Q&A: The Hasidic Movement
The Hasidic Movement
Question
Have a good week.
I read Yehuda’s article quickly, and, God willing, I’ll go back and review it, and yours as well.
Since I don’t like being blunt in public, I’ll ask privately two questions that occurred to me, and forgive the bluntness.
What is the Hasidic view of Rabbi Tzadok’s first wife?
Did aware Hasidim refrain because of our Rabbi’s view about sexual desire?
And personally, since I do like experiences, I’m willing to invest for the sake of a good melody.
Answer
Have a good week.
I have no idea who Rabbi Tzadok’s first wife was, but it seems to me that “Hasidism” is too broad a term to reduce to a single opinion.
The same goes for sexual desire (who is “our Rabbi”? Rabbi Tzadok?). Desire in itself is not necessarily bad; rather, of course, it should be channeled into proper directions.
Discussion on Answer
All right, I don’t think rebbes would necessarily have condemned his divorce from that wife (personally I certainly wouldn’t have supported it, although I’m not familiar with the norms that prevailed at that time and place, so one must be careful about anachronistic judgment. Perhaps in their setting it counted as violating Jewish marital norms, and perhaps even Torah law according to some opinions).
As for sexual desire, why go to Rabbi Nachman? Go instead to the Shulchan Arukh, section 240.
Good morning
From Rabbi Tzadok’s Wikipedia entry:
His wife from his first marriage was the daughter of Rabbi Shmuel Hirsch of Włodawka. Following a rumor that she had shaken hands with a nobleman who bought something in her shop, he wanted to divorce her, but she refused and claimed that she was innocent. He began collecting signatures for a permit of one hundred rabbis in order to marry a second wife, but in the end his wife agreed to divorce.
His journey to obtain the permit brought him to meet many of the leading figures of his generation. Among those he met were many Torah scholars, including Rabbi Yitzhak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno, and various rebbes in Poland and Ukraine. Among the righteous figures whose approval he sought for his permit was the Rebbe Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl. When the Rebbe of Chernobyl heard the story, he said that he agreed to sign, but warned him that as a result of divorcing his wife against her will, he would not be blessed with children. But Rabbi Tzadok insisted and included his signature among those of the rabbis who permitted it, and indeed he had no children until the day of his death. Hasidim say that he regretted the hasty divorce all his life, and it may be that the book Poked Akarim (“He Who Remembers the Barren”) that he wrote hints at his attempts to bring about the annulment of the decree. Rabbi Tzadok later married for a second time in Lublin, to Chana Devorah Fridental, to whom he was married for about 40 years. After her death he married a third time, to the rebbetzin of Szczurowa (the daughter of Rabbi Pinchas of Shtetshin and granddaughter of Rabbi Moshe Biderman).
And regarding Rabbi Nachman:
“And the general principle was that he utterly despised this desire to the utmost degree of disgust, to the point that he decreed and said that anyone who is even somewhat of a true sage does not consider this desire a test at all.”
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%97%D7%99_%D7%94%D7%A8%22%D7%9F
And it is told about one of the elders of our people that he would vomit from sheer revulsion.
The Praises of Rabbi Nachman – Wikisource
he.wikisource.org
Introduction . That he passed away in peace. Some of what I heard from his own holy mouth, and some from other people who had known him from long before …