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4. CHAPTER 14    Hasidism: A New Paradigm

CHAPTER 14
Hasidism: A New Paradigm

The tsadik as foundation of the world
AFTER THE GOLDEN AGE OF SAFED in the sixteenth century, Kabbalah spread even further into European Jewish society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, transformed through the teachings of Isaac Luria. Fellowships of kabbalists continued to meet in small groups just as they had in Luria’s time; the symbolism and theosophy of Luria penetrated all Jewish life, even among nonkabbalists. The esoteric teachings were transmitted from master to disciple, one generation to the next. The kabbalists were an elite of the educated, concerned with the abstract symbolism of God and the divine realms; the purpose of their meditations was to affect the relationships of powers within the divine realm and stimulate the coming of the messiah. Although in the sixteenth century Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague (the Maharal) had paved the way to simplifying Kabbalah and making it relevant to the common man, the majority of kabbalists still adhered to the old model.

The way of life of the kabbalists was called hasidut (piety) and the members of kabbalistic fellowships were often called hasidim, the term used for mystics and devotees in many periods of history. “Their purpose was to hasten redemption of the Shekhinah by withdrawing themselves from this world – the world of evil and exile – and seek proximity to the higher realms, of good and redemption.”⁴⁰⁹ The kabbalist hasidim were marked by their elite status, ascetic lifestyle, and secretive complex practices. Because the hasidic movement that later developed in eighteenth-century Poland shared the same terminology for its adherents as the kabbalist hasidim, scholars have often call the kabbalist hasidim “old-style” hasidim.

In a sense, Hasidism was a continuation of Kabbalah, but it stripped away Kabbalah’s excessive symbolism, rigid asceticism, and complicated forms of worship and meditation. In place of the ascetic penances of Kabbalah, Hasidism stressed a worship based on joy. The way to reach God was transformed from a secret doctrine for the elite into a popular movement focused on the living masters, or tsadikim, who served as intermediaries for their disciples with the divine realms.

Hasidism, then, was (and continues to be) the most recent link in the chain of Jewish mysticism that extends from the ancient heikhalot and merkavah literature and practices, to the early and later Kabbalah, into the eighteenth century and the modern world. Yet it is also revolutionary in that it applies kabbalistic principles to the population at large, bringing the divine into every aspect of life so that all life is touched by the spiritual dimension, and every person has the potential to be redeemed.

Kabbalah had been discredited to a certain extent because of its association with Shabatai Tsevi. Nevertheless, many Jews were still deeply influenced by Shabatai’s claim to messiahship and his use of kabbalistic symbolism in explaining his mission to liberate the good and holy from the realm of evil. Often there was confusion in the minds of the masses as to which aspects of Shabatai’s teachings could be preserved and which should be rejected. The fear of being linked with Shabatai and his followers drove Kabbalah further underground, into the safety of small elite groups of kabbalists all of whom knew each other intimately.

And, as much as Shabatai was officially disparaged, and even saying his name became taboo, the concept of the master embodied in Shabatai – as a quasi-supernatural being who, through his spiritual influence, could save souls – anticipated the hasidic concept of the tsadik. In fact, it is probable that had Shabatai not existed, there would have been no precedent for acceptance of a human mediator with the divine to the degree in which it was adopted in Hasidism. It is as if, in a certain ironic twist of history, he himself was the model for the tsadik.

Social background
Jews had started migrating to Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine in the sixteenth century, as a haven from the oppression they were experiencing in southern Europe. They found an atmosphere of tolerance and prosperity in which Jewish life flourished, and Torah study reached great heights with illustrious teachers. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, conditions in Poland had started degenerating and by the eighteenth century life had become extremely harsh. In 1648 the Ukrainian Count Chmielnicki led armed bands of Cossacks in a series of pogroms against the Jews – between 100,000 and 500,000 were killed. (No one knows the exact number.) Invasions from Sweden and elsewhere followed, in which Jews were targeted. Many towns were completely destroyed. The Jewish community was greatly weakened and Jewish life went into decline. There was extensive oppression from the nobles and church officials, as the Jews virtually became slaves – vulnerable and unable to defend themselves. The appeal of messianic figures like Jacob Frank and Moses Hayim Luzzatto was felt, but was limited to small groups of disciples or specific communities. The common man had nowhere to turn.

INTERNAL SPIRITUAL DECAY
The decline of Jewish life was also visible in an internal spiritual decay – in the corruption of religious leadership and the alienation of the ordinary people. The rabbis traditionally were supposed to provide guidance to the community in issues of daily life and the prescribed worship. However, over time, Torah study had degenerated into endless hairsplitting arguments over fine points of text and law, and the religious needs of the common people were neglected. The rabbis studied the religious texts to show off their knowledge and not to help the people. They served the needs of the wealthy and neglected the am ha-arets (the simple “man of the earth”). In some instances they had even purchased their positions from government officials. Prayers had lost their spark of spirituality. They were repeated in a perfunctory manner and inner devotion was lacking.

The scholar Samuel Dresner has done an intensive study of early Hasidism and the religious and social milieu of the time. Through his translations of the writings of Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoy (1710–1784), a close disciple of the Ba’al Shem Tov (the first hasidic master), we can get a picture of the degeneration of Jewish life during this period. He recounts the following parable about the loss of spiritual inspiration:

An apprentice learned his trade from a blacksmith. After he had mastered it, he made a list, point after point, of how to go about his craft. But he neglected to note down that he should first ignite a spark for the fire, as this was obvious.

When he went to work at the king’s palace, he was unable to perform his duties as he had forgotten to light the spark. Finally he returned to his master, who reminded him of the first principle, which he had forgotten.⁴¹⁰

The fire of devotion had been extinguished because of the lack of spiritual leadership. Ya’akov Yosef wrote eloquently of the terrible abyss, the gulf that divided the religious scholars from the people. He talked of the abuses of the rabbis and “the pride of the learned,” and he emphasized that there was an overwhelming need for a bond to heal this rift. He used the example of the Shekhinah, the holy spirit who is in exile from her beloved, to illustrate how deep and devastating the gulf was, and how it affected the divine as well. For if the people don’t have proper spiritual leadership, there will be no one to bring them close to God. God yearns for the love of his people, so the corruption of the spiritual leadership means that God himself experiences the loss of their devotion, “for the Shekhinah is in exile, because we have no leader, no one to give us strength.”⁴¹¹

The Ba’al Shem Tov
It was into this atmosphere that a different type of spiritual master appeared among the Jews – the mystic who broke away from the complexity of Kabbalah and traditional religious study, who offered liberation to the soul of the common man, who reignited the fire of spirituality. This was Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Ba’al Shem Tov (master of the good name), who was often called simply the Besht, an acronym of his name.

The early life of the Ba’al Shem Tov is obscured by legend, not unlike the stories of the early lives of many saints and holy men in different cultures. The first recorded stories about him are preserved in a collection called Shivhei ha-Besht (translated into English as In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov). Born in 1698 in Okup, a small village on the Russian-Polish border, Israel was orphaned at an early age. As a boy he appeared to be quite ordinary and even unintelligent – and as he grew older he did not display the brilliance or understanding of religious texts that would be required of a pious man. Instead, he was content to wander in the forests enjoying his solitude and the company of animals. When he finished school, the young Israel was given a job as a helper in the local synagogue.

To most people he appeared as a simpleton. Even his future brother-in-law tried to discourage his sister from marrying him, despite a contract signed by their father, as he thought the young Israel was ignorant of Talmud and Jewish law. After his marriage, Israel spent a lengthy period as a recluse, which prepared him for his role as a spiritual master. In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov tells the story:

He lived in a small village and made his living by keeping a tavern. After he brought brandy to his wife he would cross the river Prut and retire into seclusion in a house-like crevice that was cut into the mountain. He used to take one loaf of bread for one meal and eat once a week. He endured this way of life for several years. On the eve of the holy Sab- bath he used to return home. His brother-in-law, Rabbi Gershon of Kotov, thought him to be an ignorant and boorish person, and he used to try to persuade his sister to obtain a divorce from him. But she refused since she knew his secret but did not reveal it to anybody.⁴¹²

Later, the Ba’al Shem Tov moved from Okup to another town where he was employed as a teacher’s aide. And then, when he revealed his true spiritual stature, he moved to Miedzybozh, in western Ukraine, where he assumed his role as a spiritual master to a small group of disciples who chose to live close by him, and to many others who would visit occasionally. He lived there till his death in 1760.

From the mid-1730’s on, … the Ba’al Shem Tov appears to be at the center of a group of men who see him as a source of inspiration and authority. These men, referred to in Shivhei ha-Besht as anshei segulato [his treasured people] all outranked him in family background, social status, and education.… They saw him as having extraordinary mystical and spiritual qualities, as being endowed with inspiration and the gift of prophecy.⁴¹³

A story in In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov shows the reverence in which the Besht came to be held. It begins with the Besht revealing his true identity to a student of Rabbi Gershon’s. Gershon then instructs the student to go to the large sect of kabbalists in the town (whom he calls hasidim) and also to the rabbi of the community and say the following:

“There is a great light living near your community, and it will be worthwhile for you to seek him out and bring him to the town.”

When all the hasidim and the rabbi heard these things, they decided that it must refer to the Besht.… All of them went to his village to invite him to come to town. The Besht had foreseen what would happen and he went toward the town as they were going out to see him. When they encountered each other they all went to a certain place in the forest where they made a chair out of the branches of trees. They placed him on the chair and they accepted him as their rabbi. And the Besht said Torah to them.⁴¹⁴

The theme of the advanced soul disguised as an ordinary rustic simpleton is one which resonates in many periods of Jewish spiritual history. Many of Judaism’s living masters appeared on the stage of life without their lofty spiritual nature being revealed. For example, the prophet Moses, at the moment God called upon him to become the savior of the Israelites, told God that he was inarticulate, a stutterer, a simple shepherd certainly not qualified to be a leader of men.

The Zohar also contains many symbolic stories showing the true spiritual master disguised as a simple “man of the earth.” In the series of stories we read earlier, he appeared as a mule-driver accompanying two learned rabbis on a journey. When he hears their discussion, he interrupts with a deeper interpretation of the scriptures, and they recognize that he is no ordinary driver of animals. In another story, the spiritual master appears as a child. It is only when he speaks great wisdom to the assembled scholars that they recognize that he is not a child but their own great master. There are many other such instances in Jewish religious literature.

Ba’alei shem: Masters of the name
In taking a closer look at the Ba’al Shem Tov, we need to explore the significance of his name. The term ba’al shem was used from as early as the sixteenth century for a type of kabbalist who used kabbalistic or “magical” techniques to protect people from demons and evil spirits, and to relieve them of diseases and other types of misfortunes. The belief in demons was common among both Jews and non-Jews in Europe, and they sought relief from unexplained phenomena which they blamed on demons. There was a universal belief that crossed the boundaries of religion and class that “demonic powers have a vast potential for impairing the health and welfare of human beings. As if that did not suffice, it was further believed that magical means could be used to mobilize these demonic powers and press them into the service of humans.”⁴¹⁵

There were many ba’alei shem who wandered from village to village offering relief from ill-fortune and the influence of demons. They were often called practical kabbalists – those who could apply the mysteries of Kabbalah to practical ends. Today we might call them magicians or healers; they exorcised evil spirits and taught charms that would protect newborn infants, pregnant women, and newly married couples from the demonic powers. They also knew natural remedies for many diseases. The charms and amulets they created used various permutations and configurations of the names of God, the angels, and the prayers.^* The ba’al ha-shem who appeared in your village would personally intervene with the heavens on your behalf, or you could purchase books of charms that he sold and try the formulae on your own.

