On Hasidism, Women, and What Lies Between Them (Column 104)
After the post was published, comments began to appear and I also received several remarks, and I thought I would accede to the requests/suggestions and insert a clarification right here.
First, my aim in the post was of course not personal, since I do not know the people involved. I used the article to point to a problematic tendency that has been troubling me for quite some time in the study of Hasidism.
Second, it is obvious that there are also meaningful studies of Hasidism, but many are not of that sort (especially the existentialist directions). Among them are quite a few that receive esteem for no fault of their own, and that is what I was discussing.
Third, the air of enthusiasm blowing through the article over the female revolution that has penetrated the field of Hasidism also irritated me. The integration of women into this field is almost trivial in my eyes. Since when is existentialism closed to women? I am waiting for integration and significant achievements in the field of Talmudic analysis , and so far this is slow in coming (though there certainly are processes under way, and I hope they continue and ripen).
And fourth, regarding the irony and cynicism in my remarks, see the general clarifications on the opening page about the style of this site.
Finally, any personal reference here was made only for the sake of the general illustration. In any case, the fragmented presentation typical of a newspaper article usually does an injustice to the ideas and to the speaker, and it is not right to judge them on that basis. I sinned in this respect here, and I apologize for it. See in the comments here the discussion with Olesh Goldberg, whose words were quoted in the article. I was actually very impressed by her and by what she wrote here, and this is an opportunity to apologize if my words hurt her, though that was not my intention. I direct readers to the comments below, where you can find her responses.
I am not correcting the sentences under discussion, even though some of them really should have been corrected, because the discussion below refers to the post as it was first published; therefore I preferred instead to add these clarifications here. My principled remarks stand as they are, but the specific reference to the sentences quoted in the article should be taken with some caution. They illustrate failures that I do indeed want to point out, but they themselves (and the speaker) do not necessarily suffer from those failures.
With God’s help
Introduction: On the Analytical and the Synthetic
My ambivalent relationship to analyticity is well known. On the one hand, almost everything I have written is directed against what I called the analytical approach. This is an approach that is unwilling to speak about concepts that are not sharply defined, or claims that have not been proven. The analytical toolkit is logic, logic, and more logic. In my books I have explained that this is an important but partial toolkit, and it produces an incomplete picture of the issues. Logic deals with deriving conclusions from premises, but the premises themselves cannot be drawn from logic. The definition of concepts, too, is not a standard logical move. Therefore, someone who focuses only on logic has nothing. He remains without information (the emptiness of the analytical). On the other hand, the analytical approach has great charm and appeal because it is based on an important and correct principle. What in fact created and continues to create the analytical approach is the danger that discourse will deteriorate into empty slogans and contentless talk that says nothing. A synthetic position, which refuses to suffice with logic alone, is liable to fail by producing discourse that sounds ‘deep’ and in fact says nothing. Analyticity is an important tool for avoiding this painful danger.
By temperament and philosophical inclination I tend toward sharp analytical dissection of concepts and ideas. Precisely because of my opposition to the analytical approach (which required from me no simple overcoming of my own temperament), it is doubly important to me to clarify concepts, define, and draw conclusions, and above all to sharpen what the concepts mean and what those conclusions are saying. It is very easy to take refuge in syntheticity and exempt ourselves from the need to define concepts and examine their meaning. It is enough to quote a poem with some association, or to toss into the air a statement that sounds ‘deep’ and means nothing, in order to produce a popular lecture that will give us the aura of profound thinkers.
As every serious yeshiva scholar knows, in many cases the way to do this is through a dichotomous and dialectical presentation of thesis and antithesis, one against the other (what in yeshivot is called a ‘conceptual inquiry’). When one places a claim against an alternative claim, it is easier to examine its meanings and implications through its practical ramifications. But dialectical inquiry is no guarantee that we are in fact dealing with a claim that has content. Sometimes, on a second look, it turns out that the two sides standing opposite one another say nothing, or alternatively say the same thing. This is one of the newer criticisms of Brisker learning, and one cannot deny that there is substance to it. One can inquire whether the table stands on the legs or the legs bear the table. Here we have two alternatives set against one another, but both say the same thing. True, one can sharpen the meaning of these statements and perhaps succeed in distilling from them a real question, but so long as we have not done so and clarified our intention, this is empty and valueless discourse.
As someone who holds a synthetic position, it is clear to me that sometimes even if we do not do this, the discourse still has meaning, when the listeners understand what is being discussed. Sometimes foundational concepts and the differences between them are also difficult to define, and if everyone understands them then perhaps there is no need. But it is important to beware of sliding into empty discourse when synthetic ideology serves us as a way of freeing ourselves from the need to pour concrete content into our words. That may be good for a poet, but not for a thinker or philosopher. Someone who makes claims must clarify his intentions and the meaning of his concepts and claims.
The Vizhnitz Rebbe once wrote that it is better to fail in baseless love than in baseless hatred. To that I usually say that it is even better not to fail in either one. The same holds here. Best of all is to avoid both kinds of failure described above: not to grant exclusive standing to logic, but at the same time to beware of ignoring it and drifting into the districts of nonsense. Unfortunately, our world is full of citizens of both groups: those who ignore logic and those who focus only on it. I am trying, with my meager powers, to contribute to strengthening the third group, which does not ignore logic and sees it as a necessary though not sufficient condition, while at the same time not seeing it as the whole story (as befits a necessary condition, for those with some logical literacy).
The Study of Hasidism: A Point of Departure
For years I have been accompanied by the feeling that in far too many cases, the study of Hasidism that is so popular in our day is nothing but contentless babble. Perhaps that is the secret of its charm. People are tired of systematic and orderly thinking; they are fed up with analyticity and, in truth, they are lazy, so they seek catharsis for the vague emotions pulsing within them. And if it also sounds oceanically deep, so much the better! Thus they arrive at all kinds of lectures or writings that do little more than recite slogans, and when one examines them more closely one discovers that behind the supposed ‘depth’ there is a vacuum that says nothing. At best, this is a description of the subjective feelings of the writer/speaker, which does not really say anything about the reality outside him. Not about God, not about the Jewish people, and not about the world at all. None of this prevents people from enjoying it and feeling that they have learned profound matters from certified initiates.
What Is Learning?
The basic and important point in the background of this discussion is the meaning of learning. Not Torah study, but learning in general. When I read a poem, I am not learning. I may perhaps be affected by the poem, and if it is successful it does me good and arouses interesting and satisfying feelings in me. But thinking and learning begin when I try to analyze the poem and understand its meanings. If I have not defined the concepts and formulated the claims, I have not learned. It may have acted upon me, and perhaps even changed me, but learning is something active. I am supposed to activate my thinking and arrive at conclusions and insights. On the other hand, even if the production of feelings and experiences as such is not learning, it is clear that ideas in psychology can be learning (though it seems to me that a large part of them are not). That is not learning about the world, but about the human being. When I learn about the human psyche, I am certainly learning. But when my soul is stirred by something, that is not learning.
One must understand that if we are prepared to define learning too broadly, then every action we perform is learning. I am sure that right now all the poets and students of Hasidism among my readers (= approximately the empty set) are leaping with excitement and saying to themselves: exactly so. Every event and every experience are learning. This is empty verbiage. I do not deny that every event can affect me and that perhaps I can also learn from it. But that is only if I actually performed an act of learning in relation to it. If we define learning this way, the concept is emptied of its content. In Column 35 I explained that computers and animals do not think. Thinking is an active activity. Someone who is programmed by something does indeed change because of it, but one cannot say that he thinks or learns. If that is the definition of learning, then I am learning when I pass a telephone pole, see a cloud, or even sleep. I do not deny that each such thing can do something to me, but I would not call that learning. If everything is learning, then nothing is learning.
What Is a Lesson?
A lesson is a lecture or article whose engagement is learning. If someone recites Chinese mantras next to me, or if a dog barks next to me, that may influence me in various ways, but I would not call it a lesson. In order to learn, I am supposed to understand what is said or written, internalize it, and perhaps also draw conclusions from it (for example, to reject the opposite of what was said, or the claim itself). I must do some kind of active processing of the things I learn. They are supposed at least to enter and be placed in some drawer for me. And again, only if I myself placed them in the relevant drawer, not when it simply happened to me.
From another angle, a lesson is supposed to be made up of claims. A claim is supposed to express some fact, to assert something. The expression of a feeling or an experience is not a claim in this sense. When I say that I love so-and-so, that is a claim about myself, but not an interesting claim in the sense that someone can learn something from it. I am merely reporting a mental state. That is unlike the claim that someone is worthy of love, which is a claim in every respect. When something uplifts my spirit, even if that something is a talk or an article by some person, that is not a process of learning but at most treatment. That thing that uplifted my spirit is not a lesson but at most therapy. When I say that something was uplifting, I am reporting an experience or feeling, but certainly not engaging an insight. I am not asserting anything here (except about what happened to me as a result of the words).
It seems to me that studies of Hasidism generally fall into this category. Here there is a person speaking or writing, but the readers or listeners are not really learning from him. They are at most being influenced by him and acted upon by him. It may be that some people find therapeutic value in the words, but in many cases this is not learning. We have here the recitation of mantras that perhaps impress people and affect them, but do not teach them in the cognitive sense described above. One of the indications of this is that if you try to think about the mantras you heard, define them, and understand their meanings and implications, in many cases you will discover a vacuum. Perhaps it did something to you, but that doing did not pass through your cognition.
On Hasidism and Hasidic Women
Last Sabbath, in the Shabbat supplement of Makor Rishon, Yehuda Yifrach’s article was published, "The ‘Hasidot’ Movement" (with a holam), about women who study and teach Hasidism. The enthusiasm wafting between the lines was very conspicuous. No wonder, for the ‘women’s learning revolution’ has reached the world of Hasidism as well. Before anything else, I will say that I am not enthusiastic about the women’s learning revolution at all. I am entirely in favor of women studying (and I myself teach women), but so far I do not really see an essential contribution from them, as women, to learning. Nor do I see large numbers of female Torah scholars about whom everyone (especially women) speaks with such great enthusiasm, at least when we are dealing with the Talmudic-halakhic world (see my remarks in Columns 56,57,58, following my article in Makor Rishon’s Shabbat supplement). True, there are good explanations for this, and I hope and believe that with time it will yet come. Therefore there is no accusation in my words here, only a description, even if somewhat cruel, of reality. If so, a Litvak (of the Lithuanian yeshiva tradition) like me would be much more impressed by an article about women’s achievements in Talmudic conceptual analysis and analytic study of Jewish law than by their achievements in Hasidism (if such a thing as achievements in Hasidism exists at all).
Moreover, if there are female contributions to learning at all, in my assessment they are usually for the worse. In the terminology above, one may say that sometimes their learning is no longer learning but a kind of therapy. In that sense, Hasidism is tailor-made for women, and this article demonstrated that in a very impressive way. It is no wonder that there is a women’s revolution in the study of Hasidism. I would not have thought otherwise. By the same token, this perhaps explains why the great revolution has not manifested itself in the world of Talmudic conceptual analysis and Talmudic study. There are attempts to turn that too into therapy (existential, experiential study), which in my eyes strip it of the name Torah study and turn it into a tranquilizer or a psycho-spiritual treatment. Happily, this has not really succeeded so far. As stated, learning is not treatment. Learning may perhaps heal, and some would say it should heal (I am not sure of that), but the healing is not the learning itself. Torah study too is learning, and as such it is also subject to what I described above. Experiential tours following kabbalists in Spain or in Safed, even if very enriching and enlightening and even if they raise our spiritual level wonderfully, are not Torah study. Reciting Hasidic mantras or Talmudic sayings in colloquial Aramaic with existentialist interpretation is not learning, just as hypnosis or taking a psychiatric pill are not learning, even though they change us and perhaps improve us no less.
Just to answer all those who have now jumped up on reading these lines: yes, I know this is a generalization (a kind of pigeonholing), and of course there are exceptions and there are women who study seriously. But if we are dealing in generalizations, then my words stand. And yes, I am aware that at times the study of Hasidism can certainly be meaningful and instructive, except that in many cases it is not, and that does not harm its popularity (perhaps the opposite). In addition, I too agree that Torah study need not be cold and alienated (though it is desirable that it be J), but the warmth and the emotional results are not an essential part of the learning, only at most its results (blessed or otherwise). Adding such aspects to learning does not necessarily improve it. On the contrary, in many cases this is its corruption and distortion. Instead of studying, we look for existential lessons. Instead of seeking what is in the text, we implant in it what we want to be there, for we came in order to get something from it. These approaches lead to a situation in which the psycho-spiritual results do not come and stand alongside the learning, but replace it. The existential implications themselves become the insights of the learning and not merely its results. Learning becomes a kind of psycho-spiritual psychiatric pill, and the Sages already taught us of the prohibition on is healed through words of Torah (using Torah as therapy) (see Shevuot 15 and the halakhic authorities).[1] Here I am not speaking about a prohibition but about a missed mark. It seems to me that there is no prohibition here of is healed through words of Torah (though I am not sure why), but there is a neglect of the positive commandment of Torah study. It simply is not learning.
Instead of circling around and talking about the matters, let us look at the things themselves. The best way is to examine a few examples from Yifrach’s article.
First Example
The article opens with the words of Olesh Goldberg, a teacher of Hasidism at Midrashot Shuva and Lindenbaum, who says the following:
Hasidism, as a branch of the kabbalistic tradition, is entirely a call to feminize the conception of divinity. The very development of the concept of the Shekhinah as a feminine dimension of divinity, the turning toward it and the identification with it, and the focusing of attention on the divine within the soul rather than on the transcendent, is a Hasidic project. Hasidism is feminine also in its return to the Zohar’s surface layer as a world of content that takes shape in nature, when you walk along the way (‘as you walk on the way’), in the language of myth and not in a system of abstractions, in story. The Baal Shem Tov himself is described as a man of the forest who seeks divinity in the marketplace as well; he sees the human being as a whole of body, psyche, and soul, and couplehood as a condition for spiritual work. This nearness to being and to the body, which is embodied also in travel to the Land of Israel, is a distinctly feminine movement.
I have already written at length about feminist theology in Column 40. There I explained that this is hollow, contentless verbiage. The collection of generalizations in this passage positively cries out for a similar analysis. Thus, for example, the statement that Hasidism in its entirety (!) is nothing but a feminization of divinity. So when you read a passage by R. Tzadok or the Sefat Emet about the fact that Reuben is an aspect of Simeon and Levi, and that the husk of Amalek is the empty space of the serpent’s skin, you have simply not read it correctly. What we have here is a feminization of divinity. Where? I do not know. Is it really Hasidism that did this (or perpetrated it)? In my opinion, to a large extent this was already present in the Kabbalah on which Hasidism relies.
