Instead of a Lament: The Place of Religiosity in Religious Faith: E. The Hasidic Renaissance (Column 315)

In recent columns I’ve discussed the place of emotion in the service of God and more broadly. This series began in response to reactions I received to the interview with Yair Sheleg in Makor Rishon (see column 310). But there was another reason for writing this series. A few days earlier, Gil sent me a column containing a problematic description of the experiences of Erez Moshe Doron, a well-known Breslov teacher, around his spiritual leadership. That column joins, of course, sensations such as that of Yuval Dayan—also a celebrity and a well-known, charismatic Breslov spiritual leader—who “ran out of steam” and, in 2019, abandoned his religious life in one way or another. I responded there on several points, and here I wish to expand on them a bit as a conclusion to this series of columns.

I don’t intend to deal with these individuals themselves, and certainly not with Dayan’s departure, which in my eyes also has positive aspects (intellectual honesty, willingness to draw unpopular conclusions, transparency, and relinquishing a seductive leadership status). My concern here is that these phenomena reflect a problematic dimension in the religious attitude projected by these people and the groups to which they belong. The religious existentialism and psychologism—the experiential and emotional orientation on which they rely and which they lead (which is, of course, intimately connected to the contemporary Hasidic renaissance)—is, in my view, tied to the disproportionate and problematic attitude of our generation toward feeling and experience, which I described in recent columns. I therefore decided to end the series with an additional column dedicated to these phenomena and their significance.

Introduction on the context

First, a note about the connotation in which these phenomena appear. We’re dealing with a much broader phenomenon than the two figures I’ve described here, and it appears in part among more standard spiritual leaders as well. Religious renewal (a positive trend in itself) appears in many quarters and in many forms, but it usually connects in one way or another to spirituality and Hasidism. Those spiritual leaders (or spiritual celebs) have admirers both religious and secular (in varying proportions and mixes). Some of the religious among them are not traditional, and they’re not “hilltop youth” from the margins of religious society looking for experiential release, but serious, educated, intelligent people who truly belong to the core of the religious community. Some are drawn after Erez Moshe Doron and his colleagues, others after Yuval Dayan, but there are more mainstream groups operating around Rabbi Shagar and his students and in their periphery, essentially seeking quite similar things (not all of them). To my judgment, this blend of religious and secular—which to many seems blessed and indicative of renewal—actually indicates, in my eyes, that the religiosity led by these figures is part of the New Age phenomenon (which hardly needs saying), and therefore less connected to religiosity in its essential sense. This, of course, ties into the question of the relation or connection between religiosity and spirituality, which you won’t be surprised to hear I regard as not truly essential. Whoever wants both naturally tends to connect them, but in my view there is no real connection (I explained in column 310 that in Christianity such a connection apparently does exist, and it seems to me that it reached us from there as well).

I’ve written more than once in the past (for example, in column 310) that, in my eyes, the core of (Jewish) religiosity is halakhic commitment. Not interpretation or meaning, not outlook, morality, experiences, emotions, and the like—whether they come from biblical commentators or Talmudic aggadot, from works of ethics and Hasidism, and certainly not those marketed to us by all these leaders and their friends. To my judgment, experiences and emotions—beyond the fact that I don’t see value in them (see previous columns)—are not part of the religious world but something universal (and it seems quite a few people need it). As Leibowitz repeatedly argued, (Jewish) religiosity is not meant to meet needs—emotional or otherwise—but to demand commitment and require a certain conduct. Therefore, in my opinion, everything poured into it beyond that—morality, Bible, Jewish thought, Hasidism, and the like—is nothing but the use of religious sources and medium for general human needs. There is nothing essentially Jewish about it. These are insights—some correct and some not, many (most) trivial and some less so, some important and some less—but this is not Judaism. The (small, in my view) part that is relevant and useful in all this is relevant and applicable to any gentile—in India, in Israel, or in the West in general—no less than to Jews. As noted, some see in this the charm and exciting novelty of the renewal of Judaism in our time, but I see in it a (legitimate) response to a need, and nothing more.

In my eyes this is usually not religion, but New Age in a religious hue. Many seekers of spirituality are happy to find it in their home precincts. No need to fly to India, stay in a monastery, and do endless meditations. You can get the same thing cheaply in a pub or club in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv—in lectures by spiritual leaders and rabbis (with or without quotation marks)—while studying books in Rashi script (not always), which ostensibly give a feeling of connection to religion and to previous generations (the tradition of our forefathers). You’ll say: this is a genuine Jewish renaissance. What could be bad about it?! I’ve already explained my view of studying Hasidism (like all the other topics listed above), both as study in general and as Torah study in particular, and I won’t return to that here. I’ll devote the rest of my remarks to the new Jewish spirituality and to the Hasidic renaissance that accompanies it.