There are numerous unsubstantiated legends that Israel ben Eliezer was a member of the nistarim, a hidden society of ba’alei shem, and had inherited some of their secret manuscripts. Whether or not there is any truth to these legends of the nistarim, it seems certain that Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba’al Shem Tov, began his career as one of the wonder-working ba’alei shem. But because he was seen to have extraordinary supernatural powers he was called the Ba’al Shem Tov, the “master of the good name” of God, considered to be higher and more spiritually evolved than the ordinary ba’alei shem who derived their knowledge from intellectual study of kabbalistic and magical texts, not from their own spiritual, inner experiences.

Witnesses describe the remarkable spiritual powers of the Besht which attracted many followers: remote vision, the ability to predict the future, read people’s past lives, hear divine decrees, and so forth. These were considered gifts of divine providence, to be used for the benefit of the populace as a whole.⁴¹⁶ Even his healing was done not only through incantations and spells but through his experiences of ecstatic prayer, a state he would enter into when praying with total devekut (adhesion to God).

It seems fairly certain that the reason we remember the Ba’al Shem Tov today is that he was not only a purveyor of charms but a channel to the divine realms, guide and protector of souls, an important link in the chain of transmission of spiritual knowledge through the generations.

Disciples
The Besht had many disciples, but there were three or four who were exceptionally close. These were Rabbi Gershon, his brother-in-law, who initially was unaware of his spiritual greatness, Rabbi Dov Baer, known as the Maggid (preacher) of Mezherich,^* and Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoy. All of them were renowned scholars who initially scoffed at the devotional, nonscholastic approach of the Ba’al Shem. But all were deeply moved by the master as they came in contact with him. And while Dov Baer became the successor to the Besht, it was Ya’akov Yosef who recorded many of the sayings and homilies of his master.

The “conversion,” or initiation of Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef reveals the master’s ability to affect the disciple to his very core. It involved not a new course of study or acceptance of new dogma, but a complete change in the personality and way of life of Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef, who until then was

a harsh, officious man, rigorous in his personal observance, devoted to study, aloof from the people and their problems, given to outbursts of anger and assertions of authority.… The change which the Besht wrought in his soul was the turning point of his life. It reached down to the core of his being, opened his eyes to what he had been and revealed what he must become.⁴¹⁷

There are several stories and traditions that describe this conversion. The Ba’al Shem Tov entered the town of Sharogrod where Ya’akov Yosef was rabbi and, with his gift of storytelling, soon attracted an audience. Ya’akov Yosef heard about the Ba’al Shem and felt he was disturbing the peace by gathering so many people around him. He went to confront him but the Ba’al Shem told him several stories: first one, then another, then another. After three stories, Ya’akov Yosef “entered into conversation with him and immediately ‘was joined’ to him.”⁴¹⁸

“Entering into conversation” with his master describes their inner communion, soul to soul, in which he became “joined” to him. This implies a spiritual initiation, where the disciple merges with his master on a spiritual level and thus always has his internal guidance and protection.

According to another legend, the Ba’al Shem Tov told Ya’akov Yosef the story of a rabbi who had cruelly beaten a water carrier, and who then suffered for years because he could not find the man to apologize to him. Ya’akov Yosef recognized himself in the description of the haughty and cruel rabbi, and was deeply moved by the Ba’al Shem’s knowledge of his most-secret guilt. We can read in Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef’s own words what happened after one of his early meetings with the Ba’al Shem Tov, when he found himself doubting the Besht’s spirituality:

Afterwards, during the prayer, I wept as never before in my life, and I realized that it was not my weeping. Later, when the Besht traveled to the land of Israel, I was left desolate until he returned. Then I began to travel to him and remained for some time with him. The Besht used to say that it was necessary to elevate me. After I had been with him for about five weeks, I asked, “When, sir, will you elevate me?”⁴¹⁹

Rabbi Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezherich, was witness to the Besht’s state of ecstasy on his very first visit to him. It was this experience that brought this great scholar and mystic, a kabbalist and ascetic who had been a professional preacher and leader of prayers in many communities, into the orbit of the Ba’al Shem Tov, to whom he became totally devoted.

According to tradition, the Maggid probably met the Besht in 1753. The circumstances are not entirely clear, but In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov recounts that the Maggid wasn’t well, due to the excessive austerities and fasting he used to indulge in, and another hasid advised him to seek a cure from the Besht. He stayed close to the Besht during his period of convalescence, and on one occasion the Besht called him to read Kabbalah with him. The Maggid read a couple of pages, and the Besht interrupted saying:

Not like that, I shall read it out to you! He began to read, and while he read he trembled. He rose and said: “We are dealing with the affairs of the merkavah and I am sitting down.” So he stood up and continued to read.

As he was talking he lay me down in the shape of a circle on the bed. I was not able to see him anymore. I only heard voices and saw frightening flashes and flares. And so it was for about two hours. I grew very frightened and that fear caused me to feel faint.⁴²⁰

The Maggid’s shortcoming was that he tried to interpret the text intellectually, but when the Besht took the book and read from it, he demonstrated the need to approach it in the sense of a revelation. The Besht brought him to the level within that Moses had experienced on Mount Sinai – where he heard sounds and saw lightning within himself – and that Ezekiel had experienced in his spiritual ascent. And this is when the Maggid became the Besht’s disciple, by virtue of the inner experience he bestowed on him.

On another occasion, on one of the holy days, the Maggid fell ill and left the prayer hall early, continuing his prayers in a small room nearby. Before one section of the service, the Besht entered the room to put on his kittel, the robe normally worn on the holiest days.

And the Maggid said that he realized the Besht was inspired by the Shekhinah, and that he was not in this world. And when the Besht put on his kittel, it wrinkled around his shoulders. The great Maggid grasped the kittel in order to straighten it, and when he touched the Besht he himself began to tremble. He held on to the table that was there and the table began to tremble with him as well. The Besht went away, but this kept on until he prayed to the Blessed Lord, that he free him from this trembling, for he could no longer endure it.⁴²¹

There are other stories describing the ecstatic states the Besht would enter during his prayers. He would appear to be not in this world, and others were drawn to him by the force of his magnetism.

There is also a legend that when the Besht was praying on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, his consciousness entered the inner worlds and he saw that there was a harsh divine decree against the Jews because their prayers had gotten blocked at an intermediate level and not reached God. He recounts his experience:

I had just one more gate to pass in order to arrive before the blessed Lord, blessed be He, and in that palace I found the prayers of fifty years which had not risen to their destination, and now that we had prayed on this Yom Kippur with proper kavanah all the prayers ascended and each prayer glowed as the bright dawn. I asked the prayers, “Why did you not rise beforehand?” They replied, “We were ordered to await Your Eminence to guide us.” I said to them, “Come with me.” And the gate was open.⁴²²

He then describes overcoming another obstacle when an angel comes along and bolts the gate and doesn’t permit the prayers to rise. He then goes to the messiah for help, who gives him two holy names. This allowed him to release the bolt and open the gate, and he was able to drive in the prayers. As a result, the negative decree against the people was cancelled.

This legend reinforces the Ba’al Shem Tov’s role as the spiritual guide to the Jews, who ensures that their prayers reach their destination – a symbolic way of describing his role as protector of the people, using the same symbolism of the prayers rising from one supernal realm to the next that we find in the heikhalot literature. Even the messiah acts as a helper to the Ba’al Shem. It is the Ba’al Shem who takes the role of redeemer. He seemed to regard himself also as being “a bridge and medium between earthly existence and the upper worlds.”⁴²³

Above all, the Ba’al Shem Tov embodied the qualities of love and commitment to the well-being of his disciples. When he conversed with them they felt a sense of total communion, soul merging into soul, and thus into the divine soul. This is the meaning of the following story told about the Besht:

Every evening after prayer the Ba’al Shem went to his room. Two candles were set in front of him and the mysterious Book of Creation [Sefer yetsirah] put on the table among other books. Then all those who needed his counsel were admitted in a body, and he spoke with them until the eleventh hour.

One evening when the people left, one of them said to the man beside him how much good the words which the Ba’al Shem had directed to him had done him. But the other told him not to talk such nonsense, that they had entered the room together and from that moment on the master had spoken to no one except himself. A third, who had heard this, joined in the conversation with a smile, saying how curious that both were mistaken, for the rabbi had carried on an intimate conversation with him the entire evening. Then a fourth and a fifth made the same claim, and finally all began to talk at once and tell what they had experienced. But the next instant they all fell silent.⁴²⁴

In reading the accounts of Ya’akov Yosef, Dov Baer, and others, one gets a total picture of the man:

Above all, one gets a sense of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s ability to blur the borders between the divine and the human, between the fantastic and the real.… He was a man whose soul ascended to heaven, conversed with the inhabitants of the higher worlds, and learned their wisdom; he strolled in the Garden of Eden, but inspired his followers on earth with a profound sense of freedom, imagination, and creativity powered by the infinite resources of language as the link between man and God. He saw himself as part of the mystical chain of people who cross the line between earth and heaven – prophets and kabbalists, thinkers and visionaries, redeemers and messianic figures – and return inspired with novel ideas that reconfigure the relations between the heavenly and the earthly, new knowledge of God, and original insights that transform the world.⁴²⁵

THE BESHT'S LETTER TO RABBI GERSHON
The only surviving document written in the Besht’s own hand – his only words that can be absolutely authenticated – is an eloquent letter he wrote to Rabbi Gershon of Kotov, his brother-in-law and a close disciple. In it the Besht recounts his spiritual journey to higher realms.

For on the day of the New Year of the year 5507 [September 1746] I engaged in an ascent of the soul, as you know I do, and I saw wondrous things in that vision that I had never before seen since the day I had attained to maturity. That which I saw and learned in my ascent it is impossible to describe or to relate even from mouth to mouth. But as I returned to the lower Garden of Eden I saw many souls, both of the living and the dead, those known to me and those unknown. They were more than could be counted and they ran to and fro from world to world through the path provided by that column [the inner path of the successive sefirot] known to the adepts in the hidden science [Kabbalah]. They were all in such a state of great rapture that the mouth would be worn out if it attempted to describe it and the physical ear too indelicate to hear it. Many of the wicked repented of their sins and were pardoned, for it was a time of much grace. In my eyes, too, it was a great marvel that the repentance was accepted of so many whom you know. They also enjoyed great rapture and ascended, as mentioned above. All of them entreated me to my embarrassment, saying: “The Lord has given your honor great understanding to grasp these matters. Ascend together with us, therefore, so as to help us and assist us.” Their rapture was so great that I resolved to ascend together with them.⁴²⁶

Here he tells Rabbi Gershon of his inner ascent through higher regions and his vision of many souls ascending and moving about, all in a state of joy. Even the sinners were in a state of joy as they had been forgiven through grace. Later he describes ascending even higher with them. He meets the messiah and experiences even greater joy, to the point where he thinks he must have died, but discovers that he’s still alive. Poignantly he asks the messiah, “When will the Master come?” and the messiah replies:

You will know of it in this way; it will be when your teaching becomes famous and revealed to the world, and when that which I have taught you and you have comprehended will spread abroad so that others, too, will be capable of performing unifications and having soul ascents as you do. Then will all the kelipot be consumed and it will be a time of grace and salvation.⁴²⁷

The Besht becomes distressed when he hears this, as he realizes it may be a very long time before his teaching is known in the world. As a consolation, he is taught some specific remedies and combinations of holy names that would help the people of his generation. He becomes hopeful that by teaching these methods to his peers they too would be able to attain to the stages he has attained and engage in the ascents of the soul as he has. But, he realizes, “no permission was given to me to reveal this secret for the rest of my life. I did request that I be allowed to teach it to you but no permission at all was given to me and I am duty bound on oath to keep the secret.”⁴²⁸ There were none ready to receive the teaching. No one was at a spiritual level equal to the Besht’s. So, paraphrasing several biblical passages, he advised his brother-in-law:

Let your ways be set before the Lord and never be moved,⁴²⁹ especially in the Holy Land. Whenever you offer your prayers and whenever you study,⁴³⁰ have the intention of unifying a divine name in every word and with every utterance of your lips. For there are worlds, souls, and divinity in every letter. These ascend to become united one with the other and then the letters are combined in order to form a word so that there is complete unification with the divine. Allow your soul to be embraced by them at each of the above stages. Thus all worlds become united and they ascend so that immeasurable rapture and the greatest delight is experienced.⁴³¹

This last paragraph is a beautiful summation of how the Besht took the name practices of the kabbalists and transformed them. Since human language originates from unspoken spiritual sound, it is taught that the letters of the physical alphabet carry, in potential, the spiritual power of their origin in the higher realms. When he says that “there are worlds, souls, and divinity in every letter” he means that the letters of our human language can be a window to a higher reality, “allowing the light of the life-giving divine infinity to shine through.”⁴³²

Human language and divine speech are in a continuous dialectic relationship. When a person “unites” himself with the letters, they then carry his soul to their supernal source. Thus the words of the prayers become a vehicle to raise the soul from the mundane to the spiritual.