The next sentence in this passage explains to us that the turning toward the Shekhinah and the identification with it, and the focusing of attention on the divine within the soul rather than on the transcendent, is a Hasidic project. Even if I grant the claim that this is a Hasidic project, and even if I grant that one can define and give clear meaning to this vague sentence, I still do not understand how it is connected to the opening sentence. What does this have to do with feminizing divinity? Does she mean to claim that women focus on the divine within the soul rather than on the transcendent? Or perhaps that the divine within the soul is feminine rather than masculine? Even in the souls of men, is the divine feminine? What does that even mean? Does this turning to the divine within the soul characterize all women? Most of them? Are there no such men? And what about the rebbes who wrote the books of Hasidism? Were they women with beards and shtreimels? And in general, what does it mean to focus on the divine within the soul rather than on the transcendent? I would have been glad for a somewhat clearer meaning. In what sense is ‘closeness to being and to the body a distinctly feminine movement’? What is closeness to the soul and the body anyway? Do men not have such closeness? Are they all close to nothingness and to the soul, and not to being and the body?
It is clear to me that in a short passage like this one cannot explain all these claims, but I strongly suspect (and this suspicion is grounded in experience) that they cannot be explained even in a thick book. Some of them are simply tendentious nonsense, and another part consists of crude generalizations that in the best case do not say much. It is evident that the speaker is looking for herself instead of learning the material. She is not reading what is in the text but inserting into it the desires of her heart. Terminology and declamation replace conceptualization and content. The use of feminine terminology satisfies the needs, and so there is no need to trouble oneself to conceptualize, define, and make claims. This is a classic postmodern phenomenon.
Incidentally, this is not a characteristic of women specifically. Laziness, and the weariness of using one’s head, of defining and conceptualizing, of engaging with complex logical structures and their meaning, leads many people in our day to lessons in Hasidism. No wonder that the ‘women’s revolution’ integrates into these processes in truly marvelous fashion. Instead of exerting ourselves and learning, we wax lyrical and versify, that is, we churn out words ‘that say nothing to me at all’ (as the poet Shlomo Gronich, may he live long, put it). It is only the excitement over this carnival that I do not understand.
Second Example
Here are a few more sentences for you:
The Hasidim lived with the consciousness that the umbilical cord between God and the world had not been cut. And this is a maternal theological decision. It opens up an entire realm of From my flesh I behold God (‘from my flesh I behold God’), of deep inward growth of the soul and the understanding that it is the arena in which the encounter with divinity occurs. The alternative is that the tzimtzum (divine contraction) is literal, God is transcendent; He appears as a distant father whose existence does not always have ‘proof,’ and therefore the human being receives a great deal of freedom, autonomy, and room for initiative. This is the biblical world built on dichotomy.
In my lectures on tzimtzum (see briefly also here) I explained why conceptions according to which the tzimtzum is not literal are mere empty talk, that is, a claim devoid of sense and substance. Once again terminology replaces content, as is customary in the provinces of the women’s and Hasidic revolution. And in general, what distinguishes a transcendent God (sovev) from an immanent one (memale)? At most these are two kinds of feeling, or in other words a report about a mental state and not a claim about the world. As stated, this is not learning but at most therapy. The consciousness that the umbilical cord to God was not cut also says nothing. What, as a reader, can you infer from the statement that someone lived with such a consciousness? What will he do differently from someone who thinks the cord was cut? Clearly there are different consciousnesses here, and perhaps they have indirect implications for practical conduct. But in the end this is a slogan that describes and reports feelings, not any substantive claim. Again, this is not learning but at most therapy. In what sense is this a ‘maternal theological decision’? At most, there is a theological decision here about viewing divine motherhood. But why is that decision itself maternal? And in general, can men not engage with motherhood and its essence? Is this necessarily a unique female contribution?
Some hint of the meaning of these vague claims can be gleaned from the penultimate sentence. There we are informed (or hinted at, or perhaps rebuked) that the feminine-Hasidic God does not need proof. The search for proofs is apparently a defect of men who tend toward the transcendent. Incidentally, I can certainly confirm this. Of the thousands of questions and questioners who reach me from every direction, by phone, in meetings, by email, on the site, after lectures, there are simply no women. It seems that intellectual questions do not trouble them. So perhaps it is true that there is some feminine characteristic here, but I expect a claim about whether this is good or bad, right or wrong, recommendation or rejection, and not merely a psychological description. A psychological description is not Torah study. There are also men who tend toward the intellectual and men who do not. Is that statement Torah study? There are tall men and short men. Is that Torah study?
On the other hand, at the end of the passage she explains to us that men have ‘a great deal of freedom, autonomy, and room for initiative.’ Does she mean to say that feminine and Hasidic theology takes our freedom from us? (Later she indeed speaks about the high passivity that is really activity…?!) If so, what is good about that? I asked myself whether this is even factually correct. On the test of the facts, this may perhaps be a correct characteristic of women as against men, but it seems to me that the Lithuanian tradition is actually much less active than Hasidism. Zionism, and certainly Religious Zionism, as practical movements are actually an outgrowth of Hasidism. But who checks these claims at all?! That is like checking a talk by a yeshiva mashgiach (spiritual supervisor) with the tools of logic and observation. This too is a feature of ‘the study of Hasidism’ (not only the female version): its claims are not supposed to withstand any critical test. In essence these are slogans that say nothing, and certainly not something that can be checked. At most, something that sits well with someone emotionally. For whenever you present a counterexample, they will tell you that of course this is only a generalization, and there is the feminine aspect within the masculine and the masculine within the feminine, and the aspect of Netzah within Hod that overshadows the Hod within Yesod. In short, you will never get to the end of it with them.
Obviously there are complex claims, but even complex claims are supposed to assert something that can be examined and thought about. In my estimation, none of this happens here. Moreover, it is clear that generalizations too are important and meaningful claims. They say something about the nature of the world, even though each has exceptions and outliers. The fact that there are exceptional cases is not a criticism. My criticism is that even if these Hasidic-feminine claims are generalizations that tolerate exceptions, nobody checks them. No wonder I get the feeling that this is nothing but the launching of slogans into the air.
Again I must sharpen the point: I do not expect the speaker himself to check his claims. He may say them out of life experience or from reading studies done by others, or simply out of common sense. What I am looking for is the very claim that stands open to examination. I ask myself: if I wanted to test this claim, what would I have to do? After all, even the claim that there is God cannot be tested, but in my opinion it certainly says something clear and distinct. Its meaning is that there is a transcendent factor (and not an immanent one. How does an immanent God do anything at all?) that created the world, gave the Torah, and so on. True, these claims cannot be subjected to scientific examination, but they have a clear meaning. By contrast, the claims brought above have no meaning. It is not that they speak about something we have not experienced directly or that we are unable to experience. It is not clear what they are speaking about, if anything. What do they even say?
I think that at the end of the day, the fact is that this verbiage speaks to many people, and probably to not a few women as well. My claim is that this is therapy and not learning. I am willing to accept that it affects them, but there is still no learning here. There is no substantive content and no recursive activation of the learner’s thought. He is basically being moved by a poem that he likes. I would not be impressed by the integration of women into the Hasidic revolution, and for two main reasons: a. It is natural and completely expected (let us see them in Talmudic conceptual analysis). b. In many cases this is not something worthy of praise but a corruption.
Third Example
Yifrach asks:
But Hasidism too is not monolithic. If the Baal Shem Tov plays between nothingness and being, the Maggid of Mezritch chooses to surrender to nothingness and return to a position that nullifies reality.
I confess, to my shame, that although the words are familiar to me (nothingness, being, to play, to surrender, to nullify, and above all reality), I did not really understand the meaning of the expressions and sentences in this question (‘to play between nothingness and being,’ ‘to surrender to nothingness,’ and you know what? even ‘a position that nullifies reality,’ which seems more understandable, if you try to think about it a bit I assure you that you will discover wonders. Tested and proven). I suspect that the readers, the interviewee, and perhaps even the interviewer are in the same position. But, as stated, in Hasidism this is not about understanding but about impression and experience. Lack of understanding need not prevent us from answering our interlocutor enthusiastically. In Leibniz’s terminology, this is discourse between monads (two bubbles, each speaking independently with itself, while to the outside observer a conversation appears to be taking place).
And thus she answers:
True. And after him the Baal HaTanya abolishes the doctrine of elevating alien thoughts and prefers abstraction to work within materiality.
Well, this I actually understood reasonably well on its face, though the connection to the question is not entirely clear to me (well, I did not understand the question itself). Even so, I will not conceal that I have some reservations here too. But let us leave that aside, because what follows looks more promising:
Rabbi Nachman, who is descended from a female lineage, returns to this tension, as in the famous teaching on the Empty Space: on the one hand Do not let the world delude you (‘do not let the world deceive you’), and a strict attitude toward the body, food, and sexuality. And on the other hand he travels to the actual Land of Israel, with those houses and courtyards (‘with these houses and courtyards’), and in his tales seeks to return to the world. The tension does not disappear in the Hasidism that follows the Maggid and the Baal HaTanya.
So not all of Hasidism is a feminization of divinity? Above I understood that it was. Now we see that it has tensions and different shades. Or perhaps, I wonder, the feminization is the tension itself? Are there Hasidim without tension? Is feminization a relation to the body or the negation of the body? Or perhaps Rabbi Nachman, who negates the body, is not a Hasidic thinker? Maybe he was a covert opponent of Hasidism? Or perhaps he includes everything in the wondrous Hasidic unity of opposites (I have not yet spoken about all the drivel surrounding the Empty Space, so beloved of students of Hasidism, women and men alike)? So what exactly is the claim? That Hasidism is everything? Then in fact you have said nothing. And anyway, I am beginning to wonder: do men not travel to the actual Land of Israel? Then who exactly founded the State of Israel, the women? And perhaps there are masculine dimensions in Hasidism? Well, by now I am completely confused.
But I am merely a dry, fossilized Lithuanian ape. One who cannot manage to understand that we are above logic, above reason, beneath experience, disconnected from the empirical, not open to examination, writing poetry in prose, counting in verse, cardinals in a mosque, priests in a synagogue, women who are men, Hasidim who are Litvaks, masculine feminization, bestial humanization, and so on… Sounds very deep to me, doesn’t it to you?
Something More on French and Continental Philosophy
Well, I will not continue to bring the rest of the examples from the article, since everything goes in the same direction. I will only conclude by saying that beyond the clear connection to postmodern New Age and its vapid chatter, I also see here a clear connection to the prostitution of philosophy. Various thinkers, mainly continental ones (Levinases and other beasts, mostly French), befuddle us with similar statements that say nothing apart from subjective descriptions of experience masquerading as philosophical claims. No wonder these too enjoy a flourishing among students of Hasidism, who take great pleasure in joining Torah (which is not Torah) to wisdom (which is folly) and producing from them one great nonsense. These bring a bad name upon Torah and those upon philosophy, and Through me and through you, the Most High will be praised (through me and through you the Most High is mocked). Thus every beggar is a king and every clown a philosopher. It remains for me only to mention here several of my posts that dealt with the humanities and leave it to the reader to connect them to this.[2]
And in closing, I apologize for the generalizations I resorted to here. It is clear to me that there are meaningful studies of Hasidism and there are women who study seriously, and perhaps you will even find words of sense in some French philosopher, even one who lived no earlier than the twentieth century. Even so, I thought these phenomena required attention and that someone needed to sharpen the issue. My apologies to all those offended.
[2] See, for example, here, here and here, and in Columns 23–24.
Discussion
Beautiful and true. Yesterday I was miserable walking among thousands of Hasidic books at the Hasidism fair, feeling that I couldn’t connect to anything in this whole “treasury,” while the people around me were eagerly gulping down every single letter. What’s frustrating is that you understand this isn’t a matter of taste, but of using one’s intellect. What can you do, that’s how it is when you’re a regular guest in “Responsa and Articles.”
They need to organize some kind of Litvak fair, with books of lomdus and philosophy, on the date when the trilogy is released from its terrible imprisonment in Lod…
Hello Natan.
Since I don’t deal with this, I’m not familiar with them. I think that in almost any book you can find gems—sometimes from the author himself, and perhaps even more often something stirred up in you by reading the words. But I don’t know how to distinguish between books on this score.
A voice crying in the wilderness, as usual. Thank you.
“Roughly the value of the empty set” — I laughed out loud 🙂
An essential article for our times.
With reservations on two points.
The study of Hasidism is indeed broad; it contains deep issues, and it also contains talks and slogans.
Someone who is inspired by a Hasidic talk is like someone inspired by a moralistic talk in the yeshiva world. And one who studies Hasidism is like one who studies the Talmud, although in both cases most people do not really study, but rather receive educational information.
Hasidism and Kabbalah deal with the issues of Aggadah—matters concerning man, the world, and God.
The Talmud deals with legal issues and domains that are not within the sphere of interest of the masses, like any other field of study.
I am against “Kabbalah for the People” (for men and women alike),
but to ask questions about the Hasidic terminology that exists in the sources is not right. The terminology exists; it has to be studied, like any language that must be learned in order to understand. Of course, the criticism of using terms in inappropriate contexts is justified. But the terms are valid and they do have content.
To bring pleasure and raise laughter to the lips of a Jew? Let such a thing not be light in your eyes. I can already be a Hasidic tzaddik raising sparks. Happy am I that I have merited…
“By the way, I can definitely confirm this. Among the thousands of questions and questioners who come to me from all directions—by phone, in meetings, by email, on the site, after lectures—there simply are no women. It seems that intellectual questions do not trouble them.”
I’ve read many of your posts on the site, and you tend to repeat this statement in various forms, which always ends up eliciting some woman’s response on the matter.
I’m beginning to wonder whether you really mean it (even though it is of course not true; after all, I myself have come across comments here on the site by women), or whether the whole idea is simply to generate backlash.
As for intellectual questions, I think you’re simply mistaken. I can testify at least about myself, my classmates, and in general most of the girls I know, that this is an incorrect claim.
It is admittedly based on personal experience, and you’ve already argued that we tend to exaggerate by projecting from our immediate surroundings onto a general phenomenon, but since you also did that (your claim is based on your own personal experience), I think my argument is legitimate too.
In addition, I wanted to remark that perhaps the root of the problem lies in the fact that there is still no sweeping statement from rabbis in Religious Zionism in favor of women studying Gemara, and therefore there are no frameworks for such study that are not considered especially feminist (and so deter many girls), certainly not on the scale of the yeshivot for boys in this country.
