Vayishlah (Hasidism)

Habad: The Intellectual Path to Ecstasy

It is impossible to write about Hasidism today without mentioning Habad. Indeed, for many Jews, the first association with Hasidism is with Lubavitch, which over the past half century has made itself into a veritable “household word” through its mission to Jews of all stripes throughout the world. As this Sunday was the 19th of Kislev, the day known in Habad as Hag ha-Ge’ulah, the festival (sometimes also referred to as “the New Year of Hasidut”) commemorating the release of its founder, R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady, from Czarist prison in the very early 1800’s, this Shabbat is an apt one to discuss this school in Hasidut.

I must confess to a great ambivalence about Habad. On the one hand, there is something personally very attractive in the Habad approach, with its cultivation of deep, inner, meditative prayer, a mode which I believe is close to the original concept of tefillah as described by Hazal. On the other hand, since my first encounters with Lubavitch in the mid-1960s, I have been disturbed by the cult of the Rebbe: the insistence that he was somehow uniquely qualified to provide the answers to my own life dilemmas (and those of every other Jewish individual), and that even a brief meeting would change my life; the slick, at times kitschy promotional campaign adopted by the movement to “sell” Judaism; and especially the messianic hysteria and identification of the Rebbe as Messiah. This has become augmented since 1994 when the Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneersohn, after a long and active life, reached the end of all mortal men born of woman. Many Lubavitcher Hasidim deny the simple fact of the Rebbe’s death, clouding it in a fog of bizarre mystical theories about his “concealment’ and imminent return (!); even more disturbing, some extreme messianists hint that the Rebbe was or is somehow an embodiment or apotheosis of the Infinite Godhead! All this suggests that to be a Habadnik today involves, at best, abandoning common sense and the simple laws of human biology and, at worst, beliefs that cross the line to simple heresy. The Jewish people has already been that route two thousand years ago, hardly to our benefit. (Professor David Berger of Brooklyn College has written extensively on this; see his book, The Rebbe, The Messiah and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, as well as his numerous articles on the subject in Hebrew and English.)

Yet notwithstanding all that, Habad remains one of the great movements in Hasidim, if not in Jewish thought generally, and is deserving of study regardless of the follies of its latter-day adherents. (Interestingly, through much of the 19th century Habad was not exclusively identified with what became known as Lubavitch. All but one of the seven sons of the third rebbe, R. Menahem Mendel b. Dov Baer, known as the Tzemah Tzedek, established his own school within Habad, each one emphasizing slightly different nuances—one the service of prayer, another the intellectual and cognitive discipline (haskolah), a third the more emotional aspects, etc. The most important of these, apart from Lubavitch, was Kopost, which persisted until the 1920s, when the Communist revolution in Russia forced all Jewish life underground.)

Habad differs from just about every other Hasidic school in several important ways. Beginning with the superficial and external signs: they wear less elaborate dress, without the Shabbat finery of brocaded robes and fur shtreiml hats, but plain black coats and soft-brimmed Borcellinos even on Shabbat; there is less of the pomp and circumstance of the Rebbe’s court, such as that found in Bobov, Vishnitz or Ger; the Rebbe’s Tisch (ceremonial Shabbat meal) doesn’t play the central role it does elsewhere: in its stead, they have what is known as a “Farbrengen,” a gathering on Shabbat afternoon or at the end of major festivals at which the Rebbe or, latterly, a distinguished hasid, speaks, interspersed by singing and drinking lehayyim. Even its musical style is different: instead of the rich, gentle and expansive Shabbat zemirot of other groups, one has either military-like marches or deep, meditative songs of spiritual longing, “devekut niggunim.” If the atmosphere at the great Polish-Galician courts might be described as marked by a sense of royalty and grandeur, Habad is more like an Army unit—while much of Bretslav today might be compared to a hippy commune. They are very zealous about their own identity in terms of the particular customs they observe. Habad has its own distinctive prayer rite or nusah, and even their own Sefer Minhagim, detailing all the practices of their hasidut. Politically, too, Lubavitch has always been separate, outsiders within organized Orthodoxy. It eschews participation in Haredi political enterprises, such as Agudath Yisrael, or even umbrella rabbinical or educational organizations, such as Torah u-Messorah, preferring to create its own worldwide organizational network (the Rebbe’s endorsement of the Agudah in the 1988 Israeli elections, and Gutnik’s “Bibi is Good for the Jews” campaign in the ‘96 elections, were the exception that prove the rule).