This account is reminiscent of the Apocalypse of Enoch, written in the last centuries bce and found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which Enoch raises his consciousness within and meets the messiah, who is called the Elect One. It also resembles the merkavah mystics’ accounts of their inner journey to the spiritual heikhalot.

It is interesting that even here, the Besht is inclusive. He sees the souls of sinners as well as the virtuous, all experiencing grace and joy, and it is his mission to help them find salvation. He also has the desire to share the experience of the inner ascent with his colleagues and co-religionists, but he is not given permission to do so. He wants the messiah to come and relieve the pain of the people, but he is told it is not yet time. At the very least, he can teach Rabbi Gershon and others how to pray, how to unite with the letters of the prayers and raise their souls above the mundane level.

Earlier, the Besht had engaged in certain activities and prayers designed to bring about the messiah. This was in keeping with kabbalistic practices attempting to create harmony within the divine realms and correct the primal disharmony which was felt to be the current state of the world, symbolized by Adam’s initial fall and the scattering of the sparks of divine light into the realms of matter.

The Besht’s letter, written sometime between 1740 and 1746, marks definitively the point in time when he gave up on this pursuit of collective salvation. From then on he focused on the individual salvation of the souls of his followers, and thus became the first of the hasidic tsadikim, those spiritual masters who minister to individuals, turning away from the kabbalistic model of correcting worlds and realms of divinity.

The doctrine of the tsadik
The concept of the tsadik in Hasidism grew around the spiritual mastership of the Ba’al Shem Tov although the term was not used for the Besht during his lifetime.^* All the same, he was the living example on whom all subsequent written definitions and descriptions were based. It was the Maggid of Mezherich and Ya’akov Yosef who first articulated the concept of the tsadik from the 1760’s onward. They both drew on many scriptural, rabbinic, and kabbalistic references to explain the concept, but ultimately the literary expression grew from their dynamic living relationship with their own master, the Ba’al Shem Tov.

Eventually many later hasidic masters who traced their spiritual heritage back to the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Maggid Dov Baer would add further writings about the importance of the tsadik. In each hasidic lineage there was a single charismatic individual who was the embodiment of the ideal.⁴³³ The body of literature that developed in Hasidism about the importance of the tsadik was neither abstract, nor buried under layers of obscure symbolism. This literature was all based directly on the writers’ own experiences of living spiritual masters.

One of the key metaphors Ya’akov Yosef used for the tsadik comes from a biblical saying from the book of Proverbs, “tsadik yesod olam” (the tsadik is the foundation or cornerstone of the world).⁴³⁴ This statement was interpreted by the rabbis of antiquity to mean that the tsadik is the pillar, the axis, foundation stone, or sacred center of the world. Put otherwise, the world stands on a single pillar. As yesod (foundation) is also the name of the ninth sefirah in the kabbalistic system of the sefirot and is considered the channel through which the divine abundance flows to the earth, it is also taken to mean that the tsadik is the earthly incarnation of the divine principle symbolized by yesod; he is the channel through which the divine grace, the spiritual knowledge, comes into the world.^*

The tsadik is called the heart of the body, for he is a channel which draws the bounty of life [shefa] from the Life of all Life to all the other limbs, which are the people of his generation.⁴³⁵

Similarly, the Maggid Dov Baer of Mezherich wrote:

Now it is known that yesod has the power to ascend and draw the divine abundance forth from above, because it includes all. The same is true of the earthly tsadik: he is the channel who allows the abundance to flow down for his entire generation.⁴³⁶

Ya’akov Yosef had said that only when one joins himself to the living tsadik upon whom the Shekhinah rests does one actually join oneself to the Lord.⁴³⁷ The hasidim often used the metaphor of rungs on a ladder to describe the spiritual levels attained by individuals. The Besht taught that the master moves from the higher rung – where his attention is completely immersed in the spiritual planes of oneness with the holy spirit – to the lower rungs which are closer to the earth. He then brings his attention into the physical plane and uses his body and mind to communicate with his disciples:

And this is what was revealed to our father Jacob [in his dream in the Bible], a ladder fixed in the earth whose head reached the heavens, which means – even when the tsadik is fixed in the earth, with the lowly, common people of the earth, among scoffers and gossips and the like, nevertheless his head, his thoughts, reach the heavens, joining his thoughts to his Creator. For the divine name is before him. In this manner, the angels of the Lord – those who come into this world to do the bidding of the Lord [the tsadikim] – are called messengers of the Lord … and ascend the ladder [of the world].⁴³⁸

The tsadik as axis mundi is metaphorically the central pillar linking heaven and earth. He stands between both realms and is a conduit for the spiritual energy of each to reach the other. He connects the two. He becomes the ladder of Jacob’s dream on which the angels ascend and descend from heaven. Here also he becomes the ladder, and all spirituality comes into this world through him. It was believed that the prayers of the devoted rise to God by virtue of his intervention.

Only a living tsadik can descend to the rung of the ordinary man and gather those souls yearning to return to the Lord. Ya’akov Yosef wrote:

In this world every day or at certain times the tsadik descends from his rung in order to join himself with those lesser in degree … for when he again ascends to his rung, he brings them up as well. But it is only possible for one to ascend with him if he too joins himself to the tsadik.⁴³⁹

Although the body of the tsadik is finite and lowly, through it he is able to reach the divine, which is infinite and lofty. Only the tsadik could ascend the ladder to heaven, enter the supernal realms, meet the divine, and bring the divine grace back to earth. Samuel Dresner summarizes the writings of Ya’akov Yosef concerning the special mission of the tsadik: “Through the tsadik, the austere loftiness of heaven and the abject lowliness of earth, the transcendence of God and the humanity of man, meet. What seems set apart and unalterably opposed find in him a mediating principle which brings them together.”⁴⁴⁰ He quotes Ya’akov Yosef:

It is only possible to join together two opposites through a third force.⁴⁴¹ The tsadik is the foundation of the universe, which is peace, for he joins together two opposites as when one makes peace between a man and his neighbor.⁴⁴²

In the sixteenth century, as we read earlier, Jewish mystics like Isaac Luria had taught that at the time of the creation, sparks of the primal light had become entrapped in shards of matter – a metaphor for the imprisonment of the soul in the material world. This idea lent itself to the concept of the tsadik who descends from the spiritual to the material rungs of existence in order to liberate the sparks – the souls of those yearning for communion with God. This means that in order to liberate the good from its attachment to evil, it is necessary to descend to the realm of evil. “In order to raise a lower rung to a higher one it is necessary that the tsadik join himself to that lower rung; only then he will be able to raise those who dwell upon it.”⁴⁴³

The tsadik in Hasidism was understood as simultaneously embodying the opposites of Being (yesh) and Nothingness (ayin) – two important kabbalistic concepts adopted by Hasidism. His body is Being – it has substance and is physical – while he actually is Nothing, without substance; he exists in the divine eternity, in the realm of spirit. The noted contemporary scholar of Hasidism, Rachel Elior, offers a quotation from a twentieth-century hasidic mystic concerning the ability of the tsadik (the rebbe) to exist both on the divine and human levels simultaneously.^* His soul is one with the divine, but he lives through the physical body. It is this that gives him his spiritual power.

In the twentieth century, Habad hasidism has provided strong testimony to the idea that the charismatic authority of a tsadik derives from an unmediated relationship between the divine and the human: the tsadik is an “infinite substance garbed in flesh and blood; the rebbe being an infinite substance clothed in the rebbe’s body.”⁴⁴⁴

For the hasidim to be in the presence of the physical tsadik while he was also in touch with the spiritual dimension must have been extraordinary. Many stories and quotations testify to their sense of wonder and at being with their master. Buber recounts:

News was brought to Rabbi Moshe Leib that his friend the rabbi of Berditchev had fallen ill. On the sabbath he said his name over and over and prayed for his recovery. Then he put on new shoes made of morocco leather, laced them up tight and danced.

A tsadik who was present said: “Power flowed forth from his dancing. Every step was a powerful mystery. An unfamiliar light suffused the house, and everyone watching saw the heavenly hosts join in his dance.”⁴⁴⁵

Other hasidic tsadikim in the later generations also taught about the spiritual qualities of the tsadik. Some used the term medugal be-herut, “outstanding in his freedom.”⁴⁴⁶ He was free because of his ability to rise to higher realms and draw down the divine grace (hesed) for the benefit of the community. He had the kind of freedom that no one else had – he could move between the physical and heavenly worlds and take his disciples’ souls with him.

By virtue of his ascent to higher realms, the tsadik had another kind of freedom also – he was free to interpret the scriptures according to the needs of his disciples – as time and place dictated. He was not subject to rigid traditions of interpretation of scripture which were based on the authority of past teachers and masters. The tsadik’s authority was his own mystic experience, which was manifested outwardly as his charisma, his magnetic attraction for others.

People were naturally attracted to him, to his presence, beyond even his teachings. It was his very person that radiated love and it was this love that they received from him, that enveloped them. It hardly mattered how or what he taught intellectually. His followers were linked through their mutual love for him, for God, and through that for each other.

For the rank and file hasidim, the main purpose in their lives was to connect themselves with a tsadik who could elevate their souls and liberate them from worldly suffering. They attributed supernatural powers to him, with the ability to influence the spiritual and physical worlds. This teaching is explicitly discussed in Ma’or va-shemesh (Light and Sun), written by the later tsadik Kalonymus Epstein: “The main thing is to bind oneself to a tsadik who can elevate and repair the souls of Israel; this is the tsadik who conforms to the paradigm of the supernal tsadik [God] who connects all things.”⁴⁴⁷

Elior explains that “the tsadik was seen as having the power to liberate his followers from the shackles of the physical world through his ability to mediate between the heavenly and earthly realities and draw the divine abundance down to this world.”⁴⁴⁸ She writes about the important change in the way the hasidim regarded their relationship with God due to the presence of the tsadik among them:

With the development of the doctrine of the tsadik, the individual hasid is no longer required to devote himself to God but instead to attach himself to the tsadik, relying on the latter’s communion with God. For the doctrine of the tsadik implies the transformation of the direct relation between the hasid and God that characterized early Hasidism into an oblique, mediated relationship in which the tsadik is the link between this world and the higher worlds.⁴⁴⁹

Many of the later hasidic rebbes also wrote about the importance of the tsadik as intermediary and channel for divine grace. Elior cites a few of their writings:

For the tsadik must connect and unify the higher worlds with the lower.⁴⁵⁰

The tsadik must … draw down the abundance into the world.… In this context the tsadikim are called angels, meaning messengers, for they are God’s emissaries to benefit His creatures.⁴⁵¹

Because God’s effect is exceedingly great and it is impossible to receive His influence except through an intermediary, that is the tsadik who receives the abundance from on high and he transmits it to all.… Thus the abundance through the tsadik is a reciprocal loving kindness with the whole world, as he receives the abundance from above and distributes it to all, and it emanates from God.⁴⁵²

There is an intimate relationship between the tsadik and the hasid, the master and the disciple. They both need each other. The hasid needs the tsadik to mediate with God, to protect and guide him. The tsadik needs the hasid so that he can fulfill his mission of guiding souls and creating the ideal Jewish community. He not only has his own mystic ideal to pursue, but he has a social responsibility that derives from his contact with the divine. He has to elevate the souls of his followers and bring down the divine grace for his community, not for himself.

