in his writings. Ostensibly, it is an original idea and I have not found precedents in kabbalistic or Hasidic literature. However it is reasonable to assume that it is a borrowed term from kabbalistic literature, albeit with an altered meaning.29 Although this combination of words is similar to the locution hitgalut ha-nefesh (revelation of the soul), this term itself is sparingly mentioned in Hasidic literature.30 Gilui ha-nefesh Twentieth Century,” Modern Judaism 34, no. 3 (2014): 334–52. However, here we will discuss the connection between imagination and prophecy in his teachings. 29 In Ḥayyim Vital, Sefer Sha‘arei Qedushah ha-Shalem (Tel Aviv: Amnon Gross, 2005), 3:7, there are five levels of Holy Spirit. The lowest level is the dream, “he will see in his dreams matters of the future,” the second level is a revelation of Elijah, the third level is the revelation of a magid, the fourth level is the revelation of the souls of righteous men, “when some soul of a righteous man will reveal itself to him,” and the highest level is the revelation of his own soul (gilui nafsho), “When he will draw down onto his soul a supernal light from the root of his supernal soul, as aforementioned in the fifth gate [of this book] and it will reveal itself (ve-titgaleh) unto him, and that is complete holy spirit.” Vital does not use the exact locution of gilui nefesh, and it is unclear why the revelation relates to a supernal light or the soul. At the opening of the fourth gate of Sha’arei Qedushah he repeats the five levels of the holy spirit from the highest to the lowest and the highest he refers to as solely “the divine spirit” without any reference to the soul, “Five types of acquisition are the divine spirit, souls of the righteous, angels called maggidim, Elijah, may he be remembered for good, and a dream.” Even if Vital’s intention is in fact Shapira’s conception of gilui ha-nefesh, it does not appear as the highest level of the Holy Spirit. Therefore it appears that Vital is most likely a source of inspiration for Shapira’s locution, especially since Shapira quotes from Sha’arei Qedushah, 3:7, “And behold we heard with our ears and saw with our eyes special individuals who acquired the level of the holy spirit in our times,” in Mavo ha-She‘arim (Jerusalem: Va‘ad Hasidei Piaseczna, 1962), 38a. Nonetheless, the concept of nefesh geluyah is Shapira’s original conception and its meaning is different than that of Vital’s. Also see Ron Wacks, The Flame of the Holy Fire: Perspectives on the Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymous Kalmish Shapiro of Piaczena [Hebrew] (Alon Shvut: Tvunot, 2010), 100–102. 30 It appears once in Naḥman of Breslov, Liqqutei Moharan, II:98. Nathan of Nemirov uses this term twice in Liqqutei Halakhot, “Halakhot birkhat ha-perot,” 3 and “Halakhot erev,” 3. Furthermore, this term appears one time in Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger, Sefat Emet, Liqquṭim le-berit milah. However, Shapira does not mention these works in his writings.

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to a certain extent is an experience of the divine presence, “When you will adapt yourself to the Hasidic ways, your souls will be aroused and will be revealed, the sparks of the Garden of Eden within you will shine, you will feel the Jewish holiness that is in the Torah, and you will enjoy the splendor of its presence.”31 However, in its most basic sense gilui ha-nefesh is any feeling of emotion, even non-religious, “All excitement from mundane matters opens a spark of one’s soul, in any case the soul is revealed a little .  .  . physical excitement also opens and reveals our souls a little”;32 “All types of feeling even of commerce and other physical matters whether they be of a broken heart or joy, there is an aspect of gilui ha-nefesh (“disclosure of the soul”).”33 Feeling, in and of itself, is a disclosure of the soul no matter the relation to the content of the feeling itself, from this vantage point feeling itself is neutral. Indeed, according to Shapira it is upon man to utilize this opportunity of neutral soul disclosure and transform it into holiness.34 This action according to Shapira is done through the imagination: Since physical feeling also opens and reveal a bit of our souls, we already possess what we need to begin, to knock upon the doors of our hearts, calling it to come out from the iron gates in which it is imprisoned, [saying] “Let me in, my own, My darling” (Song. 5:2)—come forth and serve God .  .  . For example, every person, God forbid, has been worried about himself or another individual, whose concerns are like his own. Whenever he remembers and intensely visualizes it in his imagination as if it is in front of his eyes, his heart is softened and he feels, even weeps. Visualize them in front of you as well, and when you begin to be stirred and heartbroken, think to yourself: “Why should I break my heart and cry for nothing? After all, God is before me and I stand now before His blessed seat of glory. I will weep before God, Who hears the sound of tears” .  .  . and you will see how effective prayer raises you through it.35

The soul is revealed because of the tangible feeling of concern, and the imagination uses this opportunity as a means to uplift this concern for the purpose of prayer. In a deeper sense, Shapira reasons that the soul emotions 31 Kalonymous Kalman Shapira, Ḥovat ha-Talmidim (Warsaw: Feder Press, 1932), 38b–39a. 32 Idem, Benei Maḥshavah Tovah (Jerusalem: Va‘ad Hasidei Piaseczna, 1970), 21. 33 Ibid., 23. Paralleling this principle that in all emotion there is an aspect of soul disclosure see idem, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim (Jerusalem: Va‘ad Hasidei Piaseczna, 1962), 48a. 34 See ibid., 47a; idem, Ḥovat ha-Talmidim, 26a. 35 Idem, Benei Maḥshavah Tovah, 21–22.

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are not neutral. At their core they are sacred, and sin only constitutes a husk that leads these emotions down corrupt paths. The soul itself sees a holy vision, “For your soul, when it is itself – it sees a holy vision,”36 but when there is something dividing it from the sacred, it is upon man to remove this matter, “and only the body stops [it], and since you control the body, your soul may exit and see.”37 This conception distinguishes between the soul’s essence and its psychic state, a foundational conception in Hasidism. The soul is engrained with holiness, whereas its actual condition may change with man’s actions, which, if sinful, create husks around his soul.38 The meaning of gilui ha-nefesh is the peeling away of the husks surrounding the soul and disclosing it anew, “a part of your soul was garbed in a polluted garment of evil excitement and you stripped it, and in this you gained this part of your soul, disclosed without an evil garment remaining.”39 Meaning, at its most basic level gilui ha-nefesh is the uplifting of feelings and their being channeled towards sanctity; at a deeper level, gilui ha-nefesh is a reversion to man’s natural state of holiness. It should be noted that this experience of holiness, in Shapira’s thought, is none other than an experience of prophecy, an emanated vision and a glimpse of the divine dimension hidden within the world, “And when we shall merit… to disclose a little of our soul .  .  . at times we will see both the essence and the emanator. Afterwards, due to our human knowledge, we will not be able to intellectualize what we have seen and what flashed before our eyes .  .  . but in our souls we will know and we will be sure that we glimpsed the illumination of the master of the world in the splendor of the world!”40

36 Ibid., 34. 37 Ibid. 38 See for example Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Liqquṭei Amarim: Tanya, part I, ch. 2, that the essence of the soul is, “really a part of god above,” also see ibid., ch. 29. Lastly see Shapira, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim, 2b. 39 Ibid., 52b. 40 Ibid., 58a. While gilui ha-nefesh may be a new term, it seems that it is based on R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi’s notion of neshamah and qelippah—a sense that there is a pure essential self that needs to emerge from the qelippot surrounding it. This worldpicture is developed especially in Shneur Zalman’s book Tanya, see Ariel Evan Mayse, “The Sacred Writ of Hasidism: Tanya and the Spiritual Vision of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady,” in Books of the People: Revisiting Classic Works of Jewish Thought, ed. Stuart W. Halpern (New York: Straus Center and Yeshiva University Press, 2017), 109–56.

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Gilui ha-Nefesh (Revelation of the Soul) and Prophecy The revelation of the soul in Shapira’s thought has two purposes. The first is that of the intensification and empowerment of religious-emotional experiences, transforming them into mystical experiences.41 The second is preparation for prophecy, a preparation for theophany, “Behold, the beginning of revelation within God’s holy people, was their Israelite soul, which is a portion of God that is above, which is in their inner being—which was revealed to them, and then in their revealed soul they were prepared to be made into a vehicle (merkavah) for a great and sublime revelation, which they merited in their holiness.”42 The conception of divine immanence in Hasidism maintains that divinity dwells within man’s soul and consequently the soul is “a portion of God from on high.”43 If so, divine revelation does not have to be supernal or transcendent, but rather may come from within man, in the immanent aspect of “from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26). The soul in and of itself is “a part of God,” however it is hidden and concealed. The disclosure of the soul is thereby a disclosure of the divine within man. By shedding his husks man is able to expose his soul from its concealment and stir it from its slumber. According to Shapira, this disclosure is a “vehicle of revelation,” (merkavah le-hitgalut) a locution which creates an association with the classic locution “a vehicle for the shekhinah,” and in other words a means for prophecy. The issue is that gilui ha-nefesh also has the meaning of psychic emotion or feeling, without any connection to prophecy, so how does Shapira vehemently attach a clear prophetic aspect to the term? He answers this question by stating that each dimension of “soul disclosure” is a specific level of revelation, of a process leading to God, “And in the introduction to Sha’arei Qedushah of R. Ḥayyim Vital it is [written] ‘when his soul is very refined it will disclose itself to man and will lead him in all his ways,’ until here his holy words. Meaning, a righteous person who did not merit more than the revelation of his soul, neither prophecy nor the divine spirit, this is also a gradation [of prophecy] and it also leads him in the way of God.”44 A ba‘al nefesh (master of the soul) 41 See Daniel Reiser, “Historicism and/or Phenomenology in the Study of Jewish Mysticism: Contemplative Meditation in the Teachings of R. Kalonymous Kalman Shapira as a Case Study,” Modern Judaism 36, no. 1 (2016): 1–16. 42 Shapira, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim, 2b. 43 See Yoram Jacobson, The Hasidic Thought [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Press, 1986), 9–19. Also, see above, n. 32. 44 Shapira, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim, 3a.

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is one who has revealed his soul and exposed the divine within him from its concealment and qelippot (husks). This act of disclosure is a central action on the path to acquire divine inspiration and angelification: Ba‘al nefesh—a Hasid (“a master of the soul” and “a pious person”) – means one whose soul is not as hidden or concealed in his body… For this he is called a ba‘al nefesh, and his revealed soul yearns for God such that he himself does not desire sin, [longing] only [to perform the] commandments and to do more various good deeds… until he arrives at the divine spirit .  .  . and he is made into an angel of the Lord of Hosts.45

We have seen that the disclosure of the soul itself is a level of divine revelation, and this is because the soul itself “sees a holy vision” and is naturally a “portion of God above.” The disclosure of the soul is a function of shedding the husks that enwrap it, and the moment that they are separated then the soul’s essence is exposed and ascends. The practical means for this revelation in Shapira’s thought is through the use of imagery, “The one who strengthens his thought and imagination (maḥshavto ve-dimyono) for holiness and worship, then all his worship in general, from the beginning of each level to the end of each level in it, is different .  .  . he is able to feel the emotions of his soul more, he is able to become more excited [thereby] revealing his soul.”46 A comparison thereby emerges, as the imagination is a means for the disclosure of the soul, the disclosure of the soul is a means for prophetic inspiration. In any case, the imaginative faculty is a central component of prophetic inspiration. Indeed this conception has precedent and is quite developed in Maimonides’ theory of prophecy,47 but Shapira adds a practical element to it. His own interest was practical rather than theoretical.

Prophecy and Imagination Prophecy in Shapira’s thought is closer to that of an ecstatic model than an emissary model. Despite the subjective character of the ecstatic model and

45 Idem, Mavo ha-She‘arim, 36b. 46 Idem, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim, 29a-b. It should be noted that “intense thought” (maḥshavah ḥazaqah) in Shapira’s thought is actually a facet of imagination. See Reiser, Vision as a Mirror, 110–13. 47 See above n. 24.

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its individualistic emphasis, Shapira saw fit to spread prophecy to everyone and thought that all Jews were fit for prophetic inspiration.48 Tanna de-Vei Eliyahu teaches the following on the verse “Deborah was a prophetess” (Judges 4:4): Behold I call heaven and earth to witness, that a man or a woman, Cutite or a Jew, servant or a maidservant, all according to their deeds—the Holy Spirit may dwell upon him. Thus far are the words of the holy midrash. Surely a Jew of our own time is no worse than a Cutite of those times. Even now each Jewish person can earn the Holy Spirit according to his deeds.49

The consequence of this conception is the creation of preparatory techniques for the acquisition of prophecy, “And we must train ourselves as to allow this Holy Spirit, which is, in the aspect of “disciples of the prophets” (benei ha-nevi’im), to enter and serve our beings.”50 Similar to Maimonides’ theory of prophecy, which connects the imaginative faculty and prophetic capability, Shapira declares, “We want to merit revealing the spark of vision of the disciples of prophets in our being, and for this purpose we must discover and extract an intense thought (maḥshavah ḥazaqah) and holy imagination.”51 Meaning, prophetic preparation is accomplished through imaginal development.52 Indeed, Shapira was a trained teacher who developed 48 Concerning Shapira’s original and complex model of prophecy, and his attempt to disseminate it see Reiser, “To Rend the Entire Veil.” 49 Shapira, Mevo ha-She‘arim, 13a. 50 Shapira, Ḥovat ha-Talmidim, 67b. By the distinction between “prophets” and “disciples of the prophets,” according to which prophecy includes a rather wide spectrum of different levels and is not a single monochromatic phenomenon—Shapira assures each person a place on the spectrum. See Idem, Benei Maḥshavah Tovah, 32–33: “Do not object once more by asking if we want to transform you into a prophet. Our numerous sins have nullified that [ability]. Hillel the Elder already taught that although the Jewish people are not prophets, they are descendants (or disciples) of the prophets. Even among the prophets we see that God answered Moses our teacher, ‘no man can see me [and live]’ (Ex. 33:20). But Isaiah and Ezekiel both said, ‘And I have seen the Lord.’ There are many different levels. Any living person cannot see that which Moses wanted to glimpse. Yet Isaiah and Ezekiel saw a lower level than this, and there remains a much lower rung for you, as a Jew and descendent of the prophets, to see. Do not let your heart fall by saying, ‘I am a sinner and a lowly person. How can I see You, who are King of the World?’ Even on the lowest of all the levels, for we have surely known your state, and even in this we rely upon God and the holiness of Israel that lies within you—you will see!” 51 Idem, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim, 30a. 52 Regarding Shapira’s primary engagement of developing prophetic techniques, he is similar to Abulafia, who was also primarily interested in the practical-experimental

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multiple guided-imagery techniques, primarily in his books, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim (The Young Men’s Preparation) and Mavo ha-She‘arim (The Entrance to the Gates), with clear goals of developing prophetic capability.53 Joseph Weiss claimed that a pneumatic group associated with early Hasidism renounced prophetic activities, since prophecy was understood as characterizing Sabbateanism.54 This is in contradistinction to Gershom Scholem who maintained that there were prophetic elements in early Hasidism.55 Moshe Idel has suggested in contrast to both of them that the term “prophecy” may not refer to one explicit concept, rather a number of concepts and meanings, and he demonstrated that the BeSHT intertwined different elements into his conception of prophecy.56 The attacks against Hasidism, in which appears the claim that the BeSHT thought himself a prophet, seemingly contributed to the softening of the tone concerning prophetic phenomenon in Hasidic circles.57 Nonetheless, one may find a continuum of certain circles that strived for prophecy and side of prophecy. Regarding Abulafia’s practical aspect of prophecy and the role of the imaginative faculty in this process see Moshe Idel, “Definitions of Prophecy,” 19. Another similarity between Shapira and Abulafia is regarding prophecy occurring outside the land of Israel. Judah Halevi stated, according to his interpretation of classic rabbinic texts, e.g., b. Mo‘ed Qatan 25a, that prophecy can only occur within the borders of the land of Israel, Judah Halevi, Sefer Kuzari I:95, II: 9–14. In contradistinction, both Abulafia and Shapira did not accept this restriction and believed that prophecy could occur in all locations. Regarding Abulafia’s opinion of prophecy being able to occur outside of Israel, see Moshe Idel, “On the Land of Israel in Medieval Jewish Mystical Thought,” in The Land of Israel in Medieval Jewish Thought, ed. Moshe Hallamish and Aviezer Ravitzky (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1991), 200–210. For Shapira’s opinion see Ron Wacks, “Prophecy and Hasidism in the Thought of the Piazecner,” in Prophesy, O Son of Man: On the Possibility of Prophecy, ed. Odeya Tzurieli [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2006), 46–49; concerning the connection between R. David Kohen’s striving for prophecy and Abulafia’s writings see Moshe Idel, “Abraham Abulafia, Gershom Scholem, and R. David ha-Kohen [ha-Nazir],” [Hebrew] Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 19 (2005): 819–34. 53 See Reiser, Vision as a Mirror, 187–224. 54 Joseph Weiss, Studies in Eastern European Jewish Mysticism, ed. David Goldstein with intro. Joseph Dan (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1985), 27–42. 55 Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), 334; for an overview of Scholem’s and Weiss’s opinions see Moshe Idel, “On Prophecy and Early Hasidism,” in Studies in Modern Religions, Religious Movements and the Babi-Baha’i Faiths, ed. Moshe Sharon (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 43–45. 56 Moshe Idel, “The Besht as Prophet and Talismanic Magician,” in Studies in Jewish Narrative (Ma’aseh Sippur) Presented to Yoav Elstein, ed. Avidov Lipsker and Rella Kushelevsky [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006), 124–26. 57 Ibid., 132–33.

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even utilized Abulafian techniques for this purpose. R. Aaron b. Tzvi Hirsch ha-Kohen of Opatow (Apta), widely known for his work Keter Shem Ṭov (a compilation of the BeSHT’s statements from his disciples), testifies in his book Or ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim, printed in 1800, about a company of disciples who strived for prophecy and practiced prophetic techniques like celibacy and solitude (hitbodedut), when at a certain stage “their master, the prophet” taught the suitable students the technique of “combining names”—a clear transformation of Abulafian conceptions of prophecy: The issue of prophecy is (as follows): it is impossible, by and large, to prophesy suddenly, without a certain preparation and holiness. But if the person who wants to prepare himself to prophecy sanctifies and purifies himself and he concentrates mentally and utterly separates himself from the delights of this world, and he serves the sages, (including) his Rabbi, the prophet, and the disciples that follow the path of prophecy are called “the sons of the prophets” and when his Rabbi, (who is) the prophet, understands that this disciple is already prepared to (the state of) prophecy then his Rabbi gives him the topic of the recitations of the holy names, which are keys for the supernal gate.58

Prophecy is conceived as accessible through the use of these techniques transmitted from teacher-prophet to disciple—a conception which parallels that of Abulafia, primarily regarding the use of “combining holy names.”59 The concern about publishing this passage can be seen in the later editions. After eighty-seven years, the book was republished in Warsaw (1887) and this passage was censored, and in its place was an asterisk demonstrating its omission, “And so he will do when he wants to cling in divine communion (be-devequt elohut), he shall sit at rest with holy thoughts, reverence, and devequt. This is secretly interpreted in the verse, “When the Ark was to set out” (Num. 10:35), etc. “And when it halted,” etc. (Num. 10:37) wonders of wisdom*.”60 An additional omission that attests to concerns about prophetic practices may be found in a passage written about Parashat Beḥuqotai. In the 1800 edition it is written, “And according to the [level of] devequt man 58 Aaron b. Tzvi Hirsch ha-Kohen of Opatow, Or ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim (Zhovkva: Rabin-Stein Press, 1800) quoted in Moshe Idel, “On Prophecy and Early Hasidism,” 68. 59 Idem, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 59. Concerning Or ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim and its linguistic-mystical techniques in it see Jonathan Garb, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 2011), 87–88, 101, 122. 60 Aaron b. Tzvi Hirsch ha-Kohen of Opatow, Or ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim (Warsaw: J. Unterhendler Press, 1887), 72.

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merits the achieving of the holy spirit and prophecy,” whereas in the 1887 edition, on page 68, it appears as “And according to the [level of] devequt man merits achieving etc.”—the focus on prophecy and the divine spirit are omitted. The omissions made in the book Or ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim demonstrate the downplaying of prophecy in Hasidic circles. Nonetheless it is reasonable to presume that the anxiety caused by the opposition to engagement with prophecy weakened and declined over the years, paralleling the decline of the general opposition to the Hasidic movement. Against this background, with the general opposition to Hasidism no longer posing a threat in the beginning of the twentieth century, Shapira was able to raise the issue of prophecy and revitalize it in his writings, specifically in Mavo ha-She‘arim where he primarily engages with this topic and calls for a renewal of prophecy, without the slightest concern or apologetics. In Shapira’s thought this process of prophetic renewal is performed through the development of a new sense: This is the purpose of our holy company: that you may become transformed into to a person of spirit and thought, and not only thought, but pure and strong thought (ha-maḥshavah tehorah ha-ḥazaqah). You shall overcome your senses and a new, holy sense will be revealed within you, so that when you recite, “Blessed be you (atah) Lord our God, King of the world (melekh ha-‘olam),” you will see the You (atah) and King of the world (melekh ha‘olam), your eyes by themselves will open to the spirit to see the King of the world, Who surrounds the world and yourself .  .  . Do not make it difficult again by asking if we are trying to make a prophet out of you .  .  . Hillel the Elder already stated regarding every man of Israel, “although they are not prophets, they are sons of prophets” .  .  . there are levels and levels .  .  . and the lowest level, after many rungs of diminishment, remains for you as well man of Israel, a son of prophets, to see!”61

This “new sense” is in fact the prophetic sense characterized by vision, and is acquired through intense thought (maḥshavah ḥazaqah).62 Indeed, Shapira saw the imagination as a new instrument of “intellectual” development, “Therefore he visualizes .  .  . only in general a new intellect, wisdom, and his illuminated extended soul he extracts.”63 A new intellect or sense is a term 61 Shapira, Benei Maḥshavah Tovah, 32–33. 62 Regarding “intense thought” see above. 63 Shapira, Mavo ha-She‘arim, 16b

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for prophetic capability inherent in man, which is actualized through the utilization of the imaginative faculty. This prophetic ability belongs to every man, on the condition that he actualizes it and prepares himself to acquire prophetic consciousness, “Every man of Israel is able to come to them with little effort, but persistence”;64 “When we will just begin to become Hasidim [who are] ba‘alei nefesh (masters of the soul) our eyes and hearts will open, and in the world they will see what until now they have not seen .  .  . new heavens before us will be revealed, and who will stop you now from rising, when the floodgates of heaven are opened before you.”65 This preparation, which is designed to open the floodgates of heaven and yield new visions, is based on variegated imagery techniques that Shapira developed for the wider public.66

Conclusion I will now summarize these three thinkers that I have presented in this essay in three stages, one after another, although there is no clear proof of influence of one thinker on the next. Nonetheless, I believe that presenting their ideas sequentially points to a certain development: a) R. Tzadoq explained the connection between prophecy and idolatry through the imaginative faculty. Both in prophecy and idolatry the motif of vision is a central component. Afterwards, he depicted the disappearance of prophecy, idolatry, and the imaginative faculty as a response to the rise of rational and causal thinking. R. Tzadoq did not see this disappearance as a positive occurrence, rather as a product of crisis: Hellenistic culture .  .  . viewed Jews as devoid of creative imagination. This accusation is based on the disinclination of making statues and images in Judaism, on the rationality of the study hall, and the deficient Jewish artistic creativity in plastics .  .  . Hasidism, in principle, accepted this description of Judaism, but did not see it as an ideal state, rather as a product of the deterioration of the Jewish people. According to it, the state in which the intellect is transformed 64 Idem, Benei Maḥshavah Tovah, 26. 65 Idem, Hakhsharat ha-Avreikhim, 40b. 66 Reiser, Vision as a Mirror, 220–221.

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into the central, and almost only, means by which to cling to the holy one, blessed is he, is not an ideal state. It involves the nullification of prophecy, which in general is the nullification of the imagination.67

b) Similar to R. Tzadoq, R. Kook identified the imaginative faculty as a characteristic of both Israelite prophecy and idolatrous culture, and understood the decline of both of them as a reaction to the ascension of rationalistic thought. However, R. Kook recognized in twentieth-century culture a reversal in these positions, and in fact envisioned a renewal of prophecy in the twentieth century in connection with the renewed imaginative faculty. This type of prophecy approximates the ecstatic model more than the emissary model, which Schweid analyzed and is developed greatly in the thought of R. Kook’s disciples, especially R. David Kohen, known as Ha-Nazir (the Nazarite).68 c) These conceptions, which presented imagination and prophecy as positive potencies and not threatening ones, allowed for the development of techniques and human initiated effort for the acquisition of prophecy. Indeed, Shapira, more than any other rabbinical figure of the twentieth century, developed multiple imagery techniques and designed them for all Jewish people.69 The essence of every man’s soul is a revelation of the supernal divine and if man will be wise he will “reveal” his soul and then he will be able to acquire divine inspiration. The development of these imagery techniques, which are not characterized by national or social vocation, obligates us to reconceive the renewal of prophecy in the twentieth century from more variegated perspectives.

67 Rosenberg, We Walk in Fervor, 128. This statement is based on R. Tzadoq’s thought. 68 See above n. 5. Space does not permit me to write extensively on David Kohen’s conception of prophecy, but I hope to at a future time. 69 In this essay I only discussed techniques that utilized imagination, while Shapira developed many techniques, such as musical techniques. Nehemia Polen intends to publish extensive scholarship regarding the melody (nigun) as a technique for acquiring prophecy in Shapira’s thought. In honor of his reaching the age of “seventy for hoary head” (m. Avot 5:21) I would like to say that I hope we merit to see this scholarship soon and many more studies by him, which have not ascended the alter of the printing press—“For the land shall be filled with devotion to the Lord, as water covers the sea” (Is. 11:9).

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Are we not ready to recognize in the power of imagination, no longer the faculty of deriving “images” from our sensory experience, but the capacity for letting new worlds shape our understanding of ourselves? This power would not be conveyed by images, but by the emergent meanings in our language. Imagination would thus be treated as a dimension of language. —Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, 181. It is my view that Jewish thought and theology arise in the thickness of exegesis and are carried by its forms. —Michael Fishbane, Exegetical Imagination, 8. [Hasidism] is above all the cultivation of the inner life, a complex of sensibilities. —Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Hasidism as a New Approach to Torah,” 35.

Elie Holzer

Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies: Semantic Innovations for Discernment and Disclosure

André Malraux, the French art theorist and author of La Condition Humaine, has often been quoted as saying, “The twenty-first century will be religious, or won’t be at all.” A true prophecy, or an apocryphal statement? Malraux later tempered his comment in an interview: “Never did I say such a thing, since how would I know? What I am saying is far more uncertain. I do not exclude the possibility of a global religious renewal.” We are witnessing a renewed interest in the religious—or perhaps more precisely, a growing need for the imaginary and for transcendence.1 But transcendence, that which surpasses us, and self-transcendence, that which allows us to surpass ourselves, are complex and fragile constructs that can easily be distorted or perverted by excess and diversion. There is a need for patience, study, and research to thwart these traps. Thus the role of teachers consists of leading us in the subtle meander through words and concepts, their histories and their references, and in exploring the worlds that texts might open not only for—but also in—the learner. The resurgence of interest in the religious, therefore, should be channeled into a return to *

I am very grateful to Sari Steinberg for her invaluable comments and for improving the use of English in and organization of the article; I would like to thank this book’s editors for their detailed comments and suggestions. 1 Louis Dupré, The Other Dimension. A Search for the Meaning of Religious Attitudes (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972).

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the book, to reading, and to the various tools that are indispensable for a critical understanding of texts as well as the cultivation of an open heart capable of being called by these texts anew. This question of reading and studying is an essential concern of rabbinic Judaism and constitutes perhaps both the heart and the pedestal of its learning culture. We therefore have an enormous responsibility to conduct “an honest reading, a simple reading, which is to say, a well-read reading, like a flower, like the ripened fruit of a flower,” writes Charles Peguy.2 A responsibility on which depends the survival of the greatest literature, George Steiner emphasizes.3 A passionate responsibility on which depends the viability of a contemporary renaissance of a Jewish, practice-based religiosity, I would add. For that purpose, we are not in need of gurus but rather of teachers of reading. This article is a tribute to Nehemia Polen, one of the finest among them, with great admiration and deep recognition.

Prolegomenon for a Theory of the Hasidic Homily “What is the Hasidic Homily?” I ask, echoing Heidegger’s many works and essays calling upon the reader to think by means of the question “What is?”: What is Thinking? What is Metaphysics? What is Philosophy? In asking the question “What is?” Heidegger calls upon the reader to embark upon a path that might lead to the heart of the matter under discussion, such that “to think is to be underway.” My question, “What is the Hasidic Homily?” also echoes Joseph Dan, who in a 1996 article bemoans the fact that most researchers pay attention to the Hasidic homily only “as an instrument toward another goal”—that is, with the aim of gaining historical, sociological, economic, theological, or philosophical information.4 Researchers of literature refuse to see the Hasidic homily as literature;5 researchers of Jewish mysticism refuse to see it as belonging to their discipline; and even Martin Buber, who promoted 2 Charles Peguy, Clio (Paris: Collection Blanche, Gallimard, 1931), 1007–8. 3 George Steiner, “The Uncommon Reader,” in No Passion Spent: Essays 1978–1995 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 4 Joseph Dan, “Le-be‘ayat ma‘amadah shel sifrut ha-derush be-tarbut yisrael bi-yemei ha-beinayim u-vi-zeman ha-hadash,” Studies in the History of Popular Culture, ed. B.Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1996), 141–153. 5 There are a number of factors that complicate seeing Hasidic homilies as literature, such as: they are often fragmentary; they were written long after the oral delivery and/or by disciples; they were written in Hebrew after having been delivered in Yiddish. See Elie

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philosophical interest in Hasidism, refused to consider the homily as a central form of Hasidic literature.6 I concur with Dan’s assertion that the Hasidic homily is a distinct literary genre of Jewish discourse that awaits serious scholarly attention. Literary theorist Terry Eagleton says it well: “To read at all, we need to be familiar with the literary techniques and conventions which a particular work deploys; we must have some grasp of its ‘codes,’ by which is meant the rules which systematically govern the ways it produces meanings.” But to complicate matters, Hans-Georg Gadamer insists that in any research project, our first aim should be to articulate an awareness of our motives and of our interpretive approach. Gadamer recognizes that “to imagine that one might ever attain full illumination as to his motives or his interests in questions is to imagine something impossible.” That notwithstanding, he adds: “In spite of this, it remains a legitimate task to clarify what lies at the basis of our interests as far as possible. Only then are we in a position to understand the statements with which we are concerned [i.e., in the text], precisely insofar as we recognize our own questions in them.”7 I acknowledge that my scholarly interest in the nature of the Hasidic homily is an expansion of Joseph Dan’s primary concern. This goes far beyond the theoretical, as it is increasingly a real issue thanks to the burgeoning popularity of the study of Hasidism in non-Hasidic institutions of Jewish learning for adults in Israel and in the United States, all instances of the kind of the “global religious renewal” that Andre Malraux foresaw. This drives the interest of Jewish educational scholars who seek to address contemporary pedagogical and spiritual matters. In addition, my investigation Holzer, “The Sfat Emet’s Homilies in the Light of Paul Ricoeur’s ‘Work of the Text’,” Daat 81 (2016): 323, n. 9 (Hebrew). 6 Instead, Buber sought to find the heart of the living Hasidic ethos in Hasidic stories, a kind of oral discourse or literature. See Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters (New York: Schocken Books, 1947). See also Yoav Elstein, The Ecstatic Story in Hasidic Literature [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1998), 22–31. 7 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in an Age of Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), 107–108. From a broad perspective, secularization initiated a change in the relationship between religious traditions and human consciousness. One of the fundamental shifts in Western consciousness is from a metaphysical conception to a hermeneutical perception of reality. Recognizing the interpretative nature of human existence awakens possibility, openness, and the finiteness of truth. Thus a new self-awareness in relating to the subject is a major hermeneutic component of maturing to the point that the self emerges from a subjective appropriation of the objective social reality. See Marcel Gauchet, La religion dans la démocratie (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 91.

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of the nature of the Hasidic homily is part of a broader existential exploration of ways to inhabit life through a post-critical, intellectually accountable, and practice-based Judaism.8 As part of this endeavor, I am (re)engaging with Hasidism in general and with the Hasidic homily in particular while conversing with others, within and outside traditional Judaism, who also seek to pave paths toward post-critical religious philosophies.9 Within this context, my recent research is designed to articulate the foundations and delineate the contours of a pedagogy for a contemporary hermeneutic of Hasidic homilies as a formative praxis aiming to cultivate mindfulness, sensibilities, different perceptions, and ethical dispositions in the reader’s openness toward Otherness.10 My investigation has focused on the written Hasidic homily. Still, it is impossible to discuss “the Hasidic homily” in the abstract, for two major reasons: first, because of the vast range of 8

From a methodological and hermeneutical perspective, such accountability also involves demythologization, an interpretive move that consists of receiving mythical language and symbols respectfully while being critical of any naive or literal appropriation of them. This, largely, is the work of philosophical translation, which seeks to attribute epistemic credentials to mythical language, a task for which the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions are particularly conducive. In the words of Paul Ricoeur: “Modern hermeneutics . . . remains in the line of critical thought. . . . We are in every way children of criticism, and we seek to go beyond criticism by means of a criticism that is no longer reductive, but restorative” (Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan [Boston: Beacon Press, 1967], 350). In that regard, twentiethcentury continental philosophy’s pervasive occupation with the structure and function of language opens new venues for a conceptualization of language as the indwelling of the Divine within the human in Hasidism, especially in the wake of those philosophers for whom language is an opening to an outside (e.g., originary sense, Being, difference), often associated with hermeneutics. See for example, Moshe Idel, “Reification of Language in Jewish Mysticism,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 42–79. Various philosophers, such as Husserl and Bergson, start from lived experience, and Bergson coins the phrase the “turn of experience” to indicate that it is not a reduction to consciousness but a reduction of consciousness. See Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1994), 185. 9 See, for example, Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 1990); The Postmodern God, ed. Graham Word (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997); Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy and Theology, ed. Philip Blond (New York: Routledge, 1998); Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate, ed. Dominique Janicaud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000); Richard Kearney, Anatheism: Returning to God After God (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011); and Reimagining the Sacred, ed. Richard Kearney and Jens Zimmerman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 10 On formative practices, see Elie Holzer with Orit Kent, A Philosophy of Havruta: Understanding and Teaching the Art of Studying Texts in Pairs (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 184–207.

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

literary structures and devices among Hasidic homilies; and second, because there are essential differences and intentional choices of style and educative purposes between homilies written by the Hasidic masters themselves in contrast to homilies that are the product of students’ recollections and edited notes.11 Thus my choice to focus only on one rich opus of homilies, those of R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (1847–1905), the head of the Ger Hasidim and a leading figure among Polish Jewry. Both the man and his homiletical oeuvre are known as “the Sefat Emet” (literally, the Language of Truth). R. Alter authored and dated the homilies, which were published by his son and son-in-law shortly after his death.12 The homilies are characterized by their abbreviated form, their innovative and aphoristic interpretations of tradi11 On issues related to the connection between oral and written homilies, see Chava Turniansky, “Oral and Written Sermons as Mediating between Canonical Culture and the Public,” Studies in the History of Popular Culture, ed. Benjamin Zeev Kedar (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1996), 183–195 (Hebrew); Zeev Gries, The Book in Early Hasidism: Genres, Authors, Scribes, Managing Editors and its Review by Their Contemporaries and Scholars (Tel Aviv: 1992); Marc Saperstein, “The Sermon as Oral Performance,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, eds. Y. Elman and I. Gershoni (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 248–77; Arthur Green, “On Translating Hasidic Homilies,” Prooftexts 3 (1983): 63–72. On the same topic in other cultural contexts see Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800: An Anthology (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989); Daniel Abrams, “Orality in the Kabbalistic School of Nachmanides: Preserving and Interpreting Esoteric Traditions and Texts,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 3 (1996): 85–102; Elliot R. Wolfson, “Beyond the Spoken Word: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Medieval Jewish Mysticism,” in Transmitting Jewish Traditions: Orality, Textuality, and Cultural Diffusion, ed. Y. Elman and I. Gershoni (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 166–224; Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching in Times of War 1800–2001 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008); Wallace Chafe and Deborah Tannen, “The Relation between Written and Spoken Language,” Annual Review of Anthropology 16 (1987): 383–407; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 2002). 12 The written homilies are organized by parashah (Torah portion) based upon his orations. R. Alter affixed a date to a vast number of them, but his son and son-in-law had to guess the chronology for the rest. On this topic as well as on the question of the connections between the oral homily and its subsequent written composition, see Daniel Reiser and Ariel Evan Mayse, “The Final Sermon of the Rebbe of Ger: The Sefat Emet and the Implications of Yiddish for the Study of Hasidic Homilies,” Kabbalah 30 (2013): 127–60 [Hebrew]; idem, “‘For Many Years He Said This’: A Forgotten Manuscript of the Sefat Emet,” Kabbalah 34 (2016): 123–84 [Hebrew]; Ariel Evan Mayse and Daniel Reiser, “Sefer Sefat Emet, Yiddish Manuscripts, and the Oral Homilies of R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger,” Kabbalah 33 (2015): 9–43; and idem, “Second Thoughts: Unknown Yiddish Texts and New Perspectives on the Study of Hasidism,” Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture 14 (2017): 88–98. See also Ariel Evan Mayse, “Double-Take: Textual Artifacts and the Memory of Hasidic Teachings,” Kabbalah 37 (2017): 37–93.

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tional sources, a subtle interplay between hermeneutic work and homiletical structure, and a profound understanding of sacred and religious life. My methodology stands in contrast to common historical approaches to Hasidic texts, as my purpose is not to inquire into the author’s biography and/or the social-cultural contexts out of which the homilies developed and crystalized, nor to extract theological or spiritual messages from Hasidic homilies and to situate them within the history of ideas. My research method is not diachronic but synchronic.13 I seek to listen to the homily “at work”— that is, to what it says, to its figures of speech, and to what it does—and to sketch the nature of the Sefat Emet’s homily on that basis. In phenomenological terms: it is the text of the Hasidic homily that guides my analysis first and foremost, not its place in the historiography of Hasidism nor the role it played in—or what it reflects about—its socio-cultural and historical context. I also read the Sefat Emet’s homilies existentially, as I assume that they reflect and express lived experiences.14 Broadly speaking, the core mission of Hasidism is bringing the Divine strata of concrete life to the fore. In doing this, it attempts to apprehend what it considers concrete existence, beyond the veil of day-to-day routines and appearances. Thus it cannot be satisfied with abstract articulations of philosophical inquiries. The pedagogical role of the Hasidic master is to pave paths to the metaphysical dimensions that reside in and through contingent reality. In that vein, Hasidic homily such as the Sefat Emet evinces some proximity to existential philosophy and literature, which provide thick 13 On synchronic research see Aron Gurwitsch, “Phenomenology of Perceptions,” in An Invitation to Phenomenology, ed. James M. Edie (Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1965), 45–102. See also Avi Sagi, Prayer after “the Death of God”: A Phenomenological Study in Hebrew Literature (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2011), 20–23 (Hebrew). See also Gadamer, who distinguishes between historical and literary consciousness, HansGeorg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1996), 330–37. 14 Scholars such as Shaul Magid, Moshe Idel, Arthur Green, and Nehemia Polen also argue that Hasidic literature bespeaks personal religious experience. See Shaul Magid, “Associative Midrash: Reflections on a Hermeneutical Theory in ‘Likkutei MoHaRan,’” in God’s Voice from the Void—Old and New Studies in Bratslav Hasidism, ed. Shaul Magid (New York: SUNY Press, 2001), 15–66; Moshe Idel, “Hermeneutics in Hasidism,” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 9, no. 25 (2010): 3–16; Arthur Green, “The Hasidic Homily: Mystical Performance and Hermeneutical Process,” in As a Perennial Spring: A Festschrift Honoring Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, ed. B. Cohen (New York: Downhill, 2013), 237–65; Nehemia Polen, “Hasidic ‘Derashah’ as Illuminated Exegesis,” in 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), ed. Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2015), 55–70.

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

phenomenological descriptions of life designed to clear a path to life itself.15 As Avi Sagi indicates, such descriptions are the medium of philosophers who provide systematic descriptions, such as Sartre and Heidegger, as well as of those who instead offer descriptions of fragmented situations and feelings, such as Nietzsche and Kierkegaard.16 These writing styles enable lived experiences to burst forth in language as they are designed to disclose and illuminate existence, despite an awareness that language cannot be exhaustive. A phenomenological analysis will show that the Sefat Emet’s homily operates from a comparable orientation. Neither its form nor its rhetoric aims to state a truth or to propose a definite doctrine. Unlike medieval rabbinic sermons and the Mussar genre, it is not prescriptive, moralizing, or preaching, but rather more like the polysymphonic and exegetical nature of classical midrashic literature.17 For the Sefat Emet, religious faith is far more than an epistemic state (that is, denoting a confidence in the truth of religious propositions); it is a mode of existence that reveals and actualizes the godly character of life, by way of a person’s self-attunement to seeing, to hearing, and to being responsive, implying a particular relationship to language, praxis, and physical existence altogether. The homily can be conceptualized as a central educational format designed to inspire readers to encounter the Divine presence through concrete forms of religious living. Many Hasidic masters, including the Sefat Emet, have an undeniable fondness for the polysemic nature of biblical and rabbinic language, its fortuitous ambiguities, and its perpetually surprising interconnections, which 15 Sagi, Prayer after “the Death of God”, 24; Iris Murdoch, Existentialism and Mystics (New York: Penguin Press, 1997), 3–30. For Murdoch, philosophy and literature are both truth-seeking and truth-revealing activities. I agree with Murdoch that “philosophical writing is not self-expression, it involves a disciplined removal of the personal voice” (ibid., 5). But she also acknowledges that some philosophers maintain a sort of personal presence in their work (e.g., Hume and Wittgenstein), to which I would add that existential philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Camus are a stronger example of the latter. 16 Sagi, Prayer after “the Death of God”, 24. 17 Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200–1800: An Anthology (New Haven, 1989); M.  Saperstein, Jewish Preaching in Times of War 1800–2001 (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2008). In modern German Jewish communities, the Rabbinic sermon underwent significant changes in both style and content, with the aim of reviving Judaism by infusing it with a more edifying and elevated tone in the service of Bildung. See Alexander Altmann, “The New Style of Preaching in NineteenthCentury German Jewry,” in Studies in Nineteenth-Century Jewish Intellectual History, ed. Alexander Altmann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 65–111.

