#ninth lecture: hasidism: the last phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

The new Hasidism was founded shortly before the middle of the eighteenth century by that famous saint and mystic Israel Baal Shem (“Master of the Holy Name”) who died in 1760 and who during his life-time impressed the mark of his personality on the movement much as Sabbatai Zevi had shaped the character of Sabbatianism. Large sections of Russian and Polish Jewry were drawn into the orbit of the movement, particularly up to the middle of the nineteenth century, but outside the Slavic countries and Russia this form of mysticism was never able to gain a foothold.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

If one leaves out of account the lone effort at religious orientation made by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Ladi and his school, the so-called Habad-Hasidism, Hasidism seems to have produced no truly original Kabbalistic thought whatever. However, this interesting attempt to arrive at something like a synthesis of Issac Luria and the Maggid of Meseritz, despite the fact that it stands alone, provides in fact the best starting point for our investigation. It gives a new emphasis to psychology, instead of theosophy, a fact which must be deemed of the highest importance. To put it as briefly as possible, the distinctive feature of the new school is to be found in the fact that the secrets of the divine realm are presented in the guise of mystical psychology. It is by descending into the depths of his own self that man wanders through all the dimensions of the world; in his own self he lifts the barriers which separate one sphere from the other; in his own self, finally, he transcends the limits of natural existence and at the end of his way, without, as it were, a single step beyond himself, he discovers that God is “all in all” and there is “nothing but [Them]”. 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 the precision of which is not infrequently rather astounding. What gives the writings of the Habad-school their distinctive feature is that striking mixture of enthusiastic worship of God and pantheistic, or rather acosmistic [in contrast to pantheism, denies the reality of the universe, seeing it as ultimately illusory, and only the infinite unmanifest Absolute as real], interpretation of the universe on the one hand, and intense preoccupation with the human mind and its impulses on the other.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

The revival of a new mythology in the world of Hasidism, to which attention has been drawn occasionally, especially by Martin Buber, draws not the least part of its strength from its connection between the magical and the mystical faculties of its heroes. When all is said and done it is this myth which represents the greatest creative expression of Hasidism. In the place of the theoretical disquisition, or at least side by side with it, you get the Hasidic tale. Around the lives of the great Zaddikim, above all Rabbi Israel of Rishin, the founder of the Eastern Galician Hasidic dynasty, have laid down the whole treasure of their ideas in such tales. Their Torah took the form of an inexhaustible fountain of storytelling. Nothing at all has remained theory, everything has become a story.—And so perhaps I may also be permitted to close these lectures by telling you a story of which the subject, if you like, is the fairy history of Hasidism itself. And here it is, as I have heard it told by the great Hebrew novelist and story-teller, S. J. Agnon:

When the Baal Shem had a difficult task before him, he would go to a certain place in the woods, light a fire and meditate in prayer—and what he had set out to perform was done. When a generation later the “Maggid” of Meseritz was faced with the same task he would go the same place in the woods and say: We can no longer light the fire, but we can still speak the prayers—and what he wanted done became reality. Again a generation later Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov had to perform this task. And he too went into the woods and said: We can no longer light a fire, nor do we know the secret meditations belonging to the prayer, but we do know the place in the woods to which it all belongs—and that must be sufficient; and sufficient it was. But when another generation had passed and Rabbi Israel of Rishin was called upon to perform the task, he sat down on his golden chair in his castle and said: We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayers, we do not know the place, but we can tell the story of how it was done. And, the story-teller adds, the story which he told had the same effect as the actions of the other three.