We can distinguish the social role of the tsadik in Hasidism from the role that the kabbalists of previous centuries had envisioned for themselves. The kabbalists saw themselves as ascetic recluses whose duty it was to meditate for endless hours every day, performing complex prayers and rituals, responsible only to themselves and their small fellowship of companions or disciples. The tsadik of Hasidism was at one with the entire humanity, his entire community. So although some of the kabbalist ideas and symbolism had penetrated Hasidism, the role of the tsadik and the social structure of the movements greatly differed from one another.

In some hasidic circles it was taught that several tsadikim could be alive at the same time, but there was one tsadik ha-dor, a supreme tsadik for each generation. The designation of “tsadik” was extended to all the holy mystics and teachers of the past, even if it wasn’t used during their lifetimes. For example, the biblical Moses; the rabbis Haninah ben Dosa in the last centuries BCE; Simeon bar Yohai, legendary author of the Zohar, and Isaac Luria – these were all considered the great tsadikim of their generation, the tsadik ha-dor. And the Ba’al Shem Tov became the latest to be included in this rare and elevated grouping.

Teachings
The twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber wrote about how the tsadik, exemplified by the Ba’al Shem Tov, transformed others by the way he lived, not by an intellectual teaching:

The Ba’al Shem himself belongs to those central figures in the history of religion what have done their work by living in a certain way, that is to say, not starting out from a teaching but aiming toward a teaching, who lived in such a way that their life acted as a teaching, as a teaching not translated into words.⁴⁵³

The Besht taught, perhaps more by his example and the magnetic influence of his presence than by his words, that devekut was the aim of spiritual practice. Jewish mystics since medieval times had used the term devekut, but with a different meaning. For them, devekut referred to a variety of techniques to foster devotion, such as ascetic practices, using the intellect to continually keep God in mind, and mentally attaching oneself to the sefirot or the Shekhinah in prayer. To Jewish mystics before the Besht, devekut was possible only for very advanced souls after a long period of self-purification and preparation.

The Ba’al Shem Tov used the term devekut to describe the spiritual state of superconsciousness in which the divine reality is experienced as a unity that transcends diversity and compartmentalization. The term devekut appears in all hasidic literature as the goal of every spiritual practice. The Besht told a parable to explain the state of devekut:

There once was a wise and great king who did everything through illusion, constructing imaginary walls and towers and gates. And he commanded the people to come to him through the gates and the towers, and instructed that royal treasures be scattered at each and every gate. And there were some people who came to one gate and took the money and went away while others, etc., until his loving son made an effort to go directly to his father the king, and then he saw that there was no barrier separating him from his father, for it was all illusion.⁴⁵⁴

In devekut, one realizes through one’s own personal experience that the divine presence is everywhere, saturating the entire creation; that the divine is not removed from the creation – it is closer than one’s own breath. As Ya’akov Yosef explains the parable, “For all concealment is but an illusion. In truth everything is of His substance.”⁴⁵⁵

Personal instincts, appetites, and desires are the walls, towers, and partitions that separate us from our Maker. It is our own weaknesses, not external obstacles that hinder our devekut. The son of the king represents the Besht himself. Through mystical ecstasy, devotees of the Lord have the ability to rise above these obstacles and realize the true spiritual nature of everything. The Besht knew that all the divisions and walls, the diversity of the creation, were simply an illusion.

Martin Buber recounts an anecdote that defines the state of devekut, the ecstasy the hasidic tsadikim attained, through which they experienced God’s presence in everything, and that all is Him.

It is told of one master that he had to look at a clock during the hour of withdrawal in order to keep himself in this world; and of another that when he wished to observe individual things he had to put on spectacles in order to restrain his spiritual vision; “for otherwise he saw all the individual things of the world as one.”⁴⁵⁶

The hasid who was a beginner in spiritual development might not yet be able to experience devekut himself, but to be near his tsadik gave him a taste of this blissful state which no wordy teaching could convey. By attaching himself to the tsadik who was in the state of devekut, the simple hasid could also enjoy some of the ecstasy that radiated from the tsadik.

Thus, in Hasidism, asceticism, self-mortification, and intellectual study were rejected as ineffective in removing the barriers. The way to devekut was through attachment to the tsadik.

RAISING THE MATERIAL TO THE SPIRITUAL
The Besht believed that one could combat the lower instincts by “raising” the lower tendencies to the spiritual level rather than by suppressing them. All of a person’s tendencies, both good and evil, come from God – because everything is God. It is simply a matter of redirecting one’s energies and inclinations towards the divine. The Besht even believed that one should satisfy one’s appetites for food and drink in order not to create an unhealthy suppression, which would lead to depression and a turning away from God. Far from fasting and rigorous self-mortification, most hasidic groups indulged in drinking, ecstatic singing, and dancing in their worship of God.

Ya’akov Yosef summarized the Besht’s attitude to good and evil with the following quotation from his master. He taught that one must confront the evil, the mundane, the profane, the material, and raise it to the holy, the good, to service of God. “To be in the world, but a little above it, is the goal. Not to escape the evil thought or the evil man, but to take issue with them both, and turn them to the Lord.”⁴⁵⁷

For the Besht, there was no paradox in existing in a state of devekut while engaged in the material world, as he didn’t see a contradiction between the physical and spiritual natures of man. They both originated in the divine. The foundation of this principle is the experience of divine immanence: the divine is in every corner of creation. Because it is present in everything, we can worship God through the physical. Thus even mundane activities can become spiritual “by virtue of the thought that illuminates them and the intention that accompanies them.”⁴⁵⁸ The Besht taught:

In truth, where one’s thought ranges, that is where one is. In truth, his glory fills all the earth and there is no place vacant of him. In all places that a man is, that is where he will find attachment [devekut] to the Creator in the place where he is, for there is no place void of him.… In all places is divinity.⁴⁵⁹

The Besht urged that every earthly activity a person engages in be converted into worship of God. He recounted the rabbinic story of Hanokh, a cobbler, who thought of God with every stitch, “and in doing so, would bind the material deed from the lower world, by the thought that it is “empowered,” to the spirituality of the Upper World.”⁴⁶⁰

ELEVATING STRAYING THOUGHTS
Similarly, the Besht taught that just as God is immanent in every aspect of life and can be realized in mundane, material activities, so our thoughts are also part of the divine, even our most sinful or straying thoughts. He taught that we simply have to “elevate” our straying thoughts rather than suppress them.

The kabbalists before him had taught that the way to control sinful thoughts or a meandering mind that would not concentrate in prayer was through severe penances, self-mortification, and ascetic practices. In contrast, the Besht viewed these straying thoughts as originating in the divine realms, and that it was man’s duty to elevate those thoughts to their source. In fact, that was their purpose in coming into the mind: so that they would get elevated and redeemed. This was connected with the Lurianic notion of uplifting the sparks that are trapped in the material realm.

In practice, the Besht’s disciples found his methods of controlling the mind more effective than severe penances or self-deprivation.⁴⁶¹ Rabbi Nahman of Horodenka reminisced about the tremendous austerities he had undergone in order to control his mind, until he encountered the Besht:

[Earlier] I went every day to a cold mikveh [ritual immersion bath]. There is no one in this generation who could bear such a mikveh! When I went home I did not feel warm for about an hour even though it was so hot the walls were like fire. Despite this I was unable to free myself of wayward thoughts until I turned to the wisdom of the Besht.⁴⁶²

Rabbi Ephraim of Sadlikov, grandson of the Besht, wrote of the method he had received from his grandfather to control his straying thoughts:

And I say according to what was handed down to me, that all thoughts are entire levels and they come to a man because they desire to be redeemed, and when a man considers this and knows that the Lord, Blessed be He, and Blessed be his name, is the root of all the thoughts and from him come all thoughts, he can return them to their roots, as is known from my grandfather of Blessed Memory, and convert all thoughts to good and uplift them to sanctity.⁴⁶³

PRAYER FOR ITS OWN SAKE
Just as devekut took on a different meaning among the hasidim, so did kavanah (intention, concentration). The kabbalists generally took a more mechanistic view of worship – they recited specific prayers in order to influence the supernal realms, and so they would mentally direct their prayers to specific sefirot. Immanuel Etkes, an important contemporary scholar of Hasidism, remarks that for the hasidim, prayer was a form of delight in God. One prayed with kavanah simply for the delight it brought to the person praying as well as to God. He writes: “The kabbalists viewed the principal objective of prayer in terms of its influence on the upper worlds. The Besht, by contrast, maintained that the primary purpose of prayer was the ‘delight’ [ta’anug] it produced; that is, the private experience and spiritual ascent that the person praying undergoes, the climax of which is mystical ecstasy.”⁴⁶⁴ Etkes then brings us a quote from Keter shem tov (The Crown of the Good Name), an anthology of the Besht’s teachings:

From the Besht: the reward of a mitsvah [commandment] is a mitsvah, as a man has no greater reward than the delight he feels from the mitsvah itself when he performs it with joy.… The chief virtue is to take a greater delight in the worship of the Lord than in all other pleasures.⁴⁶⁵

Later hasidic masters also taught that prayer was not only a means of reaching God, it was an end in itself. Rabbi Pinhas of Korets said: “Prayer is not to God; prayer is God himself.”⁴⁶⁶ He also wrote of the state reached in truly concentrated prayer, when one loses all consciousness of the self:

The world imagines that the stripping off of corporeality is a marvel, but that is incorrect. It is only that when a man is nothing to the utmost degree in his own eyes, he is in the category of stripping off the form, and then the ascent of soul comes automatically.⁴⁶⁷

Rabbi Ya’akov Yits’hak of Pshysskha, known as the Yud (the Jew), said it very simply:

Do you wish to know what is proper prayer? When you are so engrossed that you do not feel a knife thrust into your body, then you are offering prayer correctly.⁴⁶⁸

The detachment one attains through one-pointed devotion is common to the mystic practices of all religious traditions. Prayer as taught by the Besht was a type of meditation, in which the hasid loses himself. He enters as one person, and leaves it transformed. In his experience of union, he forgets himself and thus is permanently changed. He gains more compassion for others and the bonds of his worldly attachments become loosened.

The goal of worship, according to the Habad lineage of Hasidism, is to “reach the level of nothingness that is included in the Infinite … and to annul one’s reality.”⁴⁶⁹

Zechariah Mendel of Yaroslav taught the importance of concentration in prayer or meditation, not so much out of benefit to ourselves, but because the inability to concentrate prevents us from giving God what is due to him.⁴⁷⁰

EBB AND FLOW OF DEVOTION
Another important teaching of the Besht, which brought comfort to his disciples, concerned the internal states of katnut (smallness) and gadlut (greatness, expansiveness). Many hasidim were troubled by inconsistencies in their devotion. They experienced alternating periods of inspiration and dryness. The Besht reassured them that this was normal, that it was part of the natural ebb and flow, expansion and contraction, in devotion. Katnut de mohin (smallness of mind) and gadlut de mohin (greatness of mind) were the terms used to express these alternating periods, these changeable states of mind.