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form the warp and weave of its semantic web. Language and exegesis serve as more than means of communication. Homiletical structure and discourse, and their interplay with exegesis, intend to evoke reality; their power of reference consists of setting forth novel ontologies that reorient the reader by way of an ever-expanding vision of life.18 In other words, the Sefat Emet’s homily is first and foremost designed to produce awakening effects in the reader, so as to cultivate his or her spiritual attunement to the Divine dimension (“the innermost point,” in his terminology) that is latent in all existence.19 In short, the Sefat Emet’s homily is concurrently both revealing and formative.

Exegesis as Poetical Language This conceptualization draws attention to the homily’s poiesis—the act of making or producing something, in this context through discourse. This power of invention and creation is twofold: it both produces meaning (that is, an internal extension of language) and increases the discovery power of language vis-à-vis novel and “extraordinary” aspects of reality. Semantic innovation relates to the former, and heuristic function to the latter.20 Thus, in poetic language, any separation between the meaning of language and all that is extra-linguistic, such as references to reality, is methodological at best, since no semantic innovation is possible without the heuristic function. The “inner” and “outer” dimensions of language reflect upon one another in a similar dynamic mediation: between a person and the world, between human beings, and between a person and him- or herself. Thus, in the homily, particularly through the effects of metaphorical exegesis as will be discussed below, content and form of discourse coalesce 18 For a discussion of this thesis, illuminated by the hermeneutic theory of Paul Ricoeur, see Holzer, “The Sfat Emet’s Homilies,” 321–350. 19 See Arthur Green, The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, JPS, 1998, xxxii–xxxiii. Green offers two additional translations to the concept of innermost point: “core of being” and “inward reality.” The Sefat Emet repeatedly emphasizes the task of connecting with the “innermost point” or the “concealed light” in all realms of life. See, for example, "‫ועבודתנו הוא למצוא הארה הגנוזה ואז נתגלה האמת‬ ‫ תרל"ב ד"ה וירא) בלק‬,‫)ומכניעין הכל להקב"ה" (בלק‬. This example is particularly interesting, as it seems to not entirely identify the inner light with the Divine; see Mendel Piekarz, “‘The Inner Point” of the Admorim Gur and Alexander as a Reflection of their Ability to Adjust to Changing Times,” Studies in Jewish Mysticism Philosophy and Ethical Literature Presented to Isaiah Tishby on his Seventy-fifth Birthday, eds. Joseph Dan and Joseph Hacker (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986), 617–660 (Hebrew). 20 “Heuristic” relates to discovery or invention.

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

to affect the reader religiously, spiritually, and/or morally. R. Alter makes no use of explicit persuasive rhetoric and avoids writing in the first-person.21 He thereby minimizes the instructive in favor of pneumatic discourse, which facilitates the reader’s reflective adherence to the images and ideas offered in the homily while evoking his or her trans-subjective responses.22 Moshe Idel partially echoes this view of the homily when he asserts that it would be shortsighted to view the exegetical work in Hasidic homilies only as a means used by authors for conveying ideas. Rather, says Idel, in the Hasidic homily, the semantic aspects of classical texts are subordinate to the experiential moments, emphasizing moral and devotional aspects and inner transformation.23 For Nehemia Polen, the Hasidic master is interpreting sacred Scripture through a personal spiritual involvement while believing that the newly generated understanding might affect reality itself.24 Similarly, Shaul Magid conceptualizes the role played by the exegetical axis in R. Naḥman of Breslov’s collection of homilies in Liqqutei Moharan, helping us to see how both the hermeneutical moves and the homily’s structure are designed to impact the reader’s imagination, ultimately turning “reading into praxis […] by suggesting performative models 21 Unlike in his writings prior to becoming the leader of the Ger Hasidic group (1871). See Yoram Jacobson, “From Youth to Leadership and From Kabbalah to Hasidism— Stages in the Spiritual Development of the Author of Sefat Emet,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 429–446 (Hebrew). 22 From this perspective, the homily demonstrates only in the sense of showing what can be “seen.” In the words of Heidegger: “to let which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.” See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 34. Thus, in the context of the Sefat Emet’s homily, one must speak of presentation rather than representation because the agent of this showing is not R. Alter but the homily itself. The author plays a maieutic role, a servant both of that which shows itself and of those who are helped to “see” its self-presentation. 23 Moshe Idel, “Hermeneutics in Hasidism.” In a recent article, Arthur Green further develops this idea by exploring the relationship between the hermeneutical process and the mystical performance occurring in the homily. See Arthur Green, “The Hasidic Homily: Mystical Performance and Hermeneutical Process.” It should be noted, however, that both authors do not explicitly link the transformative aspects to the reader of the homily. Instead, it seems that Idel’s claims are restricted to the author-text axis while Green focuses on the speaker-hearer aspect, as to emphasize the oral character of the homilies. Moshe Idel has expanded our knowledge of the unique exegetical characteristics of Hasidic writings and our awareness of the Hasidic masters’ own conceptualizations of what they perceived as fundamental hermeneutical principles. Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002); Moshe Idel, “White Letters: From Rabbi Levi Isaac of Berditchev’s Views to Postmodern Hermeneutics,” Modern Judaism 26, no. 2 (2006): 169–92. 24 Nehemia Polen, “Hasidic ‘Derashah’ as Illuminated Exegesis.”

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of devotional behavior.”25 Last but not least, such conceptualizations echo Michael Fishbane’s oeuvre, according to which Jewish exegetical theology is a revelatory practice in its own right.26 It is in light of the above that I have discussed the diachronic and synchronic roles of the Sefat Emet’s exegesis as to bring out their performative aspects within the homily as a comprehensive literary unit.27 My analysis identified the features that are at work in the homilies, along with the type of hermeneutic activity into which the reader is drawn, causing him or her to become open, in new or renewed ways, toward various dimensions of reality. The following is a first analysis designed to bring to the foreground the metaphorical character of three exegetical models used by the Sefat Emet across several homilies on one particular biblical narrative: the culmination of the Joseph–Judah drama in the opening scene of Parashat Va-Yiggash (Gen. 48). It is not an exhaustive analysis, but it sheds light on some central phenomena.

Metaphorical Language Spiritual traditions in general, and Hasidic literature in particular, call upon metaphorical and symbolic language as they discuss the inner spiritual realm of the human being.28 Metaphors are an instance of poetic language at their 25 Shaul Magid, “Associative Midrash: Reflections on a Hermeneutical Theory in ‘Likkutei MoHaRan,’” 31. See also David B. Siff, “Shifting Ideologies of Orality and Literacy in Their Historical Context: Rebbe Naḥman of Bratslav’s Embrace of the Book as a Means for Redemption,” Prooftexts 30, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 238–62. 26 Hava Tirosh-Samuelson and Aaron W. Hughes, eds., Michael Fishbane: Jewish Hermeneutical Theology (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015); Michael Fishbane, Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology (Chicago: University Chicago Press, 2010). Some scholars disagree on the value of exegesis in Hasidic homilies. Thus, for Louis Jacobs, exegesis is no more than a means to reach forgone conclusions and does not abide basic rules of language. See Louis Jacobs, Their Heads in Heaven: Unfamiliar Aspects of Hasidism (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005), 27. Norman Lamm downplays the importance of exegesis in favor of the homilies’ ideas. It should be noted, however, that Lamm largely confines himself to writings of the first three generations of Hasidism. See The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary: Sources and Studies in Kabbalah, Hasidism and Jewish Thought, ed. Norman Lamm, vol. 4 (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1999), xxx–xxxi. A refined analysis of the vast varieties of Hasidic homily oeuvres might indicate a significant disparateness in the role played by exegesis. My own approach to the Sefat Emet is essentially phenomenological. By using this term, I seek to bracket the question of whether or not the role that I attribute to exegesis is the outcome of the author’s conscious intention. 27 Holzer, “The Sfat Emet’s Homilies.” 28 See, for example, Jean Louis Chretien, L’espace intérieur (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 2014).

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

most basic level. They generate semantic innovations by bringing together and creating a tension between two unrelated and/or opposed semantic universes, causing the listener or reader to see something new.29 In fact, metaphors work by violating rules about the way existing words, sentences, and narratives are ordinarily used. Simultaneously, they establish new semantic relationships from which new meaning emerges. “Things or ideas which were remote appear now as close,” says Paul Ricoeur. “To see the alike is to see it in spite of and through the different.” For the reader, the heuristic effect consists of giving new meanings to conventional experiences, bringing him or her to see aspects or dimensions of life that usually are concealed by sensory perception, or by conceptual and/or everyday language.30 Paul Ricoeur’s extensive work unearths the dynamics of poetic language not only in formal metaphors but in the use of symbols and narratives as well.31 These three forms of language are poetic first and foremost by dint of 29 This reflect Aristotle’s definition of metaphor: Aristotle, Poetics, section 1457b. See Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 65–100. On the use of parables as a rhetorical device to transform the minds and the hears of listeners in Hasidic teachings see Evan Mayse, Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch (PhD diss., Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 2015), 465–71. 30 Paul Ricoeur, “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination and Feeling,” Critical Inquiry 5, no. 1 (1978): 143–59. The following is a common illustration: In saying, “Evening is the old age of day,” we bring together the semantic universe of the temporality of the day and the semantic universe of the temporality of life. This movement produces a semantic innovation. It helps us better understand something about old age, and even perhaps about something we might never understand such as death. It enables us to “see” life as a full day, which begins with a morning and moves through a midday and an evening; and it allows us to access something that conceptual language denies: a knowledge of life, or of the perceivable world, which only the imaginary allows us to configure. In this sense, poetic language discloses something about lived reality by making reality appear different from that which is enabled by concepts or by sensory perception. The potential connection between such knowledge and the concept of daat in the kabbalistic tradition may be an interesting topic for further investigation. Hans Blumenberg writes extensively on the idea that we use metaphors precisely where concepts are not possible, when things are indiscernible within our categories. See, for example, Hans Blumenberg, “Light as a Metaphor for Truth: At the Preliminary Stage of Philosophical Concept Formation,” in Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, ed. David Michael Levin (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 30–86. George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen analyze how concepts, people’s activities, and language are metaphorically structured and interrelated: George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). 31 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). This reflects Aristotle’s definition of metaphor: Aristotle, Poetics, section 1457b.

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their possessing heuristic effects. As we will discuss, the Sefat Emet’s exegesis reflects a form of poetic language beyond the use of formal metaphors, which nonetheless adopts the metaphorical process as a central feature. While the normative approach to citations within a commentary would be to view them as “prooftexts” that support an assertion, I recommend engaging the Sefat Emet’s source quotations as an element of poetic language, guided by an awareness of the transformational power that such exegesis might exercise on a reader on the basis of the semantic dynamics that are put into play.32

Models of Metaphorical Exegesis: The Biblical Context: Self-Imposed Silences An opaque, almost impenetrable silence lurks beneath the scant verbal exchanges between Joseph, on one hand, and Judah and his other brothers, on the other, in Genesis 44. The muteness began twenty years earlier as a result of growing animosity between Joseph and his brothers (Gen. 38), developing into such radical hostility that they weren’t capable of peaceful words anymore: ‫ולא יכלו דברו לשלם‬, “And they were unable to speak peace[ably] to him” (Gen. 37:4).33 Brotherly speech enters an exile.34 An even heavier, thicker silence cloaks the brothers following their betrayal and selling of Joseph, first in deceiving their father (Gen. 37:31) and then through a twenty-yearlong, self-imposed silence—toward Jacob, toward Benjamin, and most probably toward each other.35 Self-imposed interpersonal silences affect each of them individually. Silences designed not only to keep the truth hidden, but also to suppress the pangs of conscience, to quiet the inner reverberation of the crime they committed.

32 33 34 35

See Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975); Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); ibid., vol. 2 (1985); ibid., vol. 3 (1988). For a similar approach see Michael Marmur, “Heschel’s Rhetoric of Citation: The Use of Sources in God in Search of Man” (PhD diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005). One will notice the ‫ כתיב חסר‬of the word shalom, further underscoring the breakdown of the interpersonal relationships. See for example Zohar II, 25b. According to Thomas Mann’s interpretation, also toward Reuben. See Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

Joseph also maintains a self-imposed silence when he rises to power in Egypt. In his new surroundings, he silences his past identity. He does not contact his siblings. Even when his brothers appear before him, Joseph keeps an interpreter between them, not only leading them to believe that he cannot understand them but also shielding himself from the need to speak to them directly. Does he think of his brothers’ betrayal as an irreparable act? A radical and definitive severing of ties from those who used to be his siblings? Perhaps Joseph is suspicious of his father as well, wondering whether Jacob purposely sent him to his brothers with the flimsy excuse of finding out how they were doing: ‫ׁשְלֹום‬-‫ׁשְלֹום ַאחֶיָך ְואֶת‬-‫נָא ְראֵה אֶת‬-‫ לְֶך‬,‫וַּי ֹאמֶר לֹו‬ ‫ׁש ֵבנִי ּדָ בָר‬ ִ ‫ ַו ֲה‬,‫“ הַּצ ֹאן‬And he said to him: Go, please, and see to the well-being [literally, “peace”] of your brothers and the well-being of the sheep, and bring me word” (Gen. 37:14). In any event, it is a fact that Joseph doesn’t take advantage of his official position in Egypt to get in touch with either his father or his siblings. Finally, since Jacob’s return to Canaan (Gen. 35), even God seems to have adopted silence, as there is no further trace of Divine speech to any of the biblical characters while the brotherly drama unfolds. Self-imposed silences. Gnawing silences. The biblical narrative provides a little window into the emotional callousness caused by such silences. Joseph begs his brothers to spare his life as they are about to sell him. But the text mutes Joseph’s cries as it narrates this dramatic scene (Gen. 37). Only in retrospect, many years later in the plot’s chronology, is the reader given an opportunity to hear Joseph’s pleas, when the brothers discuss how wrong they had been to refuse to hear Joseph’s pleas (Gen. 42:21–23). The omission of Joseph’s voice in the original narrative underscores the sealing of the brothers’ hearts, their moral self-silencing, as they commit their fraternal crime. What does it take to break through the wall of such inter- and intrapersonal silences as well as through Divine self-silencing? Joseph’s manipulative arm-wrestling with his brothers reaches its climax in Genesis 44:18, when Judah steps forward and speaks, prompting Joseph’s breaking of the ban of silence (Gen. 45:1–3). But medieval commentators have noted that on the face of things, Judah’s speech does not add anything that hasn’t already been said previously by the brothers. Thus, understanding what leads to the dramatic apotheosis requires the reader to turn his or her gaze to a realm that transcends the explicit discourse rendered by the biblical text. This is the orientation of the following midrash.

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Midrashic Background: Metaphoric Intertextuality Then Judah came near unto him—it is written, “Counsel in the heart of man is [like] deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Proverbs 20:5). This may be compared to a deep well full of cool and excellent water, yet none could drink of it. Then came one who tied cord to cord and thread to thread, drew up its water and drank, whereupon all drew water thusly and drank thereof. In the same way Judah did not move [back], answering Joseph word for word until he reached his very heart.36

A number of details should be noted. First of all, the midrash describes a psychological dimension of the exchange between Joseph and Judah, an emotional standoff that is necessary for breaking a crucial impasse. It uses the metaphor of people in need of the cold, excellent water that is deep in a well and can be brought forth only through forethought and successive steps. This water symbolizes Joseph’s concealed identity. Since Judah was unaware of this, whose “very heart” was he trying to reach and bring to the fore? Even if the midrash is suggesting that Judah acted intentionally, his efforts at reaching out were not actually toward Joseph qua Joseph. The reference to Proverbs in the opening sentence of the midrash offers a vague answer only: “Counsel in the heart of man is [like] deep water.” Finally, we should note that the midrash does not use any reference to Genesis 44 except three words from verse 18: ‫ויגש אליו יהודה‬, “Then Judah came near unto him” (Va-yiggash eilav Yehudah). Let us note the interplay of concealment and disclosure here: in the scene described by the biblical text, the depth of Judah’s (intentional or unintentional) intervention is concealed from all the characters in the room: outwardly, he says nothing new. Similarly, the inner processes of all the characters in this scene are concealed from the reader of the biblical text.37 The exegetical move of the midrash consists of adding a new referential realm to the one conveyed by the literal meaning of “Judah came near unto him.” The words describing 36 Bereshit Rabbah 94:4. ‫ משל לבאר‬.‫אִיׁש; ְואִיׁש ּתְ בּונָה י ִדְ ֶלּנָה‬-‫ה) ַמי ִם ֲע ֻמּקִים ֵעצָה ְבלֶב‬:‫ויגש אליו יהודה וכו’ כתיב (משלי כ‬ ‫ בא אחד וקשר חבל‬.‫ ולא היתה בריה יכולה לשתות הימנה‬,‫ והיו מימיה צוננין ויפין‬,‫עמוקה מלאה צונן‬ ‫ כך לא זז‬.‫ התחילו הכל דולין הימנה ושותין‬.‫ ודלה הימנה ושתה‬,‫ משיחה במשיחה‬,‫בחבל ונימה בנימה‬ .(‫ ד‬,‫ (בראשית רבה פרשה צג‬.‫ משיב ליוסף דבר על דבר עד שעמד על לבו‬,‫יהודה‬ 37 In general, biblical narratives are characterized by minimal disclosure of the characters’ motives, feelings and inner thoughts while providing information about their deeds and utterances. See Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985).

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

Judah’s physical approach toward Joseph become an aperture, providing the reader with a glimpse into Judah’s inner realm. The reader now is able to discern that which is concealed from the biblical protagonists—Joseph, the brothers, and perhaps even Judah himself.38 This fissure in the biblical text, opened by the midrash, is further broadened by the Sefat Emet, through the use of three distinctive interpretive models. Each model generates semantic innovations in a particular way. The first consists of providing an allegorical construct of his own, which creatively draws—and expands—on the elements of the parable of the well offered in the midrash. The second and the third consist of creating new semantic meanings: first in the very words of Genesis 44:18 and then by broadening the range of references for these words.

Model One: Semantic Innovation through Metaphorical Composition. a. The Inner Well The Sefat Emet often invokes his allegorical understanding of the word be’er (“well”) in the Pentateuch; it is among his most cherished metaphors. One case in point is a homily on Parshat Hukat from the year 1874, through which we can analyze some of the devices by which the Sefat Emet creates semantic innovations by weaving short sentences of exegesis together with personal annotations. The homily begins with Numbers 21:17: “Then Israel sang this song: Spring up, O well—sing unto it,” 39which alludes to a well that miraculously accompanied and served the Israelites in the desert, and which rabbinic tradition identifies as Miriam’s.40 Its miraculous character brought the Sages to include the well in a list of supernatural things that play a part in biblical narratives. Thus, in the Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot), we find: “The mouth of the well was created at the twilight of [the first] Shabbat.”41 Notably, it is the well’s mouth (that is, its opening), which is said to have been created at the supernatural-filled twilight. 38 Assuming that Judah was not acting intentionally. 39 ‫לָּה‬-‫ עֱנּו‬,‫ ֲעלִי ְבאֵר‬:‫ִירה הַּז ֹאת‬ ָ ׁ‫ ַהּש‬-‫ אֶת‬,‫ָאז יָׁשִיר יִׂש ְָראֵל‬ 40 E.g., b. Ta‘anit 9a; Bamidbar Rabbah, ḥuqqat 29; and Ovadia Bartenura’s commentary on Avot 5:6. 41 m. Avot 5:6.

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This image serves as the starting point of the Sefat Emet’s allegorical construct. The homily reads in part: The mouth of the well was created on Shabbat Eve at twilight. As it is written, “Drink water from your cistern and fluids from your well” (Proverbs 5:15). Cistern is gathered waters, and well is a flowing spring. In every Jew there is an inner life-point. As it is written, “And [God] blew into his nose the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7). Only, a person must find this point. It is a person’s work to have all of his actions drawn by this point. This is, “Drink water from your cistern,” which is work during the [regular] days of the week. On the Holy Sabbath, “and fluids from your well,” because the well is opened and a new light comes, and that is the supplementary soul.42

The Sefat Emet’s very first step consists of connecting the image of the well from this rabbinic source to a verse from Proverbs: “Drink water from your cistern (bor) and fluids from your well (be’er).”43 Instead of explicating the meaning of this juxtaposition, he adds an annotation that characterizes the cistern as containing water gathered either by the accumulation of rain or collected by human beings. He then highlights the particular characteristic of the well, whose water—in contrast—originates in an ever-flowing spring.44 At this point, two images have been offered to the reader: the mouth of the well created at twilight before Shabbat, and the flowing well. At first glance, nothing seems to emerge from connecting these two images; they simply both involve a well. The semantic innovation occurs in the next move, when the Sefat Emet reads the well and its ever-flowing spring as a metaphor for the ever-flowing Divine element that dwells in each human being, infusing him or her with its vitality: “In every Jew there is an inner life-point (nekudat hiyut).”45 As we have seen, metaphors generate semantic innovations by creating a tension between two unrelated contexts, causing the listener or reader to 42 Sefat Emet, ḥuqqat, 1874. ‫ בור הוא מים‬.‫ מִּתֹוְך ְּבא ֵֶרָך‬,‫ִּבֹורָך; וְנֹזְלִים‬ ֶ ‫ ַמי ִם מ‬-‫ דכתיב ׁשְתֵ ה‬.‫פי הבאר נברא בערב שבת בין השמשות‬ ‫ רק‬.'‫ ובכל איש ישראל יש נקודה חיות דכתיב ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים וכו‬.‫מכונסין ובאר הוא מעין נובע‬ ‫ וזה שתה מים‬.‫ והוא עבודת האדם להמשיך כל המעשים אחר זאת הנקודה‬.‫האדם צריך למצוא זאת הנקודה‬ ‫ ובשבת קודש ונוזלים מתוך בארך שנפתח המעין ובא אור חדש והיא‬.‫מבורך והיא העבודה בימי המעשה‬ .(‫נשמה יתירה (שפת אמת פרשת חקת תרל"ד‬ 43 Proverbs 5:15. 44 This idea is partially prefigured in the writings of Menaḥem Mendel of Chernobyl, Me’or ‘Enayim (Bnei Brak,1997), vol. 1, 84. 45 See above.

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

see something new.46 In cases like this, the revelation relates to the inner spiritual realm of human beings. Here, by distinguishing between cistern and well, at least two insights stand out. Firstly, the ever-flowing spring makes the well what it is; similarly, the human being is characterized by an active source of vitality that has been implanted in him or her. Secondly, the ever-flowing spring transcends (in the sense of “is of a radically different nature from” as well as “rises above”) the natural, arid subterranean layers of the earth. Similarly, this inner life point transcends the physical boundaries and biological determinations of the human being. It belongs to another realm of existence, beyond the conditioned, physical, natural realm. To reinforce the reader’s awareness of that inner well, the Sefat Emet’s next exegetical move identifies the inner life-point with God’s breath of life, as described at the creation of Adam—“as Scripture says: And [God] blew into his nose the breath of life, etc.”47 To appreciate the tapestry of the Sefat Emet’s discourse, let us outline his use of textual sources (T) and annotations (A) in this segment of the homily: T1: “The mouth of the well was created on [the first] Shabbat Eve at twilight.”48 T2: “Drink water from your cistern (bor) and fluids from your well (be’er).” A1: Distinction between cistern and well. A2: In every Jew there is an inner life-point (nekudat chiyut). T3: “And [God] blew into his nose the breath of life.” The combination of textual sources and annotations from T2 to T3 creates a semantic innovation designed to awaken the reader’s awareness of the inner well, the concealed Divine source in him or her. It calls upon the 46 In that regard, the use of intertextuality in Midrash is a literary device that adopts a similar “metaphoric” effect in regard to semantic innovation. See Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, in Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990). 47 Gen. 2:7. Whether the Sefat Emet’s choice of verses is designed to include every human being in referring to this verse, which then would complement his previous sentence about the Jew, is a topic that awaits systematic research. See Sefat EmetSefat EmetSefat Emet, the works by Reiser and Mayse cited above. In a forthcoming book, they discuss passages from the Sefat Emet in which the printed version reads kol adam but the manuscript reads alle yidden. 48 This refers to Miriam’s movable well, which according to Rabbinic literature is among the mystical objects created on the first Shabbat Eve at twilight. See m. Avot 5:6.

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reader’s imagination to migrate from the outer realm, the literal well, to the figurative well inside him- or herself. Concurrently we notice that T1 is so far superfluous vis-à-vis this process.49 The homily continues with a new conglomeration of textual sources and annotations, characterized by a change in tone as the Sefat Emet adopts a more prescriptive style. It draws on the same textual sources as in the previous segment but this time in a reversed order: first T2 and then (implicitly) T1. The Sefat Emet’s interpretation moves the meaning of the miraculous well of the desert into one’s inner well. He begins with an annotation stating that awareness of one’s inner well, as important it may be, is not a goal in and of itself. Of no less importance is the act of laboring in order to connect with this inner life-point, and having one’s actions infused by it: “Only, a person must find this point, and it is a person’s work to have all of his actions drawn by this point.” He then goes back to T2 to emphasize the first image it provides: “Drink water from your cistern.” This time he conveys the effort required for having one’s actions infused by that standing water. The Sefat Emet adds: “This is the meaning of ‘Drink water from your cistern,’ which is work during the [regular] days of the week.” In contrast, the fluids of the well stand as a metaphor for Shabbat, which stands for the type of consciousness it brings with it50: “On the Holy Sabbath, and fluids from your well, because the well is opened and a new light comes, and that is the supplementary soul (neshama yeteira).”51 By linking the images conveyed by the well with the experience of the unique ontological dimension of Shabbat, a new semantic innovation is produced: The well, Shabbat, opens to another dimension of existence, as also conveyed in the traditional metaphor of the “supplementary soul.” At this point, the reader connects back to T1, “the mouth of the well was created in the twilight before Shabbat,” and realizes that it serves as a metaphor for the gateway of one’s inner well. In existential terms: the opening of one’s inner well is recurrently (re)”created” in the liminal time that separates

49 Further on, we’ll see how the Sefat Emet’s late treatment of T1 is part of the dynamic of this homily. 50 See Michael Fishbane, “Transcendental Consciousness and Stillness in the Mystical Theology of R. Yehudah Arieh Leib of Gur,” in Sabbath: Idea, History, Reality, ed. Gerald L. Blidstein in The Goldstein-Goren Library of Jewish Thought 1 (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2004), 119–29. 51 At the most basic symbolic level, the overflowing abundance of the well’s water reflects the abundance of spiritual vitality that is felt on Shabbat, in and through the supplementary soul.

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

between the weekdays and Shabbat, as metaphorically reflected by twilight in the physical world. The two segments of the homily indicate that the Sefat Emet’s conglomerations of textual sources and annotations have been circular: he sets out from T1 to T3, as we discussed above, and then makes his way back to T1, as follows: A3: Only, a person must find this point, and it is a person’s work to have all of his actions drawn by this point. T2: “Drink water from your cistern,” A4: which is work during the days of the week. A5: On the Holy Sabbath, T2: “and fluids from your well,” A6: because the well is opened and a new light comes, and that is the supplementary soul (neshama yeteira). T1 (implicit): “The mouth of the well was created at the twilight of [the first] Shabbat.” This reverse movement is not by chance, as its semantic innovation elicits the idea that one needs to reach out intentionally to his or her inner well: during the weekdays to infuse one’s actions with meaning, and during Shabbat, in being mindful of the unique (re-)opening and reviving of the inner well that occur on that day.

b. Judah’s Inner Well This metaphorical innovation of the well serves as a key in one of the Sefat Emet’s homilies on Va-Yiggash from 1882, which reads in part: In the Midrash, “deep water is counsel in a person’s heart” (Proverbs 20:5) is a parable for “a deep well whose water is lovely and cool,” etc. This tells us that the deeper the water is, the lovelier it is. So, too, for the point of Torah, which is called “water” (Tractate Bava Kama 17), which is found inside every Jew. The magnitude of discovery is according to the magnitude of effort. Scripture says, “How great is Your goodness that You have hidden away [for those who are in fear of You]” (Psalms 31:20). And it says, “Humans have many thoughts in their hearts, but God’s counsel will abide” (Proverbs 19:21). This means that every human being has a locus of good, which is “counsel in a person’s heart” (Proverbs 20:5), which the Blessed Creator has planted within him and that is called “God’s counsel.” It has the power to push aside all the thoughts

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surrounding this point, and to abide. Only, a person must forgo all the other thoughts for this thought. And he will be able to tie everything to this point by means of cord to cord, pulling to pulling […].52

The Sefat Emet begins by singling out two of the midrash’s statements wherein the metaphor of the well conveys Judah’s step-by-step impact on Joseph: “In the Midrash, ‘deep water is counsel in a person’s heart’ (Proverbs 20:5) is a parable for ‘a deep well whose water is lovely and cool,’ etc.” Yet, the Sefat Emet’s annotation emphasizes a new element. First, he highlights the relationship between the profundity of the water and its quality: “This tells us that the deeper the water is, the lovelier it is.” He then reads this image as a metaphor for the innermost point that dwells in everyone (this time labeled as “the point of Torah”): “So, too, for the point of Torah, which is called ‘water’ (Bava Kama 17), which is found inside every Jew.” Then he introduces the principle that “the magnitude of discovery is according to the magnitude of effort.” That is, the innermost point is not easily reached and requires one’s intentional and proactive efforts. The next segment of the homily expands this idea in order to galvanize the reader to engage in the necessary inner spiritual work. It does so by creating another semantic innovation, this time through the juxtaposition of two new biblical sources: a. “Scripture says, ‘How great is Your goodness that You have hidden away [for those who are in fear of You]’ (Psalms 31:20),” followed by b. “Scripture says, ‘Humans have many thoughts in their hearts, but God’s counsel will abide’ (Proverbs 19:21).” The verse from Psalms highlights God’s concealed goodness, but does not indicate that it might be concealed in the human being per se. As for the verse from Proverbs, it seems even more distant from the subject matter of this homily. It has nothing to do with the inner Torah; and moreover, its literal meaning sets up a contrast, not a parallel, between God’s counsel and human beings’ thoughts. The Sefat Emet overturns this reading in a new semantic innovation by identifying God’s counsel with the innermost 52 ‫ להודיע כי כל מה שהמים‬.’‫במדרש מים עמוקים עצה בלב איש משל לבאר עמוק ומימיה יפים וצוננים כו‬ ‫ וכמו כן נקודת התורה שנקראת מים (בבא קמא יז) שנמצא בכל איש‬.‫עמוק ביותר הם יפים ביותר‬ )‫ כ‬,‫ (תהילים לא‬:]‫ִיראֶיָך‬ ֵ ‫ ָצ ַפנְּתָ [ּל‬-‫ ֲאׁשֶר‬,‫טּובְָך‬-‫ כמו שכתוב מָה ַרב‬.‫ כפי רוב היגיעה כך המציאה‬.‫ישראל‬ ‫ פירוש שנמצא בכל איש נקודה‬.)‫ כא‬,‫ (משלי יט‬.‫ הִיא תָ קּום‬,‫אִיׁש; ַו ֲעצַת י ְהוָה‬-‫וכתיב ַרּבֹות ַמ ֲחׁשָבֹות ְּבלֶב‬ ‫ ובידה לדחות כל‬.‫ ונקראת ֲעצַת י ְהוָה‬.‫ ה) שהטמין בו הבורא יתברך‬,‫אִיׁש (משלי כ‬-‫ והיא ֵעצָה ְבלֶב‬.‫טובה‬ ‫ ויוכל‬.‫ רק שצריך האדם לבטל כל המחשבות למחשבה זו‬.‫המחשבות הסובבים על זו הנקודה והִיא תָ קּום‬ ‫ שבוודאי יש קצת אחיזה לכל הדברים‬.‫לקשר הכל לזו הנקודה על ידי חבל בחבל משיחה במשיחה‬ .(‫ (שפת אמת פרשת ויגש תרמ”ב‬.‫בקדושה‬

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

point: “This means that every human being has a locus of good, which is ‘counsel in a person’s heart’ (Proverbs 20:5), which the Blessed Creator has planted within him and that is called ‘God’s counsel.’” Thus, the innermost point (the point of Torah; the Divine point; the ever-flowing spring filling the well) is God’s counsel to which one should intentionally reach out, so that it will feed his or her actions, as “it has the power to push aside all the thoughts surrounding this point, and to abide.” Yet again, this can be achieved only through one’s intentional, inner work: “Only, a person must forgo all the other thoughts for this thought. And he will be able to tie everything to this point by means of cord to cord, pulling to pulling […].” We now can appreciate the Sefat Emet’s interpretative shift away from the midrash. In the midrash, the parable of reaching out toward the cool water in the well operates in reference to Judah’s successive attempts to reach the inner realm of his opponent (Joseph), with the goal of changing his decree. In contrast, for the Sefat Emet, it refers to Judah’s reaching toward his own innermost point.

Model Two: Semantic Innovation in Words53 In this interpretive model, discernment is effected through a twofold interplay between concealment and disclosure—by dint of additional semantic meanings of the biblical words, and by discerning the Divine that dwells in oneself. In the verse “Va-yiggash” (“And he [Yehudah] came near”)—This should be interpreted as referring to Jews, who are called Yehudim; this was the way to approach the Blessed God, and this is what is written: “eilav” (“unto him”)—that is, “unto” (el, aleph-lamed) “God” (Yud-vav), which this refers to. “And he said” is the connection with a spark of holiness, “Please, my master” (Gen. 44:18). It may be said that the complete human being, whose limbs are all dedicated and steadfast and who knows that everything is from the Blessed God, he himself is the clarification since his name is aleph-dalet. And those with insight will understand that this is really, truly “God is within me” (Bi Adonai). 54 53 In this section, the discussion draws on the Sefat Emet’s Liqqutim, a collection of insights he wrote on the weekly parashah during the years preceding his installment as the head of the Hasidic group of Gur in 1871. See Jacobson, “From Youth to Leadership.” It is not unreasonable to assume that R. Alter did not intend the Liqqutim to be published and become part of public discourse. 54 ‫םידוהי וארקנש לארשי שיא לכ לע שרפל שי שגיו קוספב‬, ‫הז ךרדב היה ךרבתי ’הל השגה רדסש‬, ‫והזו‬ .(‫רבדה אוהש ו”י לא ונייה—וילא בותכש‬, ‫דמ תישארב( ינודא יב השודק ץוצינ םע רוביח אוה רמאיו‬, ‫חי‬

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A first interpretive technique is to play on the semantic meaning of a biblical word, namely that “Judah” also connotes all Jews (Yehudah-Yehudim).55 The superimposition of this added meaning shifts the opening words of Vayigash from a descriptive, narrative mode into a direct appeal to the reader to pay particular attention to the path leading to the Divine as exemplified in the case of Judah.56 Surprisingly, this semantic innovation introduces the path to the Divine in a plot that, on its most literal level, is devoid of Divine presence. A second technique consists of splitting one word into two: “And this is what is written, ‘unto him’ [eilav, aleph-lamed-yud-vav]— that is, ‘to’ [el, aleph-lamed] ‘God’ [yud-vav].”57 Thus the word ‫“( אליו‬unto him”) is to be read as comprised of ‫“ אל‬to”) and ‫( י"ו‬yud-vav, one of the names of the Divine)—unto Him.58 “Then Judah came near unto him,”59 the first words of Genesis 44:18, now tell us that Judah intentionally turned toward the Divine (Him) within himself. At this point, the Sefat Emet uses a third interpretive technique, shifting the word “va-yomer” (“and he said”) to mean inward speech, an instance of self-conscious, internal turning toward the Divine element that dwells inside himself (rendering, “Judah realized and said to himself ”). The Sefat Emet connects this meaning of “va-yomer” (“and he said”) to the words “Bi adoni” (‫—בי אדוני‬literally, “Please, my master”).60 Now he uses a fourth interpretive technique, permuting the vowels of the biblical words and switching from one meaning of the homophone “bi” to another. By doing so, he innovates a new semantic meaning: the plea “Bi adoni” (“Please, my master”) becomes the declaration “Bi Adonai,” that is, “In me the Divine dwells.” He concludes this segment by adding: “For the complete human being [‘Adam’], whose limbs are all dedicated and steadfast and who knows that everything is from the Blessed God, he himself is the clarification [of this

55 56 57 58

59 60

‫אוהש רוריבה ומצע אוה ירה ךרבתי ’המ לכהש עדויו ןיקבדו םידחוימ וירבא לכש םלשה םדא יכ רמול שי‬ .(‫ד”א םש‬, ‫שגיו םיטוקיל תמא תפש( שממ ינודא יב ןכ שממש ןיבי ןיבמהו‬, ‫קוספב ה”ד‬ ‫בפסוק ויגש יש לפרש על כל איש ישראל שנקראו יהודים‬ ‫שסדר הגשה לה’ יתברך היה בדרך זה‬ ‫וזהו שכתוב אליו—היינו אל י”ו שהוא הדבר‬ In fact, the composition of the word ‫ אליו‬indicates the inner movement toward the inner Divine point: the two first letters render el (toward) and the two last letters (yud and vav) constitute together one of God’s names. See Magid Dvarav Le-Yaaqov, 113; Etz-Haim, Shaar 4, chapter 5. ‫ויגש אליו יהודה ויאמר בי אדני‬ ‫ויאמר הוא חיבור עם ניצוץ קדושה בי אדוני‬

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

idea] since his name is aleph-dalet. And those with insight will understand that this is really, truly ‘Adonai [one name of the Divine] is within me.’” 61 The letters aleph-dalet in the name “Adam,” referring to all human beings, allude to the aleph-dalet in the Divine name Adonai. This, explains the Sefat Emet, indicates that a person (adam) who clings to the Divine through his or her entire being, and lives in a heightened consciousness that everything originates in the Divine, comes to embed in him- or herself an iteration of the aleph-dalet of the Divine presence. The Sefat Emet adds: “and those with insight will understand that really (mamash) the Divine is within me.” His use of the word “mamash”—twice—emphasizes that this idea should not be understood as a metaphor, but rather an acknowledgment of an ontological reality. As with the midrash, the Sefat Emet seeks to sensitize the reader to Judah’s psycho-theological process. He moves the reader to perceive Judah’s speech in two simultaneous dimensions, reflecting two realms of human experience. The literal level of the biblical text explicitly narrates the interpersonal exchange between two characters, which will end in Joseph’s breaking of the silence. However, the reader also is invited to discern through Judah’s words the implicit, concealed process he undergoes—that is, allowing the ever-flowing inner well to infuse his speech and his actions.

Model Three: Semantic Innovation through Shifting References A third interpretive strategy appears in a homily from 1877, whose exposition orients the reader to Joseph’s revelation to his siblings: Then Joseph could not restrain himself before all them that stood by him (Gen. 45:1). If, as noticed by commentators, there is nothing in Judah’s speech that wasn’t already said earlier, what might cause this apotheosis? This time the Sefat Emet’s semantic innovation builds on exploring potential referents of the preposition-pronoun word eilav (“unto him”) in the phrase “Va-yiggash eilav Yehudah,” “then Judah came near unto him.” In the verse, “And Joseph could not refrain, etc.” As it is written, “And Judah came near unto him.” “Unto him” means to Joseph. And also unto his essence, meaning himself. “Unto him” means to the Blessed Holy One. And the clarification of this matter is that Judah did not say anything new in 61 ,‫כי אדם השלם שכל אבריו מיוחדים ודבקין ויודע שהכל מה‘ יתברך הרי הוא עצמו הבירור שהוא שם א“ד‬ ‫והמבין יבין שממש כן בי אדוני ממש‬

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these words and he also did not have any new claim to come with to Joseph. In spite of that, because he clarified the truth of the matter, deliverance came to him. As the matter of, “Truth springs out of the earth.”62

The Sefat Emet ascribes three possible objects of the action “Va-yiggash” (“and he came near”): Joseph, Judah’s own essence, and (as in the previous explication) the Divine. I submit that in his first suggestion, wherein Judah is approaching Joseph, the Sefat Emet is not merely mentioning the all-too-obvious literal meaning—not to mention that he was unaware that he was approaching his brother Joseph. Rather, this suggestion alludes to Judah’s inner, psychological representation of Joseph, suppressed by his self-imposed, guilty silence. Judah’s readiness to engage with and to repair his relationship with the Joseph within him, the brother he wronged so long ago, is the inner process that precedes his courageous act of taking full responsibility for Benjamin at the expense of his own liberty. The Sefat Emet then adds a second internal step taken by Judah, a turn toward his own “essence,”63 and a third movement, toward the Divine. Given the lack of further explanation, it is hard to say whether the Sefat Emet is suggesting these three referents to be concordant—that is, that the inner Joseph is an instance of Judah’s own essence as well as of the Divine— or complementary. But, he adds, it is clear that outwardly, Judah does not say anything new and submits no substantive argument.64 Thus the question remains as to what causes Joseph’s self-disclosure. As we have seen, the midrash suggests that the key to the breakthrough is Judah’s (intentional or unintentional) action upon Joseph. In contrast, the Sefat Emet implies that it originates in Judah’s intentional inward turn. In other words, what makes the difference is not the words of Judah’s speech, but the intentional grounding of his speech in the psycho-theological alterity that dwells within him. One understanding is that this inner alterity is called Joseph. In modern psychological terms, this might suggest that “Joseph” is a name for Judah’s moral consciousness in regard to the repressed memory of his earlier crime. Another understanding is that Joseph refers to the Divine element 62 ‫ גם אל עצמותו פירוש‬.‫ דכתיב ויגש אליו יהודה פירוש אליו ליוסף‬.’‫בפסוק ולא יכול יוסף להתאפק כו‬ ‫ וביאור הענין כי הנה יהודה לא חידש דבר באלה הדברים וגם לא היה לו‬.‫ גם פירוש אליו להקב”ה‬.‫לעצמו‬ ‫ כענין אמת מארץ תצמח‬.‫ אעפ”כ לאשר בירר אמיתות הענין בא לו הישועה‬.‫טענה במה לבוא ליוסף‬ .(‫)תהילים פה) (שפת אמת פרשת ויגש תרלז‬ 63 .‫גם אל עצמותו פירוש לעצמו‬ 64 .‫כי הנה יהודה לא חידש דבר באלה הדברים וגם לא היה לו טענה במה לבוא ליוסף‬

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

that dwells at the core of his existence, to which Judah’s “true” self knows he must surrender by standing up for Benjamin. Thus “Joseph” is simultaneously the Divine (e.g., bi-adoni alluding to bi-adonai) that has been hiding within Judah all along. In the Sefat Emet’s words, when such inner “truth clarifications” infuse speech, deliverance may be attained.65 The Sefat Emet concludes by referring to a phrase from Psalms 85:12: “as the idea that truth springs out of the earth.” Moments of truth (here, Judah’s repair of his sin as well as Joseph’s disclosure) depend on the human being’s first reaching intentional, inner recognition, as challenging as that may be. To summarize: According to the Sefat Emet, it is indeed Judah who ruptures the various silences. He breaks his own inner silence through his internal surrender to the Divine well that dwells within him. Subsequently, the interpersonal silence between Joseph and his brothers is breached. Finally, the Divine silence is remedied, too, if not through God’s revealed word, then at least through its awakening in the inner chambers of Judah’s soul—in keeping with the spirit of Hasidic theological orientations.