I will now discuss two representative columns for this phenomenon. One by Yuval Dayan and the other by Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron. I’ll preface by saying that I don’t know them nor their writings. I recognize the book covers of Doron’s works, and I generally recoil from such compositions and assume this isn’t the material I’m looking for (perhaps unfairly—I truly don’t know). But I am quite familiar with the atmosphere they cast over readers and listeners and the secret of their charm for the strata I described above. Above all, I see in them an opportunity to discuss some of the implications I wish to show here. That’s the necessary background and the disclosure regarding the discussion to follow.

Yuval Dayan

I assume Yuval Dayan needs no introduction (at least as the former husband of Noa Yaron Dayan). He’s known to a broad public from his secular period and certainly after becoming religious and turning into a kind of guru and outreach figure (it seems that I, your humble and disconnected servant, nonetheless hadn’t heard of him until he left and turned back). In 2019, Dayan told the wider world, in what he himself called a “dramatic post”, why he was deciding to leave and go back (without defining exactly what that means). I suggest reading and forming an impression, then returning here. I’ll preface that, in my view, both the step and the way he presented it truly deserve great appreciation—for the courage and intellectual integrity, and no less for the willingness to go public with it all (as part of his responsibility to his various admirers and “Hasidim,” who were apparently involved in his life earlier as well and saw him as a role model and spiritual guide).

But after these words of appreciation, if you examine his remarks you won’t find much there about belief, and even less in the way of arguments for or against it (as far as I understood, he didn’t necessarily abandon it). There are descriptions of needs and experiences, feelings and sensations, self-realization and disappointed expectations. All these initially excited him greatly, until, in the end, he ran out of steam—and then he left. As to be expected. Once he understood that the new and exciting world he had discovered did not “deliver the goods,” meaning did not allow him to be what he wanted to be, he left. I get the impression that the decision to plunge headlong into that world (in the most extreme way—joining the society at the fanatical end of the spectrum; again, apparently due to genuine honesty and searching) was likely born of a sense of vacuum and an acute need for something to provide what was lacking and address spiritual deficiencies.[1] I think that’s exactly what his departure looks like as well.

Moreover, the Jewish world he decided to leave is depicted there in his own image. For him, Judaism is a collection of people he saw around him. It’s not a worldview or principles, and certainly not truth or falsehood. It’s a very specific society and mode of conduct. If indeed his faith had been based on arguments and considerations of true or false, I would expect that if he was disappointed with the religious world he lived in, he would go look for an alternative religious world (Lithuanian, religious-Zionist, a saner and more moderate Hasidism, and the like), or create one for himself (I, for example, try to do so). After all, there are other possible Jewish worlds in which perhaps he would discover it is not true that:

Everything God wants of me boils down to turning myself into a borderline, nearly erased personality through holiness and purity and stringencies and self-nullification to the Upper, and “sameness of form,” and so on. What remains there in the end beneath all the layers and clothing and coverings and concealments and lies upon lies upon lies that whole communities maintain? I once thought a deeply hidden secret lay there. Today I know there’s nothing there but money and honor and money and honor, nothing else.

But for him it’s clear there is no other Jewish religious world. It’s clear to him that religiosity is the satisfaction of spiritual needs, not a binding yoke. Therefore “Judaism” means the new Breslov, nothing more. Once it became clear to him that this “Judaism” was not providing what he sought, he left.

Incidentally, my words here are not written as criticism of him. On the contrary, I fully agree with him. I merely use him to describe, through him, the spiritual and religious world in which he moved. It’s that world for which I have criticism. In such a pseudo-religious world, whose primary aim and tendency is the satisfaction of spiritual needs, Yuval remains in it only so long as it does what it’s supposed to do. For my part, in light of what he describes, it seems he was never a religious person (as distinct from a believer). Even in his earlier phase, when he enthusiastically and meticulously observed the 613 commandments and their offshoots and brought many back from sin, he never served God but rather himself. Therefore I fully agree with him that it’s proper to leave the society in which he lived. And if, in his view, this is Jewish religiosity, then one ought to leave Jewish religiosity altogether.