From the Besht of Blessed Memory: “… for a delight that is perpetual becomes a habit and ceases to be a delight; therefore there are rises and falls in a man’s worship of the Blessed Lord so that he will have the delight, which is the main purpose of worshiping the Blessed Lord.”⁴⁷¹

Everyone seeks to have a continuous communion with God, but the Besht taught that inspiration, like the ocean, must ebb and flow. An added benefit of accepting a process of rising and falling is that one can survive the pain of the lower state more easily – one understands that the state of smallness is temporary and is a phase of greatness, as it were. The Besht and some of the hasidic masters after him revealed that although they had achieved spiritual heights, even they experienced states of relative smallness from time to time. They are two ends of the same rope.

HUMILITY
Another important teaching of the Besht was that people don’t have to be perfect in their devotion in order to serve God – rather, they need to start from whatever rung on the ladder they are on, and work up from there. They may begin with ulterior motives (a low rung on the spiritual ladder) but ultimately they will serve and worship for love’s own sake.

Through the conduct of his own life, the Besht taught the importance of humility. The Besht did not communicate through complex discussions of religious law, nor did he act superior to those who couldn’t participate, but he tried “to shape a mold which could contain all the people, even those who were not deeply learned. When speaking to the common people he was able to express profound thoughts with plain words in a way they could understand and were subsequently influenced by.”⁴⁷²

In all of his teachings the Ba’al Shem Tov stressed the importance of pure devotion over the intellectual brilliance of the religious scholars. This is a major theme of the legends about him as well. In this he differs greatly from previous generations of kabbalists and mystics, as well as from the rabbinical leaders.

He had great empathy for the sufferings of the common man. There are numerous stories collected in In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov where the Besht helps sinners repent. As the Besht could see into the heart and soul of everyone and knew who was spiritually pure and who was not, he was able to uncover the “popular tsadik” – the ordinary person of exceptional spiritual rank.⁴⁷³

In another collection in Hebrew called Gedolim ma’asei tsadikim (Great Wonders of the Tsadikim), there are several stories that illustrate the Besht’s belief that even the most ordinary person has the potential to be the greatest devotee. An example is the famous story of a village boy who brought a flute to the service on Yom Kippur, and against his father’s admonishments began to play it. The congregation became very disturbed, and the Besht concluded the service quickly. Afterwards he said that the reason the prayers were concluded quickly is that the sound of the boy’s flute uplifted all the prayers and relieved him of having to do so. The boy could not read and didn’t know how to pray, but his devotion carried the prayers up to God, as “the Almighty looks to the heart.” “The strength of his desire played the flute from the truth of the core of his heart without distraction, wholly dedicated to His Blessed Name.”⁴⁷⁴

In the context of Judaism, a spiritual tradition that had emphasized the importance of scholarship and study and correct worship according to prescribed techniques, the Besht brought a revolutionary change – a true democratization of man’s relationship with God.

Fountain of grace and wisdom
When the Besht passed away, his disciples accepted the leadership of Rabbi Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezherich, without exception. Rabbi Yehiel, another close disciple, recounted:

He had been commanded from the heavens to accept the Besht as his rabbi and to go to learn from him, and he was shown springs of wisdom which streamed toward him [mystical knowledge]. And when the Besht passed away, he was commanded to accept the great maggid Rabbi Dov as rabbi, and he was shown those very springs which had gone to the Besht now streaming to said rabbi and maggid.⁴⁷⁵

About the Besht’s close disciples, it was said that they “all had drunk at the same fountain, namely the divine Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov of blessed and righteous memory.”⁴⁷⁶

The Maggid often used to praise the Besht to his own disciples and told them that the source of the Besht’s mystical attainments was the revelation from Elijah and other high levels. The Maggid also said the Besht had taught him “the language of birds and the conversation of trees, etc., and also studied the secrets of holy names and unifications with him.”⁴⁷⁷ He then listed the many secrets the Besht had shared with him. The Maggid was asked why he didn’t disclose his own spiritual rank earlier; he responded that he considered himself a mere student who had done nothing on his own: “I found a light in a closet, and all I did was open the door,” he said.⁴⁷⁸

It was under the leadership of the Maggid that the hasidic fellowship matured and evolved into the hasidic court, with the tsadik, the rebbe, at its center, a shape it would maintain for the next couple of hundred years.

The fountain of wisdom and love that the Ba’al Shem Tov had embodied through his very being flowed into his successor, Rabbi Dov Baer. While Ya’akov Yosef had written of the ideal of the tsadik as experienced through the example of the Ba’al Shem Tov, it was during the mastership of the Maggid that the concept developed. The Besht never referred to himself as a tsadik.

The Maggid embodied the ideal of the “teaching thinker,” as Buber put it in his insightful introduction to his classic, Tales of the Hasidim. Initially, as we have seen, he was a practicing mystic, a scholar and kabbalist, an itinerant preacher or maggid, and an ascetic. Once he came to the Ba’al Shem Tov, he was remolded so that his spiritual energies were no longer directed only at the salvation of his own soul, but towards the spiritual needs of his disciples. He had “always been a man given to ecstasy, only that, under the influence of the Ba’al Shem, this ecstasy was diverted from ascetic solitude to the active life of teaching disciples. From that moment on, his ecstasy assumed the shape of teaching.… He poured into his disciples all the strength of life.”⁴⁷⁹

The Maggid’s method of teaching Torah was designed to awaken the imagination of his disciples, for he believed that the truth lay within them and all he was doing was lighting the candle. Thus he did not give one interpretation of a passage of Torah, he would give very divergent interpretations. And he would not complete his thoughts, but rather throw out parables, hints, suggestions, and leave it for his disciples to decide what he meant and how one thought related to another.

He submitted himself completely in the service of God and he became in essence an ecstatic expression, in physical form, of God’s will. The effect on his disciples is recounted by a young man who later became the revered tsadik known as the Seer of Lublin: “When I came before the master, before the Maggid, I saw him on his bed: something was lying there, which was nothing but simple will, the will of the Most High.” That is why, Buber recounts, “the disciples learned even more and greater things from his sheer being than from his words.”⁴⁸⁰

Gershom Scholem tells the story of a hasid who said: “I did not go to the Maggid of Mezherich to learn Torah from him but to watch him tie his bootlaces.” Scholem comments that for the hasidim, “It is no longer his [the tsadik’s] knowledge but his life which lends a religious value” to contact with him.⁴⁸¹ This is a significant change from the model of the master as a scholar, an intellectual, who teaches Torah and the secrets of Kabbalah.

Through the Maggid’s devotion to his mission, the teachings of Hasidism spread to different parts of Europe, as his disciples traveled extensively, gathering the scholars and kabbalists as well as the common man, and revealing to them this radically new teaching of devotion which leads to ecstasy. Communities of hasidim began to appear, with the leaders becoming the center of their own groups of disciples.

The popular growth of the movement evoked opposition from the religious authorities, who saw it as bordering on heresy. Its emotional form of prayer, elevation of prayer over the study of Talmud, the central role of the tsadik as a quasi-supernatural being, and the independent attitude of the hasidim to the talmudists, all sparked a negative response. In 1772 the entire movement was put under a ban (herem), signed by the famous Gaon of Vilna (Sage of Vilnius) and the religious court. Shortly afterwards, in 1773, at the death of the Maggid, the movement split into many separate domains, each ruled by a different tsadik. Unfortunately there were tensions between the disciples of the various masters and sometimes between the masters themselves, as they all emphasized different aspects of their teachings and had different styles of interacting with their disciples. Thus the Maggid was the second and last universally accepted leader of the hasidim. With only one exception, every hasidic master to appear afterwards was either directly or indirectly a disciple of the Maggid.⁴⁸² Nevertheless, the movement survived the internal dissension and flourished throughout Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Hungary over the next 150 years or so – until World War II effectively ended the Jewish presence in Eastern Europe.

Some of the tsadikim of later periods saw themselves as ethical and moral guides with the mission of helping their disciples to live a balanced life through Torah, worship, and charitable actions. Others stayed true to the mystical aspects of Hasidism and taught their disciples to submerge themselves in ecstatic prayer and meditation. Still others integrated the traditional rabbinic emphasis on the scholarly with kabbalistic techniques of meditation. Others stressed their ability to work miracles, or discern signs from the synchronicity of ordinary events. They even taught their hasidim to discern such signs for themselves. Still others, like the Seer of Lublin, used powers of clairvoyance to guide their disciples. Sometimes they would recite scriptures or Psalms and then await the answers to their queries. Telepathic power was also common among the tsadikim. Like Jewish mystics in previous generations, the tsadikim believed that the appearance of Elijah the prophet, the Ba’al Shem Tov, and even their own ancestors, in their dreams or in mystic trance, were gifts of divine providence.

Some tsadikim used the telling of the miraculous story to actually work the miracle. A story about a miraculous event would take the place of the action and carry the same power (like the story at the beginning of this chapter). But the greatest sign or miracle, as an anonymous tsadik once said, was to “take a simple person and make a hasid of him.”⁴⁸³

Like the Zen masters and Sufis, the tsadik would often do unpredictable things or make paradoxical statements, to shake up and confuse the hasidim and remove their resistance, making them more receptive to their master’s teachings.

Rabbi Yits’hak Isaac Kalov forcefully described the ideal tsadik:

When you find one who can take out your innards, wash them, and replace them, while you are still alive – that is a rebbe.⁴⁸⁴

Overriding everything was the underlying belief in, and experience of, the immanence of God in the entire creation. Thus the spiritual illumination that the tsadik gave his disciple through personal contact was the experience (not only the knowledge) that “there is nothing outside of God.” And ultimately, for each hasid, his rebbe was the head of all of Israel, the Moses of his generation, a savior.⁴⁸⁵

The court of the rebbe
First there was the klaus of the kabbalists, the small room in the synagogue where the “companions” would gather to study together and discuss. Then came the havura, the circle of companions around the Ba’al Shem Tov and successive early hasidic masters. The Ba’al Shem Tov traveled from town to town to see his disciples, and they would also visit him. Eventually, as the movement grew, the home of the tsadik became like a court, where – like the aristocracy of the time – he would receive his visitors, and they could enjoy his presence.

The court also developed because after the era of the Maggid of Mezherich the mastership was passed down through the family of the tsadik, from father to son or son-in-law. The court continued to gain in power and wealth as the successor generations of the disciples of a particular tsadik would remain loyal to the same lineage of tsadikim that their ancestors were devoted to. By the mid-twentieth century there were more than one hundred courts in Eastern Europe.

So, although the movement grew over time, it became evident that once the role of the tsadik became institutionalized, there would be decay and even abuse. Some unscrupulous persons, who had inherited their positions, were not of the spiritual rank of their predecessors. In their desire for power and wealth, they exploited their followers.

But aside from that, one could say that the majority of the tsadikim were authentic, striving for their own spiritual enlightenment and the desire to teach others their way of experiencing God, and this created a dynamic force within Judaism that had not been seen for centuries. A strong current of true spirituality continued to reveal itself, in direct continuation of the teachings of the Ba’al Shem.

We have seen that Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba’al Shem Tov, exemplified the tsadik as the channel between God and man; his method of worship was ecstatic prayer and inner ascent, resulting in devekut, a state of union with God, while living a normal life in the physical world. He rejected asceticism and preached that one could raise one’s material life to spiritual heights. The impact of the Ba’al Shem Tov was so great that he not only drew many disciples in his own time, but by the end of his lifetime he had revolutionized the relationship of spiritual master and disciple in the wider Jewish community.

Each of the hundreds of the hasidic masters was a unique personality, differing greatly from the others. They shared a great devotion to their hasidim and their hasidim to them. True to their own internal calling, the way they reached into the hearts of their disciples depended on their own personality and character, as well as the background and needs of the disciples – their intellectual level, place in society, and religious commitment. But fundamentally, it was the same spiritual wisdom that surged forth from them and poured from their souls to the souls of their disciples.