Toward an Exegetical-Spiritual Pedagogy “To think is to be underway”—in this case, to be underway toward the articulation of philosophical foundations, and subsequently pedagogical practices, that might sustain the study of the Sefat Emet’s homilies as a formative spiritual practice for contemporary learners. This article has focused on the metaphorical nature of the Sefat Emet’s exegesis when analyzed through the lens of Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutic theory. The turn to Ricoeur’s work is not designed to provide a tool for the exegesis at work in the Hasidic homily. At the heart of Ricoeur’s oeuvre resides an essential recognition that I believe to be vital for a post-critical existential re-engagement with Hasidism. Briefly: medieval worldviews are heavily characterized by a turn to transcendence. In contrast, the modern worldview is best exemplified by a threefold turn to immanence consisting of a subjective turn, a linguistic turn, and an experiential turn. Language plays a pivotal role, since it mediates between the subjective and the experiential, and thus Ricoeur’s interest in language’s poietic reconfiguration of reality in the subject’s experience.66 65 .‫לאשר בירר אמיתות הענין בא לו הישועה‬ 66 For Ricoeur’s philosophy of language see Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multidisciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto, Buffalo, and

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These three turns are indispensable in any contemporary effort to (re) conceptualize learning in general and spiritually formative learning in particular. Furthermore, these three turns reverberate key concepts of Hasidic thought at large, such as a focus on a person’s inner realm and the idea that (Torah) language is the fabric of human existence. For Ricoeur, the linguistic turn is not just anthropological or hermeneutic but rather ontological, which leads to a sense of the centrality of texts, reading, and interpretation. Four topics await further exploration in regard to the Hasidic homily, in the wake of this outlook. Feelings and the world offered by the text: Phenomenological hermeneutics entails a study of the processes and operative conditions by which texts can actively shape and transform readers’ perceptions, understanding, and actions.67 Developments in the philosophy of language, and the renewed interest in the role of imagination as a venue for knowledge, are particularly promising for further analysis of the power of disclosure of homiletical discourse and its impact on the reader’s subsequent discernment.68 Indeed, it is one thing to characterize Hasidic homily and its exegesis as “spiritualizing” biblical and rabbinic texts, and it is another to analyze it through the lens of phenomenological hermeneutic theories. Among other implications, the former locates meaning solely “behind” the written text while the latter locates meaning “in front of ” or “before” the text; it is the world that London: University of Toronto Press, 1975). His hermeneutical theory addresses the subjective and the experiential turns. See Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, and Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980); Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation; Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and The Surplus of Meaning (Forth Worth: TCU Press, 1976). 67 Ricoeur draws on Aristotle’s “Poetics,” particularly on the view of imitation or representation of action by the medium of metrical language. See Aristotle, “Poetics:” The Complete Works, Past Masters Electronic ed., vol. 2 (Clayton, GA: InteLex Corporation, 1984), 24, 1449b. Ricoeur develops this process through a threefold mimesis, and argues that the latter draws together the practical world and the imaginary world: “That the praxis belongs at the same time to the real domain, covered by ethics, and the imaginary one, covered by poetics, suggests that mimesis functions not just as a break but also as a connection, one which establishes precisely the status of the ‘metaphorical’ transposition of the practical field by the mythos” (Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, 46). 68 Richard Kearney, Poetics of Imagining: From Husserl to Lyotard (London: Harper Collins, 1991). For the use of discernment in the context of Christian spirituality, see, for example, Timothy M. Gallagher, The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living (New York: Crossroad, 2005); David Lonsdale, Eyes to See, Ears to Hear: An Introduction to Ignatian Spirituality in Traditions of Christian Spirituality, series ed. Philip Sheldrake (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2000).

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

the text unfolds, discovers, or reveals. In Ricoeur’s words, “To interpret is to ­explicate the kind of being-in-the-world displayed before the text. What is then submitted to interpretation is the proposition of a world in which I could dwell, a world created by the projection of my own utmost possibilities. For every unique text is such a ‘world of the text.’”69 According to Ricoeur’s theory, poetic forms of language overturn descriptive texts’ references to an actual world and manifest in their place a possible world, a re-description of the actual world.70 They do so through the metaphorical process at the level of the text: the figurative meaning projects a network of significant connections—which Ricoeur labels as “the world of the text”—as a horizon for a possible “mode of being.”71 Ricoeur’s theory of poetic language focuses on the mediating function of imagination that goes beyond the productive capacities of cognitive understanding and brings the reader to the level of attunement and feeling. For Ricoeur, feeling is integral to the act of schematizing the metaphorical meaning. When imagination forms the image of the new figural congruence, the emergent meaning is not only visualized but also felt. Ricoeur says, “We feel like what we see like” in metaphor; that the image structures a mood.72 More importantly, feeling plays a key role in the imaginative projection of a new mode of being within the metaphorically formed world of the text. Such extensions bear directly on the possibility of a religious change of heart, which can be said to be a central theme of Hasidic philosophy. Imagination: Ricoeur’s theory helps us re-engage with imagination as a venue of knowledge. Imagination suspends the first-order referential world, and, as a result, brings to the fore a deeper attunement to being. Poetic experience can “insert us within the world in a non-objectifying fashion,” the self being reconstructed affectively, as a positive change of heart begins 69 Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics,” Studies in Religion in Sciences Religieuses 5 (1975): 14. 70 In a seminal article, Ricoeur discerns that metaphor is the hermeneutical key, so to speak, to hermeneutics. See Paul Ricoeur, “Metaphor and the Central Problem of Hermeneutics,” in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 165–81. 71 “In effect what is to be interpreted in a text is a proposed world, a world that I might inhabit and wherein I might project my own most possibilities. This is what I call the world of the text, the world probably belonging to this unique text.” Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” in Figuring the Sacred (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995), 43. For a discussion of the “world of the text” in the Sefat Emet’s homilies, see ‫ דרשת ה'שפת אמת' בראי 'פעולת הטקסט' של פול ריקר‬,‫אלי הולצר‬. 72 Paul Ricoeur, “The Metaphorical Process,” 156.

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to emerge.73 These foundations might open new possibilities for a re-evaluation of the role of imagination in the study of the Sefat Emet’s homilies, its effects on inner transformation, and its connection with meditative practices of reading.74 The human subject: The concept of the human subject is a central topic of Ricoeur’s work, and it echoes Hasidic ethics at large. In the wake of Heidegger’s works, Ricoeur’s hermeneutical theory undermines the primacy of the subject.75 A little illustration will suffice at this point. Ricoeur concludes one of his articles on the theory of interpretation with the subtitle, “The illusions of the subject.”76 As he discusses the process of interpretation by which the reader is receiving “the revelation of new modes of being,” he concludes that a critical moment of reading is not an instance of possession (of the text’s content) but rather “a moment of dispossession of the narcissistic ego” leading the reader to new self-understanding. And Ricoeur clarifies: “By the expression ‘self-understanding,’ I should like to contrast the self which emerges from the understanding of the text to the ego, with its universal power of unveiling, which gives a self to the ego.”77 Religious language: Going back to Joseph Dan’s lament about the lack of scholarly interest in the Hasidic homily, one might wonder if perhaps Hasidic homilies such as the Sefat Emet have been overlooked due to a 73 Ibid., 157. 74 On the cultivation of moral imagination, see Martha C. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). According to Nussbaum, there is ethical value in emotions, and it is a mistake to ostracize them from the sphere of philosophical relevance. Understanding our emotions helps extend our humanity toward people we have previously rejected as “the other.” Elie Holzer, “Allowing the Text to do its Pedagogical Work: Connecting Moral Education and Interpretive Activity,” Journal of Moral Education 6, vol. 4 (2007): 497–514. Joshua Gutoff, Talmud Study and the Development of the Moral Imagination: A Theoretical Framework (New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 2013). For a critical view and a discussion of the fictive ways by which experience and text connect, see Karl F. Morrison, Conversion and Text: The Cases of Augustine of Hippo, HermanJudah, and Constantine Tsatsos (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1992). 75 For Ricoeur, the “I” is not only a subject but also an inter-subject, a “self being with others.” Thus Richard Kearney claims that “if subjectivity continues to exist for hermeneutics, it is as ‘self-as-another,’” Richard Kearney, On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2004), 5. 76 Paul Ricoeur, “Appropriation,” Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 190. For pedagogical implications of Ricoeur’s view, see Elie Holzer with Orit Kent, A Philosophy of Havruta, 167–83. 77 Ibid., 190–91.

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Poetics of Exegesis in the Sefat Emet’s Homilies    ELIE HOLZER

monolithic appraisal of the nature of their language, and in particular of their exegesis. By adopting a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach, we stop seeing Hasidic homily as merely a self-expressive or communicative genre and begin finding new questions and new perspectives. For example, the heuristic dimension of homiletic exegesis, and the emphasis of its disclosing power, raise the question of religious language’s referentiality. In that regard, Ricoeur’s concept of “metaphorical reference” is particularly promising: “I tried to demonstrate in The Rule of Metaphor that language’s capacity for reference was not exhausted by descriptive discourse and that poetic works referred to the world in their own specific way, that of metaphorical reference. This thesis covers every non-descriptive use of language, and therefore every poetic text, whether it be lyrical or narrative. It implies that poetic texts, too, speak of the world, even though they may not do so in a descriptive fashion. Metaphorical reference, it will be recalled, consists of the fact that the effacement of descriptive reference—an effacement that, as a first approximation, makes language refer to itself—is revealed to be, in a second approximation, the negative condition for freeing a more radical power of reference to those aspects of our being-in-the-world that cannot be talked about directly. […] This articulating of a metaphorical reference on the metaphorical sense cannot be clothed with a full ontological meaning unless we go so far as to metaphorize the verb ‘to be’ itself and recognize in ‘being-as’ the correlate of ‘seeing-as,’ in which is summed up the work of metaphor.”78 Ricoeur’s analysis extends to religious biblical language.79 By richly weaving together multifarious traditional Jewish texts, the Hasidic homily offers an unmined case in point and awaits its own comprehensive phenomenological-hermeneutic analysis.

78 Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, Vol. 1, 80. One will notice the centrality of the term “being-as” and its opening of new venues toward ontological dimensions of language as it echoes the midrashic term of “kiveyachol.” 79 See, for example, Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred, and Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980).

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If you had not have fallen Then I would not have found you Angel flying too close to the ground

—Willie Nelson

Avinoam J. Stillman

Transcendent God, Immanent Kabbalah: Polemics and Psychology in the Hasidic Teachings of R. Avraham ha-Malakh

The writings of R. Avraham ha-Malakh (d. 1776), son of R. Dov Ber the Maggid of Mezeritch (d. 1772), have been almost ignored by modern scholars.1 In contrast, significant analysis—both historical and conceptual—has been devoted to his image in Hasidic hagiography, particularly *

1

I am honored to present this study to my dear teacher Rabbi Professor Nehemia Polen. The academic and Hasidic wor(l)ds which converge at “the Polen kiddush” have shaped me since childhood. Many thanks to my teachers Clémence Boulouque, Arthur Green, Joshua Harrison, Menachem Kallus, David Maayan, Ariel Evan Mayse, and Elliot R. Wolfson, and to my friends at Yeshivat Otniel, who all provided helpful comments at various stages of my research. The one recent exception is Tsippi Kaufmann, “Typology of the Tsaddik in the Teachings of R. Abraham the Angel,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 33 (2015). Louis Jacobs printed a short translation from R. Avraham, with commentary, in his Hasidic Thought: The Chain of Tradition Series, Volume V., 1st Edition (Behrman House, Inc., 1976), 82–86. See also Ariel Evan Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch” (Harvard, 2015), 138–39. Correlations between the Maggid’s thought and that of his son appear throughout Menachem Lorberbaum, “‘Attain the Attribute of ‘Ayyin’: The Mystical Religiosity of Maggid Devarav Le-Ya‘Aqov,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 31 (2014), and Netanel Lederberg, Ha-Shaʻar La-Ayin: Torat Ha-Ḥasidut Be-Haguto Shel Rabi Dov Ber Ha-Magid (Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 2011).

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in Shivḥei ha-Besht.2 There, he appears as an ascetic recluse who frightened others with his piety, who avoided cohabitation with his wife—a choice condemned by his father—and who did not work for a living, but rather studied Torah incessantly. This reputation garnered him the appellations “ha-Malakh” (“the angel”) and “ha-Qadosh” (“the holy” or “saintly one”). As for the sources of R. Avraham’s angelic asceticism, David Assaf denies that scholars have any “factual basis” upon which to recover his inspirations, save that he drew on kabbalistic ethical (musar) literature.3 Yet such a stance wholly neglects R. Avraham’s own writings, which inhabit the juncture between the Maggid and later Hasidism. In what follows, I will describe some formal aspects of R. Avraham’s text, as well as of its transmission and reception history. Then, I will explore how R. Avraham’s polemic against “corporeal kabbalah” and his characteristically Hasidic psychologization of kabbalistic concepts are both motivated by his theological commitments to divine transcendence and emanation. Hasidic texts are usually doubly mediated through transcription and translation; the students recorded the Hasidic teacher’s Yiddish oral homilies in Hebrew.4 In contrast, R. Avraham composed his own texts; his grandson, R. Israel of Ruzhin, inherited these literary remains, apparently in his own hand.5 Given R. Avraham’s aversion to public life, it is not surprising that he would choose to record his thoughts himself. Unfortunately, the text first printed by R. Israel as Ḥesed le-Avraham in Czernowitz in 1851 is not wholly unmediated, as the original manuscript was lost during R. Israel’s imprisonment by the Czarist government in 2 See Shivḥei Ha-Besht: Mahadurah Muʻeret U-Mevo’eret, ed. Avraham Rubinstein (Jerusalem: Reuven Mas, 1991), 139–46. For conceptual analysis of the hagiographic motifs, see Ron Margolin, Miqdash Adam: Ha-Hafnamah Ha-Datit Be-ʻitsuv Ḥayei Ha-Dat Ha-Penimiyim Be-Reshit Ha-Ḥasidut (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2005), 206–10. For historical treatment, see David Assaf, Derekh Ha-Malkhut: R. Yisra’el Me-Ruz’in U-Meqomo Be-Toldot Ha-Ḥasidut (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1997), 49–58. Strangely, this chapter is absent from the English translation of Assaf ’s work, The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). 3 Derekh Ha-Malkhut: R. Yisra’el Me-Ruz’in U-Meqomo Be-Toldot Ha-Ḥasidut, 58. 4 See Zeev Gries, Sefer, Sofer Ṿe-Sipur Be-Reshit Ha-Ḥasidut: Min Ha-Beshṭ Ṿe-ʻad Mendel Mi-Kotsḳ (Tel Aviv: ha-Ḳibuts ha-me’uḥad, 1992), 27–40. For a nineteenth-century Hasidic example, see Ariel Evan Mayse and Daniel Reiser, “Sefer Sefat Emet, Yiddish Manuscripts, and the Oral Homilies of R. Yehudah Aryeh Leib of Ger,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 33 (2015). 5 For further detail on the peregrinations of the text, see Assaf, Derekh Ha-Malkhut: R. Yisra’el Me-Ruz’in U-Meqomo Be-Toldot Ha-Ḥasidut, 56–57.

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Transcendent God, Immanent Kabbalah    AVINOAM J. STILLMAN

the late 1830s.6 R. Israel’s approbation for the first printing recounts that “after I had despaired of [R. Avraham’s writings,] for they had been lost from me at the time when the clans of Gentiles libeled against me, I sought them and could not find them . . .” 7 However, with the help of his Hasidim, he managed to retrieve a copy of his grandfather’s work. Currently, manuscript copies of at least portions of the text survive in Yale University Library Hebrew 53, the YIVO collection, and in the hands of Hasidic owners.8 The work as published consists of an “introduction” [haqdamah], in which R. Avraham expounds his understanding of the sefirot and polemicizes against those who have, in his eyes, corrupted the kabbalah. Assaf characterizes the introduction as an “attempt at a systematic composition which was not completed, or which only partially survived.”9 Indeed, the printed text contains gaps and corruptions; R.  Avraham’s account of the significance of the sefirot ends abruptly at yesod, before the last sefirah of malkhut.10 Nevertheless, R. Avraham’s “introduction” is among the first Hasidic compositions to be structured as a monograph, not as homilies on the Torah portions; it precedes the Tanya of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, by at least two decades. The “introduction” should also be considered as a particular literary form. As I discuss more extensively below, R. Avraham’s introduction resembles R. Shlomo Lutzker’s two “introductions” to Maggid Devarav le-Ya'akov, the first printed compilation of the Maggid’s teachings. Both locate Hasidism in Jewish (and more specifically, kabbalistic) history and expound what they take to be the fundamentals of Hasidic doctrine, independent of any homiletical framework.11 In the context of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hebrew printings, the “introduction” was the most obvious formal context within which to integrate a brief monograph with more traditional derush. These introductions thus operate in the space 6 For the circumstances of R. Yisrael’s imprisonment and escape from Russia, see The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin, 108–35. 7 See R. Israel’s approbation to Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham (Jerusalem: Makhon Siftei Tzadiqim, 2013), 9. All references are to this edition; I have also consulted the first Czernowitz edition. 8 See the list of manuscripts in ibid., 247. 9 Assaf, Derekh Ha-Malkhut: R. Yisra’el Me-Ruz’in U-Meqomo Be-Toldot Ha-Ḥasidut, 56 n. 36. 10 The only manuscript I was able to consult, the Yale manuscript, has similar indications of truncation; the copyist marked three dashes at the end of the section on the sefirot. 11 On these introductions, see Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch,” 56.

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between systematic philosophical, kabbalistic, or ethical compositions on the one hand, and homiletic Torah commentaries on the other. Following this standalone “introduction” are a series of R. Avraham’s homilies on the weekly Torah portions, which have no direct relation to the introduction proper.12 It is unclear whether these were delivered as oral sermons; they too seem to have been composed by R. Avraham. In its later sections, Ḥesed le-Avraham contains teachings from other early Hasidic teachers such as R. Avraham Kalisker and R. Barukh of Medzhibuzh. The book was republished in Lemberg in 1858, 1860, 1864, and Warsaw in 1884, not to mention several times in the twentieth century.13 Its popularity among printers does not necessarily indicate its influence; the pedigree of its authors, more than the profundity of its ideas, may have motivated publishers to reprint it. Nevertheless, teachings from R. Avraham—both those that appear in appear in Ḥesed le-Avraham and others—appear throughout the homilies of the Maggid’s students, including R. Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl and R. Shlomo of Lutzk.14 His explanation of one of his father’s teachings is quoted as a marginal note in Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov; this implies that R. Avraham may have served some sort of role as a “teaching assistant” for his father.15 Ḥabad traditions relate that the Maggid instructed him to study kabbalah with R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, and R. Shneur Zalman to study halakhah with him.16 His influence on R. Shneur Zalman appears to have been considerable, as oral traditions relate that “the highest homilies [of R. Shneur Zalman] were from R.  Avraham.”17 R. Avraham thus impacted subsequent Hasidic thought both via his own writings and through his contemporaries and students. At the start of his introduction, R. Avraham describes how the revelation of God’s essence (mahut)—in other words, knowledge of divinity—has become progressively obscured over the course of history: ‘ 12 Avraham ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 11–21. 13 See Kaufmann, “Typology of the Tsaddik in the Teachings of R. Abraham the Angel,” 240. 14 See Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch,” 139, for a partial list of quotations. 15 This note appears in the first edition of Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov, Koretz 1780, 22b. See Dov Ber ben Avraham, Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov (Brooklyn, NY: Kehot Publication Society, 2009), 111. 16 For this narrative see Ḥayim Meir Hilman, Beit Rebbi (Berdichev, 1902), 4. 17 For teachings from R. Avraham preserved in Ḥabad, see Yehoshua Mondshine, Migdal ‘Oz. Kfar Ḥabad: Makhon Lubavitch, 1980, 289–298.

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Transcendent God, Immanent Kabbalah    AVINOAM J. STILLMAN

Behold, the beginning of the revelation of the essence of God, blessed be He and blessed be His name. Lowly people have been permitted to reveal a small part of it to those people who attempt destructively to see the great dark fire, which has been darkened—because of our sins—over the protracted exile which God’s people suffers for generation after generation. 18

R. Avraham presents a narrative of decline; initially, God vouchsafed certain “lowly” people a limited knowledge of God’s essence, which could then be transmitted to others. The precise moment of this revelation is likely the theophany at Sinai. The revealed knowledge of God’s essence, preserved by a select few, was corrupted by those people who received said knowledge secondhand. This latter group overstepped its bounds by attempting “destructively” to comprehend God’s essence.19 R. Avraham figures God’s essence as the “great dark fire,” a counterintuitive image that has roots in the medieval doctrine of the four elements, in which the element of fire was understood to be “dark,” or transparent.20 This association underlies the seminal Zoharic image of the botsina de-qardenuta, the “lamp of darkness,” which indicates the blinding (and hence dark) divine light.21 Ironically, R. Avraham repurposes the image of darkness, which in the Zohar signifies the ineffability of God’s essence, to describe the obscurations of God’s light. This light has become darkened by errant students of kabbalah:22 18 Avraham ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 11. 19 As Kauffmann notes, the verb meharsim, which I have translated as “attempt destructively” references Ex. 19:24, which describes the prohibition against the Israelites ascending Mount Sinai. Kaufmann, “Typology of the Tsaddik in the Teachings of R. Abraham the Angel,” 243. 20 Maimonides writes in Guide, II:30, concerning the first verses of Genesis, that “darkness is the elemental fire.” See Moses Maimonides, Moreh Nevukhim, trans. Michael Schwarz, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2002), 364, and the notes there for the origins of this notion in earlier Arabic philosophy. See also the commentary of Nachmanides to Genesis 1:1. For the juxtaposition of fire and darkness in a sefirotic context, as relating to the attribute of judgement, see Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’are Orah, 3rd ed., 2 vols., vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1996), 232, and similarly in Zohar I:16a, The Zohar, trans. Daniel Chanan Matt, Pritzker ed., 12 vols., vol. 1 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 120. 21 See Zohar 1:15a, The Zohar, 1, 108, and Matt’s notes there. 22 This narrative of the decline of kabbalah into corporeality recalls Solomon Maimon, who famously visited the Maggid’s court. See Solomon Maimon, Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography, trans. J. Clark Murray (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 95. Maimon’s conception of kabbalah as a devolved symbolic system has surprising affinities with R. Avraham’s thought. See Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 37–41.

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The teaching [torah] of truth, which is called kabbalah, has become corporeal. It truly is the teaching of truth, but it has been darkened and become exceedingly corporealized due to our sins. Those people think that they can place their hands on the King—heaven forbid!—yet in truth nothing comes to their hands but thorns and thistles.23

The phrase “has become corporeal,” [hitgashem] implies that the abstract knowledge of God has been degraded; God has been understood anthropomorphically, or in overly concrete terms. Elsewhere, R. Avraham remarks that the sefirot “are called in all the holy books which have become corporeal due to our sins keter, ḥokhmah, binah, gedulah, gevurah, tiferet, netzaḥ, hod, yesod, malkhut.”24 The bulk of kabbalistic literature, not merely blatantly mythic anthropomorphisms, here comes under R. Avraham’s censure for “corporeality.”25 Rather than single out the Zoharic Idrot or the Lurianic partzufim, R. Avraham declares that even the most basic kabbalistic terminology imputes to God inappropriately “corporeal” attributes, and hence obscures God’s essence. As Isaiah Tishby notes, the history of kabbalah attests to an interplay between mythic “corporealization” and philosophically tinged “abstraction.”26 Tishby describes this as a “phenomenon of cyclical metamorphosis in opposite directions” in which mythic elements are reinterpreted philosophically and abstract prepositions come to be envisioned anthropomorphically.27 Writing within this recursive dynamic of influence and repudiation, R. Avraham commits himself to abstraction, and against corporealization, from the very first lines of his text. As we shall see, however, R. Avraham did not eschew kabbalistic ideas; rather, he radically reinterpreted them. By the late eighteenth century, the spread of the Lurianic kabbalah in manuscript and print and the aftermath of the Sabbatean movement had brought the perennial tensions over kabbalistic anthropomorphism to a

23 Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 11. 24 Ibid., 15. 25 On Jewish myth see Yehuda Liebes, “De Natura Dei: On the Development of the Jewish Myth,” in Studies in Jewish Myth and Jewish Messianism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993). 26 See Isaiah Tishby, “Le-Berur Netive ha-Hagshamah ve-Hahafshatah ba-Kabbalah,” in Netive Emunah u-Minut: Masot u-Meḥkarim be-Sifrut ha-Kabbalah veha-Shabta’ut (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1982). 27 Ibid., 24.

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head.28 kabbalistic myth was at once more accessible and more dangerous than ever before. To adduce but one example, the Italian kabbalist Joseph Ergas (1685–1730) propounded his allegorical interpretation of Lurianic kabbalah as part of his polemic against the Sabbatean Nehemiah Hayon.29 Indeed, Moshe Idel places R. Avraham’s polemic against “corporealization” in the context of a wider “weakening of the Lurianic Kabbalah” in the eighteenth century.30 Although R. Avraham never identifies his “corporealist” opponents explicitly, they would seem to be those Lurianic kabbalists who, in lieu of studying the abstract significance of the kabbalah, devote themselves to theurgic prayer. They accept kabbalah in its simple anthropomorphic meaning; they “attempt destructively” to see God. They even try to “place their hands on the King,” which may imply that they aim to influence God via kavvanot.31 The attitude towards Lurianic kavvanot among early Hasidic masters was complex, and evidently varied between individual teachers; as Menachem Kallus has shown, some Lurianic kavvanot were attributed to the Ba‘al Shem Tov himself.32 In general, however, many of the Maggid’s students opposed the widespread use of kavvanot.33 A statement

28 The interrelations between Lurianic kabbalah and Sabbateanism, and between both of these phenomena and Hasidism, have generated extensive scholarly controversy. See, for some classic treatments, Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1967), 327–35. Benzion Dinur, “The Origins of Hasidism and Its Social and Messianic Foundations,” in Essential Papers on Hasidism: Origins to Present, ed. Gershon David Hundert (New York: New York University Press, 1991). Joseph G. Weiss, “A Circle of Pneumatics in Pre-Hasidism,” in Studies in East European Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism (London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 1998). Mendel Piekarz Mendel Piekarz, Bi-Yeme Tsemiḥat Ha-Ḥasidut: Megamot Raʻyoniyot Be-Sifre Derush U-Musar, Mahad. 2. murḥevet. ed. (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1998), 299–302. 29 See Elisheva Carlebach, The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 137–43; note particularly that Hayon accused Ergas of an illegitimate reliance on philosophy. 30 Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, 36. 31 For a thorough treatment of the Lurianic kavvanot, see Menachem Kallus, “The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah” (Dissertation, Hebrew University, 2002). 32 See “The Relation of the Baal Shem Tov to the Practice of Lurianic Kavvanot in Light of His Comments on the Siddur Rashkov,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 2 (1997). See also the recent treatment of Tsippi Kaufmann, “Ritual Immersion at the Beginning of Hasidism,” Tarbiz 80, no. 3 (2012). 33 See Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 215–41.

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attributed to R. Avraham in Ḥabad sources supports the conclusion that he too deemphasized kavvanot: [The fact that] the populace [ha-‘olam, lit. the world] intends [during prayer] with the kavvanot is truly a mistake, for they exceed the simple meaning of the interpretation of the words. Rather, at the time when one says “blessed,” which in the language of Ashkenaz [Yiddish] is “gilubt,” this interpretation includes all the worlds which are in the kavvanot. That is, all the kavvanot bear the interpretation of the word according to its simple meaning. If the blessed God grants one intellect [sekhel], one can, through the [literal] interpretation of the words, go through all the kavvanot.34

R. Avraham implies that simply understanding the literal meaning of the prayers in the vernacular allows one to traverse the many supernal worlds referred to in the kavvanot.35 As we will discuss below, this accords with his overall approach to kabbalah, which emphasizes the importance of psychology over theosophic or theurgic technicalities.36 Mezeritch itself was home to a kloiz of Lurianic kabbalists; R. Ya’akov Koppel Lifshitz, a likely crypto-Sabbatean, flourished there in the earlier eighteenth century, and

34 Yehoshua Mondshine, Migdal ‘Oz (Kfar Habad: Makhon Lubavitch, 1980), 396–97, and Mondshine’s notes there. See also Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 206. 35 This negative stance notwithstanding, a Lurianic kavvanah for ritual immersion in the miqveh was attributed to R. Avraham, as printed in the Peri Ha-Aretz (Kopust 1814), as part of the unit of R. Avraham’s teachings included among the homilies of R. Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk. Perhaps R. Avraham’s opposition was limited to formal prayer kavvanot; he may have allowed elite individuals to perform kavvanot in certain ritual contexts. This kavvanah may also have been misattributed to him; the first edition of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi’s Siddur Tefillot mi-Kol ha-Shanah (Kopust 1816), was published by the same printer as the Peri Ha-Aretz, Israel ben Isaac Jaffe. There, on page 2d of the second section of the work, R. Shneur Zalman provides a lengthy analysis of “the kavvanah for the miqvah which was printed in the name of the Ba’al Shem Tov.” In later editions, the editor of the text, R. Menahem Mendel Schneerson (the Tzemaḥ Tzedeq), included the kavvanah attributed to R. Avraham as an appendix to R. Shneur Zalman’s commentary, identifying it as the aforementioned kavvanah of the Ba‘al Shem Tov. Indeed, the kavvanah in the Peri ha-Aretz contains the same structure as some of the other Lurianic/Beshtian kavvanot for the miqveh; a series of five immersions across which the person concentrates on a specific progression of permutations of divine names. 36 See the brief remarks of Idel on the Hasidic “reorganization of kabbalah,” Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, 41.

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wrote a highly influential kabbalistic prayer book.37 In this context, the “corporeal kabbalists” of R. Avraham’s polemic appear to be contemporary Lurianic theurgists, who may have had secret Sabbatean affiliations. As Idel notes, R. Avraham’s polemic bears significant similarities to R. Shlomo of Lutzk’s “First Introduction” to Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov, the first publication of the Maggid’s teachings.38 R. Shlomo surveys the dynamic between corporealization and abstraction over the history of kabbalah; the mythic imagery of the Zohar was “decorporealized” by R. Moshe Cordovero, who explained that God was distant “from the attributes of creatures, and warned and guarded and distanced greatly from corporealization.”39 Likewise, the Ba‘al Shem Tov and the Maggid corrected the literal understandings of R. Isaac Luria’s mythic system, which was only intended for students of Cordovero’s abstract teachings. In a similar vein, R. Avraham writes: Behold, God said “Let there be light,” (Gen. 1:3), and [God] began to illumine through his servants, our teacher [presumably the Ba‘al Shem Tov], and through my rabbi my teacher, our teacher, the light of our eyes [presumably the Maggid]. Behold, we have seen that this too has begun to become corporeal due to our sins.

R. Avraham describes the appearance of the Ba‘al Shem Tov and Maggid as a recreation of the divine light. Implicitly, they illuminated the darkness caused by “corporeal” kabbalah. Yet he deplores the misinterpretation of their teachings by contemporary Hasidic teachers. The ratio of misanthrophy to philosophical objection in R. Avraham’s polemic is unclear; yet his distaste for his contemporaries—and even for other students of his father—would seem to complement his thoroughgoing asceticism. Further research is necessary to delineate sub-groups among the Maggid’s students; it appears, however, that R. Avraham and R. Shlomo, and perhaps others, formed an anti-corporealist school within early Hasidism.40 R. Avraham’s historical account is far less specific than R. Shlomo’s, but shares a common 37 Tishby, “Between Sabbateanism and Hasidism: The Sabbateanism of the Kabbalist R. Ya’akov Koppel Lifshitz of Mezritch.” 38 See Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, 36–37. 39 See his “first introduction” to Dov Ber ben Avraham, Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov, 1. 40 Compare with the remarks of R. Avraham of Kalisk, who complained that R. Shneur Zalman attempted “to engarb the words of our holy master and teacher from Mezeritch, which are the same as the words of the holy rabbi the Ba‘al Shem Tov, in the words of the holy Arizal. Although they all proceed to one place, the words of the rabbis are one

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concern with the abstract meaning of kabbalah, and an opposition to overly literal “corporeal kabbalah.” For both the Maggid’s editor and his son, this stance characterizes Hasidic teachings. R. Avraham’s “introduction” proceeds to present a correctly abstract kabbalah, via an exegesis of the scriptural source for the names of the seven lower sefirot, 1 Chronicles 29:11.41 R. Avraham writes that this verse means that “there are, in the intellect [sekhel] of a person, seven intellects [sekhliot].”42 The verse from Chronicles—which explicitly imputes these attributes to God—is in fact about the human mind.43 R. Avraham’s definition of human “intellects” apparently includes not only abstract thought, but various emotional or effectual behaviors, such as the “attributes” of love (ḥesed) and strength (gevurah).44 These intellects are entirely human, in that they are subject to the duality of good and evil; later in his introduction, R. Avraham elaborates on the ethical significance of these terms, but never describes them theosophically.45 In fact, to the best of my knowledge he never employs the term sefirah. Instead, R. Avraham uses the terms sekhalim or sikhliot (intellects) for the lower seven sefirot, and the term maskilim (“intellectors”) for the higher three sefirot—and for even higher strata.46 In the first edition of Ḥesed le-Avraham the terms sekhel and maskil (as well as several other key terms) appear in boldface and large type, implying that either the printer, the copyist of the manuscript, or even R. Avraham himself, knew that this terminology was innovative. Both terms stem from medieval Hebrew philosophy, where sekhel is the standard term for the Neoplatonic “intellects.” R. Avraham even uses the phil-

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[thing] and the words of the Torah are another.” See David Tzvi Hilman, ed., Igrot Baʻal Ha-Tanya U-Vene Doro (Jerusalem, 1953), 105. This verse already provided the names of the sefirot in the Provencal kabbalah, as in the commentary of R. Isaac the Blind to Sefer Yetzirah. See Gershom Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, trans. Allan Arkush (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 263. Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 11. According to his comments on Parshat Noah, the phrase “Yours, O Lord,” means that the tzaddiq devotes his own attributes to the glory of God, not that God has attributes; ibid., 28 The expansion of the term sekhel beyond the “intellect” may reflect R. Avraham’s native Yiddish, in which seykhel refers to “common sense” and a range of cognitive functions. I cannot enter into R. Avraham’s ethics here, but suffice it to say that, much as in earlier thinkers such as Maimonides, the process of ethical self-perfection is intertwined with the attainment of ecstatic or even prophetic revelations. See Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 15, for example. The Lurianic term moḥin is also employed at various points; ibid., 57, 77, and 79.

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osophical term “separate intellects,” or sekhalim nivdalim, for the sefirot.47 The association of the intellects with the sefirot was commonplace in medieval kabbalah; Idel points to Abraham Abulafia as one likely source for R. Avraham.48 The term sekhel for sefirah appears elsewhere in Hasidic texts.49 For example, R. Shlomo of Lutzk attributes to Cordovero the doctrine that the sefirot “are only intellects [sekhalim] and bright supernal lights.”50 Above the sekhalim, R. Avraham proposes ever-higher levels of emanation termed maskilim.51 In Hebrew Aristotelian sources, maskil refers to one third of the triad of “knower, knowledge, and known.”52 However, R. Avraham uses “maskil” as a stand-alone term for the highest metaphysical strata, not as part of the triad of knower-knowledge-known. Maskilim activate lower intellects; they are “intellectors,” to coin a translation. In a particularly convoluted passage, R. Avraham writes that each higher 47 Ibid., 57. 48 Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, 224. Idel particularly notes R. Avraham in this context, 383 n. 84. See also Elliot R. Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia-Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (Los Angeles, CA: Cherub Press, 2000), 134–152 for a account of Abulafia’s treatment of the sefirot, and 152–77 for analysis of the relationship of his doctrine to Maimonides’ Separate Intellects. Wolfson’s description of the sefirot in Abulafia’s resembles R. Avraham’s doctrine: “There is a perfect homology between the sefirot above and the internalization of the sefirot experienced as psychic states on the mystical path.” 49 See Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch,” 307, n.1054. See also R. Naḥman of Breslov’s uses of sekhel in a range of pseudo-scientific and kabbalistic senses in Liqqutei Moharan, Torah 61. 50 See his introduction to Dov Ber ben Avraham, Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov, 2. 51 R. Avraham repeatedly refers to “four maskilim.” The four highest intellectors likely represent a configuration of four sefirot that correspond to the four compartments of the head phylacteries. This theme is anthropomorphically elaborated in Zoharic and Lurianic writings relating to the descent of higher mohin into zeir anpin. See, for the Zoharic materials, Isaiah Tishby, ed. The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, 3 vols., vol. 3, The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 1162. and Kallus, “The Theurgy of Prayer in the Lurianic Kabbalah,” 141, for the homology between zeir anpin and the Lurianic kabbalist. I hope to return to R. Avraham’s transformation of this theme elsewhere. 52 Already Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation of the Guide of the Perplexed uses the terms maskil, muskal, ve-sekhel. The latter formulation persists in kabbalistic works such as Pardes Rimmonim, Sha’ar Mahut ve-Hanhagah, 13. As Idel notes, the Aristotelian doctrine of the unity of the intellect and the intelligible informs a range of kabbalistic models of devekut, or union with the divine; Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 329–40. For a synthesis of the philosophical and pneumatic meanings of this triad in a Beshtian vein, see R. Moshe Efrayim of Sudilkov’s Degel Mahane Efrayim, Parshat va-yishlaḥ.

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maskil is “the vitality and the intellector to that [lower] maskil.”53 This usage reflects the way the Maggid employs the terms maskil and qadmut hasekhel as synonyms of the sefirah of hokhma.54 Qadmut hasekhel was recently described by Ariel Evan Mayse as “the reservoir of unformed potential for all specific language.”55 The term maskil shares this connotation of potentiality, but for R. Avraham signifies those emanations which transcend the human mind.56 R. Avraham’s use of the terms sekhel and maskil reflects his indebtedness to prior “intellectual” interpretations of the sefirot, and to his father’s use of such terminology. R. Avraham’s debt to Neoplatonic Jewish thought is not merely terminological, but philosophical. Underlying R. Avraham’s system is a combined commitment to both negative theology and a theory of emanation. R. Avraham explicitly denies that any being can know God: “no emanation or intellect, from the beginning of the emanations to the end can comprehend God at all.”57 Medieval kabbalists had already adopted this position, and used “neutral predicates of the primordial being,” in Gershom Scholem’s phrase.58 The philosophical grounds for R. Avraham’s critique of “corporealist Kabbalah” were first examined by Ahron Marcus.59 In his 53 See Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 12, and see ibid., 77 for the “maskil de-maskil.” 54 For treatment of qadmut ha-sekhel see Gershom Scholem, Ha-Shalav Ha-Aḥaron: Meḥḳere Ha-Ḥasidut Shel Gershom Shalom (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2008), 268–76. See also the Jungian psychological work of Siegmund Hurwitz, “Psychological Aspects in Early Hasidic Literature,” in Timeless Documents of the Soul, ed. Helmuth Jacobsohn, Marie-Luise von Franz, and Siegmund Hurwitz (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968). 55 Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch,” 230. Qadmut ha-sekhel is similarly called the maskil elyon by the Hasidic kabbalist and student of the Maggid, Yitzhak Isaac haKohen Katz, portions of whose writings are bound with R. Avraham’s “introduction” in the Yale Library manuscript. See his Ma’amar Ayal Aher, chapter 1, in Yitzḥaq Isaac Katz, Brit Kehunat ‘Olam; Ḥodesh Tishrei (Jerusalem: Makhon Sod Yesharim, 2004), 100–101. 56 See, for example, Dov Ber ben Avraham, Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov, 8a and 8b. 57 Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 14. See also Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, Yesodei HaTorah, 2:8. For a kabbalistic declaration that “no thought can comprehend [God] at all,” see Tiqqunei Zohar, 17a. R. Avraham himself references the introduction to the Tiqqunim: Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 11. 58 See Scholem, Origins of the Kabbalah, 441. See also Elliot R. Wolfson, “Negative Theology and Positive Assertion in the Early Kabbalah,” Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah, no. 32/33 (1994): V–XXII. 59 Marcus was a German Jew who became a Radomsker Hasid in the late nineteenth century. For biographical treatment, see Joshua Shanes, “Ahron Marcus: Portrait of a

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survey of Hasidic thought and history, Der Chassidismus, Marcus makes R.  Avraham the centerpiece of his account of the relation between kabbalah and Hasidism.60 In Marcus’ view, “Hasidism strove to renew precisely that scientific study of Kabbalah in its early stage, to penetrate to the depths of its secrets and to be enlightened enough to abstract it from its covering of riddles. This matter was accomplished by the author of the new Ḥesed le-Avraham . . .”61 As Marcus notes, R. Avraham claims that true kabbalah shows “the path the nation of God should walk when they wish to look at this great dark fire, so that they not destroy, heaven forbid, the thirteen principles of the true battles of Israel.”62 These “thirteen principles” are, implicitly, the thirteen principles of faith articulated by Maimonides, which enshrine the incorporeality of God. Thus, R. Avraham tried to “bridge the gaping abyss between Maimonides and the kabbalists.”63 That is, R. Avraham’s polemic against corporeal kabbalah—indeed, even against the standard names for the sefirot—reflects his acceptance Maimonides’ negative theology.64 I affirm Marcus’ intuition that R. Avraham’s polemic against “corporeal” kabbalah stems from a philosophical commitment to negative Zionist Hasid,” Jewish Social Studies 16, no. 3 (2010). He presented Hasidism to a German intellectual audience, as in his comparison of Hasidic thought to the metaphysics of the “unconscious” of Gregor Von Hartmann; Ahron Marcus, Hartmann’s Inductive Philosophie Im Chassidismus, (Wien: Moriz Waizner, 1888). 60 Ahron Marcus, Der Chassidismus: Eine Kulturgeschichtliche Studie (Pleschen: Verl. des “Jeschurun”, 1901). For a sharp critique of Marcus’ accounts of Hasidism, see Scholem, Ha-Shalav Ha-Aḥaron: Meḥḳere Ha-Ḥasidut Shel Gershom Shalom, 384–92. 61 Ahron Marcus, Ha-Ḥasidut (Tel Aviv: Hotsaʾat Netsaḥ, 1954), 288. I translate from the Hebrew. Marcus uses the qualifier “new” to distinguish our author’s work from that of the sixteenth-to-seventeenth-century kabbalist Abraham Azulai. 62 Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 11. 63 Marcus, Ha-Ḥasidut, 288. On the role of Maimonides in kabbalistic thought, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Beneath the Wings of the Great Eagle: Maimonides and Thirteenth-Century Kabbalah,” in Moses Maimonides (1138–1204)—His Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Different Cultural Contexts, ed. G. K. Hasselhoff and Otfried Fraisse (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2004). See also Moshe Idel, “Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed and the Kabbalah,” Jewish History 18, no. 2 (2004). For a thorough bibliography, see Eli Gurfinkel, “An Annotated Bibliography on the Linkage between Maimonides, the Kabbalists, and the Kabbalah,” Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah, no. 64/66 (2009). 64 Maimonides’ account of negative theology appears in Guide 1:55–60, see, for a classic formulation, Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 139. For discussion of Maimonides’ negative theology as it relates to his “critical epistemology,” see Warren Zev Harvey, “Maimonides’ Critical Epistemology and Guide 2:24,” ALEPH: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 8, no. 1 (2008).