You can say if you will that this profound little anecdote symbolizes the decay of a great movement. You can also say that it reflects the transformation of all its values, a transformation so profound that in the end all that remained of the mystery was the tale. That is the position in which we find ourselves today, or in which Jewish mysticism finds itself. The story is not ended, it has not yet become history, and the secret life it holds can break out tomorrow in you or in me. Under what aspects this invisible stream of Jewish mysticism will again come to the surface we cannot tell. But I have come here to speak to you of the main tendencies of Jewish mysticism as we know them. To speak of the mystical course which, in the great cataclysm now stirring the Jewish people more deeply than in the entire history of Exile, destiny may still have in store for us—and I for one believe that there is such a course—is the task of prophets, not of professors.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

The fact is that from the beginning the Baal Shem, The founder of Hasidism, and his followers were anxious to remain in touch with the life of the community; and to this contact they assigned an especial value. The paradox which they had to defend, that of the mystic in the community of men, was of a different nature than that upon which Sabbatians took their stand and which inevitably gave a destructive turn to all their endeavors: salvation through betrayal. The greatest saints of Hasidism, the Baal Shem himself, Levi Isaac of Berdiczew, Jacob Isaac the “Seer of Lublin,” Moshe Leib of Sassov and others, were also its most popular figures. They loved the Jews and their mystical glorification of this love did not decrease but rather added to its socially effective influence. It is not surprising, rather the contrary, that these men did everything in their power to avoid a conflict with a Judaism they intended to reform from within, and where it could not be avoided, to blunt its edge. Hasidism in fact solved the problem, at least as far as Judaism was concerned, of establishing so close a relation between the pneumatic, that is to say the man who feels himself inspired in every act by a transcendental power, the Pneuma or Spirit, and the religious community, that the inevitable tension between them helps to enrich the religious life of the community instead of destroying it. The fact that this possession of superior faculties, this pneumatic character, became an establishment, as it did in later Zaddikism after the holy fire had burnt down, is merely the reverse side of this positive achievement of Hasidism. Had the typical Zaddik been a sectarian or a hermit and not what he was in fact, namely the center of the community, such an establishment could never have grown up, safeguarding as it did a distinctive form of religious life even after the spirit had departed or, even worse, then commercialized.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

The true originality of Hasidic thought is to be found here and nowhere else. As mystical moralists the Hasidim found a way to social organization. Again we see the ancient paradox of solitude and communion. He who has attained the highest degree of spiritual solitude, who is capable of being alone with God, is the true center of the community, because he has reached the stage at which true communion becomes possible.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

But let us return to our starting point. We know that certain disciples of the Baal Shem’s most important follower, Rabbi Baer the Maggid, or popular preacher of Meseritz, displayed a behavior which was judged extraordinary by their contemporaries and which seemed to justify the suspicion that they stood for a new form of Sabbatian antinomianism [rejection of Laws and against moral/religious/social norms]. Abraham Kalisker was the leader of a group of Hasidim who were in the habit—in the words of one of his Hasidic friends, who thoroughly disapprove of the practice—“of pouring scorn on the students of the Torah and the learned, inflicting all manner of ridicule and shame on them, turning somersaults in the streets and market places of Kolusk and Liozna, and generally permitting themselves all sorts of pranks and practical jokes in public.” And yet there is an all-important difference between even these radical groups and the Sabbatians: their motives are entirely different. For the followers of the “Great Maggid,” Messianism as an active force of immediate appeal no longer had any importance. The mood that inspired them and scandalized their opponents was the primitive enthusiasm of mystical “friends of God.”

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

Now all this amounts to no less than the fact that the founder of Hasidism guarded the literary heritage of a leading crypto-Sabbatian and held it in the highest esteem. Apparently we have here the factual basis of the legend of Rabbi Adam Baal Shem. The historical Rabbi Heshel Zoref, who was indeed something like a Baal Shem, was transformed into a mythical figure, when it became known, to the considerable scandal of the Hasidim, that he was “suspected” of Sabbatianism. It seems to me to be a fact of great importance that, between a new Hasidim and the old to whom Rabbi Heshel Zoref belonged, there was a link, if only an unconscious one—assuming that rabbi Heshel’s Sabbatian belief was as little known to the Baal Shem as to his followers, one of whom is even credited with an abortive attempt to have the work [Sefer Ha-Tsoref] printed.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