Turning to the more substantive question: the nature of Habad spirituality. The classical mode of prayer in Habad is tefillah ba-arikhut: a long, meditative, quiet type of prayer, inward and very individual. There is little of the shouting and shuckling (shaking) and other visible forms of ecstasy characteristic of other Hasidic groups. The emphasis is on the “intellect”: Habad has a rich theoretical literature containing what might be called guided meditations concerning the Godhead, whose purpose is to lead one to a deep knowledge and consciousness of God. This knowledge serves to awaken the love of God that is innate within the soul of every Jew, which is in turn expressed through ecstatic prayer. Hence, more than any other Hasidut, the study of Hasidic theoretical literature occupies a central role in the religious life of Habad. One might almost say that to be a Habad hasid means to study Tanya daily, completing it every year (like the Torah?), and studying a Hasidic discourse (ma’amar) before davening-- if not on weekdays, at least on Shabbat —in preparation for protracted, meditative prayer.

Unlike the Hasidic books we have presented here thus far, the major texts of Habad do not take the form of homilies on the weekly Torah portion. (This problem is shared with Braslav, whose Torah we will, Gd willing, discuss next week, and with the teaching of the Maggid of Mezhirech, whose Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov is similarly disorganized). True, there are two volumes of teachings of the “Alter Rebbe” on the Torah portions—Likkutei Torah, on Vayikra through the end of Torah, including all the festivals; and Torah Or, on Bereshit and Shemot—but these are less central than the Tanya. Later rebbes of Habad also tended more towards systematic presentations of theoretical, topically organized discourses, rather than talks on parshat hashavua (e.g., the works of the Tzemah Tzedek, the Kuntresim of the Maharsha”b—R. Shalom Dov Baer; etc.). On the other hand, the late Rebbe (the Rama”sh) spoke regularly on Shabbat about often unnoticed commentaries of Rashi on the parsha which he examined from unexpected angles. Most of these have been published in his Likkutei Sihot, in both fascicle and book form, in the original Yiddish and in Hebrew translation.

Another difficulty in studying Habad is the complexity and abstruseness of Habad thought, as compared with other Hasidic teachings. Its very name, Habad, signifies the centrality of the intellectual element in its path: the word is an acronym for Hokhmah, Binah, Da’at—Wisdom, Understanding/Intuition, and Knowledge—which in its system are the Kabbalistic sefirot representing the intellective faculties within the Godhead, so to speak, as opposed to the seven lower sefirot more often emphasized in other systems, which might be described as roughly equivalent to Maimonides’ attributes of action. In Habad the knowledge of God, which is the central religious path, is accomplished through meditation on theosophic contents, on the elaborate system of Kabbalistic ideas and symbols, including descriptions of the interrelations among the sefirot and “partzufim,” the Divine faces (in this sense it is also more overtly Lurianic than other Hasidic teachings). It is a highly complex and interrelated system, understanding any part of which is dependent upon much prior knowledge. Hence, even a Jew reasonably literate in Torah cannot casually pick up and read a chapter of the Alter Rebbe ‘s Likkutei Torah in the same way as he would the Degel, the Me’or Einayim, or many other Hasidic sefarim. (The late Rebbe, although his talks also contained great depths, was in both this and other senses something a popularizer—he was, after all, the moving force behind Lubavitch’s world-wide outreach program—and his talks on Rashi are more easily read.)

The Tanya, or Likkutei Amarim, the basic book of Habad Hasidism, was written, as mentioned, by the first rebbe, R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady. It consists of five sections: Sefer shel Beinonim, essentially a religious psychology, analyzing the components of the human personality and the function of Torah and mitzvot in human life, discussion of the meditations on Keri’at Shema and Tefillah, and more; Sha’ar ha-Yihud veha-Emunah (Hinukh Katan) presents a mystical theology of the Creation; Iggeret ha-Teshuvah deals with the nature of repentance, how sins and mitzvot affect the soul, etc.; Iggeret ha-Kodesh, a collection of letters to the Hasidim about specific problems encountered in their Divine service, exhortations to the communities about the recitation of Psalms, etc.; and Kuntres Akharon, the concluding treatise.