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theology. Yet as will become clear below, R. Avraham’s rejection of “corporeal” kabbalah has less to do with the linguistic logic of Maimonidean negative theology, and more to do with a scheme of emanation that enshrines divine transcendence both ontologically and epistemologically. In conjunction with his negative theology, R. Avraham describes the emanation by which creation came into being; in this too his thought is markedly Neoplatonic. The Infinite [ein sof] “emanated all those maskilim and all those sekhalim mentioned above, and gives them life and sanctifies them and gives them existence during every moment and every time that [the Infinite] desires that they exist, and they are all like matter in the hand of the Creator.”65 The central dynamic which unites these two concepts—divine transcendence and emanation—is that cognition of a higher intellect entails negation and subsumption into that higher intellect: “If [a higher emanation, a maskil] would be comprehended by a [lower] intellect [sekhel], then it [the lower intellect] would be nullified from existence, for it is an intellector, and the intellect cannot comprehend an intellector.”66 All emanated intellects inhabit an onto-epistemological hierarchy. If they are to exist, their knowledge of that which is prior to them must be limited, for as intellects, their existence is their knowledge. The most obvious example of this dynamic is the impossibility of comprehending God, the Infinite: “When [the Infinite] allows them [the emanations] the slightest, unquantifiable, negligible comprehension, they are all utterly nullified in relation to the Infinite, as if they never were, and are all made like they were before they were made . . .”67 Positive knowledge of superior strata—and of God most of all—would result in annihilation. In fact, the proximity of these emanations to the Infinite is proportionate to their knowledge of their inferiority: All the emanations, both higher and lower, cannot comprehend anything of the lower intellectors [maskilim] which are close to God, except through a coarse screen. What is the coarse screen? It is the holy awe [yira᾿h], without any imperfection, which is in every emanation. What is this awe? It is the appearance [hitraut] by which every emanation appears to itself as nothing [a᾿yin] in the face of the lower intellector [maskil] which is close to the

65 Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham. 11–12. 66 Ibid., 12. 67 Ibid., 12.

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Emanator, and it is through this screen of awe that they come to the gate of nothingness [a’yin] and comprehend, each one according to their level.68

The emanated intellects must conceive of their own nothingness, their own lesser degree of being, compared to the higher emanations that interface between them and God. In a sort of dialectic, it is precisely self-negation— the “awe” of the higher emanations—that forms the “screen” which allows the maskilim to occupy their position without being negated. The only possible knowledge of one’s place in the emanated hierarchy is the knowledge that one does not know higher emanations, which are the grounds of one’s being. This dynamic of preservative self-negation is a dialectical expression of the concepts of divine transcendence and emanation. Another explanation of this tension, in a rhetorical key, is voiced by Sarah Pessin on her subtle work on the Jewish Neoplatonist Solomon ibn Gabirol. Pessin coined the phrase “doubly apophatic” to describe “a text that is apophatically constructed to express awareness of the limits of describing God, but that does so through explorations and constructions that do not even have God as their purported subject.”69 Ibn Gabirol’s Neoplatonic description of the emanated divine spheres, the “chain of Being” which interfaces between the unknowable divine unity and the universe’s multiplicity, is “doubly apophatic” in that the complexity of the metaphysical emanations rhetorically enact the impossibility of describing God. Similarly, R. Avraham’s invocation of ever more lofty spheres of emanation serves to deny the ability of the human mind to grasp God. Indeed, R. Avraham implies that there exist an infinite series of intellectors; “there are more intellectors one above the other which cannot be called by name.” Above this endless sequence is the Infinite, [e’in sof] which “is above all those intellectors and all those intellects, for He emanated all those intellectors and all those intellects mentioned above.” In another context, R. Avraham correlates the three higher “intellectual” sefirot of keter, ḥokhma, and binah with the letters of the word a’yin, or nothingness.70 This linguistic association is common in medieval kabbalah, but also 68 Ibid. See Lorberbaum, “‘Attain the Attribute of ‘Ayyin’: The Mystical Religiosity of Maggid Devarav Le-Ya‘Aqov.” 31 n. 269. 69 Sarah Pessin, Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 131–32. 70 See Daniel C. Matt, “Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism,” in The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy, ed. Robert K. C. Forman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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occurs in the kabbalistic compendium Shoshan Sodot, edited by R. Moshe of Kiev. Shoshan Sodot records that the letters of the word/divine name, ayin aleph yud nun, represent the sefirot of keter, hokhmah, and binah.71 Most interesting, however, is the explanation that “yud hints to hokhmah— which has been called the active intellect [sekhel hapo‘el]. And the nun is the spread of things [devarim, or: speech] from the hokhmah . . . and from her [binah] is the power of the intellect [sekhel].” The juxtaposition of the terms “active intellect” and “power of the intellect” with the term a’yin make it seem likely that Shoshan Sodot was among R. Avraham’s influences. The book must have been circulating in manuscript in R. Avraham’s vicinity, as it was published by Hasidim in Koretz in 1784.72 Yet this association also expresses a particularly Hasidic concept. As Menachem Lorberbaum notes, R. Avraham “sees in the relationship between the three first sefirot to the rest [of the sefirot] an analogous relation to the one between a’yin [nothingness] and yesh [being].”73 That is, the three intellectors are the higher, less differentiated and less comprehensible, grounds of, or conditions for, the lower seven intellects. If we accept Pessin’s intervention, the idea that the highest emanations are entwined with the concept of nothingness becomes not just a kabbalistic word-game, nor an abstract proposition, but also a rhetorical tool for impressing readers with the ineffability of the Infinite. If “corporeal” kabbalah discusses God in human terms, R. Avraham’s kabbalah discusses human psychology in divine terms. This seems incongruous; the application of kabbalah to human psychology could be seen as an egregious manifestation of anthropomorphic, “corporeal” kabbalah! The anti-Hasidic polemicist R. David of Makkov’s Shever Posh‘im maligned Hasidic authors for precisely this sort of extreme psychologization: They [the Hasidim] assert that, since all the worlds and whatever is [found] in them, sefirot or partzufim are comprised in man, then all the inner secrets which were orally passed down to us from our holy ancestors going back to Moses at Sinai, and their holy books which reached us, such as the book of Zohar and the Tiqqunim and the Bahir, and others like them, the last [of 71 See Moses of Kiev, Shoshan Sodot. Koretz: Johann Anton Krieger, 1784, 1b. 72 See Ḥayim Lieberman, Ohel Raḥel, 3 vols., vol. 1, New York (770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn 11213): H. Lieberman, 1980, 93–104. 73 See Menachem Lorberbaum, “‘Attain the Attribute of ‘Ayyin’: The Mystical Religiosity of Maggid Devarav Le-Ya‘Aqov,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 31 (2014), 205 n. 144.

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Transcendent God, Immanent Kabbalah    AVINOAM J. STILLMAN

them] but not least being R. Isaac Luria and his fine writings… do not mean what they seem prima facie, but they all—God forbid—are the attribute of man and his powers, inherent in him, and no more.74

The radical claim here is that, for some Hasidic authors, kabbalah is nothing but psychology. Modern scholars have similarly identified psychologization of kabbalah as characteristic of Hasidism.75 Gershom Scholem termed “the distinctive feature” of Hasidic thought the psychologization of kabbalah in which: The secrets of the divine realm are presented in the guise of mystical psychology . . . With every one of the endless stages of the theosophical world corresponding to a given state of the soul—actual or potential, but at any rate capable of being felt and perceived—kabbalism becomes an instrument of psychological analysis and self-knowledge . . .76

Yet Scholem’s position is less radical than R. David of Makkov’s; he implies that the Hasidic authors merely transposed theosophy onto psychology, without fundamentally changing their theological assumptions. Subsequent scholars tend to share this assessment; Idel writes that “Insofar as their [the Hasidic thinkers] written works reflect their esoteric thought, none of them would deny the objective existence of a transcendental theosophical structure.”77 In a similar vein, Elliot R. Wolfson has described the doctrines of Ḥabad Hasidism as “the cerebral encasing of the kabbalistic core.”78 Yet, a strong reading of R. Avraham’s text implies that humans can have no knowledge of any “transcendental theosophical structure.” His doctrine is so rooted in negative theology as to almost deny any divine signified for kabbalistic signifiers; “for [with regards to] all the emanations and the intellectors, and all the more so the blessed Creator, it is not relevant to speak about them [in terms of] any attributes [middot] at all, for 74 Quoted in Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 151–152. 75 See ibid., 152–53. The “mystical psychology” of Hasidism has precedents in earlier kabbalistic systems; see Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic. Appendix A, p. 227–238, on “Psychologization of Theosophy in Kabbalah and Hasidism.” See also Idel’s remarks on the “Sefirot in Man,” Kabbalah: New Perspectives. 146–153. For a wider context, see Jonathan Garb, Yearnings of the Soul: Psychological Thought in Modern Kabbalah (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015). 76 Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 341. 77 Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 153. 78 Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 31.

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they are above all the intellects and all comprehension . . .”79 R. Avraham denies that the seven sefirot of ḥesed through malkhut can be applied to any of the higher emanations, let alone to God. In his Hasidic system, kabbalistic concepts may have divine referents in some exceedingly abstract sense, but kabbalistic terms as commonly construed can only justifiably refer to human consciousness. One question lies at the root of our whole discussion. If, as R. Avraham postulated at the beginning of his introduction, kabbalistic truths are revelations of God’s ineffable essence, how can human beings understand kabbalah?80 By dint of our embodiment, human beings are even more limited than abstract emanated intellects. Each of us is a “corporeal human being who is in the corporeal world, [and] we cannot comprehend with our coarse corporeal intellects.”81 Since concepts must occupy the same ontological plane as the intellects which cognize them, the corporeal limit of the human intellect seemingly inevitably results in one of two options; ignorance of God, or the deplorable corporealization of kabbalah. R. Avraham charts a middle path which presents kabbalah in a way that neither does philosophical injustice to God nor eludes human capabilities. R. Avraham recognizes that “it is egregious to explain to the intellect of man something which is above his intellect.”82 But rather than leave human beings in a perpetual aporia, R. Avraham takes a middle road and psychologizes kabbalistic concepts, rendering them more abstract then descriptions of God’s “body” while not so abstract as to be incomprehensible. This explanation of R. Avraham contrasts with Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer’s argument that, in Hasidism, “the immanentist outlook which states that ‘the whole world is full of His glory’ served as the revolutionary background for the identification of psychology with metaphysics.”83 That is, since all things in the physical world are divine, the human mind should also be understood as reflecting divine structures. Schatz-Uffenheimer’s reasoning misses the 79 Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 17. 80 See the remarks of R. Avraham Kalisker, ibid., 104, in which he uses similar terminology to describe the process of teaching a student with a limited “intellect” through a “corporeal parable.” This model is common in the Maggid’s circle; see Mayse, “Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch,” 262–263. 81 Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 20. 82 Ibid., 16. 83 Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, 179–80.

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significance of divine transcendence even for “immanentist” thinkers who affirm the doctrine of emanation. Indeed, even when R. Avraham describes the flow of divine vitality into the world, he juxtaposes this with God’s transcendence: God is one, singular, and unique, above all intellects in understanding and holiness. However, in the lower worlds, where the divine activity culminates . . . divine activity must clothe itself in the worlds through that vessel which the worlds are in, as they cannot tolerate anything that is above their vessel. What is their vessel? These are the permutations of their intellect, the intellect which is in every person . . .84

Menachem Lorberbaum’s recent work on the Maggid’s dialectic between being [yesh] and nothingness [ayin] is highly instructive here. Reductivist approaches to the Maggid’s teaching focus on one of the two poles of ayin and yesh, resulting in either a quietistic acosmism or an immanentist pantheism.85 However, as Lorberbaum demonstrates, the Maggid’s thought encompasses the relations between our world of differentiated Being and the divine realm of pure nothingness. Tzimtzum for the Maggid is precisely this complex coming of nothing into being. Similarly, in the passage above, R. Avraham traces the manifestation of the transcendent divine in the intellectual “vessels” of the corporeal world. All created things—even concepts—occupy a spectrum between corporeal and intellectual modes. However, God stands above this spectrum entirely; in fact, the reason for God’s engarbment in the vessels is that these intellects cannot comprehend God directly. God is neither nothing nor something.86 Thus, against SchatzUffenheimer, I argue that the transcendentalist outlook which denies human knowledge of God underlies the Hasidic psychologization of kabbalah. R. Avraham ha-Malakh’s psychologization of kabbalah is predicated on his acceptance of a hierarchy of emanated intellects that cannot know that which is onto-epistemologically prior to themselves. The formal characteristics of R. Avraham’s writings, which are both polemical and relatively systematic, make these philosophical foundations more apparent than in 84 Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, Ḥesed le-Avraham, 16. 85 Lorberbaum, “‘Attain the Attribute of ‘Ayyin’: The Mystical Religiosity of Maggid Devarav Le-Ya‘Aqov,” 169–70. 86 For philosophical reflections on this theme, and a thorough treatment of its history in kabbalah, see Elliot R. Wolfson, “Nihilating Nonground and the Temporal Sway of Becoming: Kabbalistically Envisioning Nothing Beyond Nothing,” Angelaki 17, no. 3 (2012).

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most Hasidic texts. Yet this should not lead us to divorce R. Avraham from his contexts; neither from Hebrew philosophical and kabbalistic literatures, nor from his contemporaries. At the close of this essay, I suggest three areas in which R. Avraham’s writings may prove useful for a broader understanding of Hasidism. Firstly, his repurposing of aspects of the Maggid’s thought may clarify the latter’s teachings; one such topos which I could not address here is their use of parables—particularly about fathers and sons—to describe divine processes. Secondly, his similarities with contemporaries like R. Shlomo of Lutzk and R. Avraham of Kalisk can help us map different intellectual trends within early Hasidism. Finally, correlating R. Avraham’s ascetic mien with his teachings could be a case study for the links between Hasidic hagiography and theology. In these ways and in others, R. Avraham’s writings can help scholars paint a more three-dimensional picture of the early Hasidic masters and their intellectual worlds.

Aubrey L. Glazer

Losing the Princess— Returning to Self: Toward An Archetypal Mapping of the Soul

What is the path to living the good life? Where can one find the road to a redemptive soul-life? No spiritual master has responded to this question with as much playfulness as the Hasidic master, Reb Naḥman of Breslov (1772–1810),1 who slyly hides his advice in plain sight. The concealed counsel for the road to a redemptive soul-life figures most prominently in his *

I am grateful for all the critical Torah that I have been privileged to learn and share with Nehemia. I am equally grateful to Ariel Evan Mayse for his invitation to include this essay in the current festschrift as well as his generosity of spirit in our ongoing scholarly collaborations. Finally, I am grateful to Art Green, who originally turned Nehemia on to the Ketem Paz, who then, turned me onto an endlessly rich journey into Tiberean Hadisim. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the International Conference of New Reflections on Bratzlav Hasidism (Van Leer Institute: Jerusalem, Jan. 2–4/2017), and so I express my gratitude to the invitation by Zvi Mark, Amnon Krotzkin, and Haviva Pedaya. 1 For the classic biography in English on Reb Naḥman , see, Arthur Green, Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Pub, 1992); more recently, see, Shaul Magid, God’s Voice from the Void: Old and New Studies in Bratslav Hasidism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002); Zvi Mark, Mysticism and Madness: The Religious Thought of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (London: Continuum, 2009). For more recent English studies on the tales, see Marianne Schleicher. Intertextuality in the Tales of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav: A Close Reading of Sippurey Ma’asiyot. (Leiden Brill, 2007). For a fully-annotated Breslov bibliography, see David Assaf, Braslav Bibliografiya Moeret: Rabbi Naḥman Mi-Braslav (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 2000).

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ingenious tale that some consider the very beginnings of Modern Hebrew literature proper, called, The Journey of Losing the Princess (Ma‘aseh Mabedat Bat Melekh).2 In what follows, I propose yet another way into decoding the archetypal qualia of this story. In order to do so, I will briefly outline: (a) the grounds for reading this story through such a general archetypal lens; and (b), having adopted this general archetypal lens, what grounds then lead to the interpretation of specific elements of Journey of Losing the Princess as outlined herein. While a full-fledged methodological discussion of archetypal psychology is beyond the scope of this essay, some summation is first in order. For the ensuing archetypal analysis, I have consulted and adapted numerous allusions and excerpts primarily from the revisionist work of American neo-Jungian, James Hillman. If my main contention is that Naḥman Journey of Losing the Princess story involves “a seemingly endless archetypal journeying to redeem the soul,” then it behooves each reader to take hold of this text as invitation into an archeology of self. While the exhaustive research of Carl G. Jung into excavating signposts of the soul’s journey through diverse religio-cultural matrixes appears to exclude this story of Naḥman Journey of Losing the Princess, I am convinced that there is much to be gleaned from a revisionist Jungian analysis as present in the work of James Hillman for deepening our understanding of the implications of such a tale for our times. This is a highly idiosyncratic claim that leads to an equally idiosyncratic analysis of the tale, but Naḥman’s Journey of Losing the Princess demands nothing less. Given that Naḥman was known to have regularly asked his disciples, “Where are you in your world at this moment?” I am thus extrapolating this invitation into an archeology of self as an exercise in excavating and interpreting these signposts of the soul’s journey. I have chosen to extrapolate from both the particularistic archetypal lens of Bratzlav super-commentary, Nifla’im Ma‘asekha,3 as well as from the more universal archetypal psychology still unfolding after Jung, so as to allow the emergence of the soul within the collective unconscious to 2 Zvi Mark, “Introduction,” in The Complete Stories of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav: The Tales, Secret Stories, Dreams and Visions (Jerusalem: Miskal-Yediot Ahronot/Moasad Bialiak, 2014), 17–24 (Hebrew). 3 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha (n.a., Or haGanuz, 2007). While published anonymously after Assaf ’s extensive annotated bibliography, I have learned from Bratzlav aficionados that the most likely identity of the mysterious author is R. Avraham Yaakov Hirshkowitz.

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

return to its lost wholeness. In this more universal archetypal vein, I will trace out its emergence from Jung’s locus classicus “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,”4 to then turn to second generation interpretations of the spirit’s journey through the fairy tale utilizing the insights of Israeli archetypal psychologist, Eric Neumann (1905–1960), and the American archetypal psychologist, James Hillman (1926–2011). Finally, I have chosen to correlate my analysis through one of the most cogent summaries of the phases a soul travels on its way returning to its source by Sufi master from the Khalwati Tariqah, Shaykh Abd al-Khaliq al-Shabrawi (1887–1947). His mapping the journey of the soul comes from both his work as a professor at Al-Azhar University in Cairo as well as being a Sufi shaykh who clearly understands the cognitive, spiritual-emotional, and embodied applications of this journey intimately through his concise description of the seven stages of the soul in his The Degrees of the Soul. While it may strike some readers as unorthodox to apply such a general archetypal mapping to the re-reading of a Bratzlav super-commentary as correlated to a modern Sufi commentary to interpret the particular texture of Reb Naḥman’s tale, The Journey of Losing the Princess, I am well within the domain of neo-Jungian revisionist thinking which thus allows this text to open to a contemporary unfolding universal spiritual process enshrouded in a particular cultural language. Now, turning to the surreal tale itself, Naḥman closes his telling of the tale with the delicious promise that there is a spiritual goal that will eventually be attained, but the narrator withdraws from fully telling the reader the secret—it remains aspirational, in the offing.5 Amidst a seemingly endless archetypal journeying to redeem the soul6 symbolized by the elusive princess, every reader is then invited to personally enter into the 4 Compare with C. G. Jung, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,” in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 207–54. While Gershom Scholem attended Eranos and was in conversation with Jung, it is unclear whether this article figured as part of their conversation given the paucity of Jewish mystical sources present. For more on the Eranos circle and their shared discourse, see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 5 I am indebted to Miles Krassen for this insight and anticipate further insight emerging soon with his long awaited, Vanishing Path: How to Be While Here is Still Time (Fons Vitae, 2019). 6 Compare with C. G. Jung, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,” in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 207–54.

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perspective of the seeker, and don the garb of the archetypal viceroy, who is constantly getting lost in deserts, fields, and forests. Eventually, the viceroy finally reaches his destination with renewed clarity as to how to redeem his imprisoned soul. Such clarity only comes along a seeming diversion, traversing the path and stumbling onto a veg, or a shvil eḥad min ha-tzad as a “by-path.”7 The Journey of Losing the Princess first reads as a seemingly clichéd cast of stock fairy-tale characters, but this mythic tale takes the reader on a journey where losing the princess is a process of returning (teshuvah) that is an uncovering of the individuated self in relation to the collective unconscious. This tale, The Journey of Losing the Princess, was first told in 1806 after the death of Naḥman’s child, when he set out on the road to Medvedevke and its environs, telling it to a small coterie of disciples.8 Frustrated as he reached the end of his life, and seeing that his disciples misunderstood his mystical teachings, the spiritual master thus dedicated his final days to teaching his life’s work through the genre of fairy tales. It is the form of the tale that holds Naḥman’s deepest truths, notwithstanding the state of confusion within conventional fairy tales of his day. Already in his own time, he identified that these fairy tales, possibly circulating orally as collected and retold by the Brothers Grimm9 and others, were not being told according to the true chronology of the journey of the spirit—and thus his own journey through the “by-path.”10 After Zvi Mark’s recent critical edition and commentary, it is clear that Naḥman’s prayer-formance of these ancient tales serves as an ecstatic modality for “realizing conjunction of the upper and lower worlds (le-yaḥed yiḥudim), something once achieved through prayer.”11 The Journey of Losing the Princess, for Nahaman, contains within it all the other tales. “Losing the Princess—Returning to Self ” 7 I have translated the Yiddish veg in line with the German wege closer to the umwege as “by-path” because of its deep significance that hovers at the basis of the poetic thinking envisioned by Heidegger and critiqued by Celan, see Martin Heidegger, and William McNeill, Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Paul Celan, Bernhard Böschenstein, Heino Schmull, and Pierre Joris, trans.  The Meridian: Final Version-Drafts-Materials (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).  8 Rabbi Naḥman of Breslov, “Losing the Princess” in The Complete Stories, 204. 9 Brothers Grimm (die Brüder Grimm or die Gebrüder Grimm), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859), were renowned German folklorists and linguists best known for their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812–1822; also called Grimm’s Fairy Tales), which led to the birth of the modern study of folklore. 10 “Losing the Princess,” The Complete Stories, 204. 11 Zvi Mark, “Introduction,” The Complete Stories, 30.

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

intends to interpret this tale through the lenses of Bratzlav super-commentary, Nifla’im Ma‘asekha,12 as well as to archetypal psychology, so as to allow the emergence of the soul within the collective unconscious to return to its lost wholeness. The present investigation is but another “bypath.” I intend to briefly build upon Jung’s 1945 locus classicus, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,”13 to then turn to second-generation interpretations of the spirit’s journey through the fairy tale through the insights of Neumann and Hillman. I intend to interpret the particular texture of The Journey of Losing the Princess as a universal spiritual process of individuation in relation to the collective unconscious. Such a process of returning to the authentic self requires an appreciation of the archetypes of the Great Father and Mother, Puer and Senex, as well as the stations in the journey itself.14 Building on the exhaustive structuralist analysis of Yoav Elstein, In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess, the present analysis will continue to excavate deep structures in an archetypal soul-scape.15 At the heart of this symbol of the soul is Hillman’s revision of the archetype, insofar as ambivalence is the adequate reaction of the whole psyche to these whole truths, so that “bearing ambivalence places us within symbolic reality where we perceive both faces at once, even [as they] exist as two realities at once.” Hillman suggests that “by bearing ambivalence one is in the conjuctio itself as the tension of opposites,” thus working “at wholeness not in halves but through the wholeness from the start.” Reading Hasidism through such an archetypal lens of psychology after Hillman opens readers to that playfulness of Reb Naḥman, a playfulness that revels in the very 12 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha (n.a., Or haGanuz, 2007). 13 Compare with C. G. Jung, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,” in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 207–254. While Gershom Scholem attended Eranos and was in conversation with Jung, it is unclear this article figured as part of their conversation given the paucity of Jewish mystical sources present. For more on the Eranos circle and their shared discourse, see Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion After Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 14 This current essay was completed before awareness of the detailed study deserving further reflection: Jonatan Benarroch, “Sava-Yanuka and Enoch-Metatron as James Hillman’s Senex-Puer Archetype: a Post-Jungian Inquiry to a Zoharic Myth” (Hebrew), in: The Exegetic Imagination: Relationships Between Religion and Art in Jewish Culture (Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 2016), 46–71. 15 Yoav Elstein, In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess: A Structural Analysis of the First Tale By Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 1984) (Heb.).

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ambivalence of the soul’s positioning along this journey to integrated living. It is precisely the spaciousness of ambivalence that allows for that sly hiding of his wholesome advice in plain sight. Moreover, I suggest that this way of reading Hasidism through such an archetypal lens of psychology of conjuctio as the tension of opposites is, for Neumann, “the last breakthrough of actual introverted intuitive Judaism.” Thus, it is uniquely positioned “to experience everything external . . . as pointing to YHVH who has pitched his seat in the center of the internal.” What Neumann’s partial remarks and correspondence to Jung suggest is a process of “taking back the world into internal space” so that “everything, every action, every fulfillment of the law can lead to a higher union, to the encounter with YHVH, and so the structure of the world can be experienced as one that is at the same time unified and that is full of YHVH.” In this way, Neumann reads Jewish mystical archetypes so as not to hinder but actually help individuation through what he defines as the “introverted intuitive.” This fluid sense of the self as the “center in the collective” is what serves to contextualize the challenges facing the contemporary seeker and why reading this Hasidic tale archetypally is so salient to the elusive nature of each and every search. Such archetypal ambivalence—or what Naḥman once referred to as “deep concealment” (hastarah she-betokh ha-hastarah) breeding “dasbly wondrous revelation” (peleh hafla’ah kefulah)—facilitates another way of interpreting the fluidity of symbols in Bratzlav Hasidism’s focus on Melekh/King, Bat Melekh/Princess, and Sheni le-Malkuth/Viceroy, alongside Abba/Father, Ima/Mother, Ben/Son and Bat/Daughter, as well as Zoharic Kabbalah’s focus on Sava/Elder and Yenuka/Youth. It is this ambivalent convergence of symbolic registers and meanings that beckons further archetypal exploration and a mapping of the spirit’s formation through stations in our analysis. By engaging in this comparative methodology, the intention is to uncover further resonances for the meaning-making of the self as the center in the collective through The Journey of Losing the Princess. Sheni le-Malkuth/Viceroy, according to Reb Natan, symbolizes the tzaddiq as seeker.16 Every seeker has to find an individual path to the Pearl Castle atop the Gold Mountain through one modality—prayer. Navigating 16 See R. Nathan of Nemirov, Liqqutei Halakhot, hilkhot nedarim 4; Ibid., Liqqutei Halakhot, hilkhot sefirat ha-‘omer 2:5. See also Elstein, In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess, 52.

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

all the obstacles presented in the story through the stations of the soul is for the purpose of revealing the “praying soul.”17 This is the primary vision of redemption which Reb Naḥman is alluding to in the tale, insofar as the “praying soul” is redeemed from all strictures and expectations, and is truly free and individuated—thus, the perfect soul. What follows is a brief archetypal reading in a neo-Jungian vein that draws freely from Bratzlav commentary and Sufi commentary to interpret the particular texture of The Journey of Losing the Princess as it informs a universal spiritual process. First, I will present my own translation of the tale; second, I will provide a breakdown of the journey into seven archetypes; third, I outline a series of ten stations (akin to what Sufis call maqam). This presentation is offered in the spirit of this festschrift’s honoree, who continues to inspire this very journey into a universal spiritual process of individuation in relation to the collective unconscious returning to the authentic self.

The Journey of Losing the Princess18 ONCE upon a time, there was a king. He had six sons and one daughter. The daughter was very dear to him. The king was very fond of his daughter and used to be very playful with her. One day when they were together, the king became annoyed with her, and the words flew from his lips, “May the Other Side take you!” That night, the princess returned to her room; in the morning no one knew where she was. The king was very distressed, and he sought her everywhere. On seeing that the king was in great sorrow, the king’s viceroy asked to look for her, provided he be given a servant, a horse, and money for expenses—so he went on his way. He searched for a very long time until he found the princess. He journeyed through deserts, fields, and forests. Once, when he was traveling in the desert, he saw a bypath. Seeing how he had been in the desert for such a long time and had not found her, he decided to try that path—perhaps he would reach a town or village. The viceroy went on for a long time, and finally from afar, the viceroy saw a castle guarded by many soldiers. 17 Elstein, In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess, 28. 18 Translated from The Complete Stories, 204–207.

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The castle was beautiful in its form and layout. The viceroy was afraid that the guards would not let him in. But he decided and said to himself: “I shall take the risk.” So he took leave of his horse, ascended toward the castle, and entered. No one hindered him, and he went from room to room. He came to a great hall and saw a king in his crown surrounded by many soldiers. Musicians were playing their instruments before the king—it was all very well and good. And neither the king nor anyone else there asked the viceroy anything. The viceroy saw good food there, so he ate it. Then to watch what was happening, the viceroy went and lay down in a corner. He saw the king order that the queen be brought forward, so the servants went to bring her out. Then with a great commotion and much joy, the musicians played and sang as the queen was brought forth. A throne was brought for her as she was seated beside the king. The viceroy saw her. Immediately he recognized her—she was the lost daughter of his king! Then as the queen was glancing about, she happened to see someone lying in the corner. Lo and behold, she recognized him. She got up and went over to the viceroy, then touching him the princess asked, “Do you recognize me?” “Yes, I recognize you—you are the king’s daughter who was lost. How do you come to be here?” She answered, “Because of the words that flew from my father’s lips that the Other Side should take me. This is the Other Side’s place.” The viceroy told the princess how her father was grief-stricken and had been looking for her for many years. Then he asked her, “How can I get you out of here?” She answered, “You cannot free me unless you choose a place and  remain there for the entire year, yearning to get me out of here. Whenever you have a free moment, only yearn for me and hope to free me from here. And on the last day of the year, you must fast and not sleep for twenty-four hours.” So the viceroy went away and did as she commanded. At the end of the year, on the last day, the viceroy fasted, on vigil all night long. Then he got up to free the king’s daughter and take her away. On the way, the viceroy saw a tree with fine apples growing on it; he was filled with longing, and decided to eat one of them. As soon as he ate the apple, a deep sleep

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

­ vercame him. The viceroy slept for a very long time. His servant shook o him but could not rouse him. Then, when he awoke, he asked the servant, “Where am I in the world?” The servant told him the whole story. “My Lord, you have been sleeping for many years. I kept myself alive by eating the fruit.” As the viceroy returned to bright back to the king’s daughter her became quite grief-stricken. She too was in great sorrow, and said, “Because of one day, because you could not restrain yourself for one day and you ate the apple, you have lost everything. Had you come on that day, you would have taken me out of here. True, it is difficult not to eat, especially on the last day, when the impulse is so strong. Go, therefore, and choose yourself another place and remain there for a year. On the last day you may eat, but you must not slumber; and you must drink no wine, lest you fall asleep. The main thing to watch out for is sleep.” So once again, the viceroy took leave and did as she commanded. On the last day, the viceroy returned to her. This time on the way, he saw a red, flowing spring, with the aroma of wine. The viceroy said to his servant, “Look, there is a spring, and water should be flowing from it, yet is red, with the aroma of wine.” And so the viceroy decided to taste just a little of the spring; immediately he fell into a deep sleep for seventy years. While the viceroy was sleeping, many soldiers marched past, and their baggage trains followed them. The servant hid himself from the soldiers. Then a carriage went past—the king’s daughter was inside! She stepped down and sat next to the viceroy. She recognized him and tried to rouse him, but he would not awaken! She then began to complain that after all the troubles and tribulations, after all the years that be had spent trying to get her away, “because of one day, on which you might have succeeded, you have lost everything.” So the princess wept a great deal and said, “It’s such a pity for you and for me. I have been here for such a long time, and I cannot escape.” Then the princess wrote a message with her tears on a kerchief from her head, leaving it beside the viceroy. She arose, got seated again in her carriage and drove away. When he woke up, the viceroy asked the servant, “Where am I in the world?”

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The servant told him the whole story: how soldiers marched on past, and then a carriage had gone by, how the king’s daughter had stepped down and had wept over him, and how she had lamented what a great pity this separation was for both of them. He looked about and saw the kerchief lying nearby. The viceroy then asked, “Where is this from?” The servant answered, “The princess left it here and wrote on it with her tears.” So the viceroy raised the kerchief to the sun and began to see letters, reading what was written. The viceroy read through her weeping, and now saw that she was no longer in the same castle, so he began searching for a golden mountain on a castle of pearl, “and there you will find me” reads her tear-stained note. The viceroy took leave of his servant, heading off by himself to search for her. He searched for several years. Then he thought: “In places where humans dwell one cannot find a golden mountain on which stands a castle of pearl. So I shall seek her deep in the desert.” The viceroy journeyed into the desert for many, many years. There the viceroy encountered a giant carrying a huge tree. And the giant asked him, “Who are you?” He answered, “I am a human being.” The giant was astonished and told him, “I have been here in the desert for such a long time, and I have yet to see a human being here.” The viceroy told him how he was searching for a golden mountain atop a castle of pearl. The giant answered, “There can be no such thing. It cannot be. People have been telling you fairy tales!” But the viceroy insisted, “It must exist somewhere.” Then the giant said, “In my opinion, it is all nonsense, but since you insist, I shall help you. I am in charge of all the beasts. For your sake, I shall summon all the birds, large and small. I shall summon them all here. They run all over the world, so perhaps one of them knows about your mountain and castle.” So he summoned all the beasts, large and small, and questioned them. They all answered that they did not know of the mountain and the castle. He said, “You see, no such thing exists. If you listen to me, you will turn back because what you are seeking does not exist.”

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

But the viceroy insisted, “It certainly does exist, somewhere in the world.” The giant said, “Further along this desert you will find the one in charge of the winds—he is my brother. Since these spirit-winds blow over the whole world, perhaps they will know.” So the viceroy went along this desert, searching for many years, and then he found another giant, also carrying a huge tree. The viceroy told him the story of what had happened. And this giant also tried to discourage him, telling him that no such thing existed. But the viceroy persisted. So the giant said, “For your sake, I shall summon all the spirit-winds and question them.” So he summoned all the winds and asked them, but not one of them knew about the mountain and the castle. The giant said to the viceroy, “You see, you have been told fairy tales.” Then the viceroy began to weep and said, “I know that it does exist, somewhere in the world.” Meanwhile, the giant saw that another spirit-wind had come. He was angry with it and said, “Why are you late? Did I not summon all the winds? Why didn’t you come with them?” The wind answered, “I was delayed because I had to carry the daughter of a king to a golden mountain on which stands a castle of pearl.” The viceroy was filled with joy. The giant asked the spirit-wind, “What precious things are in that place?” The wind answered, “Everything there is precious.” Then the giant said to the viceroy, “You have been searching for so long, and you have undergone many tribulations. Perhaps lack of money is troubling you. I shall give you a satchel; in goes your hand, out comes the money.” And he ordered the spirit-wind to whisk the spirit-wind off to the mountain of gold. So the spirit-wind came and carried the viceroy off, setting him down by the gate of a city. Soldiers surrounding the gate would not let him enter. So the viceroy put his hand in the satchel, out came the money with which he bribed them—so the viceroy entered the city. And it was a beautiful city. The viceroy went to a rich man and arranged to board with him, for he would have to spend time there; the viceroy knew he would need to use wisdom and knowledge to release the king’s daughter out.

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And how he freed the princess from that place, he did not tell. But in the end he freed her . . .

Mapping the Archetypal Journey of Losing the Princess19 Princess = (Psyche, Neshamah, Shekhinah) divine indwelling presence, soul as animus; trust in the imaginal and trust in the soul go hand in hand; soul-making is concerned with evocation of psychological trust, trust arising from the psyche as trust in the reality of the soul; psyche is primarily image, and image is always psyche—this is a trust in images; love of images flows mainly through the shapes of persons in reveries, fantasies, reflections, and imaginations; the increasing vivification gives one an increasing conviction of having, and then of being, an interior reality of deep significance transcending one’s personal life; reverse is also true—when imagination is not evoked, there is a deep-seated lack of confidence to imagine fantasies in regard to one’s problems and to be free of the ego’s literalizations, its sense of being trapped in reality; lack of trust in the psyche is compensated for by an exaggerated personalizing, a fantastic need for people (and a need for fantastic people); imagination discovers and forms a personality by disclosing and shaping the multiple soul personalities out of the primary mass of confusion of arguing voices and pushing demands; Queen = (Ḥayah, Binah) divine mother, regal status of the exile, supporting and sustaining the evil, mood; owing to emotionality of the Great Mother, the dynamus of the viceroy is unusually labile, unusually dependent upon emotion; inspiration can no longer be differentiated from enthusiasm; the dependence of spirit upon mood; King = (Yeḥidah, Qadosh Barukh Hu) Source of Blessing; imaginal elder, aging; as natural, cultural, and psychic processes mature, we witness the specific formative effects of Senex; personified as holy or old wise man, powerful father, great king, ruler; emblem of the old tree; longings for superior knowledge, imperturbability, magnanimity; intolerance for that which crosses one’s systems and habits; ideas and feelings about time, the past, and death; melancholy, anxiety, sadism, paranoia, anality, obsessive memory 19 For the ensuing archetypal analysis I have consulted and adapted numerous allusions and excerpts from following works, see James Hillman, Puer Papers. Irving, Tex: Spring Publications, 1979; ibid., A Blue Fire: Selected Writings (New York: Harper & Row, 1989); ibid., Mythic Presences (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2007); ibid., Animal Presences (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2008).

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

ruminations; omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, seated, and bearded, a ruler through abstract principles of justice, morality and order, a trust in words, yet not given to self-explanation in speech; benevolent, but enraged, when his will is crossed; removed the feminine (wifeless) and the sexual aspect of creation, up high with a geometric world of stars and planets in the cold and distant night of numbers; views the worlds from the outside, without heart, from such depth of distance that he sees it all upside down, and to this view the structure of things is revealed; he sees the irony of truth within words; gives abstract architecture and anatomy of events, plots, and graphs, presenting principles of form rather than connections, interrelations, or the flow of Viceroy’s feeling; the end of the King gives the pessimistic and cynical reflection as counterpart to the Viceroy’s beginnings; Viceroy = (Puer, Ruah) hero/ine as that aspect of the soul that seeks and calls to the spirit, primordial golden shadow, affinity for beauty, angelic essence, messenger of the divine, Messiah; ecstasy and guilt are part of the pattern of sonship; everyone should recognize the Great Mother in his actions and take flight from her relatedness into lofty abstraction and impersonal fantasy; still, the viceroy is the son filled with the animus of the goddess, her pneuma (neshama), her breath, and wind; viceroy serves the Great Mother best by making such divisions between his light and her darkness, his spirit and her matter, between his world and hers. Viceroy’s trust to reach the princess remains unbroken, no matter how many encounters with angelic presences [Giants]; Horse = (Nefesh/Nafs, Commanding Self, Ego) energetic rapture of hard-riding horsepower in the self, familiaris, a dumb, brother soul at our side, soul doctor, who understands psychic laws other than those of the day-world ego and which are a death for that world; inner drive; airy element, as if all horses had wings; young heroes ride their horses often until they can hold on no more and crash; symbolism of horse connects earth to sea; stallion thrust = unstoppable power; hoof = magic of fertility; ferocious strength perceived in a woman = demonization, nightmare, panicky madness of a runaway; dream horses carry heroes on their backs; horse power still brings sudden death on the night roads to so many boys on the verge of bursting into full life; the steed that can so strongly carry life leads that same life to its funeral in the solemn procession of the riderless horse; headstrong extroversion and noble courage that gallop across continents and centuries; within that heroic impulse is delicacy, something internal and so invisible that only dreams seem able to recall;

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horse sacrifice aims to release that invisibility of the horse, marking a separation of horse from here (which is how the viceroy eventually frees the princess!); dismissal of the horse marks a turn to the ascetic path; conquering king would let a prize horse wander freely accompanied by a band of young warriors, so that the territory covered by the horse became the king’s grazing grounds—the horse representing the limitless libidinal energy of expansion; horse as the vehicle that supports expansive ambition; the death of the horse signaled the death of its own vitality, the forward-carrying energy that is needed to get up and go into the day; can the dreamer ever give up his/her expansionist ambitions (especially when facing the doubting giants?); horse’s belly, venter equi = image of inward heat; metaphor of fire = intense concentration needed for soul-making; digestion of events, brooding and incubating, instead of flaming up with martial temper; inward heat, contained fire; rather than slaying the horse or letting it go in order to be free of its force, get inside the belly of the horse (like Jonah in the whale!); interiorize and contemplate the urge to press forward, to run wild, to panic, to win; instead of free-ranging conquest, on top of the horse with reins of control in hand, climb down and stay inside one’s animal drive, enveloped and cooked by its heat; manure  =  introverting heat; steady heat refers to a slow, long focus on one’s soul life; becoming conscious of the horseshit component of one’s driven-ness, the consequences of the life through and ridden over; as one stews in this fermentation, another kind of awareness begins to form; the hollow horse as the artful image of the imaginative act of imagining the end of war, transforming battle into story, inventing in poetry a rise in culture from the ruins of conquest, as the horse’s martial drive becomes epic image of the soul; Desert = (Lev) sleeping heart, to find the responsive heart, go to where it seems to be least present; go to the desert to be awakened by its silent roar; awaken young, sleeping heart; thought of the heart is not simply given, a native spontaneous reaction, always ready and always there—rather, the heart must be provoked, called forth; beauty must be raged, or outraged into life, to be awakened from one’s stupor, paralysis of the inner, primordial gold; what is passive, immobile, asleep in the heart creates a desert which can only be cured by its own parenting principle that shows its awakening care by roaring; the more our desert, the more we must rage, which rage is love. Passions of the soul make the desert habitable; the desert is not in Egypt, it is anywhere once we desert the heart;

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Castle = regal palace, darkened looking glass, illusory nature of reality, distortions of the divine that the mind projects as guarding the palace, but when realigned settle in their illusion; binary thinking; Golden mountain atop castle of pearl = site of redemption, a form beyond human comprehension and experience; unmarked on any map, but exists in the higher spheres where redemption must be resolved. Giant = (Ogre) reactionary aspect of King [Senex] who promotes fear, poverty, and imprisonment; who tempts the young and devours them to increase his own importance; paranoid King who must have an enemy; deceitful, suspicious, illegitimate King whose nobles of the court are sheltered in gated communities, locked away or, rather, committed themselves to the enclosed asylum of security where they nourish their world-devouring megalomania, but use the language of the legitimate hero to free the world though they themselves are the carriers of lies, cruelty, doubt, and death; Sick King; various hosts who mock collective hopes; bully; angelic presence that rules over celestial worlds; Satchel = (Ashirut de'qedushah) spiritual capital as a key to wisdom and knowledge to free the Princess = final stage is a prompting to take out coins associated with images, engage in aesthetic meditation to read the redemptive path.

