CHAPTER 9
The Middle Ages: Hasidei Ashkenaz
BY THE ENDOF THE TWELFTH CENTURY, there were probably four or five independent schools of Jewish mysticism in different parts of Western Europe, simultaneously engaged in mystic practices. They were also in the early stages of formulating a symbolic presentation of the nature of God and the creation that would deeply influence Jewish mysticism for the next eight centuries. These schools had no relation with the Jewish Sufis of Egypt and the Holy Land. Nor did they seem to incorporate the rationalism of Maimonides. Rather, they developed independent of the spiritual ferment in the Maghreb (North Africa) and, in some respects, in opposition to it.
In Germany, we find the Hasidei Ashkenaz (German Pietists), whose influence spread to England, France, and Spain. In Provençe, in southern France, there were several circles of early kabbalists – among them the anonymous authors of the Sefer ha-bahir (Book of Brilliance); the religious scholars of the academies in Narbonne, Posquieres, and Lunel; and later the Gerona group in northern Spain. There were also the Cohen brothers of Castile and the Iyun (Contemplation) circle. Among these groups there were certain similarities and some important differences. Some groups influenced one another and others functioned in isolation. But all of them drew on the heikhalot texts of the merkavah mystics of antiquity, as well as the vocabulary of Neoplatonist philosophy transmitted through the works of Saadia Gaon, Abraham ibn Ezra, and the Arabic philosophers. It was at this time in history that these and other influences joined to create the right environment to nurture numerous mystics in their sincere quest for spiritual realization.
From the time of the Middle Ages in Babylonia and Europe, virtually all Jewish spiritual teachers – whether mystic adepts, guides to law and morality, or masters of scriptural knowledge – always referred to a body of “received” written literature in their teachings. Although the mystics based their teachings on personal experience, they generally referred to an accepted body of esoteric literature based on the process of creation (called ma’aseh bereshit) and the experiences of mystics of previous generations who took the inner journey to the higher realms (ma’aseh merkavah).212 Joseph Dan remarks that even from the time of antiquity, in the rabbinic period, it was not considered acceptable by the normative Jewish establishment to discuss personal experience of the divine through mystic ascent. Thus there is little evidence in the literature of this period of personal mystic experience. Instead, they refer to manuscripts that describe mythical characters of the past taking the inner journey, and most new accounts were written under the names of legendary past masters. Nevertheless, according to scholars like Dan, there are a few documents in which the descriptions are so intense and immediate that one can assume they result from personal experience.213 There are also oral traditions that bear witness to the involvement of many generations of Jewish teachers in mystic practice.
By the tenth century, the esoteric writings and techniques of the merkavah and heikhalot mysticism were known throughout Italy. According to the family history of the Kalonymus family (also known as the Kalonymides), these teachings had been imparted to their ancestors by Abu Aaron ben Samuel of Baghdad, a ninth-century scholar of Talmud who traveled widely in southern Italy. Aaron was known as the “father of all the secrets”; his wisdom and magical powers were legendary. By the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the Kalonymides had moved to Germany, where they had evolved into a remarkable lineage of spiritual masters, called the Hasidei Ashkenaz. (Ashkenaz is the Hebrew word for Germany.) Their teachings were based in large measure on the esoteric secrets of prayer and meditation which their ancestors had received from Aaron of Baghdad and the heikhalot and merkavah texts that they preserved and transmitted to even later generations.
Samuel the Hasid ben Kalonymus, the first of the German Hasidim whom we know about, lived in the early twelfth century, prior to the Crusades. According to legend, when Samuel was still very young, his father died after entrusting the secrets of mystic practice to another scholar with the agreement that he would initiate the child when he became mature.214 Not many of Samuel’s writings have survived; he wrote a short book, Sefer ha-yir’ah (Book of the Fear of God) and probably contributed the first few chapters of Sefer hasidim (Book of the Pious), which was written mostly by his son and spiritual heir, Rabbi Judah the Hasid of Regensburg.