By contrast, there is no such objection to Hasidism (perhaps because it really is not obligatory study, or not study at all?), and therefore many women looking to learn will turn to Hasidic study rather than Gemara study.
You keep claiming that you are only describing an existing situation (there are no learned women). I am not disputing the existing situation; I simply want to emphasize that there is some likelihood that the situation that arose is not because of a feminine “character trait,” but because of other reasons.
I think there is some exaggeration here too. For example, “a play between being and nothingness” means that she somehow combines tsimtsum literally understood (in which case the world is nothing) with non-literal tsimtsum (in which case the world is something). And later she identifies the attitude toward corporeality with the approach of non-literal tsimtsum—that is, she sees a connection between the position that the world exists and a positive attitude toward it, as opposed to contempt for physicality, which she links to the nullification of reality.
So one can already object to the very idea of literal tsimtsum, but all in all they are referring to it, and even if one adopts it, this is some ancient matter.
When people say of something that “it is entirely X,” they mean that this is its main point, around which everything revolves. It does not mean that every particle in that thing is X.
I can’t say there is meaning to everything there, because I didn’t really try too hard to understand it, but I think you are exaggerating.
Many congratulations. I too, the little one, was dumbfounded by the said article and by the quantities of absolute stupidity that are poured through it in every direction.
By the way (perhaps I already wrote this here once), I think the author of the piece, Yehuda Yifrach, does excellent work, and not for the first time. Because he is knowledgeable, he is able to ask these people non-trivial questions and get interesting answers—or, in cases like this one, effectively to give them a long rope with which to hang themselves. [The peak was when Rebbetzin Shapira from Ofra openly admitted to him that the educational method at Midreshet “Shuva” is to make impressionable female students fall in love with charismatic rabbis.]
Beyond that, there is something odd here in a more general sense. I feel that a person who has no idea what it means to study a page of Gemara has no possibility of speaking authoritatively about Judaism in its traditional sense without risking very embarrassing errors. What does such a person understand at all? Should it not be obvious to someone who spent some chapter of his life in yeshiva that a person like this has not the slightest ability to weigh on the scales of reason (in a way at all resembling the mode of thought of those who dealt with this subject over the past thousand years, say) what is important and what is not, what can be said and what cannot, what is a strong difficulty and what is a good resolution? How can it be that women of this sort, who to the best of my understanding do not know which side is Rashi and which side is Tosafot, are regarded by sensible people as authorities on anything? (Of course, this objection also applies to baalei teshuvah of a certain known type.)
I read the article in the Shabbat supplement and didn’t really understand it.
But I also don’t fully understand you, so that’s okay. Apparently people see the world in different ways and everyone has their own narrative blah blah.
In any case, the way you presented things made me laugh.
I use Hasidism for character refinement. It’s not an inferential kind of study, but it’s good.
With God’s help, 19 Kislev 5778
As for the women of Hasidism (with a ḥolam) who were interviewed in Yehuda Yifrach’s article, I will not address them for lack of knowledge about their particular matters. But certainly the engagement of women no less than men in matters of faith and the service of God, in intellectual deepening and emotional development, is absolutely vital—especially in our generation.
The Torah was not given to “separate intellects,” but to human beings with emotions, positive emotions and negative emotions. And to those same human beings the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself at Sinai with the declared purpose of shaping their emotional world: “that His fear may be upon your faces.” And it commanded things whose essence lies in the heart: “I am the Lord your God,” “Remember the Sabbath day,” “Honor your father and your mother,” and hardest of all—“You shall not covet”!
And after forty years with Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, standing at the threshold of the Land of Israel, the people were ripe to be commanded concerning love of God and cleaving to Him, as the book of Deuteronomy is full of engagement with these commandments. At the threshold of the Land of Israel it becomes possible to command, “And you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given you,” and to warn of what, God forbid, may happen when one does not serve the Lord “with joy and gladness of heart.”
Cultivating good traits and love of fellow creatures, cultivating feelings of love and fear of God, does not come casually; it requires much study accompanied by strenuous personal effort, as the author of Mesillat Yesharim explained on Solomon’s words in Proverbs: “If you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures—then you will understand the fear of the Lord.” It does not say, “Then you will understand philosophy, astronomy, pilpul, and the like,” but rather “then you will understand the fear of the Lord,” for here knowledge of concepts is not enough; they must be internalized in the heart.
And therefore the Torah does not begin its explanation of the commandments with “This month shall be for you,” but opens with the book of Genesis, which teaches faith and good character through descriptions of the creation of the world and the conduct of the patriarchs of the nation. Entire books of the Prophets and the Writings, the midrashim and aggadot of the Sages, and countless books of commentary and homily, thought and Kabbalah, ethics and Hasidism, by the Rishonim and Acharonim, were dedicated to cultivating fear of God. It was not for nothing that Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin gave pride of place in his book Nefesh HaChaim to guidance in the ways of serving God and spiritual elevation.
The aggadic part of Torah brings a person “to know Him who spoke and the world came into being,” and opens the heart to His love and fear. It is needed by everyone—women and men, the young and the old. Rabbi Israel Salanter was once asked: “What should someone do who has only half an hour free for study?” Rabbi Israel replied: “He should study ethics, and he will see that he has much more free time!”
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
“Women are light-minded.” The meaning is: it is the same דעת, only it is light.
The distinction is in weight, not in דעת. The דעת is the same דעת.
Throughout history women were part of the story of the Jewish people. Three Patriarchs, four Matriarchs.
Prophets, and even the tanna Bruriah.
Of course this concerns masculine and feminine character, but it is not absolute.
With God’s help, 19 Kislev 5778
Shira—many greetings,
There is no shortage of midrashot such as “Migdal Oz,” “Nishmat,” and “Bar-Ilan,” where Gemara is taught, and they belong to the mainstream and are really not “especially feminist.” At the college in Jerusalem they may not call it “Gemara,” but they engage in in-depth study of Talmudic sugyot both in the Bible interpretation tracks and in “Oral Torah.”
There are also Gemara circles in ulpanot for those interested, for example in “Amana” and “Ofra.” At Ulpanat “Ma’aleh Levonah,” Gemara study is part of the regular study program of the ulpana, presumably under Chabad inspiration, which proudly notes that the mother of the Alter Rebbe was learned in Shas. So apparently Hasidism leads to Gemara 🙂
In any case, an in-depth and analytical study of Rashi and Ramban on the Torah provides a solid foundation for the mode of Talmudic thought and analysis. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein of blessed memory once advised one of his students, who found it difficult “to get into things” in the analytical study of Gemara, to study Rashi and Ramban on the Torah and Minchat Chinukh on Sefer HaChinukh.
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger.
With God’s help, 19 Kislev 5778
David—many greetings,
There is no such saying as “women are light-minded.” And the whole concept of “lightheadedness” does not exist in the language of the Sages, only in medieval Hebrew. In the Gemara there is the expression “women are easily influenced,” whose meaning is “they do not stand firmly by their opinion,” “they are open to changing their mind.”
The proof for this understanding is from the Gemara in Pesachim 88b: whereas with an ordinary person, if the agent changes and offers a goat instead of a lamb, the agency is nullified, with a king and queen, who are “easily influenced” and rely on the discretion of their servants—the sacrifice is valid even though the agent changed what he had been commanded.
That is to say: one whose “mind is light upon him” is not what in our language we would call headstrong; he is not exacting and does not insist on his own view, and is prepared to rely on another person’s judgment.
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
This trait—patience and willingness to accept another opinion—can also have a negative consequence. Therefore seclusion of one man with two women was forbidden (Kiddushin 81), whether because the man may persuade the women that the act is permitted (as Rashi understands it), or because the woman, out of compassion, will cover for her friend who stumbled (as the Meiri understands it).
When I read these things I almost burst out laughing. (I remembered the prohibition whose current status and form I am not sure about.) In any case, I’ll only qualify that regarding “memaleh kol almin” I actually do understand what is being talked about, and these are not empty things—and likewise regarding “sovev kol almin” (assuming that about that at least we both agree). Before I give a short parable for the plausibility of such a thing existing, I only need to say that in the end this is a basic distinction (a basic observation, like a primitive concept), and therefore there is no complaint against the rabbi if he does not see it. (Certainly he is not an old Lithuanian monkey; besides, probably 98 percent of the people speaking about this subject indeed do not have the faintest clue what they are talking about and live in fantasies.)
In any case, it seems to me that a parable about teacher and student will serve well here. The teacher is God, and we are the students. Take the case of a father trying to teach his son to walk (or ride a bicycle…). A good teacher knows that he cannot walk (or ride) in place of his son or do in place of the student what teaches the student; he must leave an empty space for the student to try on his own, and allow him to fail as much as possible (without irreversible harm being caused), and to learn from the failure. Enabling that situation is transcendence. The surrounding. On the other hand, the student (the child) needs self-confidence in order to succeed, and needs to know there will be someone next to him who will catch him if he falls (to prevent irreversible harm). This self-confidence is almost the most important part of the learning (apart from the content being learned itself). This is immanence. Someone who tells the student, “Try on your own,” and then goes off to his own business is surrounding without filling. And he is not a good teacher either. I have some experience in teaching, and I know that finding this sacred balance is the heart of teaching. In those moments when one achieves this balance, the feeling (the teacher’s personal feeling) is that on the one hand he is nowhere (trying to interfere as little as possible), and on the other hand he is everywhere (that is, precisely because he is there to help and at the same time does nothing, that very kind of doing-nothing causes whatever the student does to be as if the teacher himself is acting. The student acts by the teacher’s power). This is a tangible feeling of something that exists (the presence, the action) in a real metaphysical space (not just a psychological feeling but an objective reality).
By the way, these things are relevant not only to teaching but to every human activity. It is clear to everyone that if a person does nothing on his own behalf, nothing good will happen to him. Success will not come. On the other hand, it is also known that someone who exerts himself too much does not succeed. One must not exert oneself too much. It seems to me (although I have still not clarified this fully for myself) that here too, finding the sacred balance between the two extremes (effort and trust, vessel and light) is connected to the dual reality of “sovev kol almin” and on the other hand “memaleh kol almin.”
Have a good day.
On the trait of “willingness to receive” as the basis for receiving the Torah, Rav Kook speaks in Ein Ayah regarding the angels’ claim, “What is one born of woman doing among us?” And the Rav says that this was God’s answer: “He comes to receive Torah”—that precisely because Moses was “born of woman,” he possesses in strength that “feminine” trait of “willingness to receive.”
Similarly, this is explained in the words of Rabbi Berekhiah (Yoma 71a), that Torah scholars are called “men” because they are like women and act with strength like men. And Rashi explains: “they are like women—humble and weak in strength.”
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Hello Rabbi,
A. Thank you very much for the article.
I’m also subscribed to the Makor Rishon newsletter, and I didn’t read the said article. I saw the first lines there, realized it was just idle rambling, and closed it.
So thank you for doing the work for us.
B. I feel compelled to protest the name “Hasidism” that these people have taken for themselves. As someone who grew up in Hasidic yeshivot studying Noam Elimelech, Kedushat Levi, Ohev Yisrael and the like, it is hard for me to think of this New-Age postmodern chatter as “Hasidism.”
Although one can debate the value of the content in those books, we still studied “what is written in the book,” and did not read into it what was in our own hearts. There was no “Oral Torah,” notions and ideas. There was reading and understanding of what is written.
C. I do not entirely understand what bothers you in the “study” of Hasidism. True, most of the material there is not factual claims, but material intended to provide a certain kind of “treatment.”
Doesn’t this exist in the Lithuanian public as well? There too, in the Mussar movement they repeated mantras from the Gemara, read Mesillat Yesharim in an “emotionally charged voice” and with “burning lips” (as Rabbi Israel Salanter instructed), and sang “What advantage has a man” again and again in the twilight hours after Shabbat.
So what’s the problem? That they call it “study”? A linguistic—semantic problem? Then it’s not “study.” (And if you should say so, then one cannot recite the blessing on Torah study over it.)
This tool is definitely not a logical one. But it is not supposed to be the primary tool. Only after a person has decided that this path is the right one does he use emotional tools to infuse it into his experience as well. “And you shall know this day,” and only then—“and take it to your heart.”
What bothers you?
Hello,
It pains me that at a time when a considerable part of our youth is casting off the yoke of mitzvot, becoming “lite,” and so on, we are stuck in disputes and using somewhat harsh expressions against one another.
It is strange to me that there are people who think one can base faith on ancient philosophical foundations that themselves are based on Greek—and sometimes Arabic—philosophy, which has become obsolete. Wake up! Aristotle is dead; the world has changed completely!
If our youth (boys and girls) remain indifferent to the “transcendental” God of medieval Jewish thought, and prefer more understandable messages of a more subjective divinity (I am speaking of those who have not gone off the religious path), then perhaps there is some truth on their side too…
It is a bit of a shame that Yehuda Yifrach’s article uses complicated terms understood mainly by the writer and less by the reader.
With blessing,
Gershon Bar-On
(Regards to my friend Sh. Tz. Levinger…)
Possibly. But the situation I describe is real. As for the claims themselves, I disagree. I won’t elaborate, but I will say that this is certainly not the main point in Hasidism. That is tendentious nonsense. And discussing the question of whether the world exists is even greater nonsense.
Hello Rachel.
What worries me is the comparison between what I wrote and the bizarre verbiage in the article. I thought I wrote clearly and lucidly, and apparently I was mistaken. What was not understandable in what I wrote? In light of your words, I need to do some self-examination. I’d be happy to receive concrete comments about what was unclear, to help me with that.
Since the Jerusalem college has already come up, I spoke with a student there who was not allowed to write a paper on Kabbalah rather than Talmud. According to them, women do not engage in that.
See Tali Farkash’s article, “The Girls Who Don’t Give Up on a Bagrut in Gemara,” on the y-net site, about girls at Ulpanat Amit Noga in Beit Shemesh.
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Hello Shlomo.
I wrote what bothers me. I also wrote that there are places where they study seriously, and I referred to modern study in hesder yeshivot and various midrashot. When I spoke of tendentiousness and lack of commitment to the text, I meant the feminist agenda. Not all learners do this. Some are looking for experiences and character work, not an agenda. But there are still concepts here that are not well defined, and in my view the interpreter supplies most of the content, not the text itself. But I’m not familiar with what is done with these books in the yeshivot you mentioned, so I don’t know how to say anything intelligent about them.
Gershon, who spoke about Aristotle? Faith and Jewish thought do not need anyone but common sense. Instead of studying thought, one should think (I believe the source of that is my friend Nadav Shnerb). If you find common sense in Aristotle, Kant, Kierkegaard, or the Baal Shem Tov—good for you.