Stations on the Journey of Losing the Princess Princess’s room, desert where Viceroy finds a by-path INCITING SOUL: The Viceroy is wayfaring toward God. The impulses of ignorance, avarice, greed, arrogance, irascibility, gluttony, lust, resentful envy, and distraction are what lead the King to send off the Princess, primarily through uncontrollable anger; Inciting Soul is the Rational Soul and the Heart. Finding rest in appetites, the soul consorts with the Appetitive Soul or Vital Soul indulging in reproachable attributes.20 “For the heart in this station is covered with the rust of arrogance, greed, resentful envy, conceit, hatred, and the other things you perceive within yourself, so that your most important duty in this station is to free yourself from those impurities which prevent the heart from reaching the exalted degrees. This is achieved by remembrance with energy and abundance . . . for this is the first station, that in which the soul is termed Inciting. It is also called ‘nature’s prison’ and 20 Shaykh Abd Al-Khaliq Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, trans. Mostafa Al-Badawi, Quilliam Press, London 1997, 20.

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the ‘lowest of the low.’ Gaining release from it takes priority over everything else . . . In this station two states alternate: fear and hope. When you are moved from it, your fear changes into Constriction and your hope into Expansion. Then when you reach the degrees of perfection, Constriction becomes majesty, and Expansion beauty.”21 Through this ensuing journey the majesty of the King must re-emerge from the Constriction which has led to the soul’s exile. The splendor of the princess will return once there is space for Expansion sought by the Viceroy. This station is one of Constriction in relation to the Expansion of primordial light attempting to enter into the vessel,22 so concentrate on release from the confines of the commanding self to open space of the spirit to be encountered most apparently in the desert with the giants. The quest before the Viceroy, from Constriction to Expansion, is to divest of all the blameworthy attributes and acquire their opposite praiseworthy traits.23 In the process of purifying the self from these faults, behold marvels and mysteries.24 The practice is to occupy oneself with the phrase, leit attar panui mineih— “there is no place devoid of the One.”25

Castle, dismounting horse in to hall with musicians where Queen enters REPROACHFUL SOUL: The Viceroy is wayfaring for God. The castle symbolizes holy sparks that have fallen into the coarseness of this world.26 Dismounting the horse is the wayfaring process of loosening the grip of the commanding self so that truth is acknowledged as truth and falsehood as falsehood. Devotions are offered but contaminated with conceit and secret ostentation.27 The practice is to occupy oneself with the word attar (“place”) within the phrase, leit attar panui mineih.

Fast day, eating apple from Tree, falling into deep sleep INSPIRED SOUL: The Viceroy is wayfaring upon God. Striving for the death of the commanding self,28 fasting is offered. As the Viceroy attempts 21 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 24. 22 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 104b. 23 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 27. 24 Ibid., 28. 25 Tiqqunei Zohar 122b; see Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 58. 26 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 118a. 27 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 29. 28 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 30.

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

to make this transition from the previous station of the Reproachful Soul to the Inspired Soul, he faces great libidinal temptations of the sheyne appel, tapuḥim na‘im, those “enticing apples” (much like Adam and Joseph)29 as well as experiencing constant fatigue, “for its highest degree is sincerity, and the sincere are in peril, salvation from this peril being only by extinction to the sight of one’s sincerity by the contemplative witnessing that none causes movement or stillness but God the exalted.”30 In this process the Viceroy is being brought near. The nearer he comes to the Tree, the more discernment is necessary between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Life symbolizes the sacred, perennial knowledge of the inner Divine Name (havaya) whereas the Tree of Knowledge is the Sparkling Husk (qelipat nogah—adonai) of the external name that can deceive the soul.31 All the while, the viceroy must remain sincere. There is a yearning and restlessness, shunning creation and attending to the Real, changefulness, a succession of Constriction and Expansion, the absence of fear and hope, pleasure in agreeable singing, being transported with delight on listening to it, affability, joy.32 “In this station, the wayfarer’s state is weak and he is unable to differentiate between Majesty and Beauty, nor can he differentiate between his lower nature and the entailments of such a human nature.”33 The Viceroy is in danger, much like first Adam in the garden before the Tree of Knowledge,34 if he forgets himself and falls asleep, of plummeting down to the Lowest of the Low, that is, back to the first station, of the Inciting Soul.35 Falling into deep sleep here at this station is a reminder of how quickly one falls back into sleep, as one’s human nature has weakened and spirituality has become stronger, and the deafness of one’s heart has gone and its release drawn nearer, when only a little effort remains for the Viceroy to enter the presence of the Princess.36 “In this station the soul is inclined to freedom and carelessness, and the required thing is to oppose it until it comes to rest by reaching the fourth station, where it will be called Serene.”37 Whenever the Viceroy feels he is retreating, his heart breaks and he weeps more and 29 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 145b–146a. 30 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 30. 31 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 146b. 32 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 36. 33 Ibid., 37. 34 Elstein, In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess, 52. 35 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 37. 36 Ibid., 37. 37 Ibid., 38.

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more.38 “In this station, which is that of the spirit (the spirit being the abode of passionate love with its transports and intoxication), the wayfarer stays for a long period of time; for the lover is oblivious to himself and even to his Beloved, so busy is he with uttering His Name and with the delight of praising His Beauty . . .”39 The practice is to occupy oneself with this formidable invocation, leit attar panui mineih as though addressing it to one’s bodily parts, telling those parts that there is nothing in existence but the Real.40

Fast day, drinking wine from spring water, falling into deep sleep SERENE SOUL: The Viceroy is wayfaring with God. This intermediate state between sleep and wakefulness usually comes as the wayfaring Viceroy is sitting down, and then he sees what he sees.41 Unless one is in a condition of being aware of the time and place and of one’s state between sleep and wakefulness, then one is only in a dream.42 Wine can either awaken one to divine secrets or induce deeper sleep, like Noah (as Second Adam) emerging from the ark.43 Sleep is a distancing from the divine, while the awakening is a deepening awareness of the divine.44 At this point in the journey, the Viceroy needs a knowledgeable guide who knows the waystations and conditions that he will encounter momentarily.45 The seeker must not be distracted by those flashes from the higher worlds perceived as one travels along the path, for these are the veils that will prevent one from ­approaching the Highest Essence and may be the cause of one’s return to the level of creaturely appetites.46 In this transition from the Inspired to Serene Soul, the Viceroy experiences a state of Extinction that assists in the ascent to the Serene Soul. “Extinction in this station is a condition that comes upon the wayfarer and renders him unaware of all sensory things. This is the unawareness of absorption, not that of fainting or sleep.”47 Here the shift begins from fear and hope of the Inciting and Reproachful Soul, to Constriction 38 Ibid., 41. 39 Ibid., 44–45. 40 Tiqqunei Zohar 122b; see Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 47. 41 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 34. 42 Ibid., 34. 43 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 164a. Compare with Elstein, In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess, 53. 44 Ibid., 49. 45 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 35. 46 Ibid., 38. 47 Ibid., 42.

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and Expansion of the Inspired Soul, to awe and intimacy of the Serene Soul, to majesty and beauty of the Perfected Soul reserved for the Viceroy.48 The practice is to occupy oneself with the Name of the Real (havayah), for there is nothing in existence but the Real.49

Princess in carriage, tear–stained kerchief > Castle of Pearl atop golden mountain CONTENT SOUL: The Viceroy is wayfaring in God when the chariot passes by and, behold, the princess riding within dismounts to sit with him. The “chariot” (merkavah) is that capacity within the sage to integrate the desire of all souls into a “unified consciousness” (da‘at ha-ḥakham).50 At this station, Extinction signifies the elimination of human attributes until Subsistence is reached. Without attributes, the wayfaring Viceroy is extinct, neither subsistent by himself as he had been before, nor subsistent by God as he will be in the seventh station. This is a state that can only be discerned experientially.51 The Princess in the chariot now guides the Viceroy in his transition from the “lower chariot” (merkavah ta’ta) to the “upper chariot” (merkavah ‘ila’a). This guidance happens through the writing in her “tear-stained kerchief ” (patchele), symbolized by the concealed, primordial teaching of ‘Attik Yomin veiled in this very fairy tale.52 By now, the Viceroy has himself reached a degree of perfection.53 The attributes of this soul are: detachment, sincerity, scrupulousness, “and a contented acceptance of everything that occurs in the universe, without so much as a quiver of the heart, without resorting to spiritual concentration to fend off an injury, and without objecting to anything at all. This is because the soul is absorbed in the contemplation of absolute Beauty.”54 The practice is to occupy oneself with the Names, the Bestower (ha-Gomel), the Opener (ha-Pote’aḥ), the Unique (ha-Yaḥid, and ha-Ḥayy).55

48 Ibid., 45. 49 Tiqqunei Zohar 122b; see Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 47. 50 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 167a. 51 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 53. 52 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 171a-b. 53 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 53. 54 Ibid., 54. 55 Ibid., 54–55.

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Giant I with a huge tree summons flying creatures (Desert II) PLEASING SOUL: The Viceroy is wayfaring from God. In this station, the Viceroy does not appear outwardly different from the common people; however, inwardly, he is the very essence of secrets and the exemplar of the best of people. Here the Viceroy encounters the “first giant” (groyser mensch) who symbolizes the “truly devoted one” (tzaddiq gadol) engaged in deep spiritual work of cultivating pristine and unsullied devotion.56 “The soul is called ‘Found Pleasing’ because the Real Himself is pleased with it.”57 Now, at the beginning of this station, the wayfarer shows the first signs of the Greater Viceroy, and at its end he is invested with it.58 The practice is to occupy oneself with the Name of the Sustainer (ha-Qayam). 59

Giant II summons wind-spirits (Desert III) PERFECT SOUL: The Viceroy is wayfaring by God. In this station, the Viceroy has no other desire than the good pleasure of the divine, wherein all movements are acts of goodness and every breath is an act of worship,60 aligned with the wind-spirits. By questioning the wind-spirits, the Viceroy contemplates all the good, inner points there all the while, so that each and every gesture is towards the sacred.61 The joy and delight of the Viceroy is in seeing created beings turn and return to the Real. The sorrow and anger of the Viceroy are in seeing created beings turn away from the One. There is no hatred in the heart of the Viceroy for any sentient being. The Viceroy’s desire is that of the Real. The practice is to occupy oneself with the Name of the One who Compels (ha-Meḥayev).62 In this perfected soul-state, the Viceroy is able to travel effortlessly on wind-spirits to Castle of Pearl atop mountain of gold and freely access wisdom and knowledge to free the Princess.

Unscientific Postscript In keeping with honoree of this festschrift I want to swerve through a momentary “by-path” and share the nature of my encounter with Nehemia 56 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 191b-193a. 57 Al-Shabrawi, The Degrees of the Soul, 56. 58 Ibid., 57. 59 Ibid., 58. 60 Ibid., 59. 61 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 217b. 62 Ibid., 59, 60.

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Losing the Princess—Returning to Self    AUBREY L. GLAZER

as well as acknowledge the impact he continues to have upon my own path as a scholar-rabbi. While Nehemia currently serves as Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew College, his own journey includes its own rich “by-paths” that coincide with my own wanderings. Nehemia received rabbinic ordination, from Ner Israel Rabbinical College while also completing his PhD at Boston University, where he studied with, and served as a teaching fellow for, Nobel Laureate, Elie Wiesel, o.b.m. Prior to his career in Jewish academia, Polen was deployed as a teacher, preacher, and legal decisor for twenty three-years as a congregational rabbi—another point of shared intersection. In and of itself, this is a remarkable accomplishment— to emerge not only in one piece from the trenches of the rabbinate, but to be reborn as a shining soul ready to be re-deployed to an even higher level of holiness. While I first read Nehemia’s nuanced spiritual biography The Holy Fire: The Teachings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto (1994), which indelibly marked my soul, it was not until I found myself on retreat with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality over a decade ago, that I encountered Nehemia’s teaching in a fuller way. After a good dose of silent meditation to get in the mood, Nehemia emerged with the softest and subtlest niggun, I had ever heard—almost angelic. If that was not enough to touch my soul, he then began teaching a text that has kept me enraptured continuously since that moment of revelation to a small rabbinic cohort. I vividly recall how much his teaching of this text of Tiberean Hasidism called Ketem Paz aroused every spiritual cell in my body, made all the more overpowering given that I had been deployed already in a stultifying pulpit that tolerated, but was not the least bit interested in, my passion for Hasidic thinking and praxis. The text was an excerpted riff on the doxology describing the angelic chorus singing intertwined together from a neglected manuscript by a lost spiritual master, Reb Zvi Hirsch of Smyritzch, a disciple of the Kalisker, both of whom constituted the major voices of Tiberean Hasidim that emigrated to Eretz Yisrael in 1777. I had never encountered such an ecstatic text about the power of singing in conscious community that was vertical rather than horizontal—that is, more about process than person, more egalitarian than hierarchical. At each station, I continue hearing Nehemia’s niggun and teaching. What I have come to appreciate in the decade-long hevruta I have had the honor of sharing with Nehemia through so much of this neglected Tiberean Hasidism is how unique these texts remain within the canon

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of Hasidism, and that only an elevated scholar-rabbi like Nehemia could open them in his inimitable way. While I look forward to the forthcoming publication of this Tiberean Hasidim series that I have been co-editing and translating with Nehemia since that retreat over a decade ago, there is so much more to his shining soul than appears on the page. Although Nehemia’s devotion to the highest scholarly standards is beyond doubt, his gift shines so brilliantly in precisely how he devotes himself equally to ongoing spiritual practice of a prayer-life that concretizes constant loving-kindness. In the countless meetings we have shared between countries and across continents, there has rarely been a moment when Nehemia has not been giving away whatever alms were in his pockets and blessing everyone and everything he encounters. I share this “bypath” because nothing could be more true to Naḥman’s “prayer-formance” of such a profound tale of the soul’s journey home as the Journey of Losing the Princess as our beloved, Nehemia’s ecstatic modality for reuniting the upper and lower worlds through this life as one extended prayer. If it be Your Will . . .

Avraham Rosen

Caring for the Graves of the Righteous: The Holocaust in Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin’s Sippurei Ḥasidim

Over the course of hundreds of Hasidic stories—555, to be exact—compiled by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin in the year 5715/1955, almost precisely ten years after the end of World War II, the Holocaust receives no mention. From a certain perspective, this absence of the Holocaust from Rabbi Zevin’s Sippurei Ḥasidim, a volume dedicated to a broad swath of Hasidic masters and the Hasidim that sought them out, need not come as a surprise; more than two hundred years passed from the founding of the movement in the first half of the eighteenth century and the destruction of most of European Jewry in the twentieth. And, as Rabbi Zevin’s collection makes clear, there are stories aplenty to fill not only this volume, but also a second volume completed in 1957.1 Indeed, nothing seems lacking in terms of scope, theme, and message. The stories span a wide historical and geographical breadth, encompassing the movement’s founder, the Ba‘al Shem Tov, his successor, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and the legions of masters who established courts throughout Eastern and Central Europe. Pivoting on the eighteenth and nineteenth 1 Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, Sippurei Ḥasidim: Torah (Tel Aviv: Tsiyoni, 1955–56); Sippurei Ḥasidim: Mo‘adim (Tel Aviv: Tsiyoni, 1957). Uri Kaploun translated the first volume into English under the title, A Treasury of Chassidic Tales on the Torah (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 1980), and the second volume under the title, A Treasury of Chassidic Tales on the Festivals (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 1981).

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centuries—the period when the Hasidic courts became fixtures in Jewish life—the stories occasionally do extend into the twentieth century. But these stories are of a piece with those situated in earlier years; they do not invoke World War II, or the events that so cruelly afflicted Europe’s Jews. Keeping the shadows at bay should not, however, lead one to think Rabbi Zevin chose only stories that unfold in idyllic settings and that tell of glad occurrences. Taking place mainly in the small towns made renown by the Hasidic masters who inhabited them, the tales relate not only wisdom and holiness, but also the dark side of Eastern Europe life: anti-Semitism, poverty, theft, and even murder are regular (if not defining) features of the society in which Hasidim flourished. At times, more general social upheaval intrudes on the scene, in the form of wars (Napoleonic, RussoJapanese), Cantonists (who supplied the Russian army with Jewish children) and pogroms. But the stories occur in an era before the Holocaust, at a time that, no matter the scale of social ills, Hasidic life would go forward on European soil. So it goes for well over five hundred stories. And then, at the very end of the volume, having shuttled the reader through tales of renowned and obscure masters, of the larger and smaller courts, of breathtaking spiritual accomplishments and the quest to solve the problems of everyday life, the two final stories—numbers 556 and 557—address the Holocaust head on. Indeed, these stories pull no punches, leave little to the imagination. And they transform the collection from one that bears no telltale sign of the time of publication—ten years after the end of World War II, in the near shadow of the Holocaust—to one that clearly does.2 What was Rabbi Zevin thinking? Having tacitly defined his story-collecting task as that concerned with pre-war Hasidic life, what had him change course and, on the final page, set down two stories from an era, a 2 Published almost two years later (Teves 5717/Jan/Feb, 1957), the second volume, which includes hundreds of stories organized around the festivals, does not follow this pattern. Indeed, not a single story touches on the Holocaust. This is especially striking given that the volume concludes with Tisha b’Av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of the ancient temples and several other catastrophes in Jewish life and history. It would seemingly have been fitting to enfold within this section stories from the period of the most recent major catastrophe to beset the Jews, the Holocaust. We don’t know why Rabbi Zevin did not recapitulate in the second volume what he had done in the first. Perhaps the absence of such concluding stories suggests that the publication date of the first volume, almost exactly ten years after the end of World War II and the liberation of the concentration camps in Germany, lent itself compellingly to this sort of narrative commemoration.

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time and place, which he had hitherto skirted? To be sure, the two stories, as we will see, continue to deal with luminaries in the Hasidic pantheon, and continue to illustrate the astonishing virtues they embodied. Nothing new in this respect. Yet, taking such pains as he must have done not to let the Holocaust set the collection’s agenda, why at the moment of conclusion—at the point that might be considered the most sensitive, delicate, and affecting moment in the entire volume—why allow it to do exactly that? These questions are intensified by the collection’s organizing principle. In Sippurei Ḥasidim, Rabbi Zevin chose not to arrange the volume historically, chronologically, or thematically, but rather liturgically, following the order of the weekly Torah portion. The collection thus begins with ‫בראשית‬, the first portion, moves to ‫נח‬, the second, then to ‫לך לך‬, the third, and so on, until, Torah portion by Torah portion, the ‫חומש‬, the five books of Moses, are completely covered. Multiple stories are usually scaffolded on each portion, and each story appears under the rubric of a verse drawn from the portion. The two stories that deal with the Holocaust fall under the rubric of the portion, ‫( ברכה‬also known as ‫)זאת הברכה‬, the final one in the Torah.3 In contrast to all the other portions, the complete version of which is publically read on Shabbat, ‫ ברכה‬is read on the holiday of Simḥat Torah—the holiday that celebrates the conclusion of the Torah—and that celebrates, in equal measure, immediately beginning it again. The leitmotif of the holiday of Simḥat Torah is joy: joy in the continued devotion to Torah as marked by ending one cycle and beginning another anew; joy in bearing the Torah scrolls aloft, circling the reader’s stand, and, for hours on end, dancing with them held tightly in one’s grasp. Hence, these two Holocaust stories, deferred to the end of the volume, surface in the most unlikely place: the Torah portion read on the day dedicated to an unparalleled expression of joy. What did Rabbi Zevin have in mind by placing these stories where he did? How could the Holocaust emerge with all of its ferocity exactly at the moment of joyous celebration of Torah learning and of the Torah in its own right? Though the collection Sippurei Ḥasidim was compiled in Jerusalem, where the editor resided for the last four decades of his extraordinary life, his roots go back to Eastern Europe.4 Born in Kazimirov, Belorussia in 1890, 3 “‫ ”ברכה‬is how the Torah portion is called in the Hebrew original, ve-zos ha-berakhah, in the English translation. 4 “Biographical Sketch,” A Treasury of Chassidic Tales,” xii–xiv; Tovia Preschel, “Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin,” Jewish Press (September 11 1964), http://www.toviapreschel.com/

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Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin learned in the Lithuanian yeshivahs of Mir and Slabodka (where he was a ḥevruta of Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, who also became formidable rabbinic authority). He eventually came under the tutelage of Rabbi Shemariah Noach Schneersohn of Bobruisk, who issued from the Lubavitch Hasidic line, but was also a Rebbe in his own right. It was Rabbi Schneersohn who was said to have conferred upon his Hasid, Shlomo Zevin, rabbinic ordination. Having matured as a Torah scholar, Rabbi Zevin was appointed rabbi first in his home town of Kazimirov, served in this capacity over the next years in a number of other locations, wrote articles on many themes, and, in the late 1920s, under the oppressive rule of the Bolsheviks, briefly co-edited a Torah journal with Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky. But circumstances under Communist rule proved too much for him, as it did for most, and Rabbi Zevin immigrated to Israel in 1934. It was a step he took reluctantly, leaving behind cadres of Jews in need. A long footnote in Sippurei Ḥasidim tells of the plight of those who remained behind, their hope that Rabbi Zevin would be able to help them, his inability to come to their aid, and his concluding sentiment: “My heart bleeds for them.”5 Based for the remainder of his years in Jerusalem, he adapted well to life in the Holy Land. Continuing to live immersed in Torah, he straddled many communities, associated with a wide range of people, and was said to make time for all. Teaching and writing remained central occupations. This is reflected in his steady output of Torah studies, out of which evolved a singular style of essay: in 1944 he published ‫ ;המועדים בהלכה‬two years later ‫ ;לאור ההלכה‬in 1952, ‫ ;אישים ושיטות‬in 1959, ‫ ;סופרים וספרים‬and in 1961, ‫לתורה‬ ‫ולמועדים‬. It was, moreover, during these years of immense literary productivity that Rabbi Zevin was appointed editor-in-chief of what was to be the vast Talmudic Encyclopedia, the first volume of which was published in 1947; by 1955, six volumes had appeared. The steady output continued for the remainder of his lifetime—and beyond. 6 His many and multi-faceted contributions were recognized with the Israel Prize in 1959, at the acceptance of which he set things in their proper proportion: “The prize is not rabbi-shlomo-yosef-zevin/; HaPardes (Nissan 5738), 25–26; email correspondence 6/26/17–7/1/16 with Yakov and Chanon Zevin, grandson and great-grandson of Rabbi Zevin. 5 Sippurei Ḥasidim, 433. 6 The Talmudic Encyclopedia project continues to flourish: to date, forty-two volumes have been published, with a plan to complete the endeavor in the next decade.

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everything. Torah scholars do not labor only for the sake of prizes or for other material reward—theirs is the idealistic urge to spread the Torah among our people.”7 After a long life filled with learning, industry and innovation, Rabbi Zevin passed away in 1978. When Sippurei Ḥasidim was published in 1955, Rabbi Zevin was sixty-five years old, by this time already a distinguished Talmid Ḥocham, posek, writer, and editor. He had become at this point in time a preeminent Torah figure. In a sense, it is thus a curious turn of career to see such a Torah luminary concern himself with collecting stories. Undoubtedly, the project made its own scholarly demands: the editor assembled, reviewed, and culled from over ninety collections of Hasidic stories, some published more than a century before, others only a year earlier.8 He had done the homework, had dedicated substantial time, effort, and ingenuity to the task—and was, apparently, chastised by some colleagues for diverting his energies in a direction they felt not entirely worthy of his learning and talents. Like all the other stories in the collection, the final two appear under the rubric of a verse from the Torah portion in question, in this case referring to the end of the life of Moshe Rabeinu: ‫ לא כהתה עינו‬/ his eye was not dim. Relevant to the stories that follow, Rabbi Zevin includes RaShI’s gloss on the verse: “Even when he died, his body did not crumble nor did his countenance alter.” Having ascended during his life to extraordinarily high spiritual plane, Moshe Rabeinu continued to display the mark of this achievement even after death, since, miraculously, even his corpse was not subject to the usual signs of decomposition. A similar miracle is the common motif of the volume’s concluding stories, both of which appear on the same page, and both of which confront directly the fury of the Holocaust. But they do so in diametrically opposite ways. The first details an extraordinary act of martyrdom, undertaken by the Jews of the town of Chechinov, to preserve the remains of the tzaddiq, Rabbi Avraham Landau (1789–1875), the founder of the Chechinov Hasidic dynasty. One of the main students of Rabbi Fischel of Strikov, Rabbi Avraham, revered both for his learning and activism, also had an independent streak, being for example the only Polish Hasidic master who

7 Preschel, “Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin.” 8 Rabbi Zevin included in the Hebrew-language original a bibliography of published sources as well as listing those (including his father) to whom he was indebted for having heard stories directly from them. See Sippurei Ḥasidim, 572–73.

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prayed not, like most, according to Nusaḥ Sefard or ARIZaL, but rather to Nusaḥ Ashkenaz.9 In Rabbi Zevin’s collection, Rabbi Avraham figures in six stories altogether, most of which bring out his uncompromising rectitude. The most important for our purposes chronicles at length Rabbi Avraham’s stalwart opposition to a decree issued in Warsaw in 1850 prohibiting traditional Jewish dress. Though the main Hasidic protagonist turns out to be the Ḥiddushei Ha-RIM, the first Gerer Rebbe, Rabbi Yitzḥak Meir Alter, the Chechinover enters the story first and articulates the uncompromising response—to suffer death ‘al Kiddush Hashem rather than submit to the decree—a position later subscribed to by the Gerer Rebbe himself. In other words, the Chechinover Rebbe’s radical position in this story foreshadows that taken by his Hasidim during the Second World War and chronicled in the volume’s penultimate tale. The Chechinover Hasidim too are willing to risk everything, and eventually give up their lives in the name of a cause that does not, according to halakhah, require them to do so.10 The Holocaust-period story plays out these issues with heartrending drama. In 1943, as the enemy prepares to destroy the tzaddiq’s grave, “plowing over the site and erasing it from mortal memory,” the town’s burial society acts to thwart the enemy’s plans, by moving the remains of the tzaddiq to “the new cemetery.” In the process of unearthing the grave, they are “dumbstruck” to find that, though “Some sixty eight years had passed since the burial, the holy body of the tzaddiq lay intact and whole, as though he had been buried a moment before. Even the shrouds had not decomposed.” Successful at carrying out the holy task of relocating the tzaddiq’s remains, the Hasidim in consequence pay a terrible price. The enemy heard of this exploit: “They hunted and tracked down the townsmen, and dragged them out of the cave in which they had hidden for almost two weeks. Finally, after dreadful torture, their racked bodies (May God avenge their blood) were hanged.”11 The description pulls no punches. Despite (or actually because of) their selfless act of devotion, the martyrs are subjected to the full wrath of 9 S. Rothstein, “The Gaon and Tzaddik Rabbi Avraham Landau,” Jewish Geneology, Ciechenov, Poland, The Rabbonim and Religious Leaders, https://www.jewishgen.org/ yizkor/Ciechanow/cie035.html; M. Faierstein, “Chechanov Hasidic Dynasty,” The Yivo Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/ Chekhanov_Hasidic_Dynasty 10 Sippurei Ḥasidim, 314–20. 11 Ibid., 566.

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the enemy, simply for the reason that they had acted in a way to thwart the enemy’s authority—authority that was presumed to encompass the dead as well as the living. The Hasidim did nothing to harm the enemy, enacted nothing of any military consequence. But they had acted defiantly, and thus were punished. As if the graphic details of torture and hanging were not enough, the story’s reversal adds to its power: the tzaddiq’s exhumed corpse bears all the signs of life, while the cave-hiding townsmen, also taken from the earth, are drained of life. The usual nature of life and death has been turned on its head. The second story, the one that concludes the volume, follows the outlines of the first. “On their frenzied rampage through the towns and villages of Poland and Galicia,” the enemy “arrived at Lizhensk”:12 “They first razed the town to the ground, and then turned to the old Jewish cemetery, where they found a number of aged Jews praying softly at the graveside of Reb Elimelekh [about whom more will be said shortly].” As one would gather from the preceding story (and from the history of which it was a bitter example), neither the prayers of the elderly nor the prestige of the tzaddiq seem to have the least pacifying effect on the enemy’s cruel designs: “The troops demolished the modest edifice which been built over the gravesite, [and] tore open the grave itself.” Until this point the second story lines up with the first, preparing the reader (if one can ever be really prepared for such wanton evil) for a scene of wholesale carnage. But, braced for the worst, we find out that what happened in Chechinov in the preceding story does not repeat itself in Lyzhansk. For as they stand before the open grave, the enemies (yes: the enemies!) “were shocked by what they saw—a countenance, as in life, which bespoke quiet joy and dignity.” The miracle witnessed by the townsfolk of Chechinov is here replayed in Lyzhansk, the crucial difference being that in the first story devoted followers are given the privilege of seeing the tzaddiq’s miraculously preserved remains, while here it is the enemy, hell-bent on destruction, who behold the supernatural occurrence, “the quiet joy and dignity.” Such a sight is too much even for the wicked: “Out of fright and shock, the murderers fled, leaving the grave open.” The miracle beheld is so powerful that the rampage of destruction is stopped in its tracks, so that not 12 Though no specific date is given, the story likely refers to the arrival of the Germans on erev Rosh Ha-Shanah, 5699 (September 12, 1939). Some two weeks later most of Lizhensk’s Jews were deported across the San River to the Soviet-occupied zone.

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only is the grave of the tzaddiq spared, but those in attendance, “the Jews surrounding [the grave], remain alive.” In contrast to the torture and martyrdom suffered by the devoted followers of the tzaddiq of Chechinov, their counterparts in Lizhensk emerge unscathed, in this case protected by the tzaddiq’s aura.13 The physical as well as spiritual blessings that derive from visiting the grave of the righteous appear in a number of the collection’s previous stories. One of the most detailed episodes features a businessman who agrees to visit the grave of Rabbi Dov Ber of Lubavitch in Niezin, White Russia, a visit that, through the miraculous intervention of the deceased tzaddiq, halts his wife’s failing health and his own declining fortunes. Moreover, the businessman learns that the blessings brought by way of his pilgrimage to the grave have a basis in a teaching of the Sages: “Tzaddiqim are greater in their death than in their life.”14 This principle, dovetailing with that outlined in the verse about the eye of Moshe Rabeinu not becoming “dim,” underlies the miracles at work in the businessman’s visit to Niezin as well as in the volume’s two concluding stories. The teaching is especially apropos to the tzaddiq at the center of the final story, the Rebbe Reb Elimelekh of Lizhensk (1717–1786/7[5546]), who holds a prominent position in Hasidic history and lore—as well as in Rabbi Zevin’s collection of stories. Reb Elimelekh was a student of Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, as well as a master in his own right, nurturing students who became cornerstones of Polish Hasidism: the Ḥoze or “Seer” of Lublin, the Kozhenitzer Maggid, the Ohev Yisra’el, and the Rimanover. Celebrated as a mentor of great leaders, he also authored one of the earliest published books of Hasidic teaching, the No‘am Elimelekh (1788), hailed as classic exposition of many doctrines central to the Hasidic movement. In a more popular vein, he is known as the partner of his renowned brother, the Rebbe Reb Zusia of Anapoly; the two traveled widely, helping communities and individuals alike to strengthen their connection to God. Following Reb Elimelekh’s passing on the twenty-first day of Adar 1786, his grave in Lizhensk became, and continues to serve as, a place of pilgrimage, possibly the foremost of any tzaddiq buried in Europe. For Rabbi Zevin to conclude his collection with a story highlighting the grave of Reb Elimelekh brought into the limelight one of the most revered pilgrimage 13 Ibid. 14 Sippurei Ḥasidim, 374–76; Treasury, 408–10. The cited teaching is taken from the Talmud, Ḥullin 7:b.

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Caring for the Graves of the Righteous    AVRAHAM ROSEN

sites in the orbit of European Hasidism, and, in the terms the story sets forth, a site that could continue to work saving miracles even amidst the most savage moments of Polish Jewry’s destruction.15 That a Hasidic master should work miracles on behalf of his flock is no surprise, since, from the movement’s inception, such supernatural powers were and are commonly attributed to Hasidic masters. The Ba‘al Shem Tov, the movement’s founder, often obtained his spiritual ends by means of such miracles, whether curing ailing bodies and souls, preventing harm to Jewish communities, conversing with animals, or traveling enormous distances in a matter of minutes. He lived beyond the laws of the nature and drew on supernatural powers to help Jews in need. Along with the teachings that came to make up the Hasidic worldview, these wonderworking powers were transmitted to his successors. To be sure, in Jewish life and history, righteous individuals from earlier eras have displayed the capacity to work wonders. In this light, Hasidic masters are by no means unique in serving as conduits for miracles, but rather give more intense expression to that aptitude that they have inherited from previous generations. Be that as it may, these wonder-working powers have garnered criticism both within and without the Hasidic movement, engendering a debate largely beyond the scope of this essay. Most important for our focus on Rabbi Zevin’s collection are his lengthy remarks on the subject in his introduction.16 There he notes that, although Hasidic stories regularly feature miracles, many important masters have taken pains to downplay these sorts of tales and, more generally, to emphasize the service of God within the laws of nature rather than outside of them. He for instance cites the teaching: “The miracle of Purim, it is true, was clothed in the ways of nature through the story of Achashverosh—but for this very reason it is clear that the divine light then manifested was derived from a lofty source indeed.”17 In his lyrical fashion, Rabbi Zevin draws out the implication: “It is apparent, then, that it is more praiseworthy to listen to the voice of God as He walks about the garden of everyday life in the natural world than to witness

15 See Mosdos Lyzhansk http://mosdoslizensk.com/; Tal Moshe Zwecker, Mi-Peninei No‘am Elimelekh (New York: Targum, 2008), 31–32; Hanoch Teller, “The Ever-Amazing Reb Elimelekh,” Jewish Press (May 1, 2013), http://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/ jewish-columns/chodesh-tov/the-ever-amazing-reb-elimelech-conclusion/2013/05/01/. 16 Sippurei Ḥasidim, 11–13; A Treasury of Chassidic Tales, xv–xviii. 17 A Treasury of Chassidic Tales, xvi.

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miracles that burst the bounds of nature.”18 Equally telling is the fact that the skeptical voices cited by Rabbi Zevin (including the teaching on Purim) issue from Ḥabad masters, the particular stream of Hasidism of which he was a follower. For all that, Rabbi Zevin notes that the debate is not clear-cut, since tradition is replete “with extant accounts of supernatural feats.” Yet he adds that these accounts “were told not as miracles or wonders for their own sake, but as vehicles for conveying a certain moral or educational message.”19 We might assume, then, that this same type of “moral or educational message” can be found in the volume’s concluding stories—stories emphasizing devotion of the Hasidim under all circumstances, and the enduring force of the tzaddiq’s powers, even beyond death. The first message has to do with the grim reality of postwar Europe. The areas in which Hasidism had thrived were among those hardest hit by the Holocaust: Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary. Thousands (if not millions) of Hasidim were murdered, communities were devastated, Hasidic life as it was formerly known in Eastern Europe was no longer tenable. Certainly, Hasidism built and rebuilt elsewhere, carrying the names of European shtetlach and cities by which they were known to other lands and continents: Lubavitch and Bobov in New York, Ger, Belz, and Viznitz in Israel, and many more.20 Yet, as emptied out as Eastern Europe was, there remained some graves, including those of prominent tzaddiqim. These graves serve as memorials to the life that was. Yet they are more than that. As Rabbi Zevin’s concluding stories remind us, the miraculous power vested in these gravesites continues to be an active force in Jewish life; they are the Hasidic legacy still to be found in Eastern Europe.21 Second, the stories set in wartime Europe show that the determination of the Hasidim and the vigilant care of the Admorim for their Hasidim did not cease with the invasion of Poland in 1939 or the relentless persecution that unfolded thereafter. Hasidim persevered in their desire to cleave to their Rebbe and to serve God by fervent prayer and study. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., xviii. 20 See for instance Nehemia Polen, “Yearning for Sacred Place: Wiesel’s Hasidic Tales and Postwar Hasidism,” in Elie Wiesel: Jewish, Literary and Moral Perspectives, ed. Alan Rosen and Steven Katz (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013). 21 For an overview of the activity around gravesites of Hasidic masters in Poland, see ‫אהלי צדיקים‬, http://www.zadikim.org/?siteLang=2.

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Caring for the Graves of the Righteous    AVRAHAM ROSEN

Third, Rabbi Zevin’s placement of the stories under the final Torah portion of ‫“( ברכה‬blessing”) conveys its own message of determination. The blessings that were and are so much part and parcel of the Hasidic milieu— amply documented throughout the five-hundred-plus preceding stories in the collection—existed also within the scorched earth of the Holocaust era. Ditto with the joy associated with the holiday of Simḥat Torah, when the Torah portion of ‫ ברכה‬is read. Such Holocaust era stories, saturated as they cannot help but be by the cruelty and evil that defined that period, must be told, must be included in collections like this, Yet the joy that is the hallmark of Hasidic teaching and practice must not be diminished in the least, but rather to proceed unabated. And the final point grows out of the previous ones. Publishing the collection ten years after the war’s end, Rabbi Zevin likely located the two Holocaust era stories at the volume’s conclusion—at the edge, as it were—in order to send the message that the Holocaust, though present and accounted for, must be kept in check, should never be allowed to subsume or undermine the contributions that came before. In this respect, the concluding story, recounting the enemy’s flight as they beheld the glowing countenance of the exhumed tzaddiq, serves as a parable for the volume as a whole—the final word of which is ‫בחיים‬, “alive.”

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And when I shall from this world’s gates depart, may Your angels greet me with an open heart. May they escort me into Your palaces sublime, and set my soul free from exile’s grime. When my spirit shall enter into Eden’s blissful space, let there flow upon me shekhinah’s light and grace. And may my shelter be inside Your hidden light, My spirit drenched in awe as I behold Your Face’s sight. —Hillel Zeitlin1 Before you begin to pray, decide that you are ready to die in that very prayer. There are some people so intense in their worship, who give up so much of their strength to prayer, that if not for a miracle they would die after uttering only two or three words. It is only through God’s great kindness that such people live, that their soul does not leave them as they are joined to Him in prayer —The Mezritsh School2

1 Hillel Zeitlin, Hasidic Spirituality for a New Era: The Religious Writings of Hillel Zeitlin, ed. and trans. Arthur Green (New York: Paulist Press, 2012), 229. Translation by Joel Rosenberg. 2 Arthur Green and Barry Holtz, Your Word is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer. Revised and expanded edition, with Ariel Evan Mayse (Nashville: Jewish Lights, 2017), 32.

Ariel Evan Mayse

“Like a Moth to the Flame”: The Death of Nadav and Avihu in Hasidic Literature

Undersea divers know of a dangerous and mysterious phenomenon felicitously described by Jacques-Yves Cousteau as l’ivresse des grandes profondeurs, or “the rapture of the deep.”1 This state, also called nitrogen narcosis, often manifests as a sensation of overwhelming euphoria akin to intoxication. Faced with intense pressure, likely compounded by a chemical imbalance from breathing ordinary air so far beneath the ocean’s surface, the body and mind begin to flex curiously. In this rapture, the diver’s judgment and vision become hazardously impaired. This subaquatic bliss is all the more dangerous because it may lead to an inscrutable longing to go deeper, overruling the panicked instinct to surface. Cousteau noted after a 1951 dive that “I could see, stretching temptingly below me, as far as my eyes could reach, what seemed the infinite sweetness and quiet of a blackness that would yield up the secrets of the universe if only I were to go a bit deeper.”2 On that occasion Cousteau’s instinct for self-preservation prevailed, but he later acknowledged that this brush with limits of reason and mortality transformed him forever. And the combination of physical pressure, the feeling of rapture, and the sweeping undersea expanse have tempted other divers into continuing their journey even as prudence calls them to return. 1 Jacques-Yves Cousteau, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure, with Frédéric Dumas (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1953), esp. 86, 127. 2 Idem, Life and Death in a Coral Sea, with Philippe Diole (New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1971), 17.