Judah was the towering figure of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, and his work, the Sefer hasidim, reveals a new form of devotion and mystical prayer in Judaism. Judah conceived of a “new community” of pious Jews, whose social interactions would be based on strict ethical principles. Their religious life would also be strict, based on prayer and austerities. In order to effectively carry out their mission in life, the hasidim needed to limit their contact with non-Jews and non-pietist Jews so as not to be distracted from their real work. Although the Hasidei Ashkenaz probably never were able to create the kind of community they projected as their ideal, they were accepted as the “representatives of an ideally Jewish way of life even where their principles were never completely translated into practice.”215
The Sefer hasidim also instructs the common man who loves God how he can follow the spiritual path and worship his Creator. In other words, these hasidim did not see themselves as an aristocratic elite of scholars or spiritual leaders like the early kabbalists of southern Europe. Despite their rather austere way of life, the hasidim functioned as the caring masters of the ordinary person who aspired to sainthood.
The Sefer hasidim begins with a simple statement:
This is called “Book of the Pious.” Its contents are sweet and most desirable. It is written for those who fear God and revere his name. There is a hasid whose heart desires the love of his Creator, to do His will completely. But he does not know which matters to assume, which matters to avoid, or how to immerse himself thoroughly to do his Creator’s will. The reason is that hearts have become deficient. There is a hasid who undertakes a great deal and there is one who does little, but if he knew and understood matters of piety he would do a great deal more than those who do much. It is for this reason that the Book of the Pious was written, so that all who fear God and those returning to their Creator with a sincere heart may see, know, and understand all that they must do and all that they must avoid.216
Rabbi Judah has been likened to St. Francis of Assisi, his Christian contemporary, and the Hasidei Ashkenaz compared to the monastic movements of medieval Christianity who probably influenced them. Judah, like Samuel his father before him, believed in keeping the esoteric aspects of the teachings secret, to be taught only to a few trusted disciples.
Judah died in 1217 and was succeeded by his disciple and family member, Eleazar of Worms, who made the teachings of Rabbi Judah and the Hasidei Ashkenaz more public. Known as the Roke’ah (meaning “merchant of perfumes and medicines” – presumably a reference to his mystical knowledge of how to perfume and heal the soul), he died in approximately 1237, leaving a voluminous literature codifying the hasidic mystical doctrines, as well as works of religious law, commentary, poetry, and guidance for daily life. Above all, to subsequent generations Eleazar became known for his “magical” writings. His five-volume Sodei razaya (Secret of Secrets or Secrets of the Mysteries) includes the section called “Sefer ha-shem” (Book of the Holy Name), which explains the secrets of using holy names of God.217 In other sections he transmits the entire group of heikhalot treatises and other esoteric documents. His teachings of “mystical prayer” and magical uses of sacred names are discussed below.
A defining moment for Rabbi Eleazar was the murder of his son and daughters before his eyes in 1217, during one of the Crusades, when he himself was wounded. At about the same time, he experienced the passing of his master, Rabbi Judah. He believed that the messianic age would begin in the year 1240, and that the Jews needed to be ready for it. It is thought that these factors may have spurred him to make the esoteric teachings he had inherited through his lineage available to a wider audience.
Some of Rabbi Eleazar’s students traveled south and came in contact with mystics in Provençe and Spain and in turn transmitted the teachings to them. According to legend, Eleazar himself miraculously appeared in Spain at the end of his life to bring the secret wisdom of mystical prayer to Nahmanides (Moses ben Nahman), an important Spanish kabbalist of the Gerona school, thus acting as a link in the chain of transmission of the esoteric teachings from Aaron of Baghdad through the Kalonymides, from Italy to Germany and France, and then to Spain, where they merged with other influences to create the mystical teachings of the early kabbalists.