To Sh. Tz.,
There are enough statements by Hazal about women’s wisdom and its distinctiveness. Usually women’s wisdom is perceived as straightforward and simple wisdom that does not tolerate theoretical pursuits.
“The wisdom of women built her house.”
And on the other hand, a woman is not obligated in the commandments and is disqualified from testimony, and there are other laws that place the woman in a different relation to the man. The distinctions are fundamental and broad, and are not confined to an inability to study Talmud or receive prophecy.
Thank you for the response.
Again, as far as I know the study in Hasidic yeshivot, they stick to the text there, and the interpretive space is very narrow.
Perhaps it also depends on the book: Rabbi Nachman’s books are very vague, and therefore the main thing there is interpretation. A book like Be’er Mayim Chayim or Me’or VaShemesh is really quite simple, so only reading comprehension and internalization are required.
In Hasidic yeshivot, only the classic books are studied. Rabbi Nachman’s books, for example, are banned and forbidden in many places.
Another anecdote, regarding the concept of “study”: in many Hasidic communities they preserve the old Ashkenazic custom not to study Torah on the day of “Nיטל,” when Jesus was hanged (and this is not the place to elaborate).
Nevertheless, there is a widespread “leniency” to study “Hasidism” on Nיטל. It may be that this leniency is based on the understanding that “studying Hasidism” is not “Torah study” but “service of God.”
Shatzal, why go all the way to a king? Take proof from the topic itself. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai did not tell his wife they were in the cave because “women are easily influenced,” lest “they torment her and she reveal it.” Clearly this is not stupidity but the ability to withstand pressure and the like.
With God’s help, 19 Kislev 5778
To R. Gershon—many greetings,
Rambam used the Aristotelian method to prove his system, but the God of Rambam is completely the opposite of the God of the philosophers. The God of Rambam is present in His world, watches over human actions, and leads His people and His world toward redemption. The philosophical proofs may have become outdated, but the thirteen principles of faith formulated by Rambam (which won the full agreement of the father of the Kabbalists, the Raavad) are the foundation of every school of thought in rabbinic Judaism.
Even if the Aristotelian method is outdated, and an updated rational grounding must grapple with the philosophy and science of our generation, it cannot be dispensed with. One must follow the path charted by Rambam: to know contemporary science, welcome its discoveries while recognizing its limitations, and through serious inquiry faith will be strengthened. Rambam’s words are still true today: love comes through knowledge. And when a person contemplates the wondrous wisdom in every detail of creation, he is filled with love and awe toward the Creator of the world.
Parallel to the clarification and intellectual grounding of faith, there must come an understanding of the deep wisdom in the Torah’s guidance for shaping the character of the individual and society (something Rambam discusses at length in the third part of Guide of the Perplexed, and which Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch also addressed extensively). When we understand how relevant the Torah is to setting straight our personal and public ways of life, we will know how to accept even what we still do not understand.
The work of emotion and experience is very important, but one must beware of attempts to found Judaism only on them, relying on various existentialist and postmodern philosophies. For if emotion and experience are the supreme judges, then when a person is “high” he will learn, pray, and keep mitzvot with enthusiasm—but when his emotional state is “down,” his service of God will go “down” with it. And some people call this instability “serving out of love” 🙂 You should read the post “Religious Identity Is Not a Rigid Thing” on Yehuda Gezbar’s blog “The Back Cover,” and the comments there.
In any case, you said something very important in your first paragraph. We must beware of one-dimensionality in defining the correct path in serving God. Even within one family and one generation there are very different shades: what inflames one person “does not speak at all” to another. We need to understand that just as everyone has his own character and tendencies, so too each person has his own unique emphases. One needs a strong emphasis on intellect, another on emotion. For one, social reform is central; for another, self-realization is important, and so on. Accordingly, Judaism contains a variety of worthy paths anchored in the foundations of faith and halakhah. Someone who knows he can find his spiritual place “inside” is less likely to seek it “outside.”
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
,
Hello Rabbi Michael. I’ll answer simply and briefly: unfortunately, things that I said and wrote to Yehuda at length were presented in the article only partially, inaccurately, and certainly not clearly… so in hindsight, as I understand it and to my regret, it really is not a very serious article, and it’s a shame to make too much of it. As for the substance, what appears there at the beginning is a distortion of things that I actually quoted in conversation with Yehuda in the name of Rabbi Froman (and which were said about the Zohar, not at all about Hasidism), when I answered that first of all Hasidism is an offshoot, in its own way, of the kabbalistic tradition, which dealt to a great extent with the Shekhinah, the “female” dimension of divinity. Regarding “literal tsimtsum,” I did not claim (and in my understanding this is not even implied by the article) that “this is how men see the world”… but rather that, in a primary sense, “literal tsimtsum” is indeed connected with a kabbalistic conception of a feminine divine image, and many worthy people have already said this, certainly people greater than I… I actually agree in broad terms regarding what is called “feminist theology”… that was certainly not the intent of what was said, neither by me nor by Rabbi Froman. In any case, feminization is not the same as feminism, but rather a movement toward femininity. In the context of what Rabbi Froman said, he used this expression and explained that the Zohar, in speaking the language of story and myth, moves us into the language of the “Shekhinah,” the language of divinity speaking within reality and its images—or in my own words, into the language of the “unconscious”; it is the language of “oblivion,” which in Hebrew is indeed connected with femininity…
In the original conversation I referred to the Hasidic world as continuing that language, and more.
As for therapy—what can one do, the Baal Shem Tov was a “master of the Name,” that is, a healer… Broadly speaking I teach writings from early Hasidism, and that is the field I was referring to when I spoke of a holistic conception.
Likewise, there are things I said that unfortunately were not included in the article: namely, that in contrast to Hasidic sources after the Baal Shem Tov, which are wary of the “self” and to some degree of the body, I find that study in women’s batei midrash nevertheless takes these texts to “body-soul” places in a way far from the author’s intent—but perhaps one that strives toward the holistic conceptions of early, Beshtian Hasidism, since it indeed makes less use of the reservations of the Baal Shem Tov’s successors. (As with foreign thoughts. And here too, many worthy people said these things before me.)
In short, all in all I answered, as I understood it, what is renewed by women studying Hasidism, and I answered that in general there is indeed a difference and it has interesting implications, based on my experience as someone who teaches both men and women, and I tried to point to the essence of that difference.
In any case, thank you. After a response like yours, it seems I will have to write a clear article myself, and then I will be very happy to receive any response. For now I admit it is very uncomfortable for me to be attacked like this because of an article that brought such confusion in my name… I assume that if things were presented in your name like this, and people immediately started lashing out at them in this way, it would not be very pleasant for you either… 🙂
And in conclusion: since, as stated, the things are far from the original, it is a shame to build piles upon piles of conclusions on them—not about what I said and not about women who study Hasidism…
Hello Olesh, and thank you for the clarifications.
First, you are completely right that if inaccurate things were quoted in my name and I were criticized on that basis, I would feel uncomfortable or hurt. Therefore, at the beginning of my remarks I must ask your forgiveness. After that, I will clarify my intention and then address some of the points you raised here.
The criticism was not directed at you. Since we do not know each other, and since I am aware of the possibility of inaccuracy in things quoted in a newspaper article, my remarks were directed at the study of Hasidism in general. Bottom line, the article presented things—whether they represented your intention or Yehuda Yifrach’s understanding—that illustrated very well the points I feel in general with respect to Hasidic studies. So I used the article for illustration, without intending personal criticism. As I said, my conclusions were not built on the article, but on a more general impression formed before reading it. The article merely illustrated them.
As for the essence of the study, this is indeed a disagreement that does not begin now and certainly not only between us, and still my position is that this is not study but therapy. Whether your approach is rooted in the Baal Shem Tov himself, or whether it was your own position (which is also entirely legitimate, of course), I do not agree with it. The same applies to the other things you mentioned that were already said by many worthy people before you. True—and I disagree with them as well. This begins already with Talmudic aggadah itself and my attitude toward it.
I did not identify feminization with feminism. I understood very well that we are dealing with a conception of divinity and not a feminist ideology. But in my understanding, that conception is driven by ideology, even if not feminist ideology, and that is what I was referring to. The ideology is the feminine desire (which is understandable) to find a feminine dimension in theology and Kabbalah and thereby feel greater identification, whether or not feminist conclusions are drawn from it. I do not like biased readings, regardless of feminism (which by the way I am not at all opposed to in itself, as long as it is not used as a hermeneutic spade with which to dig). You yourself write here that women tend to interpret texts not according to their original intention (adding that this turns out to fit the doctrine of the Baal Shem Tov). This illustrates very well the subjectivity and tendentiousness of this study, and the fact that it is therapy and not study. In my view, study (in any field, not only Torah) is something committed to the text, not to my desires. Deconstruction in its nihilistic sense is not study (it has other meanings, but this is not the place).
Indeed, the Baal Shem Tov did not teach a lesson as I described, and therefore in my understanding he really did not teach Torah. He may have taught important things and influenced his listeners, but he did not teach them Torah. In the past I have several times distinguished between Torah in the person and Torah in the object (you can find it by searching the site), and at most this may be seen as Torah in the person—but my inclination is that it is not even that. Both in terms of content (I do not see this as different from studying philosophy or psychology from an ordinary book or another person), and in terms of the character and form of the activity (reading a story that affects me is not study). Not everything important is Torah study. Therapy, for all its importance, is not Torah study. Just as love of God and fear of Him are not Torah study. When Rambam writes, “What is the path to loving and fearing Him? One contemplates His wondrous creations,” in my understanding he is describing a path to attain love of God, not Torah study. Contemplating creation is no more Torah study than a large part of existentialism is philosophy rather than a kind of therapy.
The boundaries between things of value and Torah study, and between study and therapy—boundaries that lie at the center of our disagreement (and not only ours)—are not so sharp, and they require much further clarification. Here, of course, I only hinted at them in broad outline.
One can see that even after the clarifications you gave here, the disagreement remains. And that brings me back to the beginning of my remarks: the passages from the article were brought only as an illustration of a general phenomenon, and therefore it is less important how faithfully they reflect your own conception. Even if they do not, they still provide a good example of correct features of this study (?) and my criticism still stands.
This is of course a disagreement, and it is entirely legitimate. My remarks were meant to surface an “old-fashioned” side that has somewhat disappeared in recent years amid the Hasidic tide surrounding us.
Again, thank you for responding, and forgive me if my words hurt you.
By the way, what you wrote illustrates my point very well. You wrote about “using” it rather than “studying” it. But as I wrote, study is not therapy, and character work is not Torah study.
By the way, one more remark. The passages I quoted in the post appear in Yifrach’s article inside quotation marks. Are you saying that it is not a quotation at all, or rather that the quotation is accurate but taken out of context?
Thank you. Yes… even if we sift out the things brought supposedly in my name… indeed, the difference you point to is expressed here, except that I fear you chose an example that is not serious enough to confront. (And although indeed the very style of the article is an example of what you point to, there is something a bit too easy about “dissolving” statements that were written somewhat carelessly to begin with. Especially when your method is somewhat mocking, and that too is a slight bias…) In any case, on the substance of the matter, we do indeed disagree. In my understanding it is obvious that this is study and that this is Torah. In light of your criticism of the very paradigm, methods, motivations, etc., of large parts of what nonetheless constitutes a substantial portion of what is today called Torah study, I wonder how they studied and created parts of what is agreed to be “Torah,” such as aggadot, the Zohar, and indeed even Writings and Psalms… after all, they often contain no claim at all… but rather poetry… expression of subjective spaces, wonderment, and so forth…
So on the contrary, to study them in a Brisker way and look in them for commands, laws, argument, logic, and the like would be far from the source—not to say somewhat biased… Broadly speaking the same is true of existentialism as part of philosophy. That is, philosophy in its origin is the love of wisdom, and human wisdom has many faces; in the past even psychology (as well as physics, astronomy, etc.) were part of what philosophy dealt with. (Psychology, incidentally, is one of the later sciences to be separated from philosophy, which testifies to philosophy’s own inner perception of the closeness between them.)
As for biased readings, I fear we can only admit that something will always be biased. But indeed there is a gap between honest acknowledgment of the partiality of every perspective, and a program of nihilistic deconstruction from the outset and the sterilization of the text from basic meaning. So too in the philosophy of language, and in literature with “the death of the author,” and as is well known in history with “the death of facts”… in that context I agree that your criticism is important.
But those extremes need not lead us to the conclusion that there is only one “true” narrative or “absolute objectivity” (even the object and the subject are different perspectives on the same thing…). In the end, even the Gemara itself is built as a dialectic of different readings of the same text. And again, regarding bias, I think that the expression “according to” used by the Sages teaches that it is not only a person’s logical conclusion but also the inclination of his heart… “Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it,” but there is significance also to who is the one turning it. And yet the space is gathered in and limited by rules that preserve a tradition of study and define different kinds of relation to the text—and those are “the principles by which the Torah is interpreted.”
From here, again, regarding therapy: a person does not learn only with the intellect. Different layers of the personality encounter a text, or a teacher, and in my understanding, the deeper and more whole the thing is, the deeper and more whole the encounter will be—and this includes bringing healing, and so too with Torah. In fact this appears in various forms in Scripture and in Hazal, such as “The precepts of the Lord are upright, rejoicing the heart,” or “If he merits, it becomes for him an elixir of life,” and many more.
In conclusion, regarding the supposed quotation: I was simply quoting Rabbi Froman, whose words were actually about the Zohar and not directly about Hasidism, and even that was part of a longer and more complex text… so those are not the things that were said, and in fact not by me either. But here is what I wrote to Yehuda. You’ll agree it’s a little different…, this is the sentence on which the said “quotation” was built:
—
“[…] First of all, Hasidism has something feminine and motherly about it in certain respects.
And in general in kabbalistic literature, certainly in the Zohar. As Rabbi Froman used to say even about the Zohar: although Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is identified in the Idra Zuta with the sefirah of Yesod, throughout the book there is a kind of call for the feminization of the perception of reality.
Also, in the all-inclusive conception of divinity there is, after all, a certain pantheism; these things are well known. And this too is an ancient kabbalistic tradition: the very development of the concept of the Shekhinah, of the feminine dimension of divinity, down to the nuances of turning toward her (for example in Or HaChaim) and identifying with her (for example in Sefer Gerushin of Ramak, a feminine Shiur Komah that places Ramak in a kind of Ein Yaakov). Hasidism is the continuation and development of this project in its own way, and as is known its concern is increasingly with the divine in the soul and not the upper worlds. (Including even Chabad contemplation.) […]”
—
So indeed, we will disagree here again about the language itself, the discourse, the study, the experience, and more—but perhaps this would not have given you and other readers the feeling of something very unserious the way being taken out of context created… (You hinted at unseriousness when you complimented other “serious” women learners who apparently do exist…) But all in all, seriousness is not necessarily a compliment among us Hasidim, so fine, I’ll live with that in peace and with a smile. 🙂
I said that there is nothing in my words against complexity and seeing from different angles, all of which may be correct—provided that the aim is to understand what one studies, and not to reach the conclusions we want.