Within a short time in the second half of the eighteenth century, numerous masters inspired by the model of the Besht appeared, responding to the community’s yearning for spiritual and material release. In his seminal work, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Gershom Scholem writes:

There are two things about the movement which are particularly remarkable. One is the fact that within a geographically small area and also within a surprisingly short period, the ghetto gave birth to a whole galaxy of saint-mystics, each of them a startling individuality. The incredible intensity of creative religious feeling, which manifested itself in Hasidism between 1750 and 1800, produced a wealth of truly original religious types which, as far as one can judge, surpassed even the harvest of the classical period of [Kabbalah in] Safed. Something like a rebellion of religious energy against petrified religious values must have taken place.⁴⁸⁶

Who were some of these “truly original religious types” that Scholem mentions, who came after the Besht’s direct successor, the Maggid of Mezherich?

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav
Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav embodied the power of storytelling to teach mystical truths that cannot be conveyed through linear discussion. Of course, Nahman, great-grandson of the Besht, was not the first hasidic master to tell stories, though perhaps he took the story into uncharted dimensions of reality and imagination. The Besht himself, as we saw in the “conversion” of Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef, used stories and parables to penetrate the hearts of his disciples with his teaching of mystic truth.

Rabbi Nahman’s stories are enigmatic and mysterious. Stories travel with the wind, and some of Nahman’s appear to be adaptations of Russian and Sufi stories or the Indian tales of Akbar and Birbal, which he may have heard during his journeys to Palestine or Turkey. They are a combination of folktale, morality story, dreams in which the subconscious comes to the surface, and metaphors of the relation between mystical symbols. They seem to be both autobiographical and cosmological. For example, in some of the stories, like the “Seven Beggars,” the characters are symbols of the sefirot, and the events of the story are actually an explanation of the relationship between the sefirot. He told his stories to his disciples orally, in Yiddish, and they were written down by his faithful disciple, Rabbi Nathan of Nemerov.

Rabbi Nahman had an extraordinary sense of human psychology in its relation to the spiritual life. We are our own greatest obstacles. This physical world (and the body) is a shadow that obscures the divine light of God strongly shining within. Here are a few of his sayings on the subject:

All the troubles of man proceed from himself. For the light of God continually pours over him, but man, through his all too physical life, makes himself a shadow so that the light of God cannot reach him.⁴⁸⁷

Man is afraid of things that cannot harm him, and he knows it, and he craves things that cannot be of help to him, and he knows it; but in truth the one thing man is afraid of is within himself, and the one thing he craves is within himself.⁴⁸⁸

In his teachings, Nahman emphasized the importance of the tsadik, as he believed that “only through the tsadik could a man attain an understanding of the divine.”⁴⁸⁹ Nahman taught that the tsadik is the main channel which God has given man to find him. He regarded the tsadik as truly representing God on earth, and as having supernatural powers beyond the ability of normal human beings. He taught that “the words of the tsadik were more precious than the words of the Torah and the prophets.”⁴⁹⁰

People find it difficult to understand why one must travel to the master in order to hear the teaching from his lips, because, as they see it, one can study moralistic works. But this is of great value, for there is a great difference between hearing the truth from the master directly, and hearing it quoted by others in his name, and certainly if the one quoting it only heard from another, for it descends to lower levels the more remote it is from the master; and there is especially a great difference between hearing it from the master and reading it in a book.⁴⁹¹

Rabbi Nahman describes how the disciple learns from the master just by looking at him and being in his presence:

Man must refine himself. Each one can see himself by looking at the master’s face, as if it were a mirror. Even if the master does not reprove him or preach to him, a person will feel immediate remorse for his deeds by merely looking at him. By merely looking at his face, he will see himself, as in a mirror, and note how he is sunk in darkness.⁴⁹²

It is not just what the tsadik says that instructs, but by being in his presence a person becomes transformed. The master’s presence makes an irresistible appeal to the inner being, even when he gives no verbal instructions. Rabbi Nahman said, “The person who listens to a discourse by a tsadik receives an imprint of his image, his mind, and his soul, and the physiognomy (countenance) of the tsadik becomes fixed in his mind.”⁴⁹³

He gives a vivid description of the mission and power of the tsadik:

Even those who are remote from the tsadik receive vitality and illumination from the tsadik. He shelters them, like a tree, which has branches, bark, and foliage, and all draw their sustenance from the tree. Even plants distant from the tree which do not appear to draw sustenance from the tree, do in fact draw from it.… Similarly, the tsadik has the equivalent of branches, bark and foliage.… And even those who are distant receive vitality from him by [his] sheltering them like a tree.⁴⁹⁴

The importance of the tsadik for human salvation is illustrated in a story he told, called “Two Turkeys.” It demonstrates that humanity is never abandoned by the God; he sends the tsadik to bring souls back to him, souls who have forgotten their divine origin. These tsadikim take on the garb of ordinary people of the world in order to gain the confidence of those souls destined for divine re-union. To use the kabbalistic and hasidic vocabulary, they descend from their high rung of spirituality and stand on the lower rung of the mundane material world to perform their mission of rescuing souls.

The king’s son once became insane and imagined himself to be a turkey. He removed his clothes and sat under the table naked, and renounced food, eating only grains and pieces of bones. The king tried all the physicians but no one could help him.

At last one wise man came to the king and said to him: I undertake to cure your son.

This wise man also removed his clothes, placed himself under the table next to the king’s son, and gathered grains and pieces of bones and ate them.

The king’s son asked him: Who are you and what are you doing here? The wise man replied: And who are you and what are you doing here? The king’s son answered him: I am a turkey. The wise man replied similarly: I am also a turkey.

The two turkeys sat together until they became acquainted. The man then gave a signal to bring him a shirt, and after he put on the shirt he said to the king’s son: Do you think that a turkey is not allowed to wear a shirt? He is allowed, and he does not thereby cease being a turkey. The king’s son understood this and he also consented to wear a shirt.

After some time, the wise man signaled to bring him trousers; he put them on and said to the king’s son: Do you think a turkey is not allowed to wear trousers? Even if he wears trousers he can still remain a real turkey. The king’s son agreed and he, too, put on trousers, and then, following the wise man’s example, he put on the rest of the clothes.

Then the wise man asked for regular food and he ate it, saying to the king’s son: Do you think that a turkey is not allowed to eat good food? One can eat the best and remain a turkey as ever. The king’s son followed him also in this, and he began to eat regular food.

Reflecting on the progress made so far, the wise man then said to the king’s son: And do you really think that a turkey must remain confined under the table? Not at all. A turkey may also go where he chooses, and no one has a right to interfere with him. The king’s son understood this and accepted the wise man’s advice. And since he now stood up and walked like a person he began to behave like a person.

Similarly, the tsadik robes himself in worldly garments and behaves like ordinary people in order to draw them to God’s service.⁴⁹⁵

Rabbi Nahman’s appreciation of the importance of the living tsadik, and the seriousness of his mission, made him critical of those tsadikim whom he felt were dishonest, and who abused the trust of their disciples. Because of his forthright attitude towards his contemporaries he made many enemies as well as supporters. And his disciples were persecuted by the followers of other hasidim.

Nahman died in 1810 at the age of thirty-eight, after a long struggle with tuberculosis. He accepted his death as “an ascent to a new stage of great wandering, to a more perfect form of total life.”⁴⁹⁶ He said: “To him who attains the true knowledge, the knowledge of God, there is no separation between life and death, for he cleaves to God and embraces him and lives the eternal life like him.”⁴⁹⁷

Rabbi Nahman named no successor, and so his disciples became known as the “dead hasidim,” as they had no living master. Yet the spiritual influence of Rabbi Nahman has outlived him. In recent years many young people have been attracted by the figure of Rabbi Nahman and several groups devoted to his teachings have emerged in Israel. Yet they are still in search of a living master to lead them. Buber considers Rabbi Nahman to be the last of the great masters and mystics of Hasidism who was true to his mystical calling.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady and Habad-Lubavitch
Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady, Russia (1747–1812) was another important hasidic master, whose spiritual ministry was very different from that of Rabbi Nahman, or even the Ba’al Shem Tov. Yet he too was true to his calling.

Shneur Zalman was first in the line of the Habad-Lubavitch lineage of hasidim. It is the most well-known of the hasidic lineages to persist till today. The term Habad (sometimes spelled Chabad) is actually an acronym of the three highest sefirot of the Kabbalah, which are the highest faculties of the mind: Wisdom (Hokhmah), Understanding (Binah), and Knowledge (Da’at).^* It was Shneur Zalman’s belief that all the faculties of the mind had to be in harmony and work together in order for a hasid to pursue the spiritual path.

Born in central Russia, in his childhood Shneur Zalman was considered a prodigy in religious studies and brilliant in the secular subjects of science and mathematics. He studied Kabbalah from his early youth. As he matured, he became known as a great scholar and sage. However, he experienced a still greater pull to the mystical life of a hasid, and joined the group of disciples devoted to Dov Baer, the great Maggid. He moved to Mezherich for several years to be close to his master. On the death of the Maggid, Shneur Zalman was asked to become the head of the hasidim in Lithuania, where there was a lot of opposition to the movement from those who objected to it as an emotional, devotional, tsadik-centered cult. The mitnagdim (the opposers) persecuted him and even denounced him to the Russian government authorities as a subversive influence. He was jailed twice in St. Petersburg and finally emigrated to Palestine to escape confrontation. Eventually he returned and settled in Lyady from where his influence spread throughout Russia.

Known as the Alta Rebbe (old rebbe), Shneur Zalman is significant because of his great influence during his own time and through his lineage. As an intellectual as well as a mystic, he synthesized the two strains of Jewish worship. His most important writings are the Likutei Amarim (Collected Essays), known as the Tanya (“it has been taught”), from the first letters which appear in the book. This work so defined Rabbi Shneur Zalman that he himself was often called the Tanya. In this work he attempts to systematize the teachings of Hasidism and reconcile them with Kabbalah. In a sense one could say that in Shneur Zalman there is a synthesis of the many opposing strains of Jewish religious approaches – Hasidism, Kabbalah, and mainstream rabbinic Judaism. He represents a return to the intellectual approach rather than the purely devotional that had been introduced by the Ba’al Shem Tov. He emphasized the importance of the study of Talmud (in contrast to some previous hasidim who had mocked the scholars’ obsession with Talmud study). It is probably this combination of the different strains of religious insight that gave the teachings of Shneur Zalman the great appeal and force that has sustained the Habad line for several hundred years.

Shneur Zalman introduced a new approach to the role of the tsadik. The Ba’al Shem Tov had taught that the rebbe’s task was to make the disciples as independent of him as possible. The tsadik was not to do the spiritual work of the disciple; rather he was to serve as a mentor and guide, to prepare the disciple for his inner spiritual journey. Buber calls the tsadik the “helper” who is needed for both body and soul. He says:

Over and over he takes you by the hand and guides you until you are able to venture on alone. He does not relieve you of doing what you have grown strong enough to do for yourself. He does not lighten your soul of the struggle it must wage in order to accomplish its particular task in the world.

And all this also holds for communication of the soul with God. The tsadik must make communication with God easier for his hasidim, but he cannot take their place. This is the teaching of the Ba’al Shem and all the great hasidim followed it; everything else is distortion and the signs of it appear relatively early. The tsadik strengthens his hasid in the hours of doubting, but he does not infiltrate him with truth. He only helps him conquer and reconquer it for himself ; … he never permits the soul of the hasid to rely so wholly on his own that it relinquishes independent concentration and tension, in other words, that striving-to-God of the soul without which life on this earth is bound to be unfulfilled.⁴⁹⁸

This was the Ba’al Shem Tov’s approach, yet there were many who felt adrift because of their inability to live according to his high moral standards and pursue the life of devotion he prescribed. Letters from the Besht’s disciples to their master complaining of their plight still exist. This is what perhaps fueled another model for the tsadik, which developed after the time of the Ba’al Shem Tov. It was this model that was taught by Shneur Zalman and most of the later hasidic rebbes. Here the people depended on the tsadik totally, for everything – material as well as spiritual. Every personal and family decision was made by the tsadik. It was believed that the tsadik would lift the hasid with him to his level, and thus the hasid did not need to apply himself to his own spiritual development. He was counseled to depend on the tsadik as he himself would not be capable of the “great work.” This is based on the concept that the tsadik and the hasid are basically different species, and that the tsadik is so far above the hasid that the hasid could never rise to that level on his own.