Teachings of the Hasidei Ashkenaz
THE GLORY
One of the key issues facing Jews of that period was, quite simply,
how to pray? To whom does one direct one’s prayers? Prior generations
had prayed to a personal God who acts in history, according to the
traditional rabbinic conception. However, with the growth of the
philosophical mindset, incorporating the Aristotelian concept of a
transcendent God as the Prime Mover, a distinction was drawn in people’s
minds between the transcendent God who is unchangeable and eternal, and
the immanent God who revealed himself to the prophets and who responds
to humanity. Both the Hasidei Ashkenaz (and later the kabbalists)
created a technique of approaching God through mystical prayer, which
resolved the apparent contradiction between the immanent and
transcendent aspects of God.
A new concept had been introduced into Jewish philosophy in the ninth century by Saadia Gaon, that of an immanent, omnipresent God, who reveals Himself to man.218 In a few places, the Bible refers to God’s “glory,” the kavod, which is normally understood as a kind of visual manifestation of the divine power, through which God revealed himself to the prophets and other biblical personalities. Saadia interpreted the kavod to mean a created angel or intermediary, and taught that there were numerous such intermediaries, kavods manifesting above kavods. This concept was quite different from the transcendent God who sits high above and remote on his throne, to whom hymns and songs of praise are sung by hierarchies of angels, but who never reaches down to the human level.
Saadia had in turn inspired the Spanish philosophers, Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1164) and Abraham bar Hiya (died c. 1136). Ibn Ezra taught that the kavod was indeed the instrument of revelation, but it was “not a created angel but a semi-divine power whose interface with the Godhead is as divine and transcendental as the Godhead itself.”219 Judah the Hasid of Germany elaborated on ibn Ezra’s concept by injecting the element of emanation. For him, the kavod was a metaphor for God’s first creation or emanation – the creative power, the primal light itself, identical with the Shekhinah, the divine presence or radiance.
God, who remains infinite and unknown also in the role of Creator, has produced the glory as “a created light, the first of all creations.” This kavod is “the great radiance called Shekhinah” and it is also identical with the ruah ha-kodesh, out of whom there speaks the voice and word of God. This primeval light of divine glory is later revealed to the prophets and mystics.220
In explaining that God has both transcendent and revealed qualities, Eleazar of Worms wrote that He “maintains his silence and (at the same time) carries the universe.”221 The kavod was a divine intermediary between the supreme Godhead and the created world; it had two aspects – the upper aspects were hidden from the prophets and the creation; its lower aspects were revealed to the prophets and sometimes to humanity at large.
The belief in God’s immanence meant that he was approachable as a friend. The hasid had to direct his prayers to the abstract or unseen aspect of God, but the immanent God was the friend who responded. (If one prayed to the revealed aspect, there was the fear that one would be perceived as worshiping an entity lower than God.) This was of key importance to the hasidic conception of prayer. Eleazar of Worms wrote:
God is omnipresent and perceives the just and the evil-doers. Therefore when you pray, collect your mind, for it is said: I always place God before me; and therefore the beginning of all benedictions runs “praise be to Thee, O God” – as though a man speaks to a friend.222
Immanence or omnipresence also meant that God could be perceived by anyone in every created being or object. It became more than simply an abstract notion of God being “everywhere.” It implied that he could be found in the physical world, in one’s own life, as the unifying principle that allows human beings to experience him in time and space. The Ashkenazic Hasidim expressed this by saying that God is closer to humanity than the soul to the body. He is the inmost ground of the soul. In the early twelfth century, Samuel ben Kalonymus, father of Rabbi Judah the Hasid, expressed this in his hymn, “The Song of Unity”:
Everything is in You
and You are in everything
You fill everything and you encompass it all;
When everything was created,
You were in everything;
Before everything was created,
You were everything.223
In some of their writings, Judah and Eleazar divided the kavod into two kavods. One, kavod penimi (inner glory) or kavod nistar (hidden or invisible glory) is the unmanifested divine will, the holy spirit or word of God. It is identical with the Shekhinah, the indwelling holy spirit that is omnipresent and inherent in all creatures, but which doesn’t project itself into the creation.* The other is the visible glory, which may take on a variety of manifested forms according to the will of God. It is sometimes conceived of as a series of ten or more visible glories, much like the kabbalistic sefirot.* The concept of the visible glory allowed for a sense of nearness and immediacy with God, although prayer was still to be directed towards the inner or invisible glory. This notion of a visible and invisible glory was further expanded upon by the Unique or Special Cherub circle of mystics.