To sharpen my claim I’ll take one confusing point and compare him to myself. He describes his extreme feelings at the beginning of the road in these words: “I was ready to die for the sanctification of God’s name, but unfortunately no one asked me to.” To this I will say that, in my estimation, his readiness to give his life was not for the Holy One or the Torah, but for the sense of meaning they gave him. Luckily for him, it wasn’t actually required. Just to sharpen, I’ll set here my own antithesis. I, in contrast, wrote in my trilogy with an exclamation point what many raised as a question mark about my approach: I’m not sure I would be willing to give my life even in situations where halakha obligates me to do so. I don’t mean weakness, or inclination, or that I would fail to meet the test—that’s natural. I don’t know how I would stand in such a situation even if I thought one should give one’s life. I meant that I have a genuine moral and halakhic doubt about such obligations, and to fulfill them I would have to be convinced to a degree I doubt I possess (see a look at the matter in column 62, around the descriptions of the pious Yaavetz regarding the difference between the Torah scholars and the ignoramuses of his generation vis-à-vis the willingness to sacrifice their lives). Many argue against me—and not only because of this point—that I serve myself, or a God I fashioned with my own hands. I deny this. I serve the Holy One according to my best understanding of His will. I am simply unwilling to give up intellect and reason in my interpretation of what He wants from us. It’s a fine difference, easy to miss, but to me it’s very great and important.

My claim is that, although in Dayan the readiness for self-sacrifice was fuller and stronger than mine, I consider myself a religious person and that he never was. I see myself as religious because my hesitations and doubts about giving my life stem from not having thrown away intellect, reason, and my healthy doubts. Though I’m committed to the service of God even when it doesn’t satisfy my needs, naturally I’m not eager to give my life and I’m also not sure that every word written in every book (including the Talmud) is correct. This isn’t a lack of faith or serving myself instead of God, but a healthy doubt about the contents of faith—that is, about what the Holy One expects of me. Hence a decision is required here, because there is a genuine value conflict. It’s not interest versus value, but value versus value.

Rabbi Soloveitchik describes in his book Halakhic Man—wonderfully—the love of life and deep attachment to it that you can find in the halakhic man (who is known to depict his grandfather, Rabbi Chaim). Despite his absolute submission to God and Torah and his meticulousness in every jot and tittle of halakha—despite stringencies and seeing everything as decrees of Scripture (in Brisk they don’t ask “Why?” but only “What?”)—the halakhic man loves life and clings to it, and therefore he won’t give it up so easily. Life is also a religious and moral value; it isn’t like dust of the earth even where it stands opposite a religious value (the Gemara already says in Yoma 85b: “and live by them,” not “die by them”). Dayan, by contrast, is a man of Hasidism, not of halakha. He goes all the way (in his earlier phase) and is willing even to give his life without much calculation. And yet, in my view, deep down he does this for himself. That’s what gives him a sense of meaning and satisfies his spiritual needs, and therefore to him it’s worth even self-sacrifice where needed (and best—and luckiest—if it isn’t needed). As the song says, a world in which there is nothing to die for is a world lacking taste and meaning. No wonder that for this one is ready to give one’s life.

These popular (populist) messages he sold—and still sells—to the masses in the form of a spiritualist Judaism, and many saw (and still see) this as a blessed religious renewal. No wonder that not a few of his admirers remain his followers even in the new phase. After all, he continues to give them what they always sought, exactly as he did for them in the previous phase. What does it matter whether this is done under a religious guise or not?!

Here I come to the connection between this matter and the current series on feeling and experience. It need hardly be said that the spiritual needs satisfied by spiritualist religiosity are primarily about feeling and experience. In our materialist “death of God” age, people sorely miss religious experience and the connection to transcendent forces (as well as community, charismatic omniscient leadership, and other added values). Something above democracy and above the material world we encounter daily. It’s no wonder that in recent decades some people invent for themselves contact with aliens, various meditation techniques—Eastern or otherwise—and gurus of different kinds (preferably Oriental, with various ashrams). Others prefer to do this within frameworks long perceived as the natural infrastructure for connection with the transcendent: the religions. In my assessment, that’s what generates the spiritualist renaissance the religions are undergoing (especially Judaism, which generally wasn’t like this in the past). It’s part of the general New Age, idealized under the attractive, alluring label of “religious renewal.”