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Religious seekers of many faith traditions speak of being irresistibly drawn toward the tempting sweetness of God’s presence. Mystical thinkers, like Teresa of Ávila and Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, describe the siren’s call to ever-greater levels of spiritual intensity, driven by an all-consuming and passionate love for the God so mighty that it may even claim the one’s life.3 Jewish sources—including mystical works—are largely ambivalent about this phenomenon; Jewish thinkers generally emphasize the significance of this-wordly service in Israel’s covenantal relationship. But this stance is far from universal, and in recent decades scholarship has demonstrated that Jewish mystical authors also address the profound allure of mystical self-annihilation, even unto death, within the Divine.4 Jewish thinkers have long struggled with the dangers of excessive closeness to God. A tension between the awareness of the mortal hazards of this yearning for the Divine, as well as its attraction, is present in the Hebrew Bible. The Psalmist longs to glimpse the face of God without reservation (Ps. 27:8, inter alia), but the author of Exodus warns the reader that gazing upon the divine countenance will overwhelm and destroy the seeker (Ex. 33:20). Both of these pulls—the mystical yearning for such a vision and the interdiction against it—remain pivotal voices in the Jewish tradition. Rabbinic sources speak in hushed tones about sages, such Rabbi Shim‘on ben ‘Azzai, who perished after having witnessed too much of the Divine.5 These texts are mirrored by the later works of the merkavah literature, which provide detailed descriptions of the hazardous ascent toward 3 See Sheelah Treflé Hidden, ed., Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Mystical Perspectives on the Love of God (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); and Moshe Idel and Bernard McGinn, Mystical Union in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: An Ecumenical Dialogue (New York: Continuum, 1996). 4 See Adam Afterman, And They Shall be One Flesh: On the Language of Mystical Union in Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2016). See also Michael Fishbane, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and Mystical Death in Judaism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996); John J.  Collins and Michael Fishbane, ed., Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995); Peter Eli Gordon, “The Erotics of Negative Theology: Maimonides on Apprehension,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 2 (1995): 1–38. On the question of martyrdom (spiritual and political), see Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); and Raʻanan S.  Boustan, From Martyr to Mystic: Rabbinic Martyrology and the Making of Merkavah Mysticism (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). 5 See t. Hagigah 2:2, and parallels. See Nehemia Polen, “Why Would Someone Cut Plants in Paradise? ‘Four Entered Pardes’ in Light of 1 Enoch 6–8” (forthcoming). See also David Greenberg, Eliezer Witztum, and Jacob T. Buchbinder, “Mysticism and Psychosis: The Fate of Ben Zoma,” British Journal of Medical Psychology 65.3 (1992): 223–35.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

the Throne of Glory. Along the journey worshipers are confronted by myriads of terrifying angels, but these sources claim that the very intensity of the vision of the divine Presence may well lead to the mystic’s demise.6 And the legacy of medieval Kabbalah also preserves the memory of looming specters of thinkers driven to madness by their proximity to God.7 These long-standing traditions of concern regarding the dangers of excessive intimacy with the Divine are essential to the Hasidic discussion.8 The tension between the insatiable longing for God and the countervailing commitment to this world is particularly acute in the teachings of Hasidism. Their homilies reveal deep-seated yearning for God’s fiery embrace together with firmly articulated faith in a modality of devotion within this world, and, for many, with the various mundane responsibilities of a communal leader.9 Certain Hasidic thinkers, such as Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk (d. 1787), longed for a mystical ecstasy in which the senses melt away and the worshiper sheds all connection to the earthly, 6 Scholem suggested that heikhalot mystics did not achieve a vision of God, but Chernus argued that the visions were accompanied by warnings precisely because such experiences could the mystic; see Ira Chernus, “Visions of God in Merkabah Mysticism,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 13 (1982): 129–30; Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 91. 7 The fifteenth-century Rabbi Joseph della Reina, for example, is remembered for attempting to force the redemption through techniques both mystical and magical; see Gershom Scholem, “On  the  Story  of  R. Joseph  della  Reina,” in Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History, Presented to Alexander Altmann on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, ed. Siegfried Stein, Raphael Loewe (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 101–8 (Heb.). 8 See Haviva Pedaya, “Seeing, Falling, Song: The Longing to See God and the Spiritual Element in Early Jewish Mysticism,” Assufot 9 (1995): 237–77 (Heb.). 9 Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man, trans. and ed. Maurice Friedman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), esp. 16–30; Gershom Scholem, “Devekut, or Communion with God,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), 203–27; Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Princeton and Jerusalem: Princeton University Press and Magnes Press, 1993); Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995); Ron Margolin, The Human Temple: Religious Interiorization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2005) (Heb.); Seth Brody, “‘Open to Me the Gates of Righteousness’: The Pursuit of Holiness and Non-Duality in Early Hasidic Teaching,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 89 (1998): 3–44; Arthur Green, “Around the Maggid’s Table: Tsaddik, Leadership and Popularization,” in The Heart of the Matter: Studies in Jewish Mysticism and Theology (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2015), 119–66.

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physical realm and becomes totally ensconced in the Ineffable; he describes this rapture explicitly as a moment of spiritual death.10 Other Hasidic homilists like Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl shied away from this pull and stayed more in line with the world-embracing mysticism of the Ba‘al Shem Tov.11 But the teachings of most Hasidic masters include a complex mixture of these different yearnings and commitments, which, as we shall see, are particularly visible in their interpretations of the tale of Nadav and Avihu. The present study aims to trace the echoes of this longing for God through a careful theological reappraisal of the exegesis around the biblical story of the death of Nadav and Avihu. Rather than following the ancient interpretive thrust that casts the death of Aaron’s sons as a punishment for sin, a remarkable number of Hasidic masters offer a positive reading of Nadav’s and Avihu’s behavior. Standing on the shoulders of very different exegetical traditions, these Hasidic sources suggest that Nadav and Avihu should be understood as spiritual enthusiasts, not transgressive rebels. The Hasidic sermons recast Nadav and Avihu as mystics drawn to the Divine by a rapture so powerful and overwhelming that their very being was consumed. Even Hasidic thinkers who interpreted their death as penance did so through a unique lens concerned with issues of devotion and spirituality, rather than formally identifying a particular mortal sin. Through this study I also hope to reinforce the following point: Hasidic exegesis should not be misconstrued as homiletical happenstance loosely connected—if at all—to the biblical text.12 Many of the i­nterpretations 10 Such meditations on spiritual death are relatively common in the teachings Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk. See Peri ha-Aretz (Beitar Illit: 2014), vol. 2, qorah, 166–81; and Ariel Evan Mayse, “Peri ha-Aretz: Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk and his Devotional Path in the Context of the Maggid’s Circle,” in Alchemy of Love: Hasidic Masters in Search of Homeland and Community, ed. Aubrey Glazer and Nehemia Polen (Fons Vitae, forthcoming). 11 See below. 12 Here I build upon the work of Nehemia Polen, “Hasidic Derashah as Illuminated Exegesis,” in 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, ed. Michael Zank and Ingrid Anderson (Boston: Brill, 2015), 55–70; and idem, “Touches of Intimacy: Leviticus, Sacred Space, Torah’s Center;” in A New Hasidism: Branches, ed. Arthur Green and Ariel Evan Mayse (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, forthcoming); and Arthur Green, “The Hasidic Homily: Mystical Performance and Hermeneutical Process,” in As a Perennial Spring: A Festschrift Honoring Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, ed. Bentsi Cohen (New York: Downhill Publishing, LLC, 2013), 237–65.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

articulated by the Hasidic masters amplify and express resonances already present, though perhaps still inchoate, in the traditional sources.13 Hasidic authors, however, describe exegesis as a creative process in which a sublime idea arises in the mind of the teacher, who must seek out a fitting “garment”—a biblical verse or rabbinic teaching.14 This vessel cloaks the once unsayable spiritual truth, thus enabling the preacher to communicate to others. Such a mode of interpretation implies that the homilist draws inspiration from a reservoir of intuitive knowledge. This inner spiritual and intellectual wellspring flows into the prooftext and guides, or even perhaps generates, the subsequent exegesis. The final result is an interpretive formulation that unfolds through a hermeneutical moment in which self and text are joined. The Hasidic masters, like so many perceptive exegetes, use the biblical narratives to tell the story of their inner spiritual world.

Anticipation The biblical account of Nadav and Avihu is saturated with repercussive ambiguity. The two sons of Aaron, whose tragic story appears briefly in 13 I have in mind teachings such as the following tradition from the Ba‘al Shem Tov, which recasts a rather materialistic verse in Ecclesiastes as a command to contemplative presence in all of one’s deeds: “I heard in the name of my teacher [the BeSHT] an interpretation of the verse: ‘Do all that you find to be within the power of your hand; in the netherworld there is neither awareness nor account (Eccl. 9:10).’ Enoch, who was to become the chief angel Metatron, was a cobbler while in this world. With each stitch that he sewed, he united the blessed Holy One and shekhinah. How did he do this? The contemplative mind is boundless; it represents the fullness of Being that is Y-H-V-H. Deeds represent [shekhinah, filling all things and all deeds]. This aspect of divinity is called by the name A-D-N-Y. Whatever you are doing, do it with the contemplative mind open, thus uniting boundless thought and concrete action. This is considered an act of unifying God, bringing the endless mystery and the indwelling presence together into One. The term for ‘power’ in this verse, ko’aḥ, is half of the word ḥokhmah, meaning ‘wisdom,’ but also referring to the primal source of all things within God. The other half of ḥokhmah is mah [lit. ‘what,’ referring to all specific objects and deeds in the world]. When you do the deed in such a way that you bind it to contemplative mind, you are uniting blessed Holy One and shekhinah. ‘In the netherworld there is neither awareness or account’—the word ayin (‘there is’) refers to both parts of the verse. If you do not believe in this power and doubt your capacity to [perform this unification], then ‘in the netherworld there is neither awareness or account’”; Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef (Jerusalem: 2011), vol. 1, va-yera, 116. 14 See the teaching of Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, translated in 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), vol. 2, 216–18.

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Leviticus 10 and again in chapter 16, perish amidst their sacred service.15 A heavenly fire mercilessly consumes Nadav and Avihu, perhaps in divine retribution for having brought an unrequested offering into the sanctum. Their father is presumably crushed by an unspeakable burden of heartbreak. Unlike many other biblical heroes greeted with misfortune, Aaron responds to his sons’ death with neither dirge nor tears. The silence, perhaps a glimpse into the magnitude of his suffering, is poignant and penetrating.16 An attentive reading of the two disparate accounts of Nadav’s and Avihu’s death in Leviticus reveals notable inner-biblical tension. Leviticus 10:1–2 emphasizes that Nadav and Avihu “offered a strange fire (esh zarah) before Y-H-V-H, which He had not commanded them; and there came forth fire from before Y-H-V-H, and devoured them, and they died before Y-H-V-H.” Their death seems to be a punishment for having brought an untoward offering, though precisely why the sacrifice was forbidden remains unclear. The narrator of Leviticus 16, however, makes no mention of this mistake, suggesting the deaths of Nadav and Avihu were the result of proximity to the Divine: “they drew near before Y-H-V-H, and they died” (Lev. 16:1).17 Unlike the version given in Leviticus 10, this latter account of Aaron’s sons’ death—found at the very heart of the book of Leviticus, itself the centerpiece of the Pentateuch—refers neither to a “strange fire” nor any other transgression. This brief story, evocative and perpetually mysterious, spurred intense discussion among the biblical commentators and has remained grist for theological reflection into our own day.18 Scholars debated the transgression for which such a sudden fiery demise would be a fitting punishment. Rabbinic suggestions include, among the many others, Nadav and Avihu entering the Holy of Holies while inebriated, performing the divine service 15 Cf. the brief mention of Nadav and Avihu in Exodus 24:11 and Numbers 3:4. 16 Va-Yyiqra Rabbah 12:2, cited by RaShI on Leviticus 10:3, suggests that that Aaron was rewarded with a direct visitation of the divine Word because of his silence (cf. Lev. 10:8). 17 John C. H. Laughlin, “The ‘Strange Fire’ of Nadab and Abihu,” Journal of Biblical Literature 95.4 (1976): 559–565; and Gary A. Anderson, “‘Through Those who are Near to Me, I Will Show Myself Holy’: Nadab and Abihu and Apophatic Theology,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 77.1 (2015): 1–19. 18 For a contemporary reflection on this tale, see Elie Wiesel, “Nadab and Abihu,” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 30.2 (1997): 18–28. In light of the unspeakable tragedy of the Holocaust, the author points to the story of Nadav and Avihu as a challenging biblical precedent in which innocent people are consumed by fire, and where silence—both human and divine—is the sole response.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

without being married, and attempting to undermine the authority of Moses and Aaron by teaching Torah front of them and without their consent.19 The medieval commentator Abraham ibn Ezra (on Lev. 10:1) argues that Nadav and Avihu were consumed by fire because they acted without a divine command. They were punished for having entered into the sanctum for no reason other than their own spiritual self-interest.20 Maimonides, by contrast, suggested that Nadav and Avihu beheld a corporealized vision of God in the encounter of Exodus 24 (or at, they thought they had), thus committing a cardinal sin.21 To these we could adumbrate countless others, each taking a different tack in order to find a blemish upon Nadav and Avihu.22 Yet the fact that it is difficult to connect many—indeed, most—of these suggestions to the plain-sense meaning of Leviticus 10 reveals that Jewish interpreters were forced to go to great lengths to incriminate Nadav and Avihu. There is another important thrust of interpretation, also quite ancient, emphasizing that Nadav and Avihu perished as a result of their exposure to the divine Presence. This line of exegetical reasoning is in keeping with Leviticus 16, an account that elides any mention of sin. An early rabbinic midrash, for example, suggests that Nadav and Avihu were moved to bring a fire offering out of enthusiastic joy in the wake of the sacrifices and consecration mentioned in Leviticus 8–9. Besotted with the Divine, Nadav and Avihu sought to add an additional moment to the intimacy and spark, one final joyful vision in seeing the fire descend from on high.23 This early rabbinic source is preceded by the interpretation of Philo of Alexandria, an important thinker whose works reached later Jewish circles indirectly.24 19 See Va-Yyiqra Rabbah 20:9; b. ‘Eruvin 63a; b. Yoma 53b; and cf. Tosafot ad loc. For a tally and close analysis of these rabbinic traditions, see Avigdor Shinan, “The Sins of Nadab and Abihu in Rabbinic Literature,” Tarbiz 48 (1978): 201–14 (Heb.); Oded Yisraeli, Temple Portals: Studies in Aggadah and Midrash in the Zohar (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2013), 222–25 (Heb.). See also Holger M. Zellentin, Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 59–66. 20 A similar understanding, with a Hasidic twist, is found in the exegesis the nineteenthcentury Polish masters. See below. 21 Moreh ha-Nevukhim I:5; and cf. ibid., II:32. 22 For a medieval Christian interpretation based on Jewish exegeses, see Adina M. Yoffie, “Cocceius and the Jewish Commentators,” Journal of the History of Ideas 65.3 (2004): 393–98. 23 See Sifra, ed. Weiss, mekhilta de-miliu’im, no. 32. 24 See David Winston, “Philo and the Contemplative Life,” in Jewish Spirituality, vol. I: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1986), 198–231.

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Philo argued that Nadav and Avihu surrendered to death in order to become purified and thus attain a life beyond the flawed, corrupt world of the physical.25 Their yearning for ascent and uplift was surely no sin. It was a necessary event in their journey toward a higher realm of philosophical and spiritual fulfillment. Some rabbinic and medieval sources that focus upon Nadav’s and Avihu’s proximity to God—rather than a specific legal transgression—still allow for the sons of Aaron having misused their intimacy with the Divine. An interpretation preserved in Midrash Tanḥuma, for example, claims that Nadav and Avihu died as a result of having come to near to shekhinah without the proper modesty and respect.26 Moses, suggests this midrash, hid his face in response to encountering God at the burning bush (Ex. 3:6). But Nadav and Avihu cast their eyes upon shekhinah and feasted upon God’s glory (Ex. 24:9–11).27 For this indiscretion their vision of the Divine was fleeting, whereas the humble Moses was able to commune with God across many years. Yet a subsequent teaching in Tanḥuma claims that Nadav’s and Avihu’s death is described as “before Y-H-V-H” (Lev. 16:1) because it was so difficult for God. The Divine is imagined by the author of the midrash as having been present to escort them into the next world.28 Death was decreed upon Nadav and Avihu because they were too close to the theophany on Sinai, though the punishment was delayed so as not to sadden Israel as the Torah was being given. Nadav and Avihu died because of their proximity to God, a nearness to the awesome power of the Divine that consumes all who draw too close. Many of the interpretations put forward in Jewish mystical literature build upon this reading of Nadav and Avihu. The recasting of the story in the Zohar is the work’s central exploration of ‘ibbur neshamah (“soul-impregnation”) and gilgul (“transmigration”), concepts fundamental to its cosmology.29 Nadav and Avihu are described as “half-forms,” 25 See the source cited and discussed in Fishbane, The Kiss of God, 21. See also Robert Kirschner, “The Rabbinic and Philonic Exegeses of the Nadab and Abihu Incident (Lev. 10:1–6),” The Jewish Quarterly Review 73.4 (1983): 375–393. 26 Midrash Tanḥuma, ed. Buber, aḥarei mot, no. 7. 27 See E. W. Nicholson, “The Antiquity of the Tradition in Exodus XXIV 9–11,” Vetus Testamentum 25.1 (1975): 69–79. 28 Midrash Tanḥuma, ed. Buber, aḥarei mot, no. 8. 29 Lurianic traditions built upon these themes of gilgul and ‘ibbur neshamah; see Sha‘ar ha-Gilgulim, esp. haqdamot 27, and 31–33; and Etz Ḥayyim, sha‘ar 39, derush 11.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

i­ ncomplete semi-beings that were consumed in death and then recombined and thus completed as they were reborn in Pinḥas.30 The zealotry of this latter priestly figure, of course, mirrors their own passionate devotion. Some Zoharic passages refer to Nadav and Avihu as exemplars of improper— and therefore dangerous—expressions of joy and religious fervor.31 Others describe the sons of Aaron as having prevented the intra-divine coupling of shekhinah and tif ’eret because they offered the incense while unmarried.32 Such readings translate rabbinic criticisms of Nadav and Avihu for their audacity and impropriety into the symbolic language of medieval Kabbalah. It is worth noting, however, that many passages in the Zohar suggest that their offering as a kind of holy rebellion. Nadav and Avihu had the purest intention, failing only to realize that such service could not take place until the future. The longest and most developed discussion of Nadav and Avihu in the Zohar, found in the work’s exegesis on Leviticus 16, focuses on the sons of Aaron as spiritual enthusiasts.33 Nadav and Avihu are called tzaddiqim, a term of exceptional praise in the Zohar’s lexicon.34 The author of this passage suggests that their story (as found in Lev. 16) is read from the Torah on Yom Kippur because Nadav’s and Avihu’s death, like that of the animals offered on the alter, has the power to atone for the sins of the community. And their demise, possessed of a sacrificial quality, was the result of divine intimacy rather than sin or iniquity.35

30

31 32 33 34 35

Cf. Zohar 3:217a, which points out that the souls of Nadav and Avihu must have transmigrated—rather than reincarnated—because Pinḥas was born before they died. This “half-forms” interpretation likely refers to the rabbinic tradition that they were unmarried, and therefore unfit to serve at the altar, which in turn belongs to the antimonastic polemic of the Zohar. See Ellen Haskell, Mystical Resistance: Uncovering the Zohar’s Conversations with Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 50–53. Zohar 3:37b. Zohar 3:5b; and cf. Zohar 3:33a-34a, 38b. See Zohar 3:56a-57a. See Arthur Green, “The Zaddiq as Axis Mundi in Later Judaism,”  Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45.3 (1977): 327–47. This reading may reflect the fact that the Zohar emerged in a society suffused with piety around the atoning death of God’s beloved Son. See Yehuda Liebes, “The Messiah of the Zohar: On R. Simeon bar Yohai as a Messianic Figure,” and “Christian Influences on the Zohar”, both in Studies in the Zohar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993) 1–84, 163–93, and 139–61, 228–44; and Arthur Green, “Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic Symbol in Its Historical Context,” AJS Review 26 (2002): 1–52.

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The commentary of R. Baḥye ben Asher, a contemporary of the Zohar, is an important development in the re-reading of Nadav’s and Avihu’s death. Reworking traditions from Tanḥuma, Naḥmanides, and the nascent Kabbalah, his comments to Leviticus 10 offer an innovative reading of their sin.36 R. Baḥye suggests that their improper gift of incense was a sacrifice offered to middat ha-din alone (i.e., to the sefirah of stern judgment) rather than Y-H-V-H. This act is tantamount to idolatry, for it suggests that one of the sefirot is a separate divine power worthy of worship. In his interpretation of Leviticus 10:3, however, Baḥye ben Asher argues that Nadav and Avihu perished after having witnessed the Divine in close proximity.37 The priests were warned to stand at a cautious distance during the Revelation on Sinai, but there—as in the story in Leviticus—Nadav and Avihu drew immoderately close to God’s Presence and were thus consumed by fire.38 This reading is complemented by R. Baḥye’s comments to Leviticus 16. His general introduction to this parashah highlights the danger of excessive contemplation and drawing too near to the Divine.39 God’s expansive majesty cannot be grasped at once; understanding comes from a refined process meditative ascent, of careful meditation that leads the worshiper into progressively uncharted territory. But Baḥye ben Asher warns his readers that delving too deeply into matters that cannot ever be fully understood (le-ma‘alah min ha-mussag) will surely lead to the worshiper’s destruction. Nadav and Avihu perished, suggests R. Baḥye, because they followed the irresistible beckons of rapture, calling them to venture into the heart of the Divine. The closest anticipation of the interpretations voiced in Hasidic literature appears in the work of the Moroccan sage Rabbi Ḥayyim ibn ‘Attar (1696–1743).40 He was a beloved figure in the Hasidic world, and the 36 See Rabbenu Baḥye: Bi’ur ‘al ha-Torah (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2006), vol. 2, 449–50. 37 Ibid., 452–53. 38 In R. Baḥye’s conclusion to his comments on Leviticus 15, he writes: “There are those who say that they [Nadav and Avihu] died because of their proximity to Mt. Sinai, for they peeked [and witnessed] more than was proper (hitzitzu yoter mi-dai)”; ibid., 490. 39 Ibid., 490–95. 40 His description of their attraction to God’s presence recalls Maimonides’ description in the Guide of the Perplexed III:51. See Gordon, “The Erotics of Negative Theology,” pp. 1–38. On the importance of Ḥayyim ibn ‘Attar in Hasidic circles, see David Assaf, “‘A Heretic who has no Faith in the Great Ones of the Age’: The Clash over the Honor of Or ha-Hayyim,” Modern Judaism 29 (2009): 194–225. On his life, thought and exegesis, see Elazar Touitou, Rabbi Hayyim ibn Attar and his Commentary ‘Or haHayyim ‘al ha-Torah’

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

i­nfluence of his commentary on the Torah (Or ha-Ḥayyim, 1742) is visible in many early Hasidic sermons.41 Amid a rather conventional discussion of the reasons for the death of Aaron’s sons, he offers a piece of exegesis centered upon their intense longing for communion with the Divine even at the expense of their lives. Ibn ‘Attar reads Nadav and Avihu as a template for a worshiper overcome by a kind of semi-prophetic ecstasy bordering on madness. The mind and body are torn asunder as the soul, longing to return to its Source, rebels against the constraints of the body. We read: Their death was the result of having come too close to God. With great love they approached the supernal Light, and in doing so they expired; this is the “kiss” with which the righteous die.42 It is the same for all righteous individuals, though while the kiss comes to some of them, others go forth and pursue it . . . even the feeling of their death drawing near cannot hold them back from the dearest and most pleasant devequt, beloved intimacy and sweetest affection, until their very souls expire. The nature of this [experience] cannot be grasped. It lies beyond intellectual comprehension and cannot be expressed in words either spoken or written. It cannot even be imagined. In order understand it even to some small degree, one must remove the Evil Inclination that is holding him back. [Growing spiritual awareness] will allow one to see the signs of the accursed Inclination, and he can then nullify it and prevent it from getting in his way . . . as this ability increases within him, his soul will despise his flesh and will depart back to the house of its Father.43 (Jerusalem: 1997) (Heb.); and Ariel Evan Mayse, “Or haHayyim: Creativity, Tradition, and Mysticism in the Torah Commentary of R. Hayyim ibn Attar,” Conversations 13 (2012): 68–89. 41 See Dan Manor, “Rabbi Hayyim ben ‘Attar in the Teachings of Hasidism,” Pe‘amim: Studies in Oriental Jewry 20 (1984): 88–110 (Heb.). 42 See Rabbi Ezra of Gerona’s commentary to Song of Songs 1:2, printed in Kitvei Ramban, ed. Bernard Chavel (Jerusalem: 1961), vol. 2, 485; ‘Avodat ha-Qodesh 2:1; Admiel Kosman, “Breath, Kiss, and Speech as the Source of the Animation of Life: Ancient Foundations of Rabbinic Homilies on the Giving of the Torah as the Kiss of God,” Self, Soul and Body in Religious Experience, ed. Albert I. Baumgarten, with Jan Assmann, and Guy G. Stroumsa (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 96–124; Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows From Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, trans. Nathan Wolski (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 296–300; Gordon, “Erotics of Negative Theology,” 1–38; Joel Hecker, “Kissing Kabbalists: Hierarchy, Reciprocity, and Equality,” Studies in Jewish Civilization 18 (2008): 171–208. See also Michael Philip Penn,  Kissing Christians: Ritual and Community in the Late Ancient Church (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). 43 See his comments in Or ha-Ḥayyim on Leviticus 16:1.

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Ḥayyim ibn ‘Attar’s warning about the dangers of intimacy with the divine is quite powerful, but the continuation of this passage one of the most remarkable and untranslatable descriptions of mystical experience that I have ever seen. He repeats words built from the same linguistic root of s.k.l. (usually associated with the mind) over twenty times in quick succession, forging an assonantal matrix of expressions that simultaneously connote intellectual, spiritual and experiential illumination. This literary panzer-thrust must be meant to shatter the reader’s assumptions about the boundaries of human consciousness; mystical communion with God is indeed possible without being entirely eclipsed within His infinitude, but it cannot be described with words as they are ordinarily used. Ibn ‘Attar employs language in a non-rational way to refer to an ineffable—but experiential—rung that lies beyond the frontiers of ordinary speech. Parallel to passages found in merkavah literature,44 this seems to be a sort of written glossolalia, a transcending of language paradoxically expressed through the vehicle of language itself.45 These classical and medieval texts reveal that the biblical account of Aaron’s sons’ death may read as a tale of caution against spiritual enthusiasm and the dangers of proximity to the Divine. In this way, they prefigure certain elements of the Hasidic exegesis, to which we shall now turn. The Hasidic sources, building upon these earlier textual foundations, reveal a wide-ranging debate over the limits of religious devotion, the yearning for nearness to God, and the implications of this allure for communal leadership. Hasidic spirituality includes a range of attitudes toward serving God through corporeal deeds, but most Hasidic thinkers affirm the importance of this-wordly worship of the Divine. 46 Rather than a quest for permanent 44 See Gershom Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Schocken Books, 1965); Ithamar Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980); Elliot R. Wolfson, “Letter Symbolism and Merkavah Imagery in the Zohar,” in Alei Shefer: Studies in the  Literature of Jewish Thought Presented to Rabbi Dr. Alexandre Safran, ed. Moshe Hallamish (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press), 195–236 (English section); Naomi Janowitz, The Poetics of Ascent: Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2012). 45 On this paradoxical usage of language in mystical literature, see Michael A. Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 46 See Tsippi Kauffman, In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009) (Heb.).

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

mystical transcendence, they call the seeker to come back to the physical after moments of expansive, even ecstatic consciousness. This return to the world is often described as the very telos of the mystic quest rather than a functional stage of spiritual decompression.47 But the temptation to become totally enveloped in these moments of illumination, to dwell within the ecstasy and rapture forevermore, is also a part of the legacy of Hasidism. This yearning, like Cousteau’s rapture of “infinite sweetness,” reappears with consistency in Hasidic sermons on Nadav and Avihu. Hasidism developed a model of religious leadership grounded in the figure of the tzaddiq or rebbe.48 This individual, whose authority is based more in charisma and spiritual talents than in scholarly erudition, must by definition be intimately connected to the members of his community. Although the tzaddiq’s contemplative or mystical service may indeed play an important role in his ministry, in Hasidism this inner spiritual life of prayer and study is combined with the rebbe’s more popular role as a teacher, a wonder-worker, or even a healer. It is thus noteworthy that several key Hasidic thinkers read Nadav and Avihu as a lesson about the dangerous seduction of all-absorbing devotion. An individual who is totally consumed by holy fire cannot really function as a leader, nor can he necessarily serve as positive example to the community. Hasidic exegesis of Nadav and Avihu is thus bound to an internal debate over the nature of leadership that, as we shall see, changed over the centuries.

47 For a teaching on this subject that is tied to the story of Nadav and Avihu, see Or ha-Ganuz (Brooklyn: 2008), aḥarei mot, 132–33. It is worth noting that the author of this piece has taken a tradition from the Ba‘al Shem Tov, an interpretation in Ez. 1:14 about the natural peregrinations of the religious life, and connects it to the death of Aaron’s sons. 48 In addition to the sources noted above, see Arthur Green, “Typologies of Leadership and the Hasidic Zaddiq,” in Jewish Spirituality, vol. II: From the Sixteenth-Century Revival to the Present, ed. Arthur Green (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 127–56; Louis Jacobs, “Doctrine of the Zaddik in Elimelekh of Lizansk,” in Their Heads in Heaven: Unfamiliar Aspects of Hasidism (London and Portland; Vallentine Mitchell 2005), 73–89; Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, “On the Essence of the Zaddik in Hasidism,” Molad 144–45 (1960): 365–68 (Heb.); and Immanuel Etkes, “The Zaddik: The Interrelationship between Religious Doctrine and Social Organization,” in Hasidism Reappraised, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (London and Portland: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 159–67. See also Ebn Leader’s revelation of the idea of the tzaddiq in the teachings of Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk, included in the present volume.

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Illumination Rabbi Abraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apta (c. 1748–1825, known as the “Apter Rav”) offers one of the most strikingly positive readings of the death of Nadav and Avihu in the Hasidic canon. His exegesis makes no mention of sin, focusing entirely on their demise as the result of their proximity to God: How exalted, lofty and elevated was the death of these two sons of Aaron “as they drew near to Y-H-V-H” (Lev. 16:1). They approached the sweet pleasantness of the highest delight. “And died”—they themselves sensed (hirgishu) that their souls were connected to the highest pleasantness, and that this would bring about their death, yet nevertheless they did not hold themselves back from giving over their souls and spirits. They refused to disconnect themselves from the beloved intimacy and highest, sweetest affection. Understand this.49

The Apter Rav explains the death of Nadav and Avihu as the inevitable consequence of their love and devotion to God. Though he does not refer to the Or ha-Ḥayyim directly, Rabbi Abraham Yehoshua uses so many identical synonyms for the sublime pleasure of God that the influence of ibn ‘Attar is unmistakable. But here in the Apter Rav’s homily we find no hint of trepidation, no hint that this story is a warning against the boundaries of spiritual enthusiasm. Drawn to the Divine like a moth to the flame, Nadav and Avihu enter the sanctum and encounter the sublime sweetness of God with no hesitation. This unmediated proximity—not sin—led to their end. Nadav and Avihu sensed that such attachment would cause them to expire, but it did not dissuade them in the least. Death amidst blissful ecstasy in God, it seems, is worthy of the highest sacrifice. Many Hasidic masters, however, present a different reading of Nadav’s and Avihu’s devotion. Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk (1717–1786/87) emphasizes the danger of passionate service of God. He suggests that such moments of elation and uplift are often the time in which impure or ulterior motivations begin surface. Noting that the Sages disagreed over the sin of Aaron’s sons without reaching a conclusion, Rabbi Elimelekh comments: We have said that, “even though a fire descends from the heavens [to consume the sacrifices], it is necessary to offer one from below.”50 If so, they 49 Ohev Yisra’el (Benei Berak: 1996), aḥarei mot, 175. See also the liqqutim ḥadashim on Va-Yyiqra 1:1. 50 b. ‘Eruvin 63a.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

[i.e., Nadav and Avihu] did the right thing [by bringing their fire offering]! Why were they punished? . . . Nadav and Avihu had the very best intention. They had attained great connection (devequt) [to the Divine]. This attachment is called “fire,” because through it one draws near to the light of shekhinah; the illumination burns within him like a mighty flame. But we know of another kind of fire, namely a person’s desire and physical pleasure. One’s heart may burn for that thing. The fire of connection is called “fire from heaven,” and the earthly one is called “ordinary fire.” One must uplift everything, even physical pleasures, like eating, drinking, [restoring them to their divine Root]. And in all of one’s character traits (middot), one must remove the precious from the cheap [i.e., transforming them as well]. This is [the meaning of]: “although a fire descends from the heavens, it is necessary to offer one from below.” When a person is so attached, he must not bring or mix in any of his own needs and desires. Doing so would damage the place of his connection.51

The Talmudic rabbis taught that even though a sacrifice is ideally to be consumed by a fire coming from above, it is a mitzvah to offer it from below. This tradition is used by the classical kabbalists to emphasize it‘aruta de-letata (“arousal from below”) in uniting the sefirot and causing blessing to flow through them. Rabbi Elimelekh, however, is using the Talmudic teaching in a uniquely Hasidic way. The “fire from below” is uplifting the physical through performing one’s daily tasks with in a state of contemplative attunement. One could worship purely through devequt, the fire of connection to the Divine, but God prefers that we raise up the ordinary and the mundane. The danger, however, lies in the difficulty of ensuring sure that such service through the physical world is without a tinge of u ­ lterior motivation. In the continuation of this sermon Rabbi Elimelekh takes up the midrashic tradition of Nadav and Avihu having been punished for entering the sanctum while inebriated. He reads it as suggesting that Aaron’s sons were besotted with love for the Divine. They neglected to purify their own motivations in this amorous, unrestrained state of heightened attachment to the

51 No‘am Elimelekh, ed. Gedaliah Nigal (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1978), qoraḥ, 418–19.

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Divine. Nadav and Avihu were punished because a residue of self-interest remained amid their rapturous and fiery devotion.52 This teaching about purity of motive and the siren call of spiritual pleasure in divine service is reinforced by a sermon found in the early compilation Ge’ulat Yisra’el (1821). This collection of homilies was assembled from the teachings of early Hasidic thinkers by Yehoshua Avraham of Zhitomir, an otherwise unidentified Hasidic editor. The author of this sermon questions why the Sages were compelled to offer a wide variety of suggestions as to the nature of Nadav’s and Avihu’s sin, given that Scripture identifies their punishment as a response to the “alien fire.” In classical Hasidic fashion, the author seeks his answer in the fact that the biblical story must include a spiritual lesson for the contemporary worshiper. The service of some individuals is immature, and their worship is unrefined and infused with self-interest. The sacred fires of inner devotion must be trained upon God alone, without any ulterior—for example, “alien”—inspiration: One may come to delight in pleasure, rejoicing and gladness, becoming consumed with passion in the moments of Torah [study] and prayer, until his soul verily expires. But if he does so, this pleasure and spiritual delight (hana’at ruaḥ) are for him—they are directed at him, since he is the one who takes pleasure at the end of the day. Understand this well. The wise person is one whose spiritual tools have been completed and repaired with the depth of mind, whose [spiritual] eyes are in his head [i.e.,

52 Rabbi Naḥman of Breslov also uses the tale of Nadav and Avihu to explore the possibility of negative manifestations of mystical fervor: “The fiery ecstasy (hitlahavut) of dance is “a fire-offering, a pleasing odor unto Y-H-V-H (Num. 28:8). But if one moves with the ecstasy of the [Evil] Inclination, this is the sin of Nadav and Avihu, of whom it is written, “and they offered a strange fire” (Lev. 10:1).” Some displays of religious devotion are pure, but Rabbi Naḥman suggests that other expressions of piety are really just showmanship or self-deception. Nadav and Avihu drunkenly embarked upon what Rabbi Naḥman calls the euphoric dance of the Evil Inclination (rikkud ha-yetser). Such movement may look identical to true ecstasy, but this sort of external performance is really an act of deceit. It seems likely that Rabbi Naḥman had in mind popular— and populist—Hasidic leaders like Rabbi Barukh of Medzhibuzh (1756–1811) or the Shpoler Zeyde (Rabbi Aryeh Leib, 1725–1812), whose displays of religious ecstasy he condemned harshly as sham piety. See Liqqutei Moharan I:41; and on dance in Breslov Hasidism, see Michael Fishbane “The Mystery of Dance According to Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav,” in The Exegetical Imagination on Jewish Thought and Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 173–84.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

his spiritual vision is clear], so that even this—the point of longing (nekudat ha-kosef) and pleasure—is directed toward his Master . . .53

This homily is a sharp polemic aimed at those who enjoy their delight in worship, and perhaps even against very popularization of Hasidism as a movement of accessible spirituality. It demands that one must not be lulled into satiation in his service, since even spiritual pleasure must be ignored and thus directed toward God alone. Indeed, invoking the same rabbinic teaching mentioned in Rabbi Elimelekh’s homily, the author suggests that the “heavenly fire” of religious passion should descend from above and need not be aroused from below. Nadav and Avihu’s offering of a “strange fire” thus reveals that they were distracted by the joy of their devotional service. Their worship was very nearly pure, but this awareness of their own bliss demonstrates that Aaron’s sons were still tainted by a lethal shred of self-interest. The author this homily stresses that the worshiper must look beyond even the pleasure of divine service, understanding that passion, itself a divine gift, is nothing more than a spiritual force of enthusiasm connecting him to God. Tacking away from Hasidic masters who interpreted the tale of Nadav and Avihu as a cautionary story about the dangers of religious devotion, we turn to the writings of Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl (c. 1737– 1797). His teachings, like those of the Apter Rav, offer some of the most resounding and affirmative exegesis of the incident. Far from attempting to ferret out their iniquity or demonize their efforts, Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum interprets Nadav and Avihu as paragons of a religious rapture that reaches its natural conclusion in the mystical extinction of the worshiper: Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu, in their intense devotion and righteousness, attained fulfillment, giving themselves over to death. They became so wondrously attached to God that their souls just remained there, cleaving to the divine light, a channel of energy rising upward. Their souls departed into the One! This is the meaning of: “When they approached Y-H-V-H and died” (Lev. 16:1). They drew so near, with so much attachment and longing, that their souls became hidden, cleaving to that which is above. But really the person who serves in this way and is joined to God in this mysterious way, is able to draw forth divine blessing, bringing it down from above while remaining alive. “You who cleave to Y-H-V-H your God 53 Ge’ulat Yisra’el (Warsaw: 1908), 55.

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are fully alive this day” (Deut. 4:4)! Your attachment to Y-H-V-H has made you more alive! That is God’s will as the Giver of life. But in them there was some sin that prevented this. Some of our sages said they were intoxicated; others said they taught a law in the presence of Moses their teacher.54 Because of this, the downward flow of blessing in the form of returning light was blocked and their souls remained attached there, flowing upward and not returning. That is why Aaron is now warned not to come at all times into the holy. It means to say that all the devotion of the tzaddiq should be of this sort, handing over their souls as a flow of energy from below. One cannot do this at all times. He should indeed come into the holy with this, the devotion shown by his sons. But let him not die: he should rather add to the life-flow of blessing and holiness pouring forth upon him.55

Nadav and Avihu were drawn toward God by inescapable yearning. Their souls departed from their bodies, becoming permanently attached to the infinite illumination the Divine. An individual who has attained this run would ordinarily become a font of blessing, a conduit through which sacred energy may flow into the physical realm. This is, of course, the ultimate goal of the Hasidic tzaddiq, whose inner quest and divine service are firmly intertwined with communal needs. But some personal shortcoming, says Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum, prevented Nadav and Avihu from taking on this role and sharing their spiritual delight with those around them. To use terms reminiscent of the Sufi vocabulary, some tinge of ego’s grime remained upon the speculum of the souls, occluding the divine light and preventing it from radiating through. If such intensity is not diffused, it will claim the very life of the worshiper. Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum thus calls Nadav and Avihu to task for having forgotten that the ultimate goal of the mystic journey is not personal uplift and rapture. Indeed, as noted by Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk, euphoria can actually distract the worshiper from the true aim of the journey toward the Divine: The seeker must yearn to transform the soul (and the self) into a channel for blessing that illuminates this world. This posture is indeed a matter of life and death, and, if it cannot be maintained, the worshiper must show self-control by choosing not to step into the presence of the Divine. 54 See b. Eruvin 63a; and Va-Yyiqra Rabbah 12:5. 55 Me’or Eynayim (Jerusalem: 2012), vol. 1, aḥarei mot, 225; translated in Green, et al, Speaking Torah, vol. 1, 285–86.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

This reading is complemented by another of Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum’ sermons. In this homily, the author imagines the sons of Aaron as harbingers of the Messiah because of their unrestrained devotion: Every one of Israel has to prepare the part of Messiah belonging to his particular soul. . . . This cannot take place absent the passion aroused by Elijah the herald. This is called “Messiah,” related to the word mesiaḥ, meaning speech. . . . Thus whenever thought and speech are united, messiah is restored. But this is not yet constant, as it will be when Messiah actually comes. Before the arrival of such wholeness, there will need to be a heralding by Elijah, to arouse the passion of Israel. The reason why Elijah arouses all this passion is that Pinḥas is Elijah. He inherited [i.e., absorbed] the souls of Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron. The reason they died was the great fiery intensity of their worship of our blessed Creator. Because they so cleaved to the pure, shining light, because their passion was so strong, their souls departed from their bodies. This is the meaning of “A fire came forth from before Y-H-V-H as they drew near to Y-H-V-H and consumed them” (Lev. 10:2). They drew so very near, with such intensity, that “a fire come forth” from their being so very directly “before Y-H-V-H.” It was their drawing so near in fiery passion that consumed them. Their souls just cleaved to the pure light. Afterwards Pinḥas, who is Elijah, inherited those souls. That is why he embodies a state of unity and passion; the great unification will take place through him. . . .56

Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum is, by and large, a world-affirming Hasidic thinker. Yet in this homily we find him describing in rather glowing terms an intimacy with God that is so profound and overwhelming that the worshiper is simply incorporated into the divine light and consumed by the fire. Nadav’s and Avihu’s yearning for God brought with it a momentary foretaste of the World to Come. This passion was reinforced as it was reiterated in Pinḥas’ zealotry, but Rabbi Menaḥem Naḥum’s point is that the fire of Nadav and Avihu—which binds together sacred deed with inner devotion—is born anew within the heart of each seeker as he or she accomplishes a unique, personal part of the messianic tiqqun. We turn now to the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo of Lutzk (d. 1813), whose sermons highlight Nadav’s and Avihu’s fatal longing for union 56 Me’or ‘Eynayim, vol. 1, pinḥas, 278–279; translated in Green, et al, Speaking Torah, vol. 2, 59–60.