Consideration must finally be given to another point. This is the close connection between mysticism and magic throughout the history of the Hasidic movement. It is as though the personality of Israel Baal Shem had been created solely for the purpose of confusing the modern theorists of mysticism. Here you have a mystic whose authentic utterances permit no doubt as to the mystical nature of his religious experience and whose earlier and later followers have resolutely taken the same path. And yet he is also a true “Baal Shem“, that is to say, a master of the great Name of God, a master of practical Kabbalism, a magician. Unbroken confidence in the power of the holy Names bridges the gap in his consciousness between the magician’s claim to work miracles with his amulet, or through other magical practices, and the mystical enthusiasm which seeks no object but God. At the end of the long history of Jewish mysticism these two tendencies are as closely interwoven as they were in the beginning, and in many of the intermediate states of its development.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

The new ideal of the religious leader, the Zaddik, differs from the traditional ideal of rabbinical Judaism, the Talmid Hakham or student of the Torah, mainly in that he himself “has become Torah.” It is no longer his knowledge but his life which lends a religious value to his personality. He is a living incarnation of the Torah.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

To live among ordinary men and yet be alone with God, to speak profane language and yet draw the strength to live from the source of existence, from the “upper root“ of the soul—that is a paradox which only the mystical devotee is able to realize in his life and which makes him the center of the community of men.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

As far as I can see, Hasidism represents an attempt to preserve those elements of Kabbalism which were capable of evolving a popular response, but stripped of their Messianic flavor to which they owed their chief successes during the preceding period. That seems to me the main point. Hasidism tried to eliminate the element of Messianism—with its dazzling but highly dangerous amalgamation of mysticism and the apocalyptic mood—without renouncing the popular appeal of later Kabbalism. Perhaps one should rather speak of a “neutralization” of the Messianic element.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

It is a well-known fact that the emotional world of Hasidism exercised a strong fascination upon men who were primarily concerned with the spiritual regeneration of Judaism. They soon perceived that the writings of the Hasidim contained more fruitful and original ideas than those of their rationalistic opponents, the Maskilim, and that the reborn Hebrew culture could find much of value in the heritage of Hasidism. Even so restrained a critic as Ahad Haam wrote around 1900, in a critical essay on modern Hebrew literature: “To our shame we must admit that of today if we want to find even a shadow of original Hebrew literature, we must turn to the literature of Hasidism; there, rather than in the literature of the Haskalah, one occasionally encounters, in addition to much that is purely fanciful, true profundity of thought which bears the mark of the original Jewish genius.”

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

There is a further and very important point in which Sabbatianism and Hasidism join in departing from the Rabbinical scale of values, namely their conception of the ideal type of man to which they ascribe the function of leadership. For rabbinical Jewry, particularly in those centuries, the ideal type recognized as the spiritual leader of the community is the scholar, the student of the Torah, the learned Rabbi. Of him no inner revival is demanded; what he needs is deeper knowledge of the sources of the Holy Law, in order that he may be able to show the right path to the community and to interpret for it the eternal and immutable word of God. In the place of these teachers of the Law, the new movements gave birth to a new type of leader, the illuminate, the man whose heart has been touched and changed by God, in a word, the prophet.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

Inevitably the original mystical conception of bottomless depths within the Torah was soon transferred to the personality of the saint, and in consequence it quickly appeared that the various groups of Hasidism were developing different characteristics in accordance with the particular type of saint to whom they looked for guidance.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

The whole development centers round the personality of the Hasidic saint; this is something entirely new. Personality takes the place of doctrine; what is lost in rationality by this change is gained in efficacy. The opinions particular to the exalted individual are less important than his character, and mere learning, knowledge of the Torah, no longer occupies the most important place in the scale of religious values.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase

[ouroboros8ontology]

… to sum up: the following points are of importance for a characterization of the Hasidic movement:

1. A burst of original religious enthusiasm in a revivalist movement which drew its strength from the people.

2. The relation of the true illuminate, who becomes a popular leader and the center of the community, to the believers whose life centers round his religious personality. This paradoxical relation led to the growth of Zaddikism.

3. The mystical ideology of the movement is derived from the Kabbalistic heritage, but its ideas are popularized, with an inevitable tendency towards terminological inexactitude.

4. The original contribution of Hasidism to religious thought is bound up with its interpretation of the values of personal and individual existence. General ideas become individual ethical values.

Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism; Ninth Lecture: Hasidism: The Last Phase