In the past few decades, quite a few people have abandoned empty materiality and pursued odd New Age spiritualist doctrines. Religious people disappointed with religiosity devoid of spirituality (as Kant characterizes Judaism; see on this in column 310) join them. In a world without religious faith and without truth, anything goes—even what is presented as religious faith and pure truth. The worship of graves, “Babas,” various spiritual shepherds, psychologists and organizers of all kinds of workshops, alternative medicine, and so on are part of this phenomenon. There is no burden of proof that any of this works, since the placebo will answer for all. So long as these enterprises offer and provide the desired goods—and don’t demand that I enslave myself to values external to me (perhaps merely to engage in inner work, which in itself is of course praiseworthy), especially to values that are not at all intelligible to me.

Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron

Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron is thankfully still with us. He did not leave, and even wrote a response and rebuke to his colleague Yuval Dayan after his departure. Rabbi Doron is a ba’al teshuva, a Breslov Hasid roughly my age (two years younger), defined in Wikipedia as a “spiritual teacher.” At the start of that entry there’s a link to “Spiritual teacher (New Age),” tying this to the New Age. It’s very worthwhile to read at least the introduction to that entry to understand what this is about. Incidentally, in the language at the start of this post it’s called a “mashpia,” a Hasidic term equivalent to “spiritual teacher.” Yet another Hasidic translation of a New-Age term. He has authored around thirty books on the Breslov approach and its meaning for our generation, which are apparently read by quite a few people of various types. I see that some have been translated into English, Russian, and Spanish, which certainly attests to their relevance for many and diverse people (I don’t assume they’re aimed at Jews who read only Spanish, but at Spanish-speakers in general). Among other things he established and headed the “Lev HaDvarim” organization, which runs “Transparent Workshops” for emotional support and development in the path of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. There he was joined by a ba’al teshuva named Gidi Dvash, and the tension between them is the subject of his column to which I wish to refer here.

As noted, a few weeks ago I was sent his post about Gidi Dvash—his student and friend—and their “Transparent Workshop.” Gil, who sent me the piece, wrote that this post sparked stormy Facebook tempests (like Yuval Dayan’s post). He assessed that it might interest me—and he was, of course, right. In my eyes the piece expresses several of the points I described above, and I’ll now try to explain this. Because of the length of the material I won’t go into details (I recommend reading it), but will offer a general view of the phenomenon in light of his remarks.

A look at religious New Age

I wrote to Gil that the post is very interesting, though not really surprising to me. It describes spiritual charlatanism and the naiveté that is captivated by it; and here we see that it characterizes the spiritual teacher, so what can one expect from his students-Hasidim-admirers?! As with Yuval Dayan, we have here an admission by one of the leaders of these movements and phenomena—and therefore, in my eyes, it has great significance.

It’s important to note that this New-Age phenomenon is not devoid of intellectual dimensions. We’re dealing with people, at least some of whom are wise, profound, and very learned, and there are ideas in their words that are certainly worth thought and discussion. In the intellectual part of this leadership are people of stature, such as Rabbi Shagar and Rabbi Froman and their students. I get the impression that Yuval Dayan and Rabbi Doron are also very intelligent people. With all the differences between them, I believe that Rabbis Shagar and Froman and their students are also part of that Hasidic-existentialist renaissance and therefore are targets for my critique of it. In column 313 I explained that the difference between the “animal soul” and the “divine soul” is not in the measure of wisdom. There are more and less intelligent people on both sides. What characterizes the conduct of the animal soul is that reason serves feeling and experience, not the other way around. Brilliant and profound ideas dealing with how to realize myself, or with the roots of the distress felt by humans in our age and the ways to treat it (according to Rabbi Nachman, Chabad, R. Tzadok, Rabbi Kook, the Maharal, the Sages, or Moses) are precisely what I called there reason and intellect in the service of feeling and experience. My main problem with these phenomena is not with the depth of the thought and ideas that appear in them (though that, too, is often problematic), but rather with their root—with emotionalism and distrust of intellect, with the centrality of experience and existential impression. It is certainly not about stupidity versus wisdom. The “new Breslov” is, of course, an integral part of this phenomenon. It has low manifestations—like “Shuvu Banim” and Berland—populist, spiritualist expressions like Dayan and Rabbi Erez Moshe Doron, and intellectual expressions as with Rabbis Shagar and Froman. But all these renewal movements, in my assessment, belong to the same New-Age fashions and currents.