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with the Divine.57 In the first of a series of four homilies describing their greatness, he claims that Nadav and Avihu were graced with joining with the Source of life after they expired—thus dying “in the presence of Y-HV-H”—because their every moment had been filled with devequt.58 And Rabbi Shlomo thus seems read the verse “as they drew near to Y-H-V-H, and died” (Lev. 16:1) differently than most classical commentators but close to understanding of Philo, interpreting it as: “in their moment of death, they drew near to Y-H-V-H.” That is, in their mystical death they are lifted beyond the confines of the physical form, their devotional spirit reaches beyond.59 Rabbi Shlomo’s second sermon, which builds upon a Talmudic tradition, suggests that Nadav and Avihu were themselves a sacrifice. A divine fire consumed the blazing offering of their passion-filled souls.60 This is not, however, the act of godly retaliation described by those who read Aaron’s sons’ death as a punishment. According to Rabbi Shlomo of Lutzk, their longing for God is a brooding fusion of eros and thanatos. The fire that consumes them is none other than their total, limitless and unmitigated devotion to the Creator. This was, in fact, no ordinary moment of religious enthusiasm. Rabbi Shlomo reminds us that the divine attributes (middot or sefirot) need to be manifest in the world through the deeds of the tzaddiqim. The actions 57 Rabbi Shlomo’s role as an editor of Hasidic and kabbalistic books has been highlighted by scholars, but his original contributions to Hasidic thought have largely been ignored. See Zeev Gries, “The Hasidic Managing Editor as an Agent of Culture,” Hasidism Reappraised, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (London and Portland: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 141–55; and Nehemia Polen and Ariel Evan Mayse, “A Celebratory Publication in Honor of the Wedding of Ariel Evan and Adina Ora Naama” (Boston: 2010). 58 See Dibrat Shlomo (Jerusalem: 2011), aḥarei mot, 275–78. 59 Rabbi Shlomo takes a different approach in his other sermons. In one, he argues that the death of Nadav and Avihu death was simply a transition from one stage of consciousness to the next. In between such rungs there is a moment of personal dissolution, referred to as a kind of spiritual death. Yet Rabbi Shlomo suggests that Aaron’s sons went through this process of extinction and rebirth constantly, throughout their lives, as they moved toward ever-higher degrees of awareness. And in his final sermon, Rabbi Shlomo notes that in the moment of death a righteous person’s entire life comes together into a single point of religious attunement. All of one’s spiritual achievements, all experiences of illumination, ecstasy and loving worship of the Divine are united in a single powerful moment. Death is, in this sense, no more than a release from temporal boundaries through the intensification of rapture. 60 See b. Zevahim 115b, building upon the parallel language of Leviticus 10:2 and 9:24.

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of these pious individuals bridge between the Godhead and the corporeal realm. Nadav’s and Avihu’s offering, suggests Rabbi Shlomo, drew the divine Presence into the lowest rungs. Their devotion enabled them to transcend  the finite boundary of death and thus infuse even the very fundaments of the mortal world. This is a fascinating and almost paradoxical reading of the tale, since one could—and many have—interpret Nadav and Avihu as attempting to escape the physical through spiritual devotion. For Rabbi Shlomo, however, their self-sacrifice forged a bond between the material world and the unbounded realm of the spirit. The teachings of Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev (c. 1740–1809) interpret the story of Nadav and Avihu as tale about the proper role of the tzaddiq and his great spiritual powers.61 He takes the two rabbinic teachings as his point of departure, namely that Nadav and Avihu were inebriated, and that they died because issued legal rulings in their teachers’ presence. But Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq reads these rabbinic traditions in a Hasidic way, suggesting that Nadav and Avihu sought to receive divine vitality directly from God and without the tzaddiq as an intermediary: Such is the case among Israel in each and every generation. God focuses shekhinah within the great individual of that generation, and from him [shekhinah flows] to his students, and from them to all Israel. One who “renders judgment in front of his master,” wishing to ascend beyond his rung and the [appropriate level of] tzimtzum, learning how to approach God on his own and without drawing [inspiration] through the channels of his teacher, is worthy of death.62

Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq here, as elsewhere, throws down the gauntlet in asserting the authority of the tzaddiq and his central place in the Hasidic community. Nadav and Avihu are being creatively recast as talented upstarts struck out on their own and forged a new path in the service of God. I wonder, however, if the author might be alluding to an incident he witnessed in his own day. Could Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq be referring to the scholars who visited the Maggid’s study hall in Mezeritch, invoking the story of Nadav and Avihu in order to reflect upon his and his colleague’s role in spreading the teachings of Hasidism throughout Eastern Europe? 61 This theme of leadership reappears countless times as a primary concern throughout Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq’s homilies. See Or Rose’s study of this phenomenon in the present volume. 62 Qedushat Levi ha-Shalem (Monsey: 2007), vol. 1, aḥarei mot, 301.

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It is entirely likely that some spiritually talented young men arrived in Mezeritch and became enamored—even inebriated—with the love-saturated religious ethos of Hasidism. To these youth Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq seems to suggest that the job of the master’s disciples is to spread these illuminating teachings among people who live in this world.63 Indeed, his image of the single, unique master at the heart of a web of inspiration is quite striking. If this autobiographical reading is reasonable, perhaps Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq had in mind an incident in which one of the Maggid’s erstwhile disciples was overcome after having gazed upon too much of the mystery. Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq’s other sermon on Nadav and Avihu offers a different perspective, similar in voice to the sermons of Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk and the anonymous editor of Ge’ulat Yisra’el: When a person begins to serve God, he feels a great pleasure, for his service brings joy to God . . . and joy and pleasure extend to all the worlds. But this [feeling] is not the essence of service, for it is but worship in order to receive a reward. Maimonides, in the Laws of Repentance, calls this [service] “not for its own sake” (she-lo lishmah).64 The essence of worship is in serving God because He is almighty and powerful (rav ve-shalit),65 giving life to all the worlds and all souls.66

This homily is unfortunately fragmentary, and the reader must thread it back toward the biblical story without Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq’s help. Perhaps, like the editor of Ge’ulat Yisra’el, Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq has reinterpreted the tradition of Nadav and Avihu being inebriated as suggesting that they were intoxicated with pleasure in their service of God. This drunkenness led them to mistake their joy and delight for the summum bonum of worship. Even rapture, says Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq, is a red herring that must be overlooked in the quest to stand in God’s presence. Communion with the Divine is itself a breathtaking reward above and beyond even the highest delight. 63 I do not mean to suggest that there was a systematic effort to disseminate the ethos of Hasidism beginning in the 1760s. The spread of Hasidic spiritualty happened more organically, with the figures who had journeyed to Mezeritch returning to their home communities (or to new professional appointments) and thus sharing the ideas of Hasidic thought. 64 Maimonides, hilkhot teshuvah, 10:5. 65 See Zohar 1:11b. 66 Qedushat Levi, vol. 1, aḥarei mot, 302.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman Epstein of Krakow (1754–1823), a prominent student of Rabbi Elimelekh of Lizhensk, had a more embracing position regarding the capacity of each individual. Rather than extolling the singular place of the rebbe and his students, as did Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq, by contrast Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman interprets the story of Nadav and Avihu as revealing that each person—including but not limited to the tzaddiq—has a unique spiritual task that cannot be accomplished by anyone else.67 All Israel share a common root in the primeval anthropos, he says, and therefore each person’s connection to the Divine is unlike any other. After the sacred sparks were scattered (i.e., after the breaking of the vessels and the initial Edenic sin), every individual is called upon to affect a specific part of the cosmic redemption. Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman takes pains to stress that even the most refined souls have more spiritual work to do. A person whose task is complete, he says, cannot serve as a communal leader. Such an individual can no longer connect to the difficult religious journeys of all other people. In fact, Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman argues that perfected souls are not long for the world because they’ve fulfilled their raison d’être and become irrelevant to their communities.68 Nadav and Avihu achieved this rung, and were therefore immediately taken up by God in a fiery moment of ecstasy. Lest the reader see this development as entirely positive, Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman reminds us that Aaron remained bound to the people of his com67 Ma’or va-Shemesh (Jerusalem: 1992), vol. 2, aḥarei mot, 353–54. On the importance of this theme, particularly characteristic of Polish Hasidism, and its interpretation as a possible sign of incipient modernity, see: Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer, “Self-Redemption in Hasidic Thought,” in Types of Redemption: Contributions to the Themes of the StudyConference Held at Jerusalem 14th to 19th July, ed. R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and C. J. Bleeker (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 207–12; Morris M.  Faierstein, “Personal Redemption in Hasidism,” in Hasidism Reappraised, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (London and Portland: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 214–24; Yoram Jacobson, “Exile and Redemption in Gur Hasidism,” Daat 2/3 (1978/1979): 175–215 (Heb.); Moshe Idel, “Multiple Forms of Redemption in Kabbalah and Hasidism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 101, no. 1 (2011): 27–70; idem, “The Tsadik and His Soul’s Sparks: From Kabbalah to Hasidism,” Jewish Quarterly Review 103, no. 2 (2013): 196–240; and Michael Rosen, The Quest for Authenticity: The Thought of Reb Simhah Bunim (Jerusalem and New York: Urim, 2008). See also Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 204–13. 68 It might be interesting to consider this exegesis in dialogue with the concept of the bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism,  a spiritually adept individual who nonetheless delays enlightenment in order to help others along the way.

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munity and was therefore able to shepherd them toward new levels of divine service. For this reason, Aaron, rather than Nadav and Avihu, is put forward by Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman as the higher model of spiritual guidance.69 An individual who is no longer growing, or who sees no need to continue their journey, is not fit to be a religious leader. This treatment of the issue of communal leadership leads us to a pivot in the course of our study. The story of Nadav and Avihu remained a point of interest and debate among Polish Hasidic masters into the twentieth century. In part their exegesis continued to revolve around the irresistible—but dangerous--beckoning of the Divine and the need for absolute purity in divine service.70 But in the homilies attributed to nineteenth-century Polish masters of the Pshiskhe/Kotzk schools, there is a noticeable change in interpretive key toward recasting Nadav and Avihu as extreme pietists who, though enthusiastic and inspiring, were extreme and thus unfit to serve as communal leaders. Many of the Hasidic thinkers of these schools describe Nadav and Avihu as quasi-angelic figures whose boundless devotion severed all connection to their flock. It is worth noting that, to my knowledge, the story of Nadav and Avihu does not figure prominently in the teachings of R. Menaḥem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotzk (1787–1859)—at least in the printed versions of his homilies and vertlekh (short teachings). But the image of the Kotzker Rebbe as preserved in the Hasidic legacy is that of a fiery iconoclast whose unlimited devotion, self-sacrifice, impassioned nonconformity, and uncompromising quest for integrity led him to spend the final twenty years of his life in solitary semi-seclusion. I believe that this image of the Kotzker Rebbe, burned into the memory of his students and progeny, is visible in the ways that these later masters interpreted the tale of Nadav and Avihu. Living in R. Menaḥem Mendel’s shadow and locked in an ambivalent struggle with 69 This reading of Nadav and Avihu as perfected—yet disconnected—beings is challenged by another of Rabbi Qalonymous Qalman’s sermons. Referring to ibn ‘Attar’s exegesis, he explains that Aaron’s sons were blameless and that their death represented a natural ascent to the upper realms because the physical world was no longer holding them back. Nadav and Avihu were reborn in Pinḥas simply to give their nephew a burst of devotional energy. See Ma’or va-Shemesh, vol. 2, aḥarei mot, 354–55. 70 Tif ’eret Shlomo (Brooklyn: 2010), aḥarei mot, 416–17, refers to Nadav and Avihu descending into the realms of impurity and qelippot (the “death” described in Lev. 16:1). Though their effort was praiseworthy and essential, the author suggests that Nadav and Avihu raised up these sparks too quickly (she-lo ‘al derekh dargin), thus resulting in a sort of spiritual decompression sickness that claimed their lives.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

his fiery religious personality, the various inheritors of the Kotzker’s mantle use their exegesis of the death of Aaron’s sons to explore the limits of devotion, the relationship of the tzaddiq to his community, and the question of sustainable religious intensity.71 With this in mind, we turn first to the writings of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (1847–1905), an intellectual descendent of the Kotzker Rebbe. His sermons often invoke the death of Nadav and Avihu as an example of uncontrolled devotion that quickly descends into religious anarchy. Characteristic of the homilies in his magnum opus Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib’s homilies return to incident of Aaron’s sons year after year.72 His sermons on Leviticus 10 (i.e., parashat shemini) emphasize that their death was the result of having performed a religious deed without having being commanded to do so. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib acknowledges their honest and upright intentions, but argues that their worship was irretrievably flawed because it was outside of framework of the mitzvot.73 In one homily, emblematic of many others, we read: “That [God] had not commanded of them” (Lev. 10:1). This teaches that the essential power of all human deeds comes from God’s command. All human reason (sekhel ha-adam) naught before this. Nadav and Avihu were

71 The texts below present a theological echo of a dynamic I have referred to elsewhere as “the founder effect,” a term that describes the way in which a religious or social group preserves an image of a leader who espouses doctrines that openly conflict with the inheritors of their tradition. A fiery and unorthodox leader may initially break open the walls of tradition and thus make the space for a new religious ethos, but such a person may be too unstable, intense or simply unconventional to create a long-term community; the original “founder” thus leaves room for a subsequent individual (or individuals) to establish a stable spiritual movement. 72 Nehemia Polen, “Birkat Kohanim in the S’fat Emet,” in Birkat Kohanim, ed. David Birnbaum and Martin S. Cohen (New York: New Paradigm Matrix Publishing, 2016) 259–74; Arthur Green, “Three Warsaw Mystics,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): *1-*58; Yoram Jacobson, “From Youth to Leadership and From Kabbalah to Hasidism—Stages in the Spiritual Development of the Author of Sefat Emet,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 13 (1996): 429–46 (Heb.); Arthur Green, The Language of Truth: The Torah Commentary of the Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998). 73 On the development of this perspective in Polish Hasidism as a bulwark against modernity and a defense against antisemitism, see Mendel Piekarz, “The Inner Point in the Teachings of Ger and Alexander Hasidism,” in Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy and Ethical Literature in Honor of Isaiah Tishby (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986), 617–60 (Heb.).

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truly righteous and were acting for the sake of heaven, but they lacked the command.74

Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib reads the biblical tale as a powerful injunction against the inclination for supererogatory piety stemming from sekhel ha-adam (the rational faculties or autonomous reason). Here the author chooses not to emphasize Nadav’s and Avihu’s yearning for God, or that their efforts might be construed as well-intentioned—if ultimately misplayed—devotion. Indeed, this sermon suggests that extra-legal piety is an invasion of divine privacy or a misuse of sacred intimacy. The theme of bittul, of nullifying the private or individual will and existence—to the community, to the tzaddiq, and to God—appears frequently in Sefat Emet. This motif complements and challenges the author’s constant insistence that one must strive for personal truth and integrity in one’s individual spiritual quest. Yet given that Hasidism (i.e., ḥasidut) may be understood as a call to cultivate a sense of supererogatory piety and inward devotion, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib’s formulation is all the more striking. I suggest that this counterintuitive exegesis should be read as an attempt to rein in the passionate fires of Kotzk, where anomian piety, stricture and other forms of religious enthusiasm were given an important place alongside the performance of halakhah. In other homilies about Nadav and Avihu, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib claims that all worshipers—and especially the Temple priests—must remember that their vital power derives from God alone. Indeed, he says, even an experience of spiritual uplift is a divine gift, for the kohen must not bring any sort of strength or ecstatic passion (ko’ah ve-hitpa‘alut) of his own into the service. Echoing the position of Rabbi Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib asserts that worship must be performed only because it connects one to God. Against the backdrop of the disobedient example of Nadav and Avihu, he warns his readers that one must not become inebriated even with passionate fire in the service of the Divine.75 Elsewhere Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib’s exegesis focuses on Nadav and Avihu as an essential danger to the community. Aaron’s sons threaten the power of the classical mitzvot to bind the Israelites together, for Nadav and Avihu achieved a rung of extraordinary piety that cannot be emulated by 74 Sefat Emet (Yeshivat Or Etzion: 2002), shemini, 5636. See also ibid., shemini, 5639 and 5641. 75 Sefat Emet, shemini, 5647.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

anyone else. This reading is articulated quite clearly in the following sermon, grounded in an oft-cited tradition from Rabbi Yitzḥak Meir of Ger, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib’s grandfather and teacher: “A strange fire that [God] had not commanded of them” (Lev. 10:1). My grandfather said that teaches us that the essence of performing a mitzvah is in the power of commandedness. This [power] is beyond all the intentions (lema‘alah mi-kol ha-kavvanot). Nadav and Avihu were truly great individuals (gedolei ‘olam), and their deeds included all the [kabbalistic] intentions, unifications and secrets. They were punished, however, because they had not been commanded. But this [devotion] will work out even better for one fulfilling a mitzvah in order to perform the Creator’s Will!76 Although such a person doesn’t know anything, it is as important as all the intentions. Thus far are his [i.e., my grandfather’s] words. We can say that this is the meaning of the verse, “Through those that are close to Me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev. 10:3). This intention to perform the commandments of God is accessible to all Israelites, even the simplest among them. The most important aspect of God’s glorification comes from the community. The punishment of Nadav and Avihu made this clear: one’s [ultimate] intention must be to perform the commandments of God. Thus every Jewish person is ready to fulfill the divine commandments. This is His glory.77

Nadav and Avihu acted with the highest motivations, but their zealous piety excluded them from the broader community. The fact that the traditional commandments are accessible to all Israel, says Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib, means that the borders of the spiritual community must be broadened to those beyond the scholarly aristocracy. Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib’s homily thus continues the Hasidic tendency to open the realm of religious experience, including its devotional and even mystical elements, to a broader population. But this exegesis cuts directly against the highly elitist elements of the Pshiskhe/Kotzk schools and of the Kotzker Rebbe himself. It seems to me that this shift, grounded in a very specific interpretation of Nadav and Avihu, was a conscious move. One wonders if Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib would have given the same explanation in a private address to a small group 76 See b. Bava Qamma 38a, inter alia, for the following rabbinic tradition: “Greater is the one who has been commanded and does, than one who is uncommanded and does.” 77 Sefat Emet, shemini, 5659.

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of advanced followers rather than a homily delivered to the entire community and subsequently transcribed for generations to come. Certain teachings in the Sefat Emet, however, allow that Nadav and Avihu were entirely blameless. In one such homily Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib claims that Aaron’s sons were punished exclusively “on account of us” (perhaps alluding to the sin of Golden Calf). Yet in this case he still reminds us that Nadav and Avihu were culpable because their very high rung disconnected them from the community.78 It is worth noting that this sermon is remarkably short, even more terse than his usual laconic style.79 Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib notes that, “this is not the place to go on,” perhaps signaling the fraught nature of his exegesis to his reader. Though he may well understand Nadav’s and Avihu’s yearning for God and for ever-higher levels of divine service, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib’s resoundingly condemns their unmitigated intensity and its impact on the community. In an 1888 homily Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib pushes the interpretation of Nadav and Avihu as righteous individuals, disconnected from the community and yet suffering on behalf the people, even farther. He suggests: Regarding the sin of Nadav and Avihu, “that [God] did not command of them” (Lev. 10:1) . . . “And let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Y-H-V-H has kindled” (Lev. 10:6). Perhaps we can say that the Israelites said “we will do” before “we will understand” like the ministering angels.80 But afterward they fell from this level, as it says, “like a human being, you shall die” (Ps. 82:7). Nadav and Avihu held fast to this original rung, like the angels, as it says, [Bless Y-H-V-H, you angels of His, mighty in strength,] that fulfill His word” and thus “hearkening” (Ps. 103:20). The reason is that the angel feels in its essence the Will of God. They are called “those who perform His will,” as is known (cf. Ps. 103:21). But because the community of Israel was not on this level, Nadav and Avihu were punished. Perhaps this was itself included in the Sages’ writing that they [Nadav and Avihu] rendered judgment before their masters” or “[that they 78 Ibid., shemini, 5640. 79 On the formation of the work, see Daniel Reiser and Ariel Evan Mayse, “The Final Sermon of the Rebbe of Ger: The Sefat Emet and the Implications of Yiddish for the Study of Hasidic Homilies,” Kabbalah 30 (2013): 127–60 (Heb.), and the series of articles published in its wake. 80 b. Shabbat 88a.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

wondered,] when will these elders die?”81 They said that they could establish a leadership of the Jewish people as it was before the sin. But the truth is that this was not the Will of God. Everything happens in the right and ready order before him. Each and every generation has a unique type of leadership. Even though the sin caused it, nevertheless all is true. [Maybe this is alluded to in “that are close to Me I will be sanctified,” (Lev. 10:3). Because “and before all the people I will be glorified” (ibid). The power of the masses is overwhelms the power of the unique individuals, close to Him]. Therefore, “the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning”— for they themselves caused their deaths.82

Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib suggests that Nadav and Avihu were punished on behalf of the generation. They were not the embodiment of vicarious suffering, but rather they were not attuned to the fact that different generations require different kinds of leadership. They community weeps, of course, for it was the people’s descent that caused the death of Nadav and Avihu. Yet it remains that Aaron’s sons were entrenched in an antiquated, generationally inappropriate mode of piety that was unsuitable for the leadership of the next generation. I suspect that here too we find a response to the legacy of Kotzk expressed quietly through exegesis of the biblical story. This homily offers not so much a forward critique, however, as an acknowledgement that one cannot create a sustainable community from elitist and overly intense pietism. The powerful elitist spiritual and religious path that worked in Kotzk, says Rabbi Alter, does not necessarily perform the fame function the world of late nineteenth-century metropolitan Warsaw. A different kind of religious leadership is needed, though it is perhaps not without a touch of sadness and disappointment in the fallen angels of the previous generation. One final teaching on Nadav and Avihu from Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib will shed further light on our subject. The homily, this time a sermon on Leviticus 16, explores the lasting impact of Nadav’s and Avihu’s rapture: Their effort was a valiant attempt, for they did not give up their souls for no reason. Nadav and Avihu were great and righteous people, and their deed was a great tikkun for the Jewish people. But something was missing in their deeds, as the Sages taught. It seems that the children of Israel were granted

81 See b. Yoma 53a; b. ‘Eruvin 63a. 82 Sefat Emet, shemini, 5648.

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the service of Yom Kippur because of them. This is why we read their story (parashah) on that day . . . We can explain, “[Speak to Aaron your brother, that he not come at all times into the holy place within the veil . . .] so that he shall not die” (Lev. 16:2) as a kind of command. Aaron might have sacrificed himself to enter into [the holy realm] and thus would have died. Therefore, it is said to him that he not come at all times, that he not die, for it was the Will of the Omnipresent the he live . . .83

Nadav and Avihu accomplished something wonderful and unique, granting us the ability to relive something of their ecstasy service each year on Yom Kippur. But, adds Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib, there was something inherently problematic about their willingness to give up their lives for God. It is a commandment not to die, he says, precisely because this type of unreserved devotion is so overwhelming attractive. The Torah teaches us the restraint of legislation; the binding power of nomos—broadly defined— is set in place to fetter the longing of the spirit. Rabbi Mordecai Yosef Leiner of Izhbits (1800–1854), to whom we shall now turn, was one of the Kotzker Rebbe’s foremost disciples before their mysterious and acrimonious break in 1839.84 Many of Rabbi Mordecai Yosef ’s sermons may be read as a moderating response to the Kotzker’s furious enthusiasm, restraining the latter’s paralyzing quest for purity and insistence on absolute integrity.85 Rabbi Mordecai Yosef attributes the sin of Nadav and Avihu to an overflowing of religious devotion (amorous, in this case) untempered by the necessary counterbalance of awe. While the Kotzker’s approach to sacred service and his relationship to his students could hardly be described as effusive, Rabbi Mordecai Yosef ’s sermon speaks to the danger hidden in all kinds of overwrought—and especially overconfident—spiritual intensity. The present homily below highlights the destructive potential of a worshiper’s love-drunk service and claim to total understanding of God’s providence:

83 Sefat Emet, aḥarei mot, 5636 84 Morris M. Faierstein, “The Friday Night Incident in Kotsk: History of a Legend,” Journal of Jewish Studies 34.2 (1983): 137–56. 85 See, for example; Mei ha-Shiloah (Brooklyn: 1973), vol. 1, shemot, 20a–b; and Morris M. Faierstein, All is in the Hands of Heaven: The Teachings of Rabbi Mortdecai Joseph Leiner of Izbica (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1989), 61–76.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

God is within everything that was happens, from the creation of the world until its end. Nothing takes place without His will. . . . And, to the extent that a person draws near to the Divine, God’s light is revealed to him even without garments. These are the fences and strictures [of halakhah]. No such boundaries or prohibitions exist within the bright light (or ha-barur). There all human deeds are clearly for [the sake of] God. But this is why... it is forbidden to delve into this [realm]. Only Rabbi Aqiva [ascended and] descended in peace.86 This is the meaning of, “As they drew near to Y-H-V-H, and died” (Lev. 16:1). [Nadav and Avihu] came close to God and gazed into the hidden depths, seeking to understand with clarity how God conducts the world. . . . Thus it could be argued that their drawing near [to the Divine] was, heaven forefend, undertaken without proper seriousness (mi-kalut rosh), or that they intended to remove the obligation of the strictures [of religious practice] . . . This is also [the explanation] of the midrash: “[Nadav and Avihu] lacked one of the [priestly] vestments. Which one? The cloak.” Although the cloak is only worn by the High Priest, [Nadav and Avihu] brought themselves into a realm where such a garment was necessary.87

Nadav and Avihu had surely attained a lofty rung of personal holiness, but their sin lay in allowing this love and yearning for the Divine to overshadow their religious commitments.88 Taking refuge in the illumination of God’s presence, they sought to serve with a passionate deed beyond the commandments. That euphoria in divine service may lead to false confidence, says Rabbi Mordecai Yosef, is the key spiritual lesson of the Nadav and Avihu story. He warns contemporary worshipers against thinking that the Divine may be served with such unqualified love.89 Nadav’s and Avihu’s intimacy with the Divine led them to assume that had a comprehensive vision of God’s Will. They believed that their sacrificial offering, though un-commanded and perhaps even against the letter of the law, was a pure act of devotion in keeping with the divine Will. Indeed, claimed Nadav and Avihu, those who bask in the God’s illumination have no need for the safeguards of the nomos as classically formulated. The 86 t. Hagigah 2:2. 87 Mei ha-Shiloaḥ, vol. 1, shemini, 34a. 88 Cf. Mei ha-Shiloaḥ, vol. 1, aḥarei mot, 36b. 89 Mei ha-Shiloaḥ, vol. 2, shemini, 23b, reads: “All Israelite sins that have been preserved in Scripture are there in order to teach Torah to the community... The story of Nadav and Avihu were written in the Torah to instruct to the individual [worshiper] about awe.”

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notion that the halakhah may not be coterminous with God’s Will, explored in dozens of passage throughout Rabbi Mordecai Yosef ’s sermons, appears here with a striking caveat: even—and perhaps especially—individuals who have stepped into the presence of God require the mediating force of the “priestly” garment, a symbol for the restraining force of the halakhah as well as the somber awareness of the limitations of human knowledge. Rabbi Mordecai Yosef ’s homily expresses clear discomfort with the intensity and implications of Nadav’s and Avihu’s devotion. His trepidation makes the following highly positive interpretation advanced by Rabbi Tzadoq ha-Kohen of Lublin (1823–1900), one of Rabbi Mordecai Yosef ’s greatest students, all the more interesting. Rabbi Tzadoq of Lublin argues that Nadav and Avihu had already refined their physical bodies to such an extent that death was no longer necessary in order for them to escape the impurity of the corporeal realm.90 Why, then, did God intercede and cast them into death? Because success in their devotion, says Rabbi Tzadoq, would have verily undone the project of Creation (mitbattel inyan beriyat ha-‘olam ha-zeh). If all worshipers strove to emulate this boundless divine service, successfully following the example of Aaron’s sons, the result would overturn the fundamental mortality of all being in this world. This impermanence of human life is also the source of our strength and agency, for we have been called upon to serve God and refine the world from within the unfolding of the Divine. Therefore, Nadav and Avihu, and eventually Elijah (within whom they were reborn), attained eternal life, but did so only through departing from the physical and thus relinquishing their ability to effect change within it. Elsewhere Rabbi Tzadoq ha-Kohen of Lublin compares Nadav and Avihu to the rabbinic figure Shim‘on ben ‘Azzai, who, according to ancient legend, died as a result of gazing upon the Divine.91 Rabbi Tzadoq writes: It is known to those that enter and go out [i.e., to the mystic seeker] that this matter depends on a person’s level. One must enter incrementally, [progressing] from stage to stage. If one attains something that is too far above his level, the soul can depart from the body.92

Exposure to God’s presence must take place gradually. The instantaneous vision of the Divine beheld by Nadav and Avihu in the inner sanctum was too much for them. Rabbi Tzadoq likens this moment to the 90 Dover Tzedeq (Jerusalem: 2005), 119. 91 t. Hagigah 2:2 92 Resisei Laylah (Jerusalem: 2005), no. 58.

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

national theophany on Sinai, thus explaining the Talmudic tradition of the Israelites dying—and becoming resurrected—as the Ten Commandments were delivered.93 Had Nadav and Avihu triumphed, claims Rabbi Tzadoq, they would connected the finite world to the infinite Godhead and thus the cosmos—and all Being—would have returned to its original, pre-Creation state of absolute and undifferentiated divine unity.94 Discussions of Nadav’s and Avihu’s death as a warning about the dangers of religious intensity continue into the twentieth century. The tale of their death often mentioned by Rabbi Avraham Mordecai Alter of Ger (1866–1948) in his work Imrei Emet.95 The author, the son of Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, continued his father’s shift away from the elitist pietism of Kotzk, and under his watch Ger also emerged as a politically active and fiercely anti-modern Hasidic community. Rabbi Avraham Mordecai’s homilies on Nadav and Avihu may be read as reflecting the trajectory of this ethos. Referring to a tradition received from his father, the Imrei Emet argues that the primary spiritual lesson of the death of Aaron’s sons is that one must never use reason or autonomous will to add anything new to the religious path.96 Many of Rabbi Avraham Mordecai’s sermons echoes his father’s point about the necessity of both commanded-ness and community, arguing that without these sureties even someone with the best intentions will be lead astray in divine service.97 Year after year the Imrei Emet repeats that Nadav’s and Avihu’s mistake was in having performed of an un-commanded act of devotion.98 This seems to be the voice of an embattled—though confident—Ultra-Orthodox leader. In these early years of his 93 Cf. b. Shabbat 88b 94 A more conventional explanation appears in Resisei Laylah, no. 24, where Rabbi Tzadoq claims that an overabundance of love brought about levity, lack of decorum and seriousness, and ultimately led to Nadav’s and Avihu’s death. 95 Cf. the arguments suggested in Benjamin Brown, “Substitutes for Mysticism: A General Model for the Theological Development of Hasidism in the Nineteenth Century,” History of Religions 56:3 (2017): 247–88. See also Dafna Schreiber, “Between Hasidism and Politics: The Rebbe of Gur, Author of Imrei Emet and the Communal Turn in Polish Hasidism,” MA Thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 2013. 96 See Imrei Emet (Tel Aviv: 1977), shemini 5647; and cf. ibid., noaḥ, 5698; shemini, 5669; shemini, 5674. Cf. Mei ha-Shiloaḥ, vol. 2, bo, 13b, for a teaching about the importance of human innovation. 97 Imrei Emet, shemini, 5674 98 Ibid., aḥarei mot, 5666; and cf. Ibid., pinḥas.

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reign Rabbi Avraham Mordecai may have sought to provide a vision as to the evils of piety outside of the normative framework of the halakhah.99 Yet some of Rabbi Avraham Mordecai’s teachings on Nadav and Avihu are less monochromatic. He suggests that Nadav and Avihu attempted to perform an act of worship so exalted, so pure that no other members of the community were ready for it.100 Aaron’s sons wanted to take the helm in leading the Israelites, then banishing the Evil Inclination altogether.101 Nadav and Avihu had become like angels, claims Rabbi Mordecai Yosef, and thus severed their connection from the ordinary people who made up their community.102 Their ecstatic and rapturous devotion, beyond the commandments, was beyond the ken of their followers. Nadav and Avihu tried to follow in the footsteps of the angels—and Adam, before the Edenic sin—who intuitively grasped the path of Torah and the divine Will without explicit instruction or command. In fact, they wanted to repair the cosmic fracture of Adam’s original sin through their own un-commanded spiritual service. Nadav and Avihu sought to throw open the gates of Eden, so that the divine Presence within would be permanently accessible.103 They were ultimately unsuccessful, says Rabbi Avraham Mordecai, but their efforts left an impact upon the Jewish people. A trace of their supererogatory, fiery passion remains even now, and it is reclaimed by the entire community on Yom Kippur. It is impossible not to become overwhelmed the intensity of God’s embrace, and for this reason the priest, beckoned in his sacred service, must be warned not to allow himself to become enraptured in the Divine. But Nadav and Avihu bestowed a new mode of worship upon the Israelite community, a reservoir of spiritual energy accessed by most individuals only once a year.104 A fascinating and surprisingly historical homily appears in teachings of the Imrei Emet on Parashat Be-Midbar (Num. 1:1–4:20) of unknown year. Rabbi Avraham Mordecai suggests that Nadav and Avihu took up the 99 Cf, the strange formulation in ibid., shemini 5691, where the author claims that Moses and Aaron represent the Written Torah, whereas Nadav and Avihu represented ha-ratzon ha-‘atzma’i—the Oral Torah. Aaron’s sons attained ruaḥ ha-qodesh, but the others—perhaps the generation, perhaps the sons of Aaron—were unready for this spiritual power and it therefore collapsed into an inferno of chaotic devotion. 100 Imrei Emet, shemini, 5693; and Ibid., shemini, 5694 101 Ibid., shemini, 5687. See also b. Yoma 69b. 102 Ibid., aḥarei mot, 5665; and cf. aḥarei mot, 5689. 103 Ibid., aḥarei mot, 5693. 104 Ibid., aḥarei mot, 5679.

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reigns of communal leadership because they thought they had achieved a higher rung than Moses and Aaron. Rabbi Avraham Mordecai illustrates the problem with this behavior through the following story about his Hasidic forbearers: When the “Holy Jew” (Rabbi Ya‘aqov Yitzḥaq Rabinowicz, 1766– 1813) realized that his spiritual level had surpassed the rung of his teacher, Rabbi Ya‘aqov Yitzḥaq Horowitz (the “Seer” of Lublin, 1745–1815), he was afraid that this imbalance would cause his master’s death. So the “Holy Jew” prayed that his teacher be made even greater and that his own spirit might become diminished. Rabbi Avraham Mordecai claims that this expression of fealty saved Rabbi Ya‘aqov Yitzḥaq Horowitz’s life. This was the mistake of Nadav and Avihu: they realized that they had ascended even higher than Moses and Aaron, but they pridefully acknowledge and accepted this fact without beseeching God to change it. This hubris, suggests Rabbi Avraham Mordecai, was the very fire that consumed Nadav and Avihu. We should briefly note that the story of Nadav and Avihu is also a favored theme in the teachings of Rabbi Shmuel Borenstein (1855–1926), the second Rebbe of Sokhachev and a direct descendent of the Kotzker Rebbe. Like other masters in the schools of Pshiskhe/Kotzk, the teachings on the death of Aaron’s sons included in his Shem mi-Shmuel are perceptive and revealing. These sermons generally focus on the shortcoming of Nadav’s and Avihu’s spiritual vision or their misplaced extremism. Rabbi Shmuel claims that Nadav and Avihu were unworthy of stepping into the divine Presence, since their souls had been refined but not their bodies.105 Or, elsewhere, he claims that they were so exhilarated by the completion of the Tabernacle that they assumed the End of Days had arrived. Seduced by this misbelief, they wrongfully supposed that certain prohibitions were no longer relevant and entered the inner sanctum without the proper care.106 Yet Rabbi Shmuel also casts a beneficent glance upon the story. In one sermon he explains that Nadav and Avihu were introspective mystical types drawn toward contemplative service. They thought, however, that their generation was in need of inspiration brought about by visible displays of public piety.107 Rabbi Shmuel argues that Nadav and Avihu were correct in understanding that such external deeds were necessary, since their community—beginners in the art of sacred service—were unable to see the power of their inner work. Elsewhere Rabbi Shmuel suggests 105 Shem mi-Shmuel (Jerusalem: 1987), va-yaqhel and parashat ha-ḥodesh, 5671 106 Ibid., shemini 5671; and cf. shemini, 5672. 107 Ibid., va-yiggash, 5677.

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that Nadav and Avihu attempted to lead through example because of own lofty spiritual rung. But their deed, incomparable in its passion and intensity, made it was impossible for the others to follow them. Not unlike the Kotzker Rebbe of yore, Nadav’s and Avihu’s attempt to forge a new religious path collapsed because the community could never hope to match their total, all-consuming commitment.108 In a key 1913 sermon the Shem mi-Shmuel offers a highly positive rendering of Nadav’s and Avihu’s death. The author claims only the Messiah can grasp the yeḥidah, the innermost point of unitive consciousness that connects the human soul to the Divine, and continue to live as a part of the world.109 Everyone else, says Rabbi Shmuel, will perish in the wake of such an encounter with the Divine. Nadav and Avihu gazed upon God directly and attained an unencumbered vision of total unity. They understood that most individuals could not reach this state on their own, so Aaron’s sons sought to share it with the community. They did not realize that such a sublime realization of the Divine is experiential knowledge, an unspeakably beautiful awareness of God that cannot be conveyed or communicated to others.110 Descendants of the House of Kotzk struggle with the figures of Nadav and Avihu as complicated heroes very much in the mold of the Kotzker Rebbe. They are described as radical and fiery iconoclasts, burned by their proximity to the Divine, whose approach to divine service cannot be emulated even by their own descendants and followers. But let us move forward some fifty years to a very different social and religious context. Rabbi Shalom Noah Berezovsky of Slonim (1911–2000), a master whose life and leadership were spent in the land of Israel, in the land of Israel, often repeats the Hasidic truism that biblical stories—including the tale of Nadav and Avihu—are included in Scripture to teach us a lesson about our own spiritual lives.111 In one sermon included in his popular work Netivot Shalom, Rabbi Shalom Noah says that they loved god without proper 108 Ibid., shemini, 5674. 109 Ibid., shemini, 5673. 110 Ibid., shemini, 5673. 111 Scholars have only begun to explore Rabbi Shalom Noah’s thought see: Aharon (Allan) Nadler, “The Value of Torah Study in Slonimer Hasidism,” in Yeshivot u-Vatei Midrashot, ed. Immanuel Etkes (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2006), 395–415 (Heb.); Noga Bing, “Perspective on Slonim Hasidism in the Twentieth Century in Light of Sefer Netivot Shalom,” MA Thesis, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 2008 (Heb.); and Shaul Magid, “In Search of a Critical Voice in the Jewish Diaspora:

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restraint.112 And their sins, though tiny, were magnified many-fold because of their proximity to God. As he continues, however, Rabbi Shalom Noah makes a highly original point: The fitting service of God is that described in the verse, “My soul yearns, yea, pines [for the courts of Y-H-V-H” (Ps. 84:3). But this kind of love cannot be attained through physical intermediaries. One can arrive at richness of the spirit only through the spirit. This is the meaning of “He did not lay His hand upon the nobles of the children of Israel; and they beheld God, and ate and drank” (Ex. 24:11). They arrived at beholding God through eating and drinking, but for “the nobles of the children of Israel” such [service] it is considered a mistake (pegam) to become uplifted in divine service through corporeal means.113

‘Avodah be-gashmiyyut, or the service of God through uplifting ordinary or physical deeds such as eating, drinking, or sexual intercourse, is an important tenet of Hasidism. It is remarkable that Rabbi Shalom Noah is underscoring its place in the late twentieth century, long after many Hasidic courts and communities had disavowed the relevance of ‘avodah be-gashmiyyut for the ordinary Hasid. But in this teaching Rabbi Shalom Noah describes worshiping the Divine through the mundane as a secondary modality of sacred service. For some elect pious individuals, summoned to the world of the mystical, uplifting the physical is actually a distraction from the real focus of their spiritual work. Nadav and Avihu sold themselves short, as it were, by trying to lift up the corporeal instead of devoting themselves to sacred contemplation. In another teaching Rabbi Shalom Noah refers to Nadav and Avihu as exalted figures who indeed held a higher spiritual place than Moses and Aaron.114 Then the Netivot Shalom, like Rabbi Avraham Mordecai of Ger, reminds his reader that at times the student may become even greater than his teacher. Rabbi Shalom Noah then claims that even such a talented disciple must humble themselves by connecting themselves to a master whose Homeless- ness and Home in Edward Said and Shalom Noah Barzofsky’s Netivot Shalom,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society 12, no. 3 (2006): 193–227.

Nadler. On the son of R. Shalom Noah and his contributions to Hasidic thought, see Alon Goshen-Gottstein’s contribution to the present volume. 112 Netivot Shalom (Jerusalem: 1995), vol. 3, aḥarei, 77. 113 Ibid., 78. 114 Netivot Shalom, vol. 3, shemini, 42–45. See also ibid., aḥarei mot, 75–77.