The Special Cherub circle
In the heikhalot texts of antiquity, the merkavah mystics recounted
their inner ascent to the realm of the Throne of Glory, where they saw a
divine being or angel seated on the throne. This being is equated in the
writings of the Hasidei Ashkenaz with the visible glory. It is described
in terms related to the physical human body, in keeping with the
anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Bible.
The concept of the glory as an embodied being gave its identity to another, more secretive school of mystics, probably a branch or subgroup of the Hasidei Ashkenaz, called the Unique or Special Cherub school (keruv ha-meyuhad).* They viewed the visible kavod as the cherub, “seated on” (covering) the invisible or hidden aspect of God – the Throne of Glory itself. The cherub is the form through which God revealed himself to the prophets, and through which humanity can know him. It is a symbol of his immanence manifested in human or angelic form. However, prayer was to be directed to the transcendent, concealed glory, the Throne itself; to the hidden aspect of God, which has no human likeness. As explained earlier, to pray to an embodied power, which appears as an angel with physical features, would have been idolatrous.
In the Special Cherub literature, the Throne or invisible glory is also called his holiness, which resides in the west. The revealed, visible aspect of God, the cherub, is called his greatness, his kingdom, and is located in the east. The west is also metaphor for the most-hidden spiritual location of the Shekhinah, the source of divine immanence; from the holiness the divine power shines onto the greatness, the visible glory. The hasidim believed that their prayers should be directed to the holiness itself, the hidden source of all emanation. In the pesak, a summary of the teachings of the Cherub circle which was written for the general public, we read:
All God-fearing people, when they pray, have to direct their prayers, when they say “Blessed is God,” and when they kneel before Him and thank Him and direct their prayers in their hearts, only to His Holiness alone, which is His Glory and which has neither form nor image, only voice, spirit, and speech, and so Isaiah said: “To whom then will ye liken God? Or what likeness will ye compare unto Him?” (Isaiah 40:18).224
The real object of their prayer and meditation, the goal of mystical contemplation, lies beyond the greatness – it is the “hidden holiness of God, His infinite and formless glory, wherefrom there emerges the voice and the word of God. The finite word of man is aimed at the infinite word of God.”225
The ancient text of the Shiur Komah (Measure of His Stature), according to legend written by Rabbi Akiva in the second century, describes an angel or divine being seated on the Throne of Glory. The Special Cherub of the hasidim is none other than this classic symbol of antiquity, the divine being of astronomically large physical proportions, covered all over with the letters of the sacred names of God.* He is depicted as sitting on the Throne of Glory wearing tefillin (phylacteries) on his forehead – portable cube-shaped containers holding scrolls of key passages from the Bible. The pesak text describes him as having been initially emanated from God’s great fire, after which –
He [God] created for him an image and a form, the form of a man, eyes and hands and hips, and on his forehead is engraved “Yah Akhatriel,”* and there are phylacteries on his head … and he has the Measurement of the Height [Shiur Komah] of Rabbi Ishmael, and man was created in his image, and he sits on the Throne of Glory.226
The hasidim believed that the Cherub, the Shiur Komah, was the spiritual “form” or model from which man was created, thus the biblical statement that man was created in God’s image. The pesak describes the Cherub as having been brought to life when God’s name Yah Akhatriel was inscribed on his forehead – perhaps symbolic of the third eye, the spiritual gateway where the divine power enters the human body.