In my view it’s hard to deny that something in this spiritualism—even in its intellectual parts—is charlatan. An idea there is tested by whether I “connect” to it and whether it “speaks” to me, and less by evidence and arguments (it’s a kind of rationalism versus empiricism—but rationalism not necessarily connected to reason, rather to an existential feeling). What sounds deep on the surface will likely be accepted, even if on further thought it turns out not to say much (see: Hasidism). You can see this very sharply, in my eyes, precisely in the intellectual side of the new Breslov (Rabbis Shagar, Froman, and the like—the intellectual philosophers of Rabbi Nachman). There is something there draped in the finery of profundity, but it’s primarily psychological depth (at best), and in many cases (not always) it lacks philosophical substance. Despite all the denials previously raised here on the site, Breslov offers people disconnection and alienation from reason—even among the educated and intelligent who lead the intellectual side of this movement. They are essentially using reason to detach people from reason. In my view—besides the fact that this is nonsense in an intellectual guise—it is also very dangerous and a recipe for trouble (see column 311).

When you disconnect from reason, all possibilities open up (especially those that sound deep and speak to experience and feeling). If you follow charlatans who sell you ideas without cover, the next step is that they sell you harm and exploit you financially and emotionally. As seen in Rabbi Doron’s post, we’re dealing also with figures belonging to the spiritual and intellectual leadership of this movement and not only with their flock. This is precisely how a cult is formed. It begins by producing intellectual thought that tries to replace philosophy with psychology and experience; and once philosophy and thinking lose their luster, anything can enter. You start with Rabbi Doron and end with Gidi Dvash (at least according to his description—I don’t know the facts there, of course). Sometimes you end like Yuval Dayan, who in his honesty felt he was selling empty hokum and disavowed the cult he himself helped create. At least he was willing to admit it, and is therefore—so I think—a straight person worthy of respect, far more than those who use their charisma to keep selling this hokum as if there were some unfathomable depth here. There are many such who continue to believe that Yuval Dayan sold them deep truths even when he himself tells them it was self-interested, megalomaniac nonsense. Nothing will help him, because they are seeking the satisfaction of needs—and he cannot convince them that their needs weren’t met. They “know” they were.

I ask myself, after two such admissions by the principals (Dayan and Rabbi Doron), why assume that those who continue in their path are indeed selling true and deep ideas? If the leaders of this movement admit it isn’t so, how can one place trust in the ideas they themselves are selling?! After all the critiques I’ve written of the Hasidic renaissance, now come two of the principals and admit as much. But, as noted, I’m sure it won’t help to persuade those who continue to be guided by their light.

On psychologism

I suddenly realized that this is mainly what so annoys me about psychologism in general—especially the intellectual kind (à la Rabbis Froman and Shagar). I’ve always intuitively felt that it’s a tool ultimately intended to satisfy needs rather than to teach or demand anything. It leads you to toss reason in the trash, and thus allows any nonsense to enter. A leap into the “vacant space” and living in a unity of opposites can hide under them whatever you want. When there is no rational control and no arguments (because religion, God, and religious experiences are above reason), an existentialism is created that is a gateway to every abomination and evil. In a certain sense, this is what the modernists warned about: when postmodernism enters and you throw out reason, evil and nonsense can enter, since there’s no legitimacy to demand consistency, critical sense, and logic from anyone. Postmodernity tried to get rid of the great modernist truths so that we would all be equal and not condescending, and wouldn’t fight over our truths. Thus eternal peace would reign. What actually happened is that now there’s no way to fight evil either, and no way to fight those who still believe in other great truths (those we should fight against—see on this in the introduction to my book Emet Ve-lo Yatziv [Truth and Not Steadfast]). When everyone is right and when all are narratives of equal standing, there’s no way to reject anything. Everyone dances in Rabbi Shagar’s “circle of differences” (a visual depiction that all positions are at equal distance from the center—Truth). Each one with his narrative; each one with what “speaks” to him (i.e., stirs his emotions and satisfies his needs).

We’ve lost today our appreciation for true and false, which in our time are regarded as obscene words (truly “unclean” language: who made you claim you’re right and another is wrong?!). Religiosity—and ideas in general—are now tools at a person’s service, intended to improve his condition and functioning and to answer his distresses. The person does not work for ideas and values; they work for him. Therefore anyone can adopt ideas and interpretations according to the measure of his “connection” to them, not according to their measure of truth. This is a flourishing of the (so-called) interpretive approach known as deconstruction—that is, the view that each person creates his own interpretation without criteria of truth and falsehood and without necessary connection to the text, even if not necessarily in its own terms.