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charismatic gift and connection to the divine (devequt) is goes far beyond intellectual luminosity. There is great spiritual value, he says, in being able to express obecience to one’s teacher. It confers divine protection (shemirah ‘elyonah) upon the student, which Rabbi Shalom Noah sees as a fundament of Hasidism. That is, Nadav’s and Avihu’s display of public independence broke down the master-disciple relationship at the heart of Hasidism. He uses this same logic to explain the midrashic tradition that they were unmarried. Nadav and Avihu could not enter into a giving relationship with another person, because their focus was exclusively self-directed. Rabbi Shalom Noah’s argument about the nature of religious authority seems to reflect a twentieth-century social reality of firmly entrenched dynastic succession. The fact that less talented tzaddiqiqim may indeed have brilliant students whose scholarship far surpasses their own is on obvious, if unavoidable, threat to the inherited social hierarchy of Hasidism. Several times in this homily Rabbi Shalom refers to the connection between a master and his disciples as a core tenet of Hasidism. But his conservative-leaning exegesis of the Nadav and Avihu story also reveals another extremely insightful point: brilliant scholarship and a rich inner mystical life are not necessarily the qualities empower someone to lead a community. Nadav and Avihu may have been distinguished intellects or inspiring pietists, but their approach was far beyond the purview of most people. Our study of the Hasidic sources on Nadav and Avihu now draws to a close. A sermon of Rabbi Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1992–1994), the Seventh Rebbe of Ḥabad, will represent our final word on this subject. His reading of Nadav and Avihu demonstrate his brilliance as an exegete, whose creative mystical thought was intertwined with his vast expansive social agenda and communal vision: Hasidus explains (and see also [comments of] the holy Or ha-Ḥayyim)115 that the sin of the two sons of Aaron was not a sin according to the simple meaning of the word, God forbid. Their sin consisted of this: they permitted their tremendously great deveykus with the Almighty to lead them to actually expire in their all-consuming longing (kelos ha-nefesh). This is the meaning of, “when they drew near before Y-H-V-H” (to the extent that) “they died.” For them, this was reckoned as a sin.

115 All parenthesis other than transliteration appear in the original; brackets are my own interpolation.

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Although a Jew must want—and see to it—that his service be in such a way that he arrives at divestment from the physical (hispashtus ha-gashmiyus) . . . at the very same time, it is demanded of him that in the moment that he achieves all-consuming desire, “running [toward God]” (ratzo), he must summon up the “retreat” (shov),116 turning himself back to perform the service as a soul in a body, in this world, as the Sages taught, “against your will, you live” (m. Avot 4:22). [We must] carry out the intention of the Most High: building “a dwelling place [for the Divine] in the physical” (diroh batahtoynim)—not to depart from the world, but to transform the world itself into a home for the Almighty.117

Nadav’s and Avihu’s rapture was problematic not because of its intensity, but rather because Aaron’s sons allowed their ecstasy to consume them permanently. Nadav and Avihu forgot that such an enormous outpouring of spiritual energies is only the first stage of a religious journey, which must ultimately lead back to its point of departure in the physical world. Even in the modern American context, argues Rabbi Schneerson, such devotion in worship is possible and even required of all Jews. But he reminds his listeners—and readers—that the real point of religious service, and indeed of the inward journey beyond the confines of the physical cosmos, is to achieve a moment of intense uplift that may then be carried into the world as a renewed flow of blessing and illumination.

Repercussion In the hands of Hasidic exegetes, the biblical story of the death of Nadav and Avihu is transformed into a story of mystical piety, devotion, and the dangers of becoming enraptured by divine Presence. Some of these homilies recast the sons of Aaron as misguided spiritual seekers. Lured by the false piety of the Evil Inclination, seeking to bypass the central figure of the tzaddiq, or perhaps interested in devotion as a source of personal pleasure, a number of Hasidic sermons argue that the sons of Aaron failed to realize some crucial element of the spiritual life.

116 See Ez. 1:14. 117 Liqqutei Siḥot (New York: 2006), vol. 3, 987–88. See also Liqqutei Siḥot (New York 1991), vol. 7, 122, 125, 320. My transliterations here follow the conventions of Yiddish, the language of this particular homily.

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But a significant number of Hasidic interpretations of Nadav and Avihu recast the story of their death as a warning against the urge to follow God’s beckoning and the dangers of answering such a invitation. Much like the infamous “rapture of the deep” that overcomes divers operating in a high-pressure and intensity environment, the siren call of the Divine may lead the worshiper into a realm of untold beauty that claims the life all those who cross its border. The Hasidic master’s yearning to become enveloped into the Divine is different than the longing for extinction in the writings of many mithnaggedim, for whom deathly quietus is the only way to escape the soiled impurity of the world.118 The Hasidic sensibility is also quite different than the totalizing fear of death described by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in his seminal Halakhic Man.119 The Hasidic masters’ interpretations of Nadav and Avihu, rather, show them to be conscious of the powerful draw toward the absorbing sweetness of the ineffable. Their awareness of this pull is clearly both intuitive and experiential, for in their exegesis the Hasidic authors seem to be welcoming us into the tensions and yearning found in their own spiritual worlds. Their interpretations of the death of Aaron’s sons across the centuries reveal them to be exploring the boundaries of religious devotion and dangers in loving God with a fiery and all-consuming passion. Yet with few exceptions, the Hasidic sources emphasize the crucial importance of effecting change and channeling blessing into this world. The ideal Hasidic leader is neither the spiritual seeker who allows himself to become enveloped by God even unto dying “with a kiss,” nor the private saint who allows himself to comfortably withdraw into the inner, or elitist, pathways of pietistic devotion. The Hasidic master, by contrast, is one whose mystical journey involves an immediate encounter with the living God, a state called devequt, which is then translated into an intensified commitment to his community and with the world around him.120 118 Allan Nadler, The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 116–19. 119 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man, trans. Lawrence Kaplan (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), 30–39. 120 The complicated Hasidic yearnings for the Beyond are also substantially different in tenor and tone from the understanding advanced by scholars who emphasize mystical religion as the quest to transcend the sullied material realm. See, for example, Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Carol Cosman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 39: “And there is mystic asceticism, whose purpose is to sever man’s last remaining attachments to the profane world. Indeed, there

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“Like a Moth to the Flame”    ARIEL EVAN MAYSE

The textual gossamer of Hasidic sermons presented above reveals the ways in which the Hasidic masters allow themselves to be guided by the biblical and rabbinic texts while at the same time articulating their own theological vision. Each sees in the story of Nadav and Avihu some element of contemporary relevance, as well as an insight regarding the eternal and universal world of the spirit. Some Hasidic exegetes warn their listeners— and readers—about the dangerous allure of inner personal devotion, which can take them astray from the community or can lead to self-denial. Many others, however, sought no fault in Nadav’s and Avihu’s yearnings for God. Perhaps such a model of absolute, total devotion cannot be applied to the masses, but their draw toward God and their death is not a matter of sin. The Hasidic masters understand that incorporation into fiery, inscrutable luminosity of the Divine results in the death of the worshiper. This extinction of the self is fearlessly welcomed by those for whom the all-consuming love of God, a devotion beyond all logic and reason, is the heart of their religious service. Hasidism by and large has refused to proceed down this spiritual path, for the moment of devequt is only part of trajectory that returns the worshiper to this-worldly empowerment. But their exegesis of the tale Nadav and Avihu allowed them room to explore alternative visions of the spiritual life, demonstrating that the temptation of dying “with a kiss” in the divine embrace was never far from their imagination. The title of the present essay draws upon a well-known image found in many spiritual traditions, but is particularly associated with the poetic devotion of the Sufi mystics. We will close with some words from the incomparable Rūmī, whose expressive longing for the Divine shares much in common with several of the key Hasidic homilies reviewed above: Reason is like a moth, and the Beloved is like a candle. Whensoever the moth dashes itself against the candle, it is consumed and destroyed. But the moth is so by nature, that however much it may be hurt by that consuming and agony it cannot do without the candle. If there were any animal like the moth that could not do without the light of the candle and dashed itself against that light, it would itself be a moth; whilst if the moth dashed itself against the light of the candle and the moth were not consumed, that indeed would not be a candle.

is religious suicide, the logical culmination of this asceticism, since the only way of escaping profane life entirely is to escape life altogether.”

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Therefore, the man who can do without God and makes no effort is no man at all; whilst if he were able to comprehend God, that indeed would not be God. Therefore the true man is he who is never free from striving, who revolves restlessly and ceaselessly about the light of the Majesty of God. And God is He who consumes man and makes him naught, being comprehended by no reason.121

121 A. J. Arberry, Discourses of Rumi (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 1993), 35.

Index

A

Aaron (also Aaron’s sons), 30, 39–40, 86, 92, 101, 368–404. See also Avihu, Eleazar Aaron b. Tzvi Hirsch ha-Kohen of Opatow, see Ashkenazi, Aaron b. Tzvi Hirsch ha-Kohen of Opatow Abba bar Kahana, 78 Abraham, 7, 19, 77, 81–83, 129, 131–133, 137, 140, 151, 155, 160, 162–164, 181 Abraham Kalisker, 180, 314, 319n40, 328n80, 330, 351 Abramsky, Yechezkel, 356 Abulafia, Abraham, 267, 274–275n52, 276, 321 Achashverosh, 361 Adam, 40, 185, 187, 188, 264, 297, 302–303, 347, 398 Admorim, 119n5, 362 Adon ‘Olam, 4 aggadah, 63, 73 aḥaronim, 105, 108 Aḥot ha-Temimim, 203, 204, 207, 216, 226, 254n120 Al-Azhar University, 333 ‘al ha-nissim, 98, 100, 169 al-Shabrawi, Shaykh Abd al-Khaliq, 333 Degrees of the Soul, The, 333, 345–350 Alkabetz, 12 “Lekha Dodi li-qr’at kallah,” 12 Alter, Avraham Mordecai of Ger, 248, 397–399, 401

Alter, Yehudah Aryeh Leib, xiv–xvi, 285, 289, 380n52, 389–394, 397. See also Sefat Emet Imrei Emet, 397–398 Alter, Yitzḥak Meir of Ger (RIM), 358, 391 Amram Gaon, 100 Antioch, 95 Apter Rav, see Heschel, Abraham Yehoshua of Apta Aqiva, Rabbi, 1–2, 7–9, 23, 85, 87–88, 395 Aristotle, 265n18, 291n29, 291n31, 306n67, 321 Asher ben Yeḥiel (RoSh), 105 Ashkenazi, Aaron b. Tzvi Hirsch ha-Kohen of Opatow (Apta), 276 Keter Shem Ṭov, 276 Or ha-Ganuz la-Tzaddiqim, 276–277 Assaf, David, 312–313 Austin, J. L., 42 Avihu (son of Aaron), 365–40. See also Aaron Avraham ha-Malakh ben Dov Ber, 243n80, 245n88, 248–249, 311–330 Gittel (wife), 233, 243n80, 245n88, 248–249 Ḥesed le-Avraham, 312, 313n7, 314, 315n18, 316n23–24, 318, 320, 322n53, 322n57, 323, 324n65–67, 328n79, 329n84 Avraham Mordecai of Ger, see Alter, Avraham Mordecai of Ger Avrahami, Yael, 95 ayin, 173, 175, 329

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B

Ba‘al Shem Tov (BeSHT), xi, xviii, xxi, 16–17, 157n5, 173, 178, 182n17, 183, 191, 235, 236–237, 239, 242, 244–247, 249–250, 255, 257, 275–276, 317, 319, 353, 361, 368, 369n13, 377n47 Adel (daughter), 236, 246–247, 250 Babylonian exile, 51, 54 Baeck, Leo, 259 Baḥye ben Asher, 374 Bahir, 326 Bal, Mieke, 57 Barukh of Medzhibuzh, 235, 314, 380n52 Beer la-hai Roi, 65n35 Beit Yaakov, 240, 226n14, 254n120 Ben Zoma, 23 Bender, Yitzḥaq Siaḥ Sarfei Qodesh, 229, 236n50, 243n80, 245n87, 246n93, 250n107 Benjamin (son of Jacob), 292, 304–305 Berditchever, see Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev Berekhiah the Elder, 76, 81 Berezovsky, Shalom Noah, 118, 400–402 Netivot Shalom, 118, 125, 152, 400–401 Berezovsky, Shmuel, 118–153 Darkhei No‘am, 119, 125–129, 131, 132n40, 136, 146, 148n95, 151 Bergson, Henri, 284n8 berit, 124–136, 139, 150 Berkowitz, Beth, 116 Berkowitz, Eliezer, 61n26 BeSHT, see Ba‘al Shem Tov Biale, David, 224, 246 Bible, also Hebrew Bible; biblical, xx, 6, 10, 16, 23, 30–31, 50–53, 56–67, 61, 66, 68, 69, 72, 82–83, 85, 87, 91–92, 94, 97–98, 101, 109, 113, 115n41, 119–122, 124–131, 134, 136, 139, 141, 143, 146, 148, 151, 155, 160–163, 174, 235, 244, 259–260, 262, 287, 290, 292–295, 300–303, 306, 309, 368–370, 376, 380, 386, 390, 393, 400, 403, 405 Torah Genesis (Bereshit), xivn5, 9, 29, 40, 55–56n12, 61, 65n35, 77, 109n23, 129, 131n35, 137n55, 140, 162, 172, 174, 181, 211n23, 250n109, 290, 292–296, 297n47, 301–303, 315n20, 319 Exodus (Shemot), 51, 53, 62–65, 67–69, 85–86, 130, 146,

148–149, 151n105, 175n47, 167n24, 184, 186n34, 193– 194, 201, 274n50, 315n19, 366, 370n15, 371–372, 401 Leviticus (Va-Yyiqra), xvi, 1, 13, 17n40, 28n3, 96, 147, 194, 370–375, 378, 380n52, 381, 383–384, 388n70, 389, 391, 393–395 Numbers (Bamidbar), xiv, 27, 28–34, 39–40, 47–48, 64n32, 65n34, 67–68, 79, 126n20, 159, 160n12, 276, 295, 370n15, 380n52, 398 Deuteronomy (Devarim), xiv, 3, 6, 9, 15, 31, 38n29, 41, 52–55, 57, 62n30, 64n32, 65n34, 68n40, 70, 79–80, 113, 140, 143n78, 152, 211–212, 382 Nevi’im Former Prophets (Nevi’im rishonim) Judges, 148n93, 274 1 Samuel, 14, 29, 147n89 2 Samuel, 78 1 Kings, 29, 64–65, 96, 149n98 2 Kings, 91–92, 109 Latter Prophets (Nevi’im aḥaronim), 51 Isaiah, 11, 52n7, 55, 56n13, 145, 148n94, 279n69 Jeremiah, 56n13, 128–129, 133–135, 138, 141, 142n75, 145 Ezekiel, 52, 56n13, 130–131, 140, 160, 274n50, 377n47, 403n116 Twelve Minor Prophets (Trei Asar), 33n24 Hosea, 7 Joel, 68n39, 150n99 Jonah, 68n39 Micah, 56n13, 77, 145 Malachi, 15, 130 Ketuvim Psalms, xviii, 13, 19–20, 22, 25–26, 34, 41, 56n13, 59n22, 62n31, 68n39, 76–83, 85, 126n20, 130, 140, 148, 158, 169, 173, 299–300, 305, 366, 392, 401 Proverbs, 13, 41, 84, 87, 125, 222, 294, 296, 299–301 Job, 53–54, 56n12, 57, 109n21, 272

Index

Song of Songs, 1–2, 8–9, 12, 22, 133n42, 142–143, 270, 375n42 Ecclesiastes, 13, 369n13 Esther, 51, 52n5, 169, 176 Nehemiah, 68n39, 77–78, 83, 136n54 1 Chronicles, 66, 221, 320 bittul, 178, 390 Blumenberg, Hans, 291n30 Bolsheviks, 356 Braiterman, Zachary, 56, 57 Buber, Martin, 24, 52–53, 61, 257, 259, 282, 283n6 Buddhism, 21, 387n68

C

Camus, Albert, 287n15 Canaan, 110, 293 candelabrum (in the Temple), 89–93, 97 Cantonists, 354 Carmel (mount), 65 Cavell, Stanley, 37–38, 44 Celan, Paul, 43–44, 334n7 Chaldea, 77–78 Chechinov, 357–360 Chernus, Ira, 367n6 Christianity; Christian, 4, 9, 13, 24, 26, 68 circumcision, 124, 129, 133–134, 137, 140, 148, 152–153 Cordovero, Moshe, 13, 181n15, 185n32, 319, 321 Cousteau, Jacques-Yves, 365, 377 Czernowitz, 312

D

Dan, Joseph, 282–283, 308 David, 14, 21, 41, 78–79, 81–83, 137 David of Makkov, 326–327 Shever Posh‘im, 326 De Vidas, Elijah, 13–14, 21 Reshit Ḥokhmah, 9n19, 11n22, 13, 15n34 della Reina, Joseph, 367n7 derash; derashot; derashah, 50, 52n4, 56n12, 120–121, 234 Deutsch, Nathanial, 225n10 devequt, 6, 14, 178, 180n13, 190n49, 191–192, 199, 249, 276–277, 375, 379, 384, 402, 404–405 dibbur, 27, 33, 38–39 Dov Ber, Maggid of Mezeritch, xviii, 11, 20, 157, 163–164, 170, 173–174, 176,

178–180, 181n15, 182–184, 193n62, 196n70, 199, 202, 233, 237, 245n88, 248–249, 311–314, 317, 319–320, 322, 328n80, 329–330, 353, 360, 385–386 Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov, 313–314, 319, 321n50, 322n56 Dubin, Mordechai, 216, 220n45 Dvir-Goldberg, Rivka, 224, 239

E

Eagleton, Terry, 283 Egypt, 7, 25, 35–37, 126n20, 128–129, 134, 138, 140, 145, 153, 175n47, 192n57, 262–263, 293, 344 Eleazar (son of Aaron), 28–29, 39. See also Aaron Ele’azar, R., 85–86, 88 Eleazar ben Dordia, 45 Elijah (prophet), 64–65, 237, 383, 396 Elisha (prophet), 91 Elstein, Yoav, 335 In the Footsteps of a Lost Princess, 335, 337n18, 347n34 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 37, 284 Epstein, Qalonymous Qalman, 182n17, 184n29, 191n53, 387–388 Ergas, Joseph, 317 Esau, see Jacob and Esau Exodus, 2, 26, 123, 128–130, 133–134, 138, 140, 144–145 Ezra of Gerona, 375n42

F

Falk, Jacob Joshua ben Zvi Hirsch, 104, 108–117 Penai Yehoshua, 103–117 Felman, Shoshana, 42 Felstiner, John, 43–44 Fischel of Strikov, 357 Fishbane, Michael, 280, 290 Francis, Saint, 20 Freud, Sigmund, 17

G

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 283, 286n13 Galilee, 97 Garb, Jonathan, 119n5, 197 Ge’ulat Yisra’el, 380, 381n53, 386 Gilad, Yehuda, 102n37 Golden Calf, 61–63, 68, 72, 392 Gordon, A. D., 259 Greece; Greeks, 91, 98, 100–101, 262–263 Syrian Greeks, 98, 100

409

410

Be-Ron Yah.ad

Green, Arthur, 126, 160n11, 161n13, 164– 165, 169n29, 169n31, 170n32, 181n15, 288n19, 289n23 Radical Judaism, 4 Greenberg, Irving (Yitz), 171n34 Gries, Ze’ev, 180 Grimm (brothers), 334 Gross, Rita, 231–232, 246n92 Yehuda ha-Nassi, 46

Hopstein, Yehiel Moshe, Maggid of Kozhnitz, 234, 360 granddaughter, 250–251 Perl (daughter), 233, 243–244 Horeb, 61, 64, 70 Horodezky, Shmuel Abba, 224, 233, 239 Ha-Ḥasidut ve-ha-Ḥasidim, 224 House of Study, 28

H

ibn Ezra, Abraham, 62n30, 371 ibn Gabirol, Solomon, 325 Idel, Moshe, 162n15, 186n33, 197, 275, 289, 317, 318n36, 319, 321, 327 idolatry, 129, 148, 201, 261–265, 278–279, 374 Immanuel (town), 119 Israel of Ruzhin, 312–313 Israel Prize (1959), 356 ‘iyyun, 210–212, 215–216, 218

Ḥabad, 21, 204–207, 210, 216, 218–220, 222, 226, 231, 234, 254, 314, 318, 327, 362, 402 Hagar, 65n35 haKohen Katz, Yitzhak Isaac, 322n55 Halbertal, Moshe, 105n9, 106 Halevi, Judah, 267n23 Ḥanina ben Dosa, 155, 181–182 Hanukkah, 89–102, 127, 156n4, 169–170, 176 Haredi, 121 Ḥarlap, Jacob Moses ben Zebulun, 260n4 hasagah, 217n38. See also haskalah Hasidism, passim Haskalah, 104, 117. See also maskilim as a pedagogical term, 217n38. See also hasagah Hasmoneans, 90, 97–98, 100–101 Ḥayyim ibn ‘Attar, 121n8, 374–376, 378 Or ha-Ḥayyim, 121n8, 186n34, 374–375, 378, 402 Hayon, Nehemiah, 317 Hefetz, Mordechai, 216, 218–219 Heidegger, Martin, 282, 287, 289n22, 308, 334n7 Heschel, Abraham Yehoshua of Apta (Opatow), 233, 378, 381 Heschel, Abraham Joshua, ix, xx, 1n2, 3–4, 8, 16, 19, 25, 58n19, 61, 175, 259, 260n5, 280, 292n32 ḥesed, 3, 4n9, 8n15, 10n19, 17n40, 160–162, 320, 328 Hillel, House of, 96 Hillman, James, 332–333, 335 Hirshkowitz, Avraham Yaakov, 332n3 hitbodedut, 204–206, 276 Hitler, Adolf, 51, 53, 59n22, 61n26 Hiyya bar Abin, 66, 76–78, 81–82 Hodakov, Haim Mordechai Aizik, 219–220, 222 Holocaust, 18–20, 51, 58n17, 60, 118, 266n21, 353–363. See also Shoah

I

J

Jabès, Edmund, 65 Jacob and Esau, 158n6 Jacob, 77, 167n24, 172, 174, 292–293 Jacob, Louis, 159n9, 290n26, 311n1 Jay, Nancy, 255 Jerusalem, 8, 26, 97, 355–356 Jesus Christ, 13, 97 John, book of, 97 Johns Hopkins University, xix Jordan Valley, 25 Joseph (son of Jacob), 28, 34, 290, 292–305, 347 Josephus Flavius, 95, 97, 99 Antiquities, 95 Joshua, 40, 160 Joshua of Sikhnin, 84 Judah (son of Jacob), 290, 292–295, 299–305 Judah, R., 92 Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabbah, 74 Jung, Carl G., 322n54, 332–333, 335–336 “Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales,” 333, 335

K

Kabbalah, xii, xvi, 3, 6, 9–10, 12–16, 18, 58, 72, 120, 124–126, 166, 198n79, 212n27, 222, 242, 246, 248, 250, 269, 311–330, 336, 367, 373–374, 379, 391. See also Luria, Isaac; Lurianic Kabbalah; musar movement; tzimtzum; Zohar

Index

Kafka, Franz, 46n49 Kallus, Menachem, 317 Kauffman, Tsippi, 192n58, 193n61, 195n67– 68, 196n70, 315n19 kavvanot, 236, 249, 317–318 Kazimirov, 355–356 Ketem Paz, 331n, 351 Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye, 19, 42, 198, 287 Kohen, David (Ha-Nazir), 259n4, 275n52, 279 Kook, Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen, xiii, 258–279 Koraḥ, 29–30 Koretz, 326 Kotik, Yekhezkel, 230 Kotzk, see Pshiskhe/Kotzk schools Krakow, 204 Krassen, Miles, 179n10, 333n5

Maggid of Zlotshev, xviii maggidim, 178n6, 184, 188 Magid, Shaul, 169n28, 286n14, 289 MaHaRaL, 169n29 MaHaRaSh (Rabbi Shmuel Schneerson), 220 MaHaRSha (Rabbi Shmuel Eidels), 105n6 Maimon, Solomon, 315n22 Maimonides, 3–4, 9, 249, 268, 273–274, 315n20, 321n48, 323–324, 371, 386. See also RaMBaM Guide for the Perplexed, 3, 4n9, 9, 55n11, 263n14, 315n20, 321n52, 323n64, 374n40 Malraux, André, 281, 283 La Condition Humaine, 281 Manasseh, 28 Marcus, Ahron, 322–323 Der Chassidismus, 323 Margolin, Ron, 178n4, 181n15, 190n49, 249 L Mark, Zvi, 334 Lamm, Norman, 54, 55n11, 58n17, 64n32, maskilim, 231n33, 320–322, 324–325. See 290n26 also Haskalah Landau, Rabbi Avraham, 357–358 Mattathias (son of John the Hasmonean), Leader, Ebn, 21n44, 377n48 100 Leah, 235–236 Mayse, Ariel Evan, 322 Leah, Rabbanit see Schneersohn, Rivka Mayseh-Bukh, 238 Leiner, Mordecai Yosef of Izhbits, 394–395, Megillat Ta‘anit (MT), 89, 90–91, 93–94, 398 97–98, 101 Lev, Sarra, 111 Scholium, 89, 90n1–2, 94 Levi Yitzḥaq of Berditchev, xviii, 155–176, Menaḥem Mendel of Chernobyl, 296n44 385–387, 390 Menaḥem Mendel of Premishlan, xvi “Levi Yitzḥaq’s Qaddish” [Din Toyre mit Menaḥem Mendel of Vitebsk, 20, 22, 24, Goyt], 156–159, 161, 176 148n95, 318n35, 367, 368n10 Levi, R., 84 Menaḥem Naḥum of Chernobyl, 19n42, Levin, Shalom Ber, 220n47 193n61, 243n80, 252n111, 314, 368, Levinas, Emmanuel, 69–72 381–383 Lewis, Justin, 224, 234n46 Yesamaḥ Lev, 19n42 Lifshitz, Ya’akov Koppel, 318 merkavah literature, 366, 376 Loewenthal, Naftali, 224–226, 254 Michaelover (Michaelson), Chaya Sima Lorberbaum, Menachem, 311n1, 326, 329 203–204, 206–208, 218–222 Ludmir, Maiden of, 225n10, 233 midrash; midrashic, xii, 1, 12–13, 19, 32, Luria, Isaac, 186n35, 319, 327, 358 35–38, 40, 44, 49, 51, 63, 65–66, 74–75, Lurianic Kabbalah, xvii, 58–59, 166, 185– 81–83, 87–88, 90, 92–94, 98, 101, 109, 186, 199n82, 201n89, 316–319, 320n46, 113, 134, 148, 166, 274, 287, 293–295, 321n51, 372n29 299–301, 303–304, 371–372, 379, 395, Lysias, 95 402 Lizhensk, 359–360 Mekhilta, 2n5, 124n14, 129n28, 148, 151n105 M midrash halakhah, 113, Maccabees, book of Midrash Rabbah, 32, 74 1 Maccabees, 95, 97, 99, 100n35, 101 Bereshit Rabbah, xivn5, 19n43, 2 Maccabees, 95–97, 100n35, 101 56n12, 64n33, 158n6, Magee, Penelope M., 255 294n36

411

412

Be-Ron Yah.ad

Shemot Rabbah, 12, 170n33 Va-Yyiqra Rabbah, 13n28, 74 ff., 94, 370n16, 371n19, 378n49, 382n54 Chicago translation, 74–88 Israelstam-Slotki translation, 74 Margulies edition, 75, 82n8, 83–84 Bamidbar Rabbah, xivn6, 32n11– 12, 33, 35n19, 46n48, 47n52, 295n40 Devarim Rabbah, 167 Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah, 8-9, 12, 52n4 Sifre, 31n8, 31n10, 33–34, 47n51 Tanḥuma, 31n9, 33n14, 64n33, 372, 374 Midrash Tehillim, 64n33 Mir, 356 miracle of the oil, the, 89–102 Miriam’s well, 295 ff. Mishnah, xvi, 46, 99n32, 107n12, 111–116 mitzvot, 11, 18–19, 57, 73, 137, 124, 191–193, 204–207, 222, 379, 389–392 Mordecai, 169–170, 176 Morgenstern, Menaḥem Mendel of Kotzk, 388 Moses, xiv, 7, 27–41, 44–45, 48–49, 51–52, 54, 61–63, 65–70, 72, 79–83, 85–88, 90, 92, 97, 101, 155, 160, 164–165, 166–167n24, 169, 171n35, 175n47, 259, 274n50, 326, 355, 357, 371–372, 382, 398n99, 399, 401 Moshe of Kiev, 326 Muslims, 25 Mussar, 13, 209n17, 262n11, 287, 312

Journey of Losing the Princess, The (Ma‘aseh Mabedat Bat Melekh), 332–337, 342, 345, 352 Liqqutei Moharan, 209n15, 242n75, 269n30, 289, 321n49, 380n52 Sara (daughter), 233, 240 Sefer Ma‘asiyot, 234n48 Naḥmanides, 169n29, 374 Naḥum Ish Gamzu, 174 Nathan of Nemirov, 128n25, 269n30 Nathan, R., 78 Nehemiah, 96 Neoplatonism, 16, 320, 322, 324–325 Neumann, Eric, 333, 335–336 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 59, 61, 287 Niezin, 360 Nifla’im Ma‘asekha, 332, 335, 346–350 Nigal, Gedalyahu, 180n11, 180n13, 187n39– 40, 192n58, 224, 234n47 Noah, 161–162, 164, 348 Noam, Vered, 89–91, 94, 97n27 “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil,” 89–91, 94n14, 97n27–28, 99n30 nusaḥ Ashkenaz, 358 Sefard, 358

O

Ohev Yisra’el, see Heschel, Abraham Yehoshua of Apta Or Zaru‘a, 91 Origen, 9 Otwock, 203, 208, 216, 219

P

partzufim, 316, 326 Peguy, Charles, 282 Persian exile, 51 N Pessin, Sarah, 325–326 Nadav (son of Aharon), 365–405. See also Philo of Alexandria, 371–372, 384 Aharon Phineas, R., 77, 81 Naḥman, Rav, 66 Piekarz, Mendel, 178n3, 179–180n11, Naḥman of Breslov, 10, 168n28, 184n29, 184n28, 190n49–51, 195n68, 200n85 209n15, 229, 233–236, 238n59, 240, Pinḥas, 160n12, 373, 383, 388n69 242–246, 249, 253, 254n119, 289, Pinhas of Koretz, 178n4 321n49, 331–337, 352, 380n52 Polen, David Nehemia, xix–xxi, 50–51, Adel (daughter), 240, 253 153–154, 219, 224, 247, 263n13, 279n69, Adel (maternal grandmother), 235, 246, 282, 286n14, 289, 351–352 249, 254n119 Esh Kodesh [The Holy Fire: The TeachFeige (mother), 234, 235, 236, 244, ings of Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman 245n89, 254n119 Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ḥayei Moharan, 229, 233n39, 235n49, Ghetto] (1994), 50, 351 238n59, 240, 245n89, 253n113, 253n117, 254n119

Index

Pshiskhe/Kotzk schools, 388–391, 393–394, 397, 399–400 Purim, 156n4, 169n31, 170, 176, 361–362

Schneersohn, Yosef Yitzchak, 203–222, 234, 237, 240–241, 254, 356 Divrei Yemei, 230n26, 234n45, 237n53– 56, 241n68–72, 242n76–77, Q 243n79–80, 244n82–84, 245n88, Qaddish, see “Levi Yitzḥaq’s Qaddish” 254 Qedushat Levi, 155–176 Iggerot Qodesh, 203n1–2, 204n4, 205n5, 206n6, 207n8, 209n14, 210n21, R 216n37 Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, 104 Liqqutei Dibburim, 208n13, 217n38 Rachel, 235–236 Schneersohn, Rivka, 230, 234, 237, 240–242, RaMBaM, 3, 9, 16, 18. See also Maimonides 243n80, 244, 245n88, 254 Rapoport-Albert, Ada, 184n26, 184n29, 185, Leah (Rivka’s grandmother), 240–242 206n7, 224, 228, 231, 239 Schneersohn, Shalom Dovber, 219n44 RaShI, 28, 30n5, 31–34, 38n29, 39–42, 47, Schneerson, Menaḥem Mendel, 7n13, 62n30, 104, 105n8, 107n14, 109, 112, 204n4, 208n9, 219, 221n49, 402-403. See 114, 131, 133n42, 141, 142n71, 151n105, also Tzemaḥ Tzedeq 193, 357, 370n16 Scholem, Gershom, 275, 322, 327, 333n4, Rebecca, 235–236 335n13, 367n6 Red Sea, 86, 146 Schwartz, Maier, 231n31 Reshit Ḥokhmah, see De Vidas, Elijah Scott, Joan Wallach, 225 Ricoeur, Paul, 71, 280, 284n8, 288n18, 291, Second Temple (period), 25–26, 52n4, 305–309 58n17, 94, 96, 98n29, 141, 261–262 Riga, 203–204, 206, 216, 219–220 Sefat Emet, xiiin4, xiv, xvn10, xvin14–16, 15, Rimanover, see Turim, Menaḥem Mendel 46–49, 53n8, 64n32, 126n19, 269n30, rishonim, 104, 105n6 281–309, 389–390, 391n77, 392, Rome, 26 393n82, 394n83 Rosenzweig, Franz, 19, 24 Sefer Ḥasidim, 261 Lehrhaus, 19 Sefer Yetzirah, xv, 320n41 Rosh Ha-Shanah, 152, 217n39, 253n115, sefirot; sefirotic, 4n10, 9n19, 11n21, 222, 359n12 239n61, 242, 313, 315n20, 316, 320–326, Rotenberg, Meir of Opatów, 228 328, 374, 379, 384 Rosman, Moshe, 224 Shabbat, 148, 235–236, 295–299, 355 Ruderman, xix Shalom Roke’ah of Belz Rūmī, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad, 20, 366, Eideli (daughter), 245n89 405 Malka (wife), 233, 244n85, 250 Shammai, House of, 96 S Shapiro, Malka, 229, 233, 243n80, 247–248, Sabbateanism, 193, 275, 316–319 253 Sabbath, 127, 129, 131, 243, 296, 298, 299 Rebbe’s Daughter, The, 230n25, 234n44, Sagi, Avi, 287 237n52, 238n61, 243–244n80– Sagiv, Gadi, 231, 232n35 82, 244n85, 247, 250n108, Sarah, 235–236 251n110, 253n114, 253n118, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 287 254n119 Scarry, Elaine, 33 Shemoneh Esreh, 169 Schatz-Uffenheimer, Rivka, 11n22, 174n44, Shim‘on ben ‘Azzai (Simeon b. Azzai), R., 85, 184n28, 198n77, 198n79, 328–329 366, 396 Schenirer, Sara, 204, 226n14 Shimon bar Yohai, 236 Schmelke, R., 255 Shivḥei ha-Besht, 233, 234n48, 239, 243n80, Schneersohn, Dov Ber, 360 248, 250, 311–312 Schneersohn of Bobruisk, Shemariah Shlomo Lutzker (of Lutzk), 313–314, 319, Noach, 356 321, 330, 383–385 Shmelke, R.

413

414

Be-Ron Yah.ad

Miriam, Rabbanit (sister), 233 Shmuel Borenstein, Rabbi, 399–400 Shoah, 19, 50, 54, 57–59, 71–72, 141, 145, 148n90. See also Holocaust Shapira, Kalonymous Kalman, xv, xvii, xix, 50, 219, 258–279, 351 Shoshan Sodot, 326 Sifra, 90, 92–94, 101, 148n91, 371n23 Simḥah, R., 235–236 Sinai (Mount; covenant; theophany on), xiv, 2, 18, 25, 39, 49, 51, 61–62, 65, 69–70, 80, 86, 123, 126, 129, 133, 143, 148, 153, 164–167, 315, 326, 372, 397 Simḥat Torah, xxi, 135, 150n100, 217n38, 355, 363 Slabodka, 356 Solomon, 90, 97, 101 Soloveitchik, Rabbi Joseph B., 55n11, 404 Halakhic Man, 404 Song of the Sea, xiv Sonenberg-Bergson, Temer’l, 229 Steiner, George, 60–61, 72, 282 Sukkot, 95–96

T

Ta-Shema, Yisrael, 105n6, 107n13, 108 Tabernacle, 62n30, 90–94, 96–98, 101, 399 Tagore, Rabindranath, 20 Talmud, ix, xvii, 38, 41, 43, 45–46, 52n5, 64– 66, 68–70, 72, 89–91, 103–105, 107–108, 110, 116–117, 132, 168, 180–181, 189, 244, 249, 255, 379, 384, 397 Babylonian Talmud (Bavli), 89–94, 95–96, 98–99, 101, 103–107, 110, 115–117 Palestinian Talmud (Yerushalmi), 90–91, 94 Zeraim Berakhot, 65n34 (?), 66, 69n41 (?), 104n3 (?), 142n74 (?), 181 (?), 202 (?), 249n105 (B) Peah, 164 Mo‘ed Shabbat, 3n7, 68n40, 392n80, 397n93 ‘Eruvin, 211n24, 212n25, 371n19, 378n50, 382n54, 393n81 Pesaḥim, 175 Yoma, 52n4, 261n7, 264, 371, 393n81, 398n101 Rosh Ha-Shanah, 69, 124n16 Ta‘anit, 168, 174, 295n40 Megillah, 65, 69n41, 140n67

Mo‘ed Qatan, 124n16, 161n13, 164, 168, 275n53 Hagigah, 8n16, 366n5, 395n86, 396n91 Nashim Yevamot, 68n40, 113 Ketubot, 112–114, 115n41 Nedarim, 124n15 Nazir, 194n64 Sota, 52n4 Gittin, 43n40 Qiddushin, 19n41, 110–115, 181 Nezikin Bava Kama, 299–300 Bava Metzi‘a, 161n13, 168 Bava Batra, 31n7, 35n20, 38n29, 47, 48n53, 68n40, 69n41, 202, 263n14 Sanhedrin, 2n4, 31, 33n14, 52n4, 261n6 Avodah Zarah, 45n47 Avot, xvn9, 6n12, 19n42, 279n69, 295, 297n48, 403 Kodashim Zevahim, 384 Menaḥot, 68n40 Ḥullin, 52n5, 170, 360n14 Tohorot Niddah, 124n16 Soferim, 99–100 Talmudic Encyclopedia, 356 Tanhum b. Hanilai, 80 tannaim, 143, 148 Tanya, 22, 189n48, 204–205, 209n16, 209n18, 210n20, 211n23, 213n28–29, 218–219, 254, 271n38, 271n40, 313 Targum, 31–32 Teresa of Ávila, 366 Tertullian, 19 Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, 62–64, 67, 69–70 Tiberean Hasidim, 331n, 351–352 Tishby, Isaiah, 316 Torah, passim. See also Bible Torah, Oral (Torah she-be-’al peh), xiv, 48–49, 68, 73, 113, 164–165, 262–263, 314 (oral sermons; homilies), 398n99 Torah, Written, 48, 113, 263, 398n99 Tosafot, 104, 105n8, 107n14, 109, 112–114, 371n19 Turim, Menaḥem Mendel (Rimanover), 360

Index

tzaddiq (also tzaddiqah; tzaddiqim), 12, 14, 157–178, 179n11, 180–202, 223, 224n7, 225n10, 226n14, 228–235, 238–239, 241–242, 244–245, 247–248, 251–253, 256–257, 320n43, 336, 350, 357–360, 362–363, 373, 377, 382, 384–385, 387, 389–390, 402–403 Tzadoq ha-Kohen Rabinowitz of Lublin, 258–279, 390, 396–397 Tzei’na u-R’eina, 238 Tzelofḥad, daughters of, 27–31, 34, 36–38, 40, 44–47, 49 Tzemaḥ Tzedeq, 210n22, 213n28, 237, 242, 318n25. See also Schneerson, Menaḥem Mendel tzimtzum (divine contraction), 12, 20, 58–59, 72, 166–167, 169–172, 176, 329, 385

U

Ulmanis, Kārlis, 219, 220n45 Ur, 77–78 Urbach, Ephriam, 56

V

Vital, Ḥayyim, 185, 269n29, 272 Sefer Sha‘arei Qedushah ha-Shalem, 269n29

W

Warsaw Ghetto, 50, 71 Warsaw, 203, 204n4, 268, 276, 314, 358, 393 Weinberg, Yechiel Yaakov, 356 Weisblum, Elimelekh of Lizhensk, 359–360, 377n48, 378–379, 381, 386–387 No‘am Elimelekh, 177–202, 360, 379n51 Weiss Halivni, David, 57 Weiss, Joseph, 163, 178n6, 183, 190, 275 Weissler, Chava, 225, 238 Whitman, Walt, 20 Wiesel, Elie, xix, 60n24, 155n1, 351 Wilden, Anthony, 255–256 Wodziński, Marcin, 224, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232n35 Wolfson, Elliot, 15n33, 321n48, 327 Wolpe, David, 55n11 World War II, 51, 72, 353–354, 358

Y

Ya‘aqov Yitzḥaq Horowitz (the “Seer” of Lublin), 200n85, 202n92, 360, 399 Ya‘aqov Yosef of Polnoye, 178–179, 182–183, 188n32, 187, 190n51, 192n58, 193n61– 62, 195–196, 202 Toledot Ya‘aqov Yose, 17n40, 178, 192n58, 195–196n68 Yale University Library, 313 Yehoshua Avraham of Zhitomir, 380 Yehudah Aryeh Leib, see Alter, Yehudah Aryeh Leib Yiddish, 43, 204, 208n13, 220–222, 259, 282n5, 312, 318, 403n117 Yitzhak Isaac haKohen Katz, see haKohen Katz, Yitzhak Isaac Yitzḥak Meir of Ger, see Alter, Yitzḥak Meir of Ger YIVO, 313 Yoḥanan, R., 65, 68–69, 202, 211n24 Yom Kippur, 243, 373, 394, 398 Yom Tov ben Avaraham Ishbili (RITBA), 105 Yonah, 192n59 Yosher Divrei Emet, xviin17, 179n10 Yossel (son of Yossel), 71

Z

Zalman of Liadi, Shneur (Admor ha-Zaqen), 183n24, 189n48, 204–205, 237, 271n40, 313–314, 318n35, 319n40. See also Tanya Zalman, Elijah b. Solomon, 261 Zeitlin, Aaron, 20 Zeitlin, Hillel, 24, 364 Zevin, Shlomo Yosef, 353–363 Sippurei Ḥasidim, 353–363 Zion, 26, 51, 145, Zionist movement, 259 Zohar; Zoharic, xvii, 3, 9–15, 20, 22, 30, 121, 199n80, 210n22, 292n34, 315–316, 319, 321n51, 326, 336, 372–374, 386n65 Tiqqunei Zohar, 4, 12n26, 322n57, 326, 346n25, 348n40, 349n49 Zornberg, Avivah, 66–67, 69, 72 Zusia of Anapoly, 254–255, 360 Zvi Hirsch of Smyritzch, 351

415