The Special Cherub circle lived in northern France and England, and was related to the Hasidei Ashkenaz. Unlike them, however, they did not publish their writings under their own names but under the names of legendary figures like Joseph ben Uzziel, the grandson of the biblical prophet Jeremiah. Perhaps anonymity was a way of protecting what would have been considered heresy – a secondary god in the form of man, seated on the divine throne – even if their prayers were not directed to him.
Practice
MYSTICAL PRAYER
In the Judaism of antiquity, as we saw earlier, the mystics were
engaged in the manipulation of holy names to induce mystic experience,
but probably not openly or systematically. In the heikhalot mysticism
such techniques were used by those who attempted the inner ascent, but
there is no record of them having been used in the liturgy and prayers
recited by ordinary Jews in the synagogue.
A key innovation of the Hasidei Ashkenaz in the history of Jewish spirituality was “mystical prayer.” Prayers and hymns to God had been written by poets and rabbis over the centuries. Collections of psalms and other biblical verses had been drawn from the scriptures into the liturgy, but never before had the emphasis been placed on the need for strict precision in the recitation and writing of the words and letters of the prayers. Earlier, the attitude to the liturgy allowed for creative input and on-the-spot improvisation. Now even the number of words in a prayer took on importance.
For example, if the name of God appeared in a prayer nineteen times, and similarly Israel is called God’s son nineteen times in that prayer, there is a significance in the correspondence that has an esoteric meaning. If you were to add one more sentence in which the name of God appears, it would throw off the mathematical symmetry.
Rabbi Judah wrote to a group of Jews who didn’t understand this important truth:
You inhabitants of France and the Islands of the Sea [England] who err utterly and completely, for you invent lies and add several words in your prayers of which the early sages who formulated the prayers never dreamed, when they commanded us to say the prayers in place of the sacrifices in the Temple. Every benediction which they formulated is measured exactly in its number of words and letters, for if it were not so, our prayer would be the song of the uncircumcised non-Jews. Therefore, give heed and repent, and do not go on doing this evil thing, adding and omitting letters and words from the prayers.227
Scholar Joseph Dan explains that for Rabbis Judah and Eleazar and their disciples, “every addition or omission of a word, or even of a single letter, from the sacred text of the prayers destroys the religious meaning of the prayer as a whole and is to be regarded as a grave sin, a sin which could result in eternal exile for those who commit it.”228 Humanly mandated changes would make the prayers secular and remove their potency. By ascribing a mystical significance to the very words and letters, it elevates the prayer from mere repetition to a mystical process.
There was a logic behind this. The Ashkenazic Hasidim believed in divine providence and destiny, of even the minutest details of life. They believed that there is a divine master plan, which is revealed in everything that happens in history, and it can be seen as the underlying pattern or blueprint woven through the sacred texts of the Bible and the prayers.229 Thus the divine design can be understood by finding the embedded codes hidden within the texts. Dan writes that Rabbi Judah and his disciples
evolved a mystical theory, according to which the words of the various prayers are not accidental, nor are they only vehicles for their literal meaning. Their order, and especially their numbers, reflect a mystical harmony, a sacred divine rhythm, which was introduced by the rabbis who formulated the daily prayers.… This mystical harmony can be discovered in historical events, directed by God; in nature, … and first and foremost in the Bible. According to Rabbi Judah and the Ashkenazi Hasidic school in general, there can be nothing accidental in the Bible, not even the forms of letters.… It sometimes seems that where other readers would see letters and meanings in the Bible, the Ashkenazic Hasidim would see only rows of figures and numbers, mystically connected.… The mystical harmony inherent … in the biblical text is to be found also in the text of the prayers.230
From this perspective, one can understand why people would avoid deviating from the prescribed prayers! There would be cosmic implications, and harm could fall on the Jews. The purpose of mystical prayer was not necessarily to preserve or improve the relationship between man and God, it was to affect the realm of the divine. This almost borders on magic, or theurgy, an attempt by man to control divine powers through his actions. The hasid becomes an adept at maintaining the balance in the divine realm, and the universe depends on his efforts for its continued existence.