The following passage from Tanya illustrates the relation between intellectual ideas and religious experience, and the manner in which certain thoughts lead to spiritual experience. Chapter 33:

Further, this shall be the true joy of the soul, particularly when he sees at times that his soul needs to be purified and enlightened with joy of the heart. Then he shall immerse himself deeply in thought, and sketch in his mind and understanding the subject of His true unity, may He be blessed—how He fills all the worlds, upper and lower, and that He even fills this world with His glory, may He be blessed, and that all things before Him are considered literally as naught. And that He alone is He, in the upper and lower worlds, literally, as He was alone before the Six Days of Creation. And that even in this place where the created world is now—heavens and earth and all their hosts—He alone was there, filling this place; and that even now, He alone is, without any change at all, because all created beings are literally negated before him, like the negation of the letters of speech and thought in their source and root…

There is something profoundly Maimonidean about this argument. For that great medieval Jewish thinker, the way to the love of God was through the intellect: the way to love and fear God, he says, is to ponder His greatness. “When he contemplates His great acts and His marvelous creations, and through them perceives His wisdom, to which there is no comparison nor end, then he immediately loves and praises and extols and feels an intense desire to know the Name, may He be blessed..” (Yesodei ha-Torah 2.2). At the same time, the person feels a sense of awe and withdrawal, engendered by the thought of his own smallness and mortality. Maimonides then goes on to elaborate the secrets of both cosmology and metaphysics, meditation upon which leads to love of God. Even in Hilkhot Teshuvah, where he paints a picture of the passionate heights which may be reached by the love of God (10.2-3), he takes pains to reiterate the intellectual root of this love: “according to the knowledge, thus shall be the love… therefore a person should set himself aside to understand and know the wisdom and science that bring knowledge of His Maker, according to his capability” (10.6).

Here, and in many other places in Tanya, the basic process is almost identical: meditation upon God’s greatness, as revealed in both the physical universe and in the spiritual realms for which Kabbalah and Hasidism provide a detailed road-map, so to speak, leads to love of Him, or more precisely, awakens the love of God already innate in the soul—which is, in the Habad view, “a part of God on high, literally”—helek eloha mima’al mamash).

But there is a second point here as well, one that is of great importance. “…all things before Him are considered literally as naught.” On a certain level, there is a rejection here of the reality of the cosmos as an independent entity; in reality, everything is God. Ultimately, the act of Creation itself made no difference in then essential situation; just as He was alone in the universe prior to the Creation, so too, even today “He alone is there, filling this place.” Scholar Rachel Elior calls this philosophic stance “acosmism”: the cosmos does not really exist, but is illusory (shades of Buddhism and the idea of all things as maya, “illusion”?). Hints of this idea are found in mainstream sources in Judaism, but here they are carried to their extreme logical conclusion. But where “mainstream” Judaism interprets the verse “there is none other [but Him]” [Deut 4:35, 39] as “there is no other God but Him,” mystical texts read it as “nothing else exists in the world at all but Him.” Other Hasidic texts also allude to this idea; at times, they draw a distinction between the perception of the world from “His [i.e., God’s] perspective,” in which all is undifferentiated unity, and “our perspective,” in which all the things and people around us are perceived as tangible and real. But the Habad formulation is far more striking and unequivocal. Whereas other Hasidic schools emphasize the positive, panentheistic formula stressing God’s omnipresence: “no place is empty of Him” (leit atar panuy mineih), i.e., He is everywhere, Habad bluntly states the unreality of the world: “all things are considered before him as naught” (kula kameih kela hashiv).

[The Tanya goes on to develop various analogies in which one thing is negated vis-a-vis another: e.g., words and inchoate thoughts within the human mind and soul; the light of the sun within the sun itself; etc. He then returns to the main theme:]

And thus, literally, by way of analogy, is the negation of the world and its fulness in relation to its source, the Light of the Infinite, blessed be He, as we have written elsewhere at length. And when a person delves into this matter much, his heart will rejoice and his soul will be glad, with song and melody, with all his heart and soul and might in this great faith, for this is true closeness to God. And this is [the purpose of] every man and the purpose of his creation, and the creation of all the worlds, upper and lower—that He might have a dwelling place in the lower realms, as we write below at length.

The concluding sentence here, “that He might have a dwelling place in the lower realms” (dirah batahtonim), is also a central motif in Habad. If everything is God, and the world is essentially illusory, then why should God have bothered with the whole business of the creation, not to mention the revelation of Torah and mitzvot to the people of Israel? The answer is that such is the quintessence of the Divine Will: that He wished to have a “dwelling place” for Himself in the lower realms. For whatever reason, it was His mysterious will, unfathomable to human beings, to have an earthly dwelling. And man’s role in this is to magnify the consciousness of God among others, and to fulfill the various mitzvot which provide God, so to speak, with a “residence” on earth, as clarified at length in other places in Habad literature.