I also did not write in favor of the Brisker method, but at most in favor of the Brisker coolness (and even that only by hint). The Brisker method is a tool for understanding the text, and one may debate how useful it is (in my view very) and whether it is complete (in my view definitely not). But in my opinion there is no room for debate that the goal of study is understanding what one studies, not excitement and general impression or creating one mood or another, and certainly not fitting it to a preordained agenda.
By the way, I fully acknowledge that there are ideological influences that bias study. We are all human beings. I am also entirely in favor of honest reflection that admits this. I am against turning the matter into an ideology and making conscious use of it. I am also against the assumption that engaging with these biases is itself study.
I did not say that there is only one true narrative, although I do think that in most cases there is only one truth (albeit a complex one). But I did not write that here either, and therefore I do not propose that we open that discussion here.
To conclude: the sense of unseriousness arises not because of what is written in the article, but because of the phenomenon as a whole. When experience replaces conceptual and scholarly effort, and when the concepts are undefined and some of them are sheer nonsense, and instead people talk about leaping into the empty void and rising above contradictions—that is intellectual laziness. Among other things, that is what I was speaking against.
Apropos Psalms, I have just remembered two more things.
I once heard from someone (I don’t remember the source of this gem) that the Gemara relates that King David asked the Holy One, blessed be He, that engagement in Psalms be considered like Torah study (Negaim and Ohalot), but it does not mention what God answered him. Note this well.
And I also remembered the words of R. Chaim of Volozhin (the father of all Litvaks) in Gate 4, who defines aggadot as the word of God (what God spoke), whereas halakhah is both the word of God and the will of God (what He wants from us). Therefore the principal Torah study is in halakhah, which is attachment to His will. Except that it was newly established (following King David’s request?) that even engagement in aggadah has some value. And anyone who takes note will see that he hints there that the Gemara in Gittin 6, which speaks of the dispute regarding the concubine in Gibeah and brings in Elijah’s name from the Holy One, blessed be He, “These and those are the words (!) of the living God,” does not mean that both are correct, but that both are the word of God (He said both sides). This was said about aggadot, which are all God’s word but not His will. But in halakhah (Eruvin 13), where this rule is brought concerning halakhic disputes between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, there indeed only one of them is God’s will, and what is true of both is that both are God’s word. Note this well.
By the way, in my opinion the discussion that opened here is very important, and unfortunately it is not really held anywhere despite its importance. Usually you have the conservatives grumbling and growling because they don’t like new phenomena, and the innovators for whom it is self-evident that this is mere conservatism (and rightly so; usually the conservatives do not make substantive arguments other than “innovation is forbidden by the Torah”), and it is obvious to them that this is a new Torah (which perhaps fits the old and ancient concept of Torah that has disappeared).
If my post has brought the discussion into the open and shown that there are two substantive sides here, for and against, that alone was worthwhile. I am not suspect as a conservative who upholds “innovation is forbidden by the Torah.” On the contrary, some accuse me that for me the old is what is forbidden by the Torah, and everything is of the sort “See, this is new.” Therefore my claims here are not made because this is an innovation, but despite the fact that it is an innovation—and because I disagree on the substance.
Rabbi Michi,
Your conclusions regarding the validity of studying Hasidism as Torah study are based on assumptions that, in my opinion, are not necessary. As long as people are not consciously inventing nonsense, I am inclined to say that the matter has not departed from the category of engaging in Torah (even though I personally do not connect much to this branch of engagement). In fact, most Hasidism, as I understand it, is no different from psychology, for example, in both its practical and research branches (umm, actually are you against psychology?). Psychology is certainly not exact, but it gives indications, explanations, descriptions, and working methods of a certain utility. In short, assuming that non-foolish engagement in matters pertaining to God, our role in the world, and the like is Torah study, then Hasidism, as the psychology of human experience (the person with himself, his surroundings, etc.), is a legitimate field. As stated, I am inclined to say that even someone who speaks complete nonsense, but unconsciously, is also considered to be studying Torah (perhaps what you call “in the person”).
All in all, I too get the impression that many people are speaking nonsense (unconsciously; I’m not quite that conspiratorial..), and I join the call that anyone who has nothing good and rational to say should not turn his nonsense into thought and thereby blur serious thought.
*based
To Mr. y (Yehuda M.?) — are the Litvaks rational? What about the brainwashing by the mashgichim (and countless other examples..)? I would define the Litvaks as indifferent. Indifference is of course an antidote to all sorts of emotionalist and nonsensical movements that crop up from time to time, but nonsense that is deeply embedded in the consciousness of the Litvak haredi does exist and is there to stay (did someone say Yair Lapid?). Among the indifferent creatures walking around our world, there are indeed also a few rational ones who have even managed to make all sorts of arguments and produce thought. Maybe a virtual fair on the rabbi’s book site?
Let me add a refinement—the Hasidism is not the psychology of human experience as I wrote, but rather purports to describe human experience and discuss matters pertaining to it, and so on.
Hello Rabbi,
Regarding what I didn’t understand—the introduction. At what point, in your view, is the connection to logic lost, and at what point not, assuming that logic is not the whole picture? An example of a subject that lies beyond logic and would still be accepted by you?
As for the second remark—obviously.
But that’s a matter of definitions. I call it practical learning. Development. I could also call it a table. What difference does it make? It’s not theoretical study. (Though I also try to set aside times for that.)
Many thanks for the article and the responses to the responses. I enjoyed it very much. A question about something you wrote in passing: does the existence of a God who created the world but does not command mitzvot have any practical significance?
Tam’s question. Search for materials on the site (it’s quite a fundamental question).
Something I received by email from Moshe:
Hello to his honor,
Regarding what you mentioned, that King David asked that reciting Psalms be considered like Negaim and Ohalot, this too is explicit in the words of R. Chaim of Volozhin (Gate 4, ch. 2): “…that David our king requested before Him, may He be blessed, that one who engages in Psalms be considered by Him, may He be blessed, as if he were engaging in Negaim and Ohalot… and who knows whether the Holy One, blessed be He, agreed with him in this, for we do not find in the words of our Sages of blessed memory what answer He, may He be blessed, gave to his request…”
On the other hand, in Hasidic books [I can’t locate it at the moment, and I think even in the writings of the author of Beit HaTeshuvah] they took for granted that Psalms are like Negaim and Ohalot, and never entertained the possibility that God did not agree.
So both sides proceed in accordance with their understanding…
{On the matter itself, I express no opinion. I take delight in reading your words [even the ones that are very jarring..], but there is a feeling—perhaps especially in the words of physicists like you and Shnerb…—that everything is logical to such a superlative degree that you are forced to accept it like 1+1, and it is impossible to budge a centimeter from the arguments. On the other hand, Judaism as it is perceived among us is not like that. Of course, even on this there is no room for argument, because the logician’s hand is uppermost.
By the way, ever since I was exposed to academic Jewish studies and even began working and writing accordingly, I lost the ability to enjoy a Hasidic book, and usually even Lithuanian ethical works. There is probably a connection, but that is only indirectly related.}
My response:
Indeed. That is probably where I saw it (and smiled).
As I wrote, I am far from thinking there is only logic. But I do think it is a mistake to ignore logic, and that is what I objected to. One can enjoy many books, like Crime and Punishment. But still, that is not necessarily study, and certainly not Torah study.
In principle, no. But see the fifth notebook, where this is presented as a first step, not independent of belief in a theistic God. There is also practical significance to the God of morality; see the fourth notebook, part 3.
As I wrote, studying psychology—even though I do not have much confidence in it—is study. But creating psychological experiences is not. I completely join the call at the end of your words.
An example of such a subject is the existence of God. Almost every premise of a logical argument does not emerge from logic but from intuition. But there must be a clear meaning to the premises and the concepts, and that is what is lacking here. Inferences are always in logical terms.
In the yeshivot they call this a practical implication for betrothing a woman. The question is what is true, not what we call things. You can call sociology mathematics and then say, what difference does it make? The difference is that it is not true. Not everything of value is Torah study, and the (unimportant) practical implication is where to place it in the Book of Commandments: under the commandment of Torah study, or under character refinement. Another practical implication: do we recite the blessing on Torah study over this? In my opinion, no. Another practical implication: if I studied Hasidism, have I fulfilled the obligation of “you shall meditate,” or do I still have to learn at least one chapter morning and evening? In my opinion, I have not fulfilled it. But all these are merely practical implications for betrothing a woman.
Thanks.
If the premise is non-logical anyway, then what is the meaning of “meaning”? Just that one writes/says something understandable?
As for the practical implication, I understand. For you, Torah is Bible, Mishnah, and Gemara, not ethics / Hasidism. Intuitively it seems to me that the combination of them is Torah. Maybe. But it doesn’t matter that much; in any case it’s a good case.
On the “Yeshivat Kisei Rachamim” website, Rabbi Meir Mazuz was asked about the words of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin of blessed memory, and replied that Rabbi Chaim’s words are puzzling. He cited the Chida’s words in his introduction to his commentary on Psalms, Yosef Tehillot, that David’s prayer was certainly accepted. One of the questioners noted that this was also written in Commentary on the Prayers by Rabbi Yehudah bar Yakar (one of Ramban’s teachers), p. 84.
If that is so regarding the reading of the book of Psalms, then all the more so it is certain that study with understanding and depth of Scripture and the aggadic words of Hazal and our early and later sages, which guide a person in the foundations of faith and the ways of serving God and acquiring good character traits, are among the main elements of Torah. If Negaim and Ohalot, which deal with the external signs of impurity, are bodies of Torah—then all the more so studies that bring a person to purity of heart and mind are bodies of Torah.
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Regarding David’s request that reciting the psalms be considered as important as Negaim and Ohalot.
In the book Sichatan shel Avdei Avot (by R. A. Halperin of blessed memory, the Sanz system), he tells of the Sabbath on which the Avnei Nezer, in his youth, was hosted by the Divrei Chaim of Sanz. He had come there so that the Rebbe of Sanz could size him up and decide whether to take him as a son-in-law.
On that Sabbath there were several conflicts stemming from the difference in mentality between Sanz Hasidim and Kotzk Hasidim, and in the end the match did not come to fruition.
Among other things, the Avnei Nezer expressed himself against the comparison between Psalms and Negaim and Ohalot, since who can say that David’s prayer was accepted.
The Divrei Chaim was angered by this statement and rejected it with the following proof:
The Gemara (Arakhin 15a) says regarding one who speaks slander: “Rabbi Acha son of Rabbi Chanina says: One who has spoken [evil speech] has no remedy, for David through the Holy Spirit already cut him off, as it says, ‘May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, the tongue that speaks great things.’” But this is a prayer—and who says it was accepted? Clearly, one ordinarily assumes that David’s prayer was accepted. (End quote from that book.)
In this the Divrei Chaim joins the other great Hasidic masters whom R. Chaim of Volozhin’s statement offended.
I heard a similar proof from a great man, from the Mishnah at the end of tractate Nazir: “Samuel was a Nazirite, according to the words of Rabbi Nehorai, as it says, ‘And no razor shall come upon his head.’ ‘Razor’ is stated regarding Samson, and ‘razor’ is stated regarding Samuel: just as the ‘razor’ stated regarding Samson means Naziriteship, so too the ‘razor’ stated regarding Samuel means Naziriteship.
Rabbi Yosei said: But does not ‘mora’ mean only fear of flesh and blood?
Rabbi Nehorai said to him: But has it not already been said, ‘And Samuel said: How can I go? If Saul hears, he will kill me’—for he already had fear of flesh and blood upon him.”
Rabbi Nehorai’s difficulty is puzzling: why not say that “mora” means fear of flesh and blood, and that this is what Hannah prayed for—that he not fear human beings? And the fact that in the end Samuel did fear Saul would simply be because Hannah’s prayer was not accepted?
Clearly, one ordinarily assumes that Hannah’s prayer was accepted.
As for me personally, I would interpret the matter differently. Namely, when we ascribe importance to the recitation of Psalms and mention David’s request to equate them with Negaim and Ohalot (there are Yehi Ratzon prayers recited before saying Psalms that include “and may the recitation of Psalms be considered before You as Negaim and Ohalot”)—we do not mean to say that the prayer was accepted, for how should we know?
We merely assume that if David was able to ask such a request, that is itself a sign that there is something great in Psalms. After all, David would not have made such a request if his Psalms had no value. From the very boldness of his request, we understand that there is some similarity and connection between Psalms and the study of Negaim and Ohalot.
And over you, Rabbi Michi, I read this verse (Sanhedrin 67):
Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said to him: Akiva, what have you to do with aggadah? Leave your words and go to Negaim and Ohalot!
Paragraph 1, line 3
… in “Commentary on the Prayers by Rabbi Yehudah bar Yakar” (one of Ramban’s teachers)…
[Rabbi Yaakov bar Yakar was one of Rashi’s teachers. Shatzal]
Hello to the honored rabbi.
I greatly enjoyed reading this.
The source for the midrash about David is Midrash Tehillim 1:5 (or 1:4, I don’t remember).
More power to you.
Dear Rabbi Aharon. This response of yours alone made this site worthwhile. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you.
As for your point, of course it can easily be rejected, for the prayers assumed to have been answered are prayers for the needs of the petitioner (and even here there is a non-simple assumption that such a prayer is necessarily answered). But David asked to add to the Torah something that is not Torah, and that is literally adding to the Torah. As if I were to ask the Holy One, blessed be He, that pork not be forbidden, and this would be like stipulating against what is written in the Torah. And from where would we assume that this too would be answered?!
All this, however, is of course only for dialectical play. For in plain sense it is clear from the Gemara that its intent is that David was answered, and R. Chaim’s words are nothing more than Hasidic words (= little homiletic quips), alas. Perhaps for the purpose of battle he girded on the weaponry of his opponents (for if someone is a Hasid, there is a presumption that he is persuaded by little quips, and therefore he may also be persuaded the other way by opposing little quips). This teaches that the end sanctifies the means. But I am not of that sort (usually the end does not sanctify the means).
I took your last sentence as a compliment, although I still need to think about it (the question whether engaging in the question of what aggadah is and what its status should be is itself aggadah. Similar to what the Shakh wrote in Takפו Kohen: the decisors disputed whether, when there is a dispute whether seizure is effective, seizure itself would help on that very question. Note this well).