There were three techniques the hasidim used for extracting esoteric meanings from words and passages of the Hebrew language, all based on the fact that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet have numerical values. The main one is gematria, the principle of finding a numerical value of the Hebrew words and searching for other words or phrases of equal value, thus establishing a connection between their meanings. Other techniques included temurah, interchanging the letters of a word according to certain systematic rules, and notarikon, interpreting the letters of a word as abbreviations of other words.231 These techniques are still in use by people wishing to find codes or esoteric meanings in the letters and words of the Bible.
Of course, it was not only the esoteric significance of the letters and words that were the focus of the prayers. Kavanah, a mind directed with intention and concentration, was the foundation of all prayer. The words were supposed to be drawn out and repeated slowly, with concentration and intention concerning both the meaning and the letters themselves. For the uneducated, the meaning alone was sufficient; simple sincerity was tolerated and appreciated. But the sage was to engage in mystical prayer at both levels – of external meaning and esoteric significance. Melodies were also attached to the prayers to enhance concentration. The hasidim put their shawls over their heads to avoid seeing others. To prevent laughter during prayers, they shut their eyes, ground their teeth, and pulled in their stomachs. They also avoided sitting next to non-hasidim so that their minds would not be distracted from God.
PROPHECY AND MAGIC
It was only a short leap from the practice of mystical prayer as
described above, to the use of the words and letters of the prayers for
magical purposes. As mentioned earlier, theurgy is often considered a
polite word for magic. The works of Eleazar of Worms are filled with
pages of magical formulae and permutations of the texts of the prayers
and names of God, ostensibly for the purpose of maintaining the divine
balance or augmenting the divine realm.* However, there is evidence that
practitioners often used these texts for magical purposes and personal
motive, justified as religious or spiritual in nature. There are
numerous legends and accounts of hasidim who had prophetic revelations
or gained psychic powers through these techniques, which they used for
healing or to give guidance to devotees.
As in rabbinic times, in those days there was a pervasive fear of demons, spells, and curses. Also, the Crusades had added an element of uncertainty to Jewish life. The threatening atmosphere of the world around them made the Jews receptive to a belief in magical practices. On the advice of the hasidim, the common people would wear amulets and charms with scrolls containing divine names and magical formulae that held the promise of effectively disempowering all such negative forces. These forms of magic continued to be practiced throughout the succeeding centuries right through to the hasidic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the ba’alei ha-shem (masters of the name) traveled through Poland creating charms and using holy names to influence people’s destiny.
The knowledge of magical names and techniques, which brought the gifts of prophecy and inner visions, testified to the reputation of the Ashkenazic Hasidim as mystics of intensity with divine powers. For although many were renowned as Talmud scholars and ethicists, they were also practicing mystics and magicians. Among them were the French ethicist, Isaac of Dampière, routinely referred to as a visionary, Elhanan ben Yakar of London and his disciple Ezra of Montcontour, called the navi (the prophet and miracle worker)*. According to popular legend, Ezra ascended to heaven in the merkavah and asked the last of the canonical prophets – Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi – when the messiah would come. His ascents to heaven were attested to by witnesses who watched him go into mystic trance. Other scholars, including Eleazar of Worms himself, “after days of fasting and prayer, were granted the revelation that all his words were truth and not deception. He also produced talmudic explanations the like of which had never been heard before, and he revealed the mysteries of the Torah and the prophets.”232 His prediction that the messianic age would begin in 1226 and culminate in 1240 caused excitement throughout the Jewish community.