Ironically, the postmodernists—like the new Hasidim (and the old), the religious New Age, and the new religious existentialism—tend to level such claims against the rationalists (the cold Litvaks). They repeatedly argue that adherence to reason can sanction any evil, so long as it’s consistent and intellectually impressive. They, of course, assume the baseless premise that the source of morality is in the heart (see “animal soul,” and in previous columns). But beyond that, I claim they are projecting their own flaw. They think reason means only logical consistency, and that’s what leads them to the conclusion that reason can sanction anything. But this is precisely the mistake of postmodernity, which itself leads to the sanctioning of every position. If it “speaks” to me and stirs my emotions and meets my needs—then it’s worthy and correct.

In the synthetic approach I presented in several of my books, I’ve shown that reason is far more than logical consistency. It uses intuition as a cognitive tool (which is part of reason, not emotion; see columns 312–14). But reason deals with truth and the world, not with the psychological inner depth of the person and what benefits him or not. Values come to demand of me, not to satisfy my needs. What can I do? I’m old-fashioned, and therefore in my eyes claims must be reasoned in terms of truth and falsehood, logic, and the like—not in pragmatic terms of advisable and useful, in the coin of what brings me peace and inner connection, evokes an exciting experience in me, gives me an existential dimension or a psychological sense of meaning, and the like. You know what? Even if some approach or policy leads to fear of Heaven, that is not an argument bearing on its truth or falsehood. There may be steps that lead to fear of Heaven and yet do not necessarily express cognitive truth (such as studying Hasidism), and vice versa. To sharpen: certainly one should strive for fear of Heaven, but it is not a necessary measure of truth and falsehood (in addition, the question arises: which “Heaven” is it they fear?).

No wonder that when a Gidi Dvash comes along and hypnotizes you psychologically, you go after him and don’t check whether what he says is reasonable and logical. After all, in Breslov they teach us that we must throw away the intellect, no? Psychology replaces philosophy, and in psychology there are manipulations, not arguments. If it connects with me—then it’s true (for me). And when it stops connecting, then I understand that now it’s no longer true (for me)—just like with Yuval Dayan. When the ideology is to throw away reason, no wonder that’s the outcome: use-and-discard.

I must emphasize that I’m not claiming that such an approach leads to secularization and abandoning religious commitment. I’m not at all sure there are more leavers there than in the rationalist approach (my impression is actually the opposite). What I claim is that the leaving demonstrates that even those who remain do so not for the right and proper reasons. Whoever operates within that world does not serve God; and therefore whoever leaves that world is not essentially different from him. It’s only a question of what best satisfies my needs. As our “revered teacher” Marx already said: religion is the opium of the masses. I always thought he foresaw the New Age that would develop almost two hundred years later.

To conclude my response, I wrote to Gil that this definitely deserves a column, though it seems hard to define and sharpen the points—especially since they run head-on against the current in our existentialist generation. As part of the despair of reason,[2] this generation finds its satisfaction mainly in studying Hasidism (which gives a sense of depth—usually, in my view, a fake one—and at best offers responses to our psychological needs through experiences, and so on), in studying Bible (which gives a sense of national and historical identity—again, a response to a need), or “Jewish thought” (which usually deals with vague topics and undefined concepts, and at best “Judaizes” universal philosophical ideas and proclaims them as Judaism). Therefore the Talmud and philosophy lie today forsaken in a corner (aside from pseudo-philosophies that actually deal in psychology and existentialism). Talmud and philosophy are, after all, dry, alienating logic and law (they’re not—but that’s their reputation). What is that compared to the teachings of Rabbi Nachman or the Sefat Emet, as translated by charismatic gurus who show us their relevance, who revive the soul?! So here is the column I spoke of. As I said: instead of a lament.

[1] A few years ago I began reading the book Mikimi, written by Noa Yaron Dayan, his then-wife, together with him; despite the warm recommendations, the beginning of the book truly repelled me and I put it down. The description of the secular vacuum and the celebrity condescension—which clearly hadn’t left them even after becoming religious—repulsed me utterly (though the book also shows honesty and transparency worthy of note).

[2] My friend Nadav Shnerb wrote a critique of Rabbi Shagar’s book Kelim Shevurim, titled “A Tale of a Wise Man Who Despaired of Reason.”