Shneur Zalman taught that the tsadik is born with a special soul and that the ordinary man cannot aspire to that level. The ordinary person is generally governed by his animal nature, the “evil inclination” (yetser ha-ra) that drives him into the hands of his passions. Only the true tsadik, he taught, can overcome his animal nature completely. Yet there is hardly anyone who is a true tsadik, a true saint.

Most people fall into the category of beinoni (in between), the average person who was neither tsadik nor caught in the web of evil. The beinoni is governed by the rational soul which stands in between the animal soul (which governs the wicked) and the divine soul (which governs the saintly). The beinoni has made the commitment to live a spiritual life, not to “derive life energies from any source other than God. This means he considers each sin as idolatry.”⁴⁹⁹

The beinoni, although he feels the pull of the spiritual life, is in need of constant moral support and spiritual reinforcement, and so the tsadik, the master, must enter the world of the beinoni in order to help him. By entering that world, he descends from his spiritual stature as tsadik and enters the world of duality – in which there is the pull of good and evil, and where decisions must be made. This is a practical application of the metaphor of the tsadik who descends from his higher spiritual rung on the ladder of spirituality to the lower rung of the material world. It is said that Shneur Zalman modestly said of himself: “I am only a beinoni.”

Shneur Zalman’s concept of the tsadik as a special sort of soul engendered the elevation of the tsadik to a divine level – and a form of discipleship in which the hasidim became totally dependent on the tsadik. Hasidism’s detractors pointed to the worship of the tsadik as a type of idolatry. They felt he was elevating the tsadik to a level equal to a prophet or messiah, and this is why Shneur Zalman was denounced by his enemies.

On the death of Shneur Zalman in 1814, his eldest son, Rabbi Dov Baer (named for Shneur Zalman’s master, Dov Baer the Maggid of Mezherich), assumed leadership of the Habad hasidim. On Dov’s return from central Russia where he had accompanied his father during the Napoleonic wars, he settled in the town of Lubavitch, which remained the seat of the Habad movement until 1916.

DOV BAER OF LUBAVITCH
Known as the Middle Rebbe, Dov Baer (1774–1827) above all emphasized the importance of achieving spiritual ecstasy in prayer through disciplined practice. He rejected what he called physical ecstasy, which comes from the stirring up of emotions. Although many hasidim and kabbalists practiced meditation, there are few who wrote explicitly on their experiences. Dov Baer, however, has left as his legacy two unusual (though dense and difficult) works on the subject, Tract on Ecstasy and Tract on Meditation. Following are a few selections from Tract on Ecstasy concerning the ecstasy arising from devekut – the state of attachment to God.

There is a difference between love and attachment [devekut]. Attachment is life itself, since it is the binding of the soul to the Life of Life, the Infinite Light, which is called the Source of Life for all souls.⁵⁰⁰

This is the concept of the souls’ intrinsic attachment, and it is even higher than the soul’s Wisdom [the second level of the soul in Kabbalah]. This is called attachment, since the soul is attached and drawn because of the intrinsic godliness that is in it. It is automatically attracted and attached, just as a spark is drawn to a flame. This is genuine godly ecstasy.⁵⁰¹

Above this is the concept of pure desire, which is much higher even than meditation.… Our entire discussion in this chapter of how ecstasy in the heart and mind come through meditation is really only a beginning. The fifth level, however, involves the intrinsic passion that exists in one’s wisdom and understanding, and this also shines into the heart.⁵⁰²

LIFE AT THE COURT OF THE LUBAVITCH REBBE
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a twentieth-century Canadian-American spiritual leader who was raised as a Lubavitch hasid and spent his life trying to convey Hasidism’s values to contemporary American Jewish youth, has written an interesting book called Spiritual Intimacy, in which he looks closely at the tsadik-hasid relationship, especially among the contemporary Lubavitch hasidim. Schachter-Shalomi’s detailed descriptions of life at the court of the rebbe give an intimate and specific sense of the relationship between hasid and tsadik.

One of the most important events in the life of the hasid was the private interviews he had with his rebbe. At least once a year, the hasid would seek an interview with his master. In Habad Hasidism, this personal interview was called the yehidut (joining). Schachter-Shalomi says that during the yehidut with the rebbe, the hasid and the rebbe became one, as soul was open to soul, and there was no sense of one being superior or above the other. As Schachter-Shalomi wrote, the rebbe’s task is to disclose the undisclosed, the inner spirit, in himself and in the hasid.⁵⁰³

When the rebbe would meet the hasid, he would know the hasid’s soul-history, its incarnations in various lives. This was considered his true identity. He would be given a special name that he would use in all visits to the tsadik. Thus a person’s identification with his body, his old self, would be broken. He would discover that his true self lies beyond that, revealed through his contact with the tsadik.

The belief in reincarnation underlies all the Lubavitch teachings. When people came to see the rebbe, the rebbe would see the record of the soul’s development through its incarnations. As he goes back in time, he sees the soul as it was when it first separated from the Lord – in the primordial Adam Kadmon (original Adam). “It is a vision in which all the potentialities of a soul are realized in divine fullness. The rebbe’s task is to see that the hasid realizes this plenitude – if possible, in this present lifetime.”⁵⁰⁴ Schachter-Shalomi writes about the rebbe’s mission in this life.

The rebbe sees his life task as the sanctification of the Divine. Having known the great illumination, he knows the purpose of his present incarnation as well as of his past incarnations.⁵⁰⁵

When the hasid meets the rebbe in his yehidut, the rebbe not only looks at the hasid himself but also at his ancestors. They all plead for the tsadik to help the hasid with his needs. He takes into himself the anguish of the hasid and he sighs. The sigh indicates that he is flooded with “immense compassion,” as a result of his state of union with God. He looks within himself, and focuses completely on the hasid. In a sense he becomes the hasid. After the hasid answers the rebbe’s questions, questions which are framed by the inner knowledge the rebbe has attained of the hasid, the rebbe offers his advice and blesses him.⁵⁰⁶

A payment (called pidyon, ransom) was given to the rebbes. In some cases it was a monthly fee which the rebbe could use or distribute as he wished. It represented the ransom for the person’s soul to be liberated from the realm of the material world to the protection of the tsadik. It seals the commitment. It is also like the sacrifice on the altar that the people would bring in biblical times. This is because, to the hasid, the rebbe is like an “altar, a sacrifice without blemish, a high priest offering the sacrifice by eating of the hasid’s gift and raising it up to God in fervent prayer and study.”⁵⁰⁷

On other occasions, the rebbe would deliver sermons, tell stories, or explain a verse from Torah or Talmud to make his point. Often these interactions took place at the third sabbath meal, and they were called table talks or tisch (table) celebrations. The third sabbath meal was a special occasion for the hasidim to spend long hours in the company of the rebbe: “The table is like the altar, the rebbe is the priest, the food is the oblation, and the leftovers from the rebbe’s plate – the shirayim – are the peace offering. The highly stylized meal is at once a liturgical act and an agape love feast.”⁵⁰⁸

The yehidut, the farbrengen [fellowship of hasidim], and the table talks were occasions in which hasidim were treated to ma’asiyot [stories] told by the rebbes. A. J. Heschel defined the ma’aseh as “a story in which the soul surprises the mind.” Its purpose is to celebrate the rebbe’s wisdom and sanctity and to prepare the hasid to emulate him in his life.⁵⁰⁹

The Lubavitch line continued into the twentieth century. Despite the holocaust in Europe, which effectively ended many other hasidic lines, Lubavitch remained strong even after the rebbe moved his court to the U.S. and Canada. The last rebbe of the line, Mehahem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994) was named rebbe on the death of his father-in-law. Well-educated in Germany, Russia, and France, he was an electrical engineer until he took over the spiritual duties of his community. The Lubavitch synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, N.Y., became his residence in 1988, and his followers would collect there regularly to hear his discourses and interpretations of Torah, and to seek his advice. He started a process of reaching out to secular Jews by training shelihim, emissaries, to live among them and teach Jewish values and rituals.

Although Hasidism after the Ba’al Shem Tov had turned Jewish messianic aspirations inward to the salvation of the individual, messianic hope was always simmering beneath the surface. For a few years before his death in 1994, rumors spread within the movement that Rabbi Schneerson was the long-anticipated messiah. When he died suddenly the movement went through a crisis. Many of his adherents have refused to accept his death as final and still await his reappearance. This belief has caused a split in the Lubavitcher movement and has precipitated some disquiet in the wider orthodox Jewish world, as to most Jews the concept of the “second coming” taken literally as a physical reappearance on earth is strongly reminiscent of the Christian belief in the second coming of Christ. In fact, recently some of his followers have suggested that Schneerson and Jesus would return together.

Other tsadikim
Outside of the Lubavitcher line, there were many more hasidic masters who shared the light of their love for God. The limitless fountain of grace and wisdom, the nourishing waters of spirituality first unlocked by the Ba’al Shem Tov, flowed through these tsadikim and brought spiritual sustenance to hundreds of thousands of their followers in rural villages, towns, and cities, even through the worst times of suffering. A short glimpse of a few who were active in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries follows below.

RABBI ISAAC EIZIK OF KOMARNO
In the early nineteenth century, Rabbi Isaac Safrin (1806–74), known as Isaac Eizik of Komarno, wrote of his intensive life of Torah study and divine worship through which he attained “many lofty stages of the holy spirit.” However, he says, “I did not appreciate at the time that it was not the result of my own efforts, since I was still remote from true worship.… Many harsh and demonic forces rose against me.… Worse than all was the state of melancholy into which I was hurled.”⁵¹⁰

After finally overcoming these inner obstacles, Rabbi Isaac describes a wonderful light that he attributes to the Shekhinah that alighted upon him. He recounts that after this period of spiritual delight, he fell once again, and finally realized, “I must journey to the saints who would draw down His light … upon me since I already had a refined vessel wherewith to receive the light.”⁵¹¹ Rabbi Isaac realized that all his worship and Torah study – even his seeing of the divine light of the Shekhinah – were just a preparation, an inner cleansing, to ready him for the real spiritual experience which he could attain only by seeking the company of a saint.

For Rabbi Isaac, the Ba’al Shem Tov was a divine being. He tells of a vision that he dreamed one night in which he was overcome by a great longing to see the face of the divine Ba’al Shem Tov:

I ran to his abode and stood in the outer room. They told me that he was reciting his prayers in the inner sanctum but he opened the door and I had the merit of seeing the radiant form of our master, the Ba’al Shem Tov.… I was in such a state of joy and dread that I could not move, but he came up to me, greeting me with a smile of his face. I delighted greatly in this and his form is engraved on my mind so that I can recall it.⁵¹²

When Rabbi Isaac writes of seeing the “radiant form” of the Ba’al Shem Tov, he is referring to a recognition based on spiritual insight into the master’s true “formless form,” his spiritual divine essence. It is not an impression of his physical body, but of the supernal reality taking the form of the Besht.

Although the Besht had died before Rabbi Isaac was born, he was the inheritor to several important kabbalists and hasidic dynasties through whom the teachings of the Besht would have come to him, and thus he saw the form of the Besht within. He associated himself so closely with the Besht that he believed he was his reincarnation.