I didn’t look it up now. It can of course also be found in Nefesh HaChaim, Gate 4.
With God’s help, 20 Kislev 5778
To Y.Z.—many greetings,
Thank you for the reference to the words of the Midrash (Midrash Tehillim “Shocher Tov” 1:8):
“It was taught in the school of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korḥa: ‘Twenty times “happy” is written in the book of Psalms, corresponding to the twenty “woes” in the book of Isaiah.’ Rabbi said: ‘I am amazed how Rabbi Yehoshua taught us “twenty times happy is written,” for I say: twenty-two—and why? Corresponding to the twenty-two letters. And concerning them he says: “May the words of my mouth be favorable”—may the words of my mouth be made for generations and written for generations and engraved for generations, and they shall not read them like the books of Homer, but they shall read them and receive reward for them as for Negaim and Ohalot.’”
According to Rabbi, David asked that his words be written for generations, and be considered not like the books of Homer, which are merely poetry, but as part of the Holy Writings, so that those who read them receive the reward of Torah study, like Negaim and Ohalot—and this was certainly fulfilled, for the book of Psalms is an integral part of Scripture.
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
It seems that this is the meaning, according to Rabbi, of the appearance of the word “happy” twenty-two times, corresponding to the number of the letters of the Torah, to teach us that the book of Psalms is an integral part of Torah.
At the very beginning of the psalm the Midrash also draws a comparison between David, author of Psalms, and Moses, giver of the Torah::
“The most praiseworthy of the prophets is Moses; the most praiseworthy of the kings is David. You find that everything Moses did, David did: Moses brought Israel out of Egypt, and David brought Israel out of the subjugation of kingdoms; Moses fought wars against Sihon and Og, and David fought the wars of the Holy One…; Moses ruled over Israel and Judah… and David ruled over Israel and Judah…; Moses split the sea for them, and David split the rivers for them…; Moses built an altar and David built an altar; this one offered and that one offered; Moses gave them the five books of the Torah, and David gave them the book of Psalms, which has five books…”
As a member of the empty set, I greatly enjoyed reading the article, and also the quotations. It is actually fairly clear to me what they are trying to claim in those statements, even if statements of that kind are ones that are hard to refute and therefore hard to put to a scientific test. Exactly as the quality of poets, and even of composers, cannot be subjected to scientific testing. The direct discussion with Olesh was also excellent, and in my opinion clarified that the use of those quotations was mainly for the purpose of attacking tendentious, agenda-driven study (or tendentious interpretation), and alternatively to attack the blurring of the difference between study and what is not study (regardless of where exactly to draw the line, it is clear that there has to be a line; in fact the article was also somewhat against drawing it in the wrong places). As in many places, the argument is wrapped in a great deal of verbiage intended to annoy some people or amuse others (not necessarily the same people), and sometimes this slightly interferes with the arguments themselves. But that is already not a logical claim but a claim about quality.
Rabbi Michi,
Would one who reads the essayistic style of Deuteronomy:
“And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul… Behold, to the Lord your God belong the heavens and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet only your fathers did the Lord delight in to love them, and He chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as at this day. … You shall fear the Lord your God; Him shall you serve; to Him shall you cleave, and by His name shall you swear. He is your praise, and He is your God, who has done with you these great and awesome things that your eyes have seen. Your fathers went down into Egypt seventy persons, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven”
—a sermonic style, whose whole purpose is only to arouse feeling and experience—would that not count as Torah study? Is it not evident from many passages that the very study of Torah is meant to bring one to fear and love?
And is not the father who is required to say to his son the following stirring words: “When your son asks you tomorrow, saying: What are the testimonies and the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord our God commanded you? Then you shall say to your son: We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord gave signs and wonders, great and grievous, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes. And He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land that He swore to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as at this day. And it shall be righteousness for us if we observe to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us”—is he not engaged in teaching Torah? (Note that this is a literary expansion of the way the commandment of Torah study is to be fulfilled, which appears just above in the paragraph of Shema.)
And what of one who reads the paragraph of the Shema (the source of the commandment of Torah study!), which exhorts us to love God with all heart and soul in every place and in every situation:
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.”
The Torah requires us to write everywhere and recite in every situation these two things: God’s unity and love of Him. This is the only source for Torah study, and from here it follows that all study is meant to bring one to this recognition. If this is not Torah, then what is Torah, according to the Torah?
Hello Moshe.
As an honorary member of the empty set, I do not know whether I am entitled to expect clarification of your words, but I will try anyway. 🙂
Clearly a poet or composer is not supposed to stand up to scientific testing. More than that, I accept that a thinker in Jewish thought and Hasidism is not supposed to stand up to such a test either. Even a philosopher (a discipline which I assume everyone knows I do not reject or oppose) does not stand up to it. I explained in my remarks that the demand is more minimal than that (clarifying the concepts and giving clear meaning to the claims), and even that you (= members of the empty set) do not meet. In my estimation, in not a few cases even concepts and arguments that you think say something to you do not in fact do so. In my opinion such illusions are very common around these texts.
Gil, with all due respect, that is simply a distortion.
These verses do not say that the purpose of study is love. Study perhaps expresses love too, but that is really not the same thing. One who loves God is supposed to express this also through study, but this does not mean that the purpose of study is love. Otherwise Torah study would be merely a preparatory instrument for the commandment of loving God. As is known, Rambam does not count preparatory instruments for commandments in his enumeration (see the tenth root).
The question whether studying the non-halakhic parts of the Written Torah counts as Torah study is an interesting question, and I have dealt with it in the past (incidentally, that itself is the difficulty Rashi chose to open his Torah commentary with. Note it well there and consider carefully the meaning of his answer). In my opinion it depends on what you do with them. If you want to learn them, then yes (at least as the word of God even if not His will—that is, what they call in the yeshivot qualitative neglect of Torah study). But reading them casually so that they affect me in some ways not through the cognitive, intellectual dimension does not count as Torah study, in my humble opinion. Just as wrapping or rolling a Torah scroll is indeed dealing with the Torah scroll, but is not Torah study.
With God’s help, on the eve of holy Sabbath, for the portion “For the Lord is with him,” 5778
To Gil—many greetings,
And so the king too was commanded: “And it shall be, when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this Torah in a book from before the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this Torah and these statutes, to do them, that his heart be not lifted up above his brothers, and that he not turn aside from the commandment to the right or to the left…” (Deut. 17:18–20).
And not only the king; the whole people too is stirred by Torah study to fear the Lord, as the priests, sons of Levi, and all the elders of Israel were commanded: “…you shall read this Torah before all Israel in their ears. Gather the people, the men, the women, and the little ones, and your stranger within your gates, so that they may hear and so that they may learn and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this Torah. And their children, who have not known, shall hear and learn to fear the Lord your God all the days that you live upon the land…” (Deut. 31:11–13).
The assembly at Hakhel is the continuation of the assembly at Mount Sinai: “The day that you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, ‘Gather the people to Me and I will make them hear My words, so that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children’” (Deut. 4:10).
The teaching of Torah was imposed on the tribe of Levi—among them the fathers of the Brisk dynasty—because of their piety and devotion to the word of God, as in Moses’ blessing: “Your Thummim and Urim belong to Your pious man…” They were the ones who were zealous for the word of God and did not show favoritism even to their relatives: “For they kept Your word and guarded Your covenant”—and upon them it is incumbent to educate the people: “They shall teach Your ordinances to Jacob and Your Torah to Israel,” and upon them it is incumbent to plead merit and atone for their people: “They shall place incense before Your nostrils and whole burnt-offerings on Your altar” (Deut. 33:8–10). One comes to Torah with ardor, and the Torah channels that ardor into education, repair, and appeasement!
May it be His will that we walk in the way of the sages of Lithuania, to plant within the people love of God and love of His Torah!
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Paragraph 3, line 1:
… when the Lord said to me…
I don’t know how to respond to the response, so I’m writing my clarification here.
I agree that a lot of foolish things are said. Still, many times things are said that can be seen as lacking analytical value (because they indeed lack analytical value), and yet, although they do not convey a single clear-cut message, they do succeed in arousing the reader to a certain impression (just as poetry operates). I agree that in those quotations too there was some jumble of nonsense, but definitely not only that; there was a real message that could also be translated into a much clearer form (one of the best Sabbath pamphlets—another empty set—is Belz’s Sabbath pamphlet, whose first page includes a quotation from a Hasidic book and a translation of it into the sort of sermonic style accepted today). In any case, there are many things there that do have substance (for example, the description of the difference between the Baal Shem Tov and the Maggid. Something quite similar in a more scientific style is found in Margaliot’s Encyclopedia of the History of the Great Ones of Israel, if I recall correctly; and even parts of Olesh’s quotation—which turns out to have been inaccurate). Of course one can debate the content, and a poem that expresses nonsense sounds like nonsense (that doesn’t detract from its artistic beauty 🙂), but content can be extracted from there if one wants. One doesn’t have to, and one doesn’t have to want to. But one can.
And again, I absolutely agree that “such illusions are widespread around such texts,” as Rabbi Nachman writes (Likkutei Moharan 281): “Even a simple person … can see new and wondrous things … and one can see in the book what the author did not intend at all … but one should not put the matter to the test, for it may be that then precisely he will see nothing at all.” Of course, this includes the possibility of seeing also nonsense that the author did not intend at all, but not only that. So the article is important because it deals with the nonsense one can see in a book, and it warns against this (there is an essay by the Piaseczner Rebbe at the end of Bnei Machshavah Tovah that deals with the question of how to meditate on Hasidic books, and in my opinion it touches on this a bit). But I wanted to note that one can enjoy the artistic quality of nonsense and even arrive at real insights as a result of it, and sometimes a poet writes such things precisely in order to bring a person to a state in which he will understand what is not written (biblical verses woven into piyyutim out of their original context, which we all know, are meant exactly for this in my opinion—they are an artistic creation trying to evoke different feelings than the content alone; just as the same content with a tune or rhyme can affect a person differently than without them, when the artistic tools are tools for conveying content).
I hope this is clearer—To sum up: the article reflects an important angle of “be careful not to say foolish things when you try to work with artistic tools,” and I only wanted to note that these are wonderful artistic tools and they also convey content that is not nonsense (at least some parts of it are not, or they may be incorrect but not nonsense), except that it is all mixed together with many things that are not content but rather color and style.
Hello Rabbi,
and thank you from the rain of posts increasing in the second century,
With your permission I would like to point out a difference in this article from most of its predecessors—
In the many articles of the rabbi dealing with various topics, the core of the article draws its strength from the root and soul of the issue.
That is to say, the rabbi descends to the root of the matter and examines its source, cites the generators and progenitors of the idea,
and only from there begins the discussion with all its branches and offshoots.
Likewise, the conclusions derived from the article and post shed light on the topic as a whole, color it, and sometimes even refute it entirely.
The present article is utterly different.
(At any rate, while reading it I had the feeling that the rabbi was interviewing himself, while this pair of foolish Hasidim served him as background music.)
And if we want to discuss the meaning of Hasidism, or its definition as study or spiritual experience, and its practitioners, women and men, and try to clarify and stand on its foundations—what do we do?
We take as our opening text an article in the newspaper Makor Rishon, in which an anonymous writer is conducting a dialogue of the deaf with a Hasidic woman who mashes together Hasidic concepts standing on one foot and kneads them into a soggy paste.
And I haven’t even mentioned the great investment of a sea of words in refuting and vaporizing such vapidities—as though the doctrine of the Hasidim rested on them.
When dealing with something as weighty as Hasidism, which has accompanied entire communities, thinkers, and leaders of grace for more than 250 years—a whole Torah spread across countless books, studies, and so on.
And I wonder: is this fitting? Or more importantly, is it fair?
(Actually yes—the rabbi states more than once that he is not versed in the Torah of Hasidism, and perhaps this is what the rabbi should have opened with.)
Even if the discussion here revolves only around women’s engagement with Hasidism—even here one must investigate the foundations of the matter, and not bring ready-made decisive proofs, or rely on someone who did not understand and errs in her understanding. Moreover, from personal acquaintance with women who teach Hasidism, who engage in the field deeply and fundamentally, who train their students to look at Shabbat and concepts such as Shabbat and festivals with an in-depth perspective—(and not only by passing along recipes and desserts for these days)—to learn and understand the meaning of mitzvot and prayer by way of Hasidism (if not on the intellectual level, then certainly on the practical one).
It seems to me that they should have stood on the other side of the discussion, and thus we would have honored ourselves with fair discourse.
With the blessing,
“And no plague shall come near your tent”
Dear Elkana.
There is a book called Shivchei HaBaal Shem Tov, which as is well known is full of stories of miracles and wonders. That book was published in the initial period of the spread of Hasidism, and even if the reliability of its stories is nil, it certainly reflects what the members of the Hasidic sect of that period enjoyed reading.
In that book it is told about Rabbi Nachman, one of the early heads of the Hasidim, that he went to the community of Zolkva and served as prayer leader there according to the Sephardic rite (as is known, this is the rite the Hasidim began to pray in because they thought that this was how the exiles of Spain, who were kabbalists, prayed).
“When he had finished all his prayers, all the men of the study house opened against him … ‘How did your heart dare to stand before the ark without permission and alter the rite in which our fathers and forefathers prayed, who were the great ones of the generation?’ He answered and said: ‘And who says they are in Gan Eden?’”
That is what the early Hasidim had to say about the Maharshal, the Maharsha, the Shakh, the Taz, and the Rema. One needs to understand that the whole enterprise was built on brazen nullification of everyone else, and on acquiring name and fame (also) by means of fabricated miracle stories in order to mislead the ignorant masses—and alas, Satan’s work succeeded.
I see no reason to honor even the luminaries of Hasidism (certainly not its standard little rebbes, who did not reach their ankles) more than they honored the great ones of the preceding generations. Not a few of the Hasidic rabbis can be assigned a not insignificant pile of dubious and unworthy deeds, and lies and mockeries that are 250 years old are not worth much more than those invented today.
[There is of course another issue, namely that the “existential” meaning bestowed by various preachers (of the sort mentioned in the article) upon Hasidic doctrine is entirely different from the original idea. And if, for example, the author of the Tanya were to rise from the dead, I am sure he would cry bitterly over the distortion of his teachings.]
Hello Moshe.
What you say parallels what I once wrote in a series of short essays on poetry at Atzchah (there is a link here on the site under Writings, under posts from Atzchah: http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2137463&forum_id=1364).