As in the earlier centuries, community members would routinely ask their rabbis questions concerning the application of religious law to affairs of daily life and the correct performance of rituals. The responses would normally be based on precedents found in the Talmud and other codes of religious law. Not so with Rabbi Jacob of Marvège – a hasid of the late twelfth–early thirteenth century; he would formulate a question before going to sleep at night and receive the response during his sleep in a dream, presumably from heaven – implying that it came either from a spirit or from God himself. He would also fast beforehand and use combinations of divine names in meditation to induce the heavenly response. His responses are included in a collection called Responsa from Heaven, which was brought to light as recently as 1957. Although this method of contact with the astral or psychic world was normally frowned upon as a misuse of spiritual energy, Rabbi Jacob was admired as a prophet for doing so. He was certainly not the only one to use such methods to respond to questions of daily life, and such collections of responsa demonstrate the ambivalent attitudes about the use of magic.
PENANCES
Hand in hand with the practice of mystical prayer and magic, the
Hasidei Ashkenaz established a system of penances. Earlier in Jewish
history, repentance was not of much concern to the mystics; now, as
Scholem remarks, “it became the central fact of their existence.… In the
place of the heavenly journey of the self-absorbed ecstatic, and
parallel to the new emphasis laid on the now enormously important act of
prayer, the technique of penitence was developed into a vast and
elaborate system until it became one of the cornerstones of true
hasidut [the hasidic way of life].”233
The hasidic perspective on the world was that it was an illusion, governed by the unrelenting laws of destiny. Human beings were considered above all sinners who need to make restitution to God by their individual acts of repentance. This was probably the way the Ashkenazic Hasidim were able to cope with the terrible events being perpetrated by the Crusaders, when armies of Christian soldiers on their way to the Holy Land to fight the “infidels” would regularly victimize Jews and other nonbelievers unfortunate enough to be living along their route. The suffering the Jews experienced could be explained as the result of sin. One needed magical prayer and penances to counteract such sins.
So the hasidim created a system of penances as appropriate payment for specific sins. The concept was probably taken from the elaborate penances devised by the Church in that period and adapted to the Jewish milieu. Some of these were extreme and bizarre and led to fanatical acts of asceticism. For example, a story is told of a hasid who had mistakenly erased the “name of God” from a scroll of parchment containing prayers. Of course, given the importance of precision in the texts of the prayers, lest a negative power be unleashed, his concern was understandable. “He said to himself: ‘I have despised God’s honor, therefore I shall not think higher of my own.…’ So every day when the congregation entered and left the synagogue, he lay down on the doorstop, and old and young passed over him; and if one trod on him, whether deliberately or by accident, he rejoiced and thanked God. Thus he did for a whole year.”234
Another story is told of a man who was not guilty of any particular grievous sin, but decided that he would sleep on the floor in summer, among the fleas, and place his feet in a bucket with water in winter, until they froze into one lump with the ice. When he was asked why he did this, he said, “the messiah is suffering for our sins … and I don’t want anyone but myself to suffer for my sins.”235
Constant vigilance over one’s behavior was necessary because of the active nature of man’s evil inclination. In the Sefer hasidim Rabbi Judah wrote:
If you withstood a great test, do not be confident of yourself until the day of death, to say: “Since I did not sin in this great matter, I will no longer sin.” Because the evil inclination today is not the same as yesterday, therefore perhaps in the very same matter tomorrow you will be unable to endure.236
Conclusion
The hasidim of medieval Germany became the proprietors of divine
secrets concerning the creation and the nature of the Godhead, the
secrets of divine names and mystical prayer. They had deep knowledge of
ancient writings, including the merkavah and heikhalot literature as
well as Bible and Talmud. The techniques they created and expanded upon,
of focusing on the numbers of the words and letters of the prayers,
later became associated with kabbalistic practices, especially the
teachings of Abraham Abulafia, but they had originated with the Hasidei
Ashkenaz, particularly with Eleazar of Worms.
The extraordinary history of the Hasidei Ashkenaz with their revolutionary forms of worship and repentance, and their concepts of the visible and invisible glory, prepared the way for a revolution in Jewish mysticism in southern Europe in the succeeding centuries.