RACHEL OF LUDOMIR
The late nineteenth century saw the appearance of Rachel of Ludomir, probably the only female hasidic rebbe, who – because she was a woman – was ostracized and banished from her community in Poland. Ultimately she settled in Jerusalem where she lived till her death in 1905, after ministering for more than fifty years to men and women seeking spiritual understanding. Little is known of her actual teachings or whether she taught a mystical path – she functioned more as a miracle worker to her disciples who came with requests for relief from earthly suffering.

There may have been other women saints in the Jewish community about whom we have no information, as they too would have been suppressed. Only men were permitted to read the holy scriptures and Talmud, and especially the mystical texts. Women were not included in the fellowships of the kabbalists or the hasidim.

RABBI KALONYMUS SHAPIRA
At the time of the Holocaust in Europe during World War II, Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira stands out as an unquenchable flame who brought hope and spiritual strength to his disciples who were interned in the Warsaw Ghetto. Heir to the dynasty of the great third-generation hasidic rebbe Elimelekh of Lyzhansk, Kalonymus Shapira was known as the Holy Fire (Esh Kodesh), which is also the title of his most important book, found buried in a canister after the Warsaw Ghetto was demolished. His writings attest to his internal spiritual growth as he was confronted by the horrific events he experienced and witnessed daily. Shapira’s children and other relations were killed during the bombing of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1939, and he was interned in the Ghetto from 1939 to 1943 where he ran a secret synagogue and arranged for proper performance of many religious rituals and holy days. He continued bringing faith and solace to the Jews interned there with him, and helped them to find God’s presence within themselves, which gave them the strength to undergo their harsh fate. In 1943 the rabbi was taken to a labor camp where he was shot just before the war ended.

Shapira ministered selflessly, tirelessly, to the people in the Ghetto, helping them maintain faith in God when life seemed tragic beyond comprehension. At first he believed that the Holocaust would end and a messiah would come to liberate the Jews, but finally his passionate love for God led him to accept what was happening. He struggled with his faith but ultimately came to understand and accept everything as an expression of the divine will, and that the love of the divine being was always present. He never gave up on his belief in the tenets of Judaism and in a special loving relationship between God and the individual.

He pursued a path of inner meditative prayer as well as adherence to outward religion. His reflections on quieting the mind are quite relevant. This quotation is from a letter written by one of his students.

The master continued with his well-known thesis that the ego constitutes a barrier to the heavenly influx. Thus, if one’s thoughts and intellect are active, it is difficult for the heavenly flow to penetrate. However, when one sleeps, his mind and thoughts are quiet, and at such times he has no self-directed thoughts and it is possible for the heavenly influence to reach him.… Now when one sleeps, it is impossible for him to desire anything for himself, since he is unconscious. Thus our goal is to come to a sleep-consciousness while we are awake. That is to say, we wish to stem the flow of thoughts and impulses that is endemic to the working of the mind. This flow of thoughts is highly associative, and it is very difficult for a man to extricate himself from it.… He then gave us concrete advice about this quieting.

He said first that one simply watches for a set period of time, observing his thoughts. He eventually will notice that the mind is emptying; his thoughts are slowing a bit from their habitual flow. He then must repeat a single verse or phrase, such as “God is truly God,” in order to insert a thought of holiness into his now open mind.⁵¹³

RABBI ABRAHAM ISAAC KOOK
There were many mystics in the twentieth century who would not be considered part of the hasidic movement, yet they also were deeply involved in teaching the path to inner realization of God; they provided guidance to disciples in their quest for inner knowledge of the divine. The legacy of writings and letters of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, for example, who served as chief rabbi of Palestine till his death in 1935, reveal that he actively pursued the mystical life and had experienced the sublime inner light. He criticized the worship of outer names of God as a form of idolatry. He advocated the worship of the true divine essence which is beyond any outer names of God, even the name “God.”

All the ideological controversies among people and all the inner conflicts that every individual suffers in his world outlook are caused by the confusion in the conception of God. This is an endlessly profound realm and all thoughts, whether practical or theoretical, are centered in it.…

All the divine names, whether in Hebrew or in any other language, give us only a tiny and dull spark of the hidden light to which the soul aspires when it utters the word “God.” Every definition of God brings about heresy; every definition is spiritual idolatry; even attributing to his intellect and will, even the term divine, the term God, suffers from the limitations of definition.…

The greatest impediment to the human spirit, on reaching maturity, results from the fact that the conception of God is crystallized among people in a particular form, going back to childish habit and imagination. This is an aspect of the offense of making a graven image or likeness of God [idolatry], against which we must always beware.…

The tendency of unrefined people to see the divine essence as embodied in the words and in the letters alone is a source of embarrassment to humanity, and atheism arises as a pained outcry to liberate man from this narrow and alien pit.⁵¹⁴

Here was a man in touch with the infinite spirit that we call God! It is no wonder that some scholars have called him the only true Jewish mystic of the twentieth century. Kook wrote of awakening to the depths of the inner worship, which he called the holiness of silence – the inner silence that creates the space within oneself to commune with the Lord. Once one has become absorbed in that kind of worship, then outer forms of worship or prayer will feel constricting.

If a person who has risen to the holiness of silence should lower himself to a particularized form of divine service, in prayer, [or] Torah study, to the limited problems of morality, he will suffer and feel oppressed. He will feel as though his soul, which embraces all existence, is being pressed as though with prongs, to surrender her to the lowland where everything exists within a prescribed measure, to the narrowness of a particular path, when all paths are open to him, all abounding in light, all abounding in life’s treasures.⁵¹⁵

He wrote also of the divine light, or fire, that gives life to every heart. He urges people to let go of the burden of their material life and enjoy “the grace of God’s love”:

The flame of the holy fire of the love of God is always burning in the human heart. It is this which warms the human spirit and illumines life; the delights it yields are endless, there is no measure by which to assess it. And how cruel is man toward himself, that he allows himself to be sunk in the dark abyss of life, troubles himself with petty considerations, while he erases from his mind this which spells true life, which is the basis for all that gives meaning to life. It is for this reason that he does not share in it, and walks this world bound by the heavy burden of his material existence, without light to illumine his way. But all this is contrary to the nature of life; indeed it is contrary to the nature of all existence. The grace of God’s love, a boon from On High, is destined to break out from its confinements, and the holiness of life will hew a path toward this delight, so as to enable it to appear in its full splendor and might. “No eye has seen what God alone will do for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:3).⁵¹⁶

In poignant simplicity, Kook wrote about the love for everyone that flowed from his divine soul:

I love everybody. It is impossible for me not to love all people, all nations. With all the depth of my being, I desire to see them grow toward beauty, toward perfection. My love for the Jewish people is with more ardor, more depth. But my inner desire reaches out with a mighty love toward all. There is veritably no need for me to force this feeling of love. It flows directly from the holy depth of wisdom, from the divine soul.⁵¹⁷

Kook’s universality is expressed in another selection:

Conventional theology assumes that the different religions must necessarily oppose each other.… But on reaching full maturity the human spirit aspires to rise above every manner of conflict and opposition, and a person then recognizes all expressions of the spiritual life as an organic whole.⁵¹⁸

BENISH HAI AND BABA SALI
Also in Israel, several Moroccan and Iraqi Jewish mystics like Yosef Hayim, known as Ben Ish Hai (son of the living man) and Yisrael Abuhatseira (Baba Sali) have provided comfort to thousands of disciples. Baba Sali, which means “our praying father,” was the inheritor of an important lineage of kabbalists who had migrated from Damascus to Morocco more than four hundred years earlier. In Morocco, where he was a teacher and spiritual master, both Jews and Arabs came to him for blessings and advice. He moved to Israel in 1964 where the number of his visitors was even greater. At his direction, his teachings were not written down or recorded as he believed in the importance of personal contact. He was humble and honest, known for his self-sacrifice, purity, miracles, and loving magnetic nature. Hasidic rabbis came to him for blessings and he would ask them for their blessings. European and Eastern Jews (Ashkenazim and Sephardim) both revered him, and in him “they found the spring of sweet water that gave succor, help, blessing and reassurance.”⁵¹⁹ He passed away in 1984.

The unending story
This is an unending story. There will never be a final chapter, as there will always be new spiritual masters coming to teach the way to inner knowledge, and disciples who are drawn to the spiritual life. The mystic reality is constant and accessible if we look deep within ourselves. There is always a yearning for contact with God, a search for teachers who can show the way: In Judaism there have been those who emphasized the role of intellect, those who enfolded their teachings in complex symbolism or intricate methods of concentration, and those who taught the simpler way of devotion. Each movement influences the others, so the pattern is ever-shifting. But in all movements, in all periods, there were those who sought the inner truth under the guidance of their spiritual masters.

Jewish mystics have always emphasized creativity in worship, not rigidity. The kabbalists were enjoined to innovate as part of their adherence to the spirit of the mystical quest, as their response to the inner calling of the spirit of Elijah and other internal guides. There also have been many outside influences on Judaism from other religious traditions – Christian mystical and monastic sects, Muslim Sufis, and so forth. It is a dynamic process.

Today in Israel, in the U.S., U.K., and other Western countries, there is an unprecedented interest in Jewish mysticism on all levels. There are the neo-hasidim who are seeking to revive the values and devotion of Hasidism. There are the ba’alei teshuvah, the “repenters” – Jews brought up without a religious orientation but who are searching for inner spiritual enlightenment. Many of them have joined existing hasidic lineages, revitalizing them with modern practices and attitudes. The Habad-Lubavitch lineage may be the most well known, but there are also contemporary hevras emulating the teachings and spirit of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav and other tsadikim.

Kabbalah has been popularized through the efforts of the Kabbalah Center, whose leaders are the inheritors of the twentieth-century kabbalist Yehudah Ashlag. They reach out to Jews and non-Jews alike and have many celebrity followers. But they are not the only ones. There are numerous rabbis and leaders of groups practicing kabbalistic meditations and trying to apply principles of Kabbalah to their daily lives. Even in some orthodox yeshivas (academies) in Israel, where traditionally halakhic (talmudic-legal) texts were studied to the exclusion of esoteric material, mystical texts have been added to the curriculum. Every day another popular book on Kabbalah is published, and the writings of early kabbalists and hasidic masters are being translated into English and published by a variety of secular, academic, and religious publishers. In practice, Kabbalah is often re-integrated with Hasidism and Hasidism with Kabbalah. Seekers of spiritual understanding are not content with an intellectual path to knowledge; they actively pursue techniques of meditation taught by past and contemporary masters.

Various spiritual leaders have large followings outside of the traditional religious institutions. Aryeh Kaplan, an orthodox scholar of Jewish mysticism who mined the Bible and later Jewish mystics for evidence of their meditation practices, taught meditation to Jews and non-Jews alike until his early death at the age of forty-eight. Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, mentioned earlier, is the founder of the B’nai Or (Children of Light) communities – now called ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Ordained in the Lubavitcher movement, Reb Zalman has broadened his inspiration to include Christian monastic, Hindu, Sufi, and Buddhist traditions and meditative practices. The Renewal movement reflects this multireligious and multicultural orientation. Another aspect of the evolution of the Jewish consciousness today is the empowerment of women. Traditionally, Judaism has been patriarchal and male-dominated, and the feminine element of humanity has been missing from the spiritual life of Judaism. Today, however, women are in the forefront of the transformation of Judaism into a more holistic spiritual path, which embraces inner worship along with the outer religious traditions. Women are also taking leadership roles in the community: they are being ordained as rabbis, accepted as scholars in Jewish religious studies and mysticism, and teaching courses in meditation.

It is a time of spiritual ferment and seeking, motivated by the deep inner pull of the spiritual reality that is the universal human heritage. When the Bible says that we are created in the “image of God,” it means that all human beings share the same divine core, the ruah ha-kodesh, which can be experienced within ourselves in contemplation and meditation. As Gershom Scholem wrote:

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.⁵²⁰

1. Next:  APPENDIX 1: The Writing of the Bible