I entirely agree. The problem is that it is hard to call this study, because in the end the product is not mainly the result of the text being studied, but of the interpreter. The sources are sources of inspiration, and the product is created within the reader. But if so, then the text has no real added educational value. Someone sufficiently creative could find treasures even by contemplating a telephone directory page (see Zen stories and aphorisms). Does that mean the telephone page is a lesson?
Is the one who produced it a teacher? In other words, the Hasidic vort says more about the speaker than about the writer. What exists in the poetic/Hasidic text itself is artistic quality—the extent to which it arouses wonder and insights. But then we are speaking of an artistic creation, not a text that one studies. And that is exactly what I wrote.
But all these are just ways of speaking about the matter and impressions. Clearly, there is also some of the real thing in Hasidic texts and lessons. The question is one of proportions and how much of it there is. And here we need examples.
Hello Elkana.
First, we are not dealing with two fools. Not at all. You can look at the exchange here between Olesh and me and you will see a very intelligent woman who, in my estimation, definitely knows what she is talking about (I do not know how many of the women engaged in Hasidism that you know are better than her. I very much doubt it). So let’s not belittle them, especially when the main message of your comment is not to belittle intelligent people. Let’s just say I was not persuaded that the authors of the books were wiser than these two. I will only sharpen the point that I did not come to belittle people but the method (or lack thereof) and the genre.
Second, the fact that I am not expert in Hasidism is precisely because of my attitude toward it. I know enough of it to have formed this position toward it. One need not know all the details in order to form such a position. It is enough to know the genre and the form of the discourse. This position of mine was not formed from reading the Makor Rishon article (please do not belittle me to that extent). What I saw in Makor Rishon was a good example of more general features found in the study of Hasidism, and those are what I wanted to address. The article is only the trigger.
You would do well to read what I just wrote to Moshe (here above, above Gil’s comment, at 11:06), where I clarified my view about the character of Hasidic writings and their significance in Hasidic study (like telephone pages that inspire the viewer).
Hello again, Rabbi—
First, I ask forgiveness; I did not mean to belittle the rabbi or the knowledge behind his article.
(“A rabbi who forgoes his honor…” etc.) Quite the opposite—as one who reads his words thirstily, I was simply surprised this time by the basis on which the claims were built.
As mentioned, my disparagement toward the writer and the Hasidic woman was directly influenced by the rabbi’s own words, which seemed to belittle them twice as much as I did
(here are some examples:
Some of it is simply tendentious nonsense!
—it is evident that the speaker is looking for herself instead of learning the material!
—that is, they are just inventing words “that don’t say anything to me”!
—the inability to understand need not prevent us from answering our interlocutor enthusiastically. This is a discourse between monads… )
Nor do I doubt the rabbi’s erudition, and his understanding of the perplexities of the soul of Hasidism, but again: a known approach and method are not summed up and anchored in an interview between a reporter and a teacher!
And a detail that in my view is unnecessary: there is no need to make the effort to wallow in improper discourse (monads).
(Does the rabbi not agree about this?)
I simply expected a more fundamental article dealing with the heart of the matter, and with the give-and-take of the fathers of the idea, and not with a few sentences in the framework of a newspaper. ((And to Nadav S.—wonderful and authoritative quotations from the melting pot of the joke-book Shivchei HaBesht—by the way, which foundational work quotes from it? The Tanya? Toldot Yaakov Yosef? It only shows the understanding of what reflects Hasidism and what does not, and enough said.))
And regarding the women of Hasidism whom I know, I do not think there is any need to dwell on their level of education or the height of their intelligence (not that they lack these).
What is needed?—
Simply to read what they write and u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d, or to speak with their students (more than with them themselves), and one will see that they delve deeply into perspective on a wide range of Jewish topics.
With blessing, and forgiveness retroactively.
Hello Elkana.
1. I do not understand the sense of your saying that the belittling of people is “because of” my words (which you do not agree with). In any event, even the quotations you brought from me are not disparagement of people but of the mode of study and the method (there is a difference between saying that someone is a fool or two fools, and saying that his words, or some of them, are foolish. The former is criticism of the person, the latter of the things said).
2. What is improper about saying that this is a discourse between monads? I am astonished!
3. A principled article on Hasidism and its roots belongs elsewhere. Here I was speaking about the form of discourse and study practiced there. For that, no research is needed, and in general a post on a website like this is not the place for systematic research but for expressing a general position.
4. I do not know why I need to repeat once again what I have already written: that my remarks were not based on this interview.
5. I do not know whom you are talking about, but what I have read in matters of Hasidism, whether by women or by men, generally does not impress me at all.
Hello again. I will not trouble the rabbi further and will end with this response (without a vow).
1. I do not know them at all, apart from this very post, and I think that whether there was disparagement of them or their words in your remarks is for the readers to judge.
I understand that there is no way for the rabbi (at any rate, now) to declare that he disparages them—because they serve as example and illustration, and we do not pull the rug out from under ourselves. I leave that to the rabbi to deal with; in any case I am exempt from it, and allow me a little disparagement.
2. It is certainly a proper definition—but entirely unnecessary to discuss and draw conclusions from it in a sea of verbiage on your part.
3. Even the form of discourse the rabbi tried to present is clearly not the whole picture, or to define it as the form of d-i-s-c-o-u-r-s-e. Heaven forbid that the rabbi be required to do research, but fairness does require checking, in any case, women teachers who know what they are saying and who create proper discourse and dialogue.
4. Clearly the rabbi did not base himself on that—and it seems to me I wrote that too! But the burden of proof lies on the one making the claim (all the more so against large communities), and yet I think at least some slight contact with the abundant sources is required.
5. If it really interests you (which I am not sure it does), I’d be happy to direct you.
And in conclusion (to N. S.)—even in a post about Hasidism and Hasidic discourse, to cite from Shivchei HaBesht reminds me of that panel on Breslov Hasidism where someone stood up and quoted from Yisrael Odesser’s books)
With blessings to the rabbi
who treats me like Hillel on Sabbath eve.
With God’s help, on the eve of holy Sabbath: for “for he is wise,” 5778
Just as the ardor of “Your pious man” prepares him for “they shall teach Your ordinances to Jacob,” so too Hasidism depends on depth of wisdom. Hasidism is expressed not only in “matters of blessings”—the emotional work of prayer and thanksgiving; nor only in “matters of Avot”—good character and proper conduct.
Hasidism also requires care in “matters of damages,” about which it was said: “Whoever wishes to become wise should engage in monetary law, for in them is hidden deep, double wisdom”—both deep analysis of the complex halakhic categories full of subtle distinctions, and deep analysis of the complications of reality and the recesses of the human soul, from which there is a cornerstone and a peg for the ability to be careful about every slightest trace of harming another.
It was no accident that those great in lomdus and halakhic analysis were also great in character work and the work of the heart in love and fear of God. The human soul is one: excellence in intellect brings excellence in emotion, and opening the heart brings opening the mind!
And at the end of the break, Joseph the master dreamer becomes a man of organization and administration, and Judah the practical, clear-eyed man is tested also in his ability to reveal loftiness of spirit. And both understand that one cannot unite without the other!
With blessings for a peaceful Sabbath, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Paragraph 2, line 1:
… in them is hidden wisdom…
As usual I enjoy reading the rabbi’s posts; I just want to be precise about a few things… of course with great respect, and I will try not to offend the rabbi’s honor, and if I am not in order I ask forgiveness in advance; I’m sure the rabbi understands 🙂
Regarding Hasidism, which is built from kabbalistic things, and Kabbalah study in general—when one does not understand the kabbalistic referent, apart from a few books (Da’at Tevunot, which sounds like a kabbalistic version of the Guide for the Perplexed, Klach Pitchei Chokhmah, and others; I am aware of the opposition to them, and there is a deep and biographical answer to that) that explain these things logically or on the basis of a tradition from Sinai—and likewise, one generally has to understand them from one’s teacher intuitively, mainly through close precision with the rabbi on the matter so as not to err. Of course there are things that are in the category of “understands on his own” and he will not be able to explain their essence in themselves, but in my opinion those are very few indeed…
And someone who has not studied is indeed many times left with contentless statements into which he injects his own meaning, and on that I completely agree with the rabbi…
But not so with one who studies and understands the kabbalistic referent (whose study, by the way, really does take on a different expression in experience, because it is much less emotional, but when one arrives at the understanding itself and reads it a second time, there is again room for emotional experience… something that has been addressed…)
That is why Hasidim such as the Kotzker Rebbe in the past, and Rav Sheinfeld and Rav Morgenstern today (of course there are and were many others) are very strict about studying books of Kabbalah as the basis for understanding what led to the Hasidic interpretation… The Kotzker Rebbe therefore obligated his students to study Maharal’s writings, which although not kabbalistic nevertheless contained a kind of thought that could instill understanding in Hasidism (which as is known was influenced by Maharal and Ramchal, despite the later opposition to him). The heretic Persico in his article explained how Hasidism elevated Kabbalah by a degree through its psychological mode of study… but without Kabbalah, Hasidism is only a production method without raw material.
Another thing the rabbi said—that experience is not study. First of all, that depends on a very subjective definition: do I regard study as a cognitive definition?
If I experienced pain from a dangerous act I performed, did that not teach me for life to keep away from it and that it is dangerous? Learning through emotion is something humanity does all the time.
It is not for nothing that there is the statement about “serving a rabbi… is greater than studying with him,” etc. (and likewise Duties of the Heart…)
It should be noted that I used to oppose Hasidism because I truly thought there was nothing to it, until I understood what was at stake on the conceptual level. The rabbi quotes Rav Kook more than once, and it is known that Rav Kook drew a great deal from Hasidism, to the point that he said he was the soul of Rabbi Nachman (as his son Rav Tzvi Yehuda testified).
And it is understanding the referents in his thought that gives it meaning (these can be studied through quite a few books by the students of his students who transmitted his explanations).
Likewise, Rav Hillel Zeitlin, who was a philosopher (he was initially occupied with Gersonides, Rambam, and, to distinguish, Spinoza, Nietzsche, and others) before returning to observance, was a Chabad Hasid. Of course, testimonies regarding such righteous men are no proof, since one does not adopt a view because of someone’s greatness—but this is only to add a bit more weight to the explanation that preceded it.
(Before he returned to observance.) He was a Chabad Hasid*
Now I’m already worried. What is this concern for my honor?! Just as I write like a whip, so everyone else is invited to do the same.
If you mean what I remarked to the previous writer (Elkana), that was only because his claim involved hurting the honor of others, and so I responded measure for measure.
As for your point itself,
I know the kabbalistic background (much better than Hasidism itself), and still, in my humble opinion, much of it is nonsense. Statements of the sort “if you understand, you will see the light” do not help me. Perhaps I do not understand (I think I do), but bottom line, I do not see the light. On the contrary, I think those who believe they understand often do so because of lack of skill in systematic thought.
As for learning from pain, I have already written and explained here several times: if learning Hasidism is learning in the same way as drawing lessons from pain, then it is not study. Pain is not a sacred book, just as a telephone directory page (from which one can also draw lessons) is not a sacred book. One can draw lessons from a great many things (perhaps from everything). So enough with definitions. We have no dispute about definitions but about essence.
Thank you very much, Rabbi Michi, for the warm compliment. (The cry “Go to Negaim and Ohalot” was of course only a compliment; it’s all we need for the site to focus only on such matters…).
As for our matter: I think the argument moved from the question about the “study” of Hasidism to “Hasidism” in general. In my opinion these are two questions. The first question does not pertain only to the study of Hasidism, but to all experiential learning, such as Mussar study. The second question requires different definitions.
I agree with the rabbi’s view regarding contemporary Hasidic study, which is a subjective experience. I think the “original,” classical Hasidic public studies Hasidism differently: it analyzes the text and does not insert its own experiences into the book. And I also think it is possible to arrange the principles of original Hasidism in a clear and defined form (though one may dispute their validity and truth).
Here is an interesting link to Nadav Shnerb’s site. When a computer randomly mixes words from the writings of Rav Kook, the resulting passage still continues to seem meaningful to many in the “sector.” This shows that the study is not drawing objective conclusions from what is written, but rather a subjective experience. Very amusing:
Shnerb,
I can actually imagine them asking exactly the same question of the local master and of you.
You wrote:
“If that is the definition of study, then I study when I pass by a telephone pole, see a cloud, or even sleep. I do not deny that any such thing can do something to me, but I would not call it study. If everything is study, then nothing is study.”
Interestingly, in the well-known story, the Baal Shem Tov indeed claims that from everything one can “learn” a way in the service of God:
“…But the point is that even from a non-Jew, and even from one who fights against Jews and Judaism, one can sometimes learn something good… And that is also the content of the story that the Baal Shem Tov himself, after revealing himself as the greatest and holiest man of his generation, learned from a gentile, to distinguish, a lesson in the service of God:
Once the Baal Shem Tov sat with his disciples in the synagogue and study hall, engaged in Torah or prayer. In the nearby street a gentile passed by with a wagon, and because there was much mud in the street, the wagon could not continue and became stuck in the mud. The gentile approached the window of the synagogue where the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples sat, stuck his head through the window, and asked that they help him get the wagon out of the mud. Since the wagon was heavy and the mud was deep, the disciples replied that they did not have the strength to get the wagon out of the deep mud. The gentile answered them—in Ukrainian—‘Mozhesh da nie chotchesh,’ meaning: you can, but you do not want to; and because you do not want to, it seems to you that you cannot.
And afterward the Baal Shem Tov explained to his disciples that the words they had heard from the gentile were not by chance, but that one should learn from this a lesson in the service of God: … regarding this the Baal Shem Tov says that one must learn from the gentile’s words, to distinguish, ‘Mozhesh da nie chotchesh,’ meaning that the Holy One, blessed be He, gives the power to do all good things, except that because one does not want to do them, because one listens to the evil inclination, it appears that one cannot do them.” http://chabadlibrary.org/books/admur/tm/28/24/index.htm#_ftnref_1515
There are different versions of the story; this is what I found now. The main point that emerges from them is the Baal Shem Tov’s claim that a stimulus in our surroundings is sent to us from above in order to teach us something, or for some other reason.
This conception is connected to the private providence that the Baal Shem Tov emphasized (“Every leaf that falls from the tree is under providence as to when and in which direction it will fall”). One can view this way of thinking as egocentricity: everything that happens around me is intended from above, by providence, in order to challenge me.
In any case, it is interesting that the vagueness in the definition of the concept of “learning” among students of Hasidism already began then, in an explicit expression of the Baal Shem Tov.
But in my opinion your words beg the question. You narrow the concept of “learning,” and from that conclude that experience (whose source is a Hasidic book) is not study.
Perhaps you should go in the opposite direction? From the fact that it is customary to recite the blessing on Torah study over Mussar study, or over the aggadot of Rabbah bar bar Chana, it is a sign that the concept of study (in its halakhic definition) is broader, and includes “experience” too?
Obviously. After all, this is what also emerged in the correspondence here with Olesh. The Hasidim learn from stories (of course Rabbi Nachman is a prime example). The problem is that learning from a story or from a telephone page is nothing but receiving inspiration, not study in the full sense, as I wrote.
What you brought here cannot be considered begging the question, but rather an argument with premises and a conclusion. Indeed, this is what I assume as the definition of study, and from that I concluded that there are things that are not study. And of course one can always dispute the premise and reach a different conclusion. Still, in my opinion this is a reasonable premise (see the telephone page).
Thank you very much.
I would be happy—and I think many would join me, and I even know some of them—if at the beginning of an article (or at least at its end) you would attach an abstract / TL;DR or short summary of the idea, so as to give even those who unfortunately cannot manage to follow the general point
All the best and thank you
The source of that gem is R. Chaim of Volozhin in Gate 4 of Nefesh HaChaim: “…and who knows whether the Holy One, blessed be He, agreed with him in this, for we do not find in the words of our Sages of blessed memory what answer He, may He be blessed, gave to his request…”
A question:
Quite a few years ago, I remember reading an article of yours in the Yerucham Yeshiva bulletin, and the gist of it was that it does not matter at all what the author intended, and there is no need whatsoever to try to understand his intention, because the text stands on its own regardless of the author’s intention (many years have passed since then, so forgive me if I am distorting the matter. And perhaps it was a student’s summary of yours and not an article formulated by you).
At the time, I remember that those words seemed absurd and contrary to the pursuit of truth.
From the article here and from your comments, I get the opposite impression: “By the way, I fully acknowledge that there are ideological influences that bias study. We are all human beings. I am also entirely in favor of honest reflection that admits this. I am against turning the matter into an ideology and making conscious use of it. I am also against the assumption that engaging with these biases is itself study.”
How do these two things fit together?
N.M —
The rabbi’s view on the subject is laid out at length here:
…Hermeneutics is the field of inquiry that deals with the understanding or interpretation of various texts, and in a broader context with the understanding and interpretation of works of art, and of interpretation and understanding in general. The problem of general understanding and interpretation discusses the reciprocal relation among three factors involved in the interpretive act: the text, the author, and the reader (the interpreter). Accordingly, these three factors allow us to divide, in a very schematic manner, the basic hermeneutic positions into three main directions…
See there.
To R. Michi and the band of lickspittles of his narrow-minded thought, hello.
You are a first-rate babbler, without a shred of understanding. What Olesh wrote is really not nonsense.
And even what the interviewer quoted from it is not terrible at all.
Olesh should have fulfilled on you, “Answer a fool according to his folly.”
Since you pretend to be some kind of intellectual, one would expect you to understand a little more in the field.
It is a disgrace that a Torah scholar has deteriorated into such ignorance and shallowness.
And by the way, studying Hasidism is the father of the father of Torah study.
And so is the whole field of the inner Torah.
It drives me crazy to see how you chatter and prattle without blinking…
Good for you.
From a longtime reader of the blog….
Thank you. People already noted this above, and it was discussed there.
I think it wasn’t in the Yerucham bulletin but in Akdamot, in my article on hermeneutics, which Aharon quoted just above your comment.
As for the body of your question, I will answer in three parts:
First, my view has changed since then (the matter of providence has been shaken for me, alas, as is known).
Second, there is no contradiction even if my view had not changed, because there I dealt only with a canonical text, that is, a text whose authority stems from its acceptance. Regarding that, I argued that authority was given to the text and not to the writer, and therefore one must clarify what the text says, not what the writer intended. But books of commentary or thought have no such authority, and so that theory does not apply there. My main claim there was that the hermeneutics of a canonical text differs from ordinary hermeneutics.
And third, even there I did not claim that there is no interpretive truth, but rather that the truth lies in the text, not the writer. But the “study” I dealt with here focuses on the reader and assumes that there is no interpretive truth at all (deconstruction), and that is certainly not study.
Thank you for the information, both the part delivered directly from the mouth of the Almighty and the part graciously bestowed upon us by the way. And I am even more grateful for the wishes and the esteem. Indeed, it gives me pleasure. 🙂
While the rabbi criticizes that “studying” Hasidism is not really “studying” Torah, the rabbi is invited to read the blog published today on the Bechadrei Charedim site about studying Gemara:
“How We’ll Make Youth Connect to Gemara Study
The fact that Gemara study in yeshivot takes place monotonously causes quite a few young people to feel disconnected from this wondrous thing • The influencer Rabbi Mendel Roth suggests doing it differently: five wondrous aspects that will cause young people to find real taste in the tractates of the Talmud • ‘The Influencer’s Blog’ engages in simple pilpul”
That is exactly what I am crying over. The fellows may perhaps find a taste in “study,” except that the study is not study. One can also dance a hora with them with books of Rabbi Nachman and they will enjoy it greatly. Does that turn it into Torah study?
Okay, that is indeed much more explained and understandable than what was written in that bulletin (or at least than what I understood from that bulletin. I remember it well—I was in the army then, in 1999 or 2000, and these things were published in the bulletin received by the Yerucham boys in the hesder program).
(And incidentally, your version in the article Aharon referred to appeals to me much more than the later formulation—namely the matter of providence having been shaken for you in your sins—but that is already another matter.)
By the way, Mendel Roth is an outsider in the haredi public; he is an interesting phenomenon and worth following.
“How do we teach Torah to children?
Today’s children are not like they used to be… that is how adults complain.
True. Today’s youth are different. Anyone who thinks that in 2017 it is possible to seat 30 students in rows and have a teacher lecture them seven hours a day for 12 years, a total of about 15,000 hours—from first grade through twelfth—is mistaken. For most children this does not work. They lose interest, they do not connect.
So what do we do? How do we harness youth to learning out of commitment, desire, and responsibility?
Here are a few ideas: an atmosphere of joy at school. Likkutei Moharan (24) writes, ‘It is a great mitzvah to always be joyful.’ There is no asterisk saying that one need not be joyful at school.
Furthermore, parents and educators must ensure that learning is sweet as honey, for ‘A person only learns Torah from the place his heart desires’ (Avodah Zarah 19).
This week at “Meitarim” in Ra’anana they studied a page of Gemara. The students chose whether to delve into the text through creative writing, drama, cinema, art, or dance. The important principle is that the students chose the most delicious way for them to learn.”
(Dubi Arbel, principal of the “Meitarim” high school in Ra’anana, the “Sichat HaShabbat” bulletin, issue no. 30 p. 4)
* * *
I just received this by email (and the rest, go and study). I thought someone had sent it to me as a provocation after this post, but no—it seems innocent.
__________________________________
Hello everyone,
I’m happy to tell you about two new series of classes for women opening in two weeks, on Wednesday after Hanukkah:
The Dance of Eve and Lilith: Women and Femininity in Kabbalah and Hasidism
10 meetings | Wednesdays 20:30–22:30 | Tziyonah Tagger St., Jaffa
According to Kabbalah, there were in the Garden of Eden not one woman but two: Eve, and another woman who was rejected and became a terrifying demon.
What is the secret of these two primordial women? What is the story of the rejected woman, and how is it connected to our generation and our lives?
For details and registration: 054-4949743 | You can also register for live internet broadcast
Map of the Soul According to Hasidism
12 meetings | Wednesdays 10:00–11:30 | Rachel the Poet St. (Beit HaKerem), Jerusalem
The Jewish esoteric tradition, Kabbalah and Hasidism, offers a detailed map of the powers of the soul, and advice on how to awaken and direct them.
Come get to know up close the powers of soul hidden within you and learn how to realize them in your life!
For details and registration: 050-6360882
Attached are flyers for both series. Please distribute them so that they reach all the souls they are meant to reach.
Thank you very much and see you soon!
When a person writes a post about “women’s Hasidism and what lies between them,” he should not be surprised if, for someone searching for material on women and Hasidism, his article jumps to the top of the list. Even negative things can serve as advertising 🙂
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levingoogle
Good thing they’re not at the same hour.
And as for the post—
Actually, this time the women’s issue did not bother me.
Broadly speaking, I agree that for very many ordinary Jews [men and women—there is no gender difference here at all] these studies are existential. They want to come out of the lessons illuminated, but [it seems to me you will not disagree with what follows, though it is important to emphasize it]
1. There is great value in studies that radiate into one’s service of God [but the whole concept of serving God is different in your definition and in the Hasidic definition, so for you studies with impact in that area are less significant].
2. Studies of this kind are in a certain sense the most Torah-of-life possible.
But that is really secondary. My main disagreement is actually with the first part of the post, where you spoke about Hasidic studies in general.
Hasidic studies—and first and foremost Kabbalah studies—as I understand and know them [and I really know very little] are very serious studies. This is another language—not only in terms of language itself [which is ostensibly technical, though as a linguist I think language is not technical at all…], but also in terms of the mode of thought, the world of knowledge, the concepts, the understanding of how the worlds function, etc.
To study a serious Hasidic discourse requires a tremendous amount of toil, no less than a sugya requires. Sometimes I can sit over a discourse of the Alter Rebbe and labor greatly to understand it. Most people are beginners in Hasidic studies and therefore never reach their depth at all, and of course few understand the kabbalistic doctrines on which Hasidism is based. By the way, the academic world around Kabbalah is also not easy and requires labor no less than other fields. Not to mention that in many teachings of the more learned Hasidic traditions (Sfat Emet, Shem MiShmuel, and many others), without the analytical understanding of the sugya one cannot understand the additional layer of Hasidism and its subtleties.
It was דווקא the women’s part that bothered me less this time.
I didn’t read the article in the source because it didn’t interest me that much. From the quotations you brought I didn’t understand everything, because I’m not really from that field. Perhaps only one point—certainly in Kabbalah there is a feminization of divinity [I didn’t like that term, but I’m speaking in her language in the article…]. The whole kabbalistic world is built on the categories of female and male, and divinity is very often in the category of the female. That means each of us has such and such an aspect, and certain deeds and commandments activate one side or another—in us or in the upper worlds.
In short
Contrary to what my stereotype probably conveys, I spent quite a few years dealing with Kabbalah and I know the terminology, language, and principles fairly well. I also think it has no small value, and I know it is studied seriously. My remarks are directed mainly at the existential kind of study that has been gaining momentum in recent years (following Rabbis Shagar and Froman, etc.). In my view, this is mainly intellectual laziness.
When one engages in Kabbalah and focuses on kabbalistic terminology and studies “within it,” it is a kind of different language and a different conceptual world, and this study has characteristics of mathematics. But when people begin to assign meaning (and this happens a lot in the existential directions), they very often end up with vague and undefined things and in fact say nothing under the guise of tremendous depth.
Beyond that, precisely as someone with experience, I must say there is no comparison between conceptual-analytical study and studies of Hasidism and Kabbalah. It is simply not in the same league at all. Even when something is difficult, it is difficult simply because it is hard to understand what is meant, not because there are subtleties that are hard to grasp or complexities that are hard to master. The things themselves are, all in all, rather simple. So I really do not accept the comparison you made.
As for study and the service of God, beyond the disagreement about what the service of God is, we also have a disagreement about the very relationship between study and the service of God. Study is not a preparatory instrument for a mitzvah, and therefore one should not view it as a tool for forming one’s service of God (this is, as is known, the essence of the dispute between Nefesh HaChaim and the Hasidim), whatever that service may be. Even if I accept the Hasidic interpretation of serving God (and I do not), I still refuse to see study as a preparatory instrument for a mitzvah designed for some purpose outside itself. I think this is the focus of the disagreement, and not only the question of what the service of God is.
Of course, all this could be expanded upon at great length.
I have now added a few sentences at the beginning of the post. Many thanks for the criticism. I am very happy to receive it, and I hope you will continue whenever necessary. There is obviously no need at all to apologize for that—quite the opposite. Happy Hanukkah.
With God’s help, 25 Kislev 5778
To L.—many greetings,
Rav Michael Abraham’s need for a mocking style, just like the highlighting of the statements attributed to Olesh Goldberg about the feminine sides of divinity, stems from the same need—the need of a journalist or publicist to publish things that “shake the very foundations.”
Take out of Yifrach’s article the discussion of the feminine sides of divinity, and what remains is a banal article about women engaging in the service of God and character work in the light of Hasidic teaching. What is new in that? Therefore something “provocative” had to be found, something to stir up the readers.
Take out of Rav Michael Abraham’s article the mocking words, and what remains? The strange assertion that the entire engagement of prophets and sages, early and late, in studying the ways of serving God, loving Him, and fearing Him is not Torah. So what is Torah? < Is it pilpul over the sugya of one who betroths a woman on condition that the path of Hasidism is correct, or on condition that the path of the sages of Lithuania is correct 🙂
At least one improvement I do notice in Rav Michael Abraham’s writing: after every post once carried the title “A Gloomy View,” the view is no longer quite so gloomy!
With blessing, Sh. Tz. Levinger—this already opens the door to hope 🙂
Take out of Shatzal’s response the jab about the improvement in the “gloomy view,” and still, of course for a change, his words are sensible.
The restriction in the definition of “study” is unfounded.
To Chevroner.
By the word “Lithuanianness” I of course meant the intellectual side of Lithuanianness as expressed in lomdus, which of course is emphasized there more than in Hasidism. The rationality of lomdus needs to be imported into the realms of faith. Of course the books of the local master would stand at the front of the fair, but they are not the only ones.
Shatzal, there is nothing provocative in Yifrach’s article. The statement that Kabbalah (not Hasidism) adds a feminine dimension to the conception of divinity is a simple and well-known fact. Hasidism, at least among the Hasidic existentialists I was speaking about, takes this into existential regions.
And if we remove from your response the ridiculous comparison you made between removing the provocation (which does not exist) from Yifrach and removing the mockery from my article (which, even by your own words, leaves a substantial and non-trivial argument, though you disagree with it), nothing remains but the declaration that you do not agree with my definition of study. You could simply have written that.
And since we have come to this, I will only say that your argument is obviously absurd. The fact that many have engaged and do engage in the service of God does not mean that it is Torah study, but at most that it is something of value (if at all). That was not the discussion. I was speaking about the definition of the commandment of Torah study. Beyond that, I also argued that in many cases it is not even really of substantial value, but perhaps only of therapeutic value.
Thank you for the article.
Could you give examples of Hasidic books that, in your view, do contain real and meaningful learning that meets the analytical criteria you mentioned?