Review: Contemporary Uses and Forms of Hasidut, edited by Shlomo Zuckier

Contemporary Uses and Forms of Hasidut. Edited by Shlomo Zuckier. Yeshiva University Press, 2022. 516 pages. ISBN 978-1-60280-398-5.

REVIEWED BY BEZALEL NAOR

When the ‘Ilui of Denenburg was in Lublin, he visited the Rabbi of the city, the Gaon Rabbi Shneur Zalman [Fradkin]. Upon parting, he asked him if there is to be found in Lublin another gaon. Rabbi Shneur Zalman replied: “There resides here Rabbi Zadok HaKohen, a great gaon.” The ‘Ilui of Denenburg went to the “Kohen,” who received him with great honor.

(Shmuel Ungar, Sefer Toledot Hakohen mi-Lublin, ed. Zevi Moskowitch [Jerusalem, 1966], chap. 9, p. 36)

When the famous Gaon, Rabbi Yosef Rosen, may he live, the Rabbi of Denenburg, visited him and wished to engage him in pilpul (Talmudic dialectic), [Rabbi Zadok Hakohen] said to him: “When the Men of the Great Assembly instituted the blessing, ‘You bestow knowledge upon men,’ their intention was not that one should demonstrate ones prowess in pilpul. But since ‘from the LORD a man’s steps are set’ [Psalms 37:23], perhaps it is for this reason that His Honor has come to me. Though His Honor is an ‘ilui, he should know that I was an ‘ilui. While I was yet young, I won over all the gedolim (greats) who engaged me in pilpul. Yet, I saw afterward, that it is impossible to merit to the ‘crown of Torah’ unless we latch onto the door of the disciples of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, may his merit protect us.”

(Shlomo Gavriel Margaliyot, “Toledot Rabbeinu ha-Kohen ha-Mehaber,” Introduction to Rabbi Zadok ha-Kohen, Sihat Mal’akhei ha-Sharet [Lublin, 1927], 2a)

For the better part of the twentieth century, Yeshiva University—under its rashei yeshivah, Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik, his elder son Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (referred to simply as “the Rav”), and younger son Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik—was the vanguard of the much vaunted “Brisker derekh,” the novel method of Talmudic analysis developed by Rabbi Hayyim Soloveichik of Brisk de-Lita (Brest-Litovsk), Moshe’s father. This methodology was later transported to Yeshivat Har Etzion (in Gush Etzion), when Rabbi Yosef Dov’s son-in-law Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein became rosh yeshivah there in 1971. The Soloveichik Family, descendants of Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin, the premier disciple of the Vilna Gaon, carried on the Mitnagdic tradition of Torah li-shemah (study of Torah for Torah’s sake) as outlined in Rabbi Hayyim’s work Nefesh ha-Hayyim, and as put into practice for the better part of the nineteenth century in the Volozhin Yeshivah, ‘the mother of yeshivot.”

And then there was Shagar. ShaGaR (acronym of Shimon Gershon Rosenberg) (1949-2007), himself a product of the Dati-Le’umi (Religious Zionist) world (identified by their knitted yarmulkas, or kippot serugot) posed a challenge to the monolithic world of Brisk. With an impressive armamentarium of spiritual works—Habad, Likkutei Moharan (by Rabbi Nahman of Breslov), Mei ha-Shilo’ah (of the Izhbitser Rebbe)—his teachings found a chink in the armor of the time-hallowed derekh ha-limmud (method of study). One could say, Shagar was a Litvak’s worst nightmare. Students of the Gush, the so-called “Harvard of yeshivot hesder,” who evidently were dissatisfied with the traditional diet of the yeshivah, were taken by the siren song of Shagar, who dispensed a post-modernist presentation of Hasidic thought.

And then the unthinkable occurred. The refracted light of Hasidism bounced back to the “mother ship,” Yeshiva University, and in 2013, Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, an American Hasidic rebbe (a graduate of Yeshiva University), was appointed “Mashpi‘a” of Yeshiva University. (Previously, the title “mashpi‘a,” or “spiritual influencer,” was synonymous with Lubavitcher yeshivot.)

The meeting between the Vilna Gaon’s heirs and the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s heirs was happening.

The present volume, edited by Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Zuckier, a polymath of some distinction, and published under the auspices of Yeshiva University, is testimony to this paradigm shift within the world of Yeshiva University and Yeshivat Har Etzion.

The thought occurs to this writer that the confrontation of Shagar and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein in the Gush, might have taken place a generation earlier had Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel become faculty at Yeshiva University. (There exists documentation to substantiate the negotiations between Heschel and Yeshiva University.) Within the halls of Yeshiva University there would have held forth the Rav and the Rebbe; the scion of the Beit Harav mi-Volozhin, and the descendant of the Apter Rov (his namesake, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel), author of Ohev Yisrael; Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, author of Kedushat Levi; the royal house of Ruzhin; and the Rebbe of Novominsk. A generation earlier, the encounter of the Man of Halakhah and the Man of Aggadah might have produced a marvelous cross-pollination.

A single example will illustrate the fecundity of their mutually complementary thought: Prophecy.

Where the Rav, the Ish ha-Halakhah (based on Maimonides, of course) “worked overtime” to glean the halakhic takeaway of the entire prophetic enterprise, and arrived finally at the notion of imitatio Dei (“ve-halakhta bi-derakhav”), the Rebbe, the Ish ha-Aggadah, dismissed imitatio Dei. While the Man of Halakhah sought the dimension of “prophecy needed for generations” (“nevu’ah she-hutzrekhah le-dorot,” b. Megillah 14a), the Man of Aggadah searched for precisely the “teaching of the hour” (hora’at sha‘ah).

After quoting Maimonides’ Hilkhot De‘ot 1:6 (“And in this way, the prophets called God by all those epithets [kinuyim]—“Long Suffering,” “Master of Lovingkindness,” “Righteous,” “Straight,” etc.—to make known that they are good and straight ways, and a man is obligated to conduct himself by them and to emulate Him to his ability”), Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik confides:

I always had difficulty in regard to the role of the prophets of Israel. On one hand, we rule that a prophet may not innovate to add or subtract even a jot; on the other hand, the word of the LORD required prophets, and their prophecy was written down for generations. What is the purpose of their prophecy inasmuch as they were unable to innovate any matter of Halakhah? Certainly, they rebuked Israel, and rebuke was one of the purposes for which our prophets were sent. However, I still have difficulty saying that in their prophecy they told Israel nothing in the Halakhic sense.

But now all is crystal clear. There is an entire Torah in the books of the Prophets—the Torah of the ways of the LORD, the Torah of the epithets that obligates man in imitating his Creator. … Tout court, prophecy came to teach man how to participate in the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, and to attain His epithets.

(Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, Shi‘urim le-Zekher Abba Mori [Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2002], vol. 2, pp. 188-189)

In revolt against Maimonides, and nurtured on the iconoclasm of Pshysucha and Kotzk, Heschel, proponent of divine pathos, searches for exactly the “teaching of the moment,” the prophet’s experience of the moment. (As one of the authors in the collection, the late Ya‘akov Elman, wrote, “Individualism in Przysucha-Kotzk-Izbica-Lublin involves not just individual humans, but also individual moments in time and circumstance” [p. 87].)

Heschel writes:

Prophetic sympathy is by no means identical with the imitation of God, which in the broadest sense is also a biblical motif (cf. Lev. 19:2). The difference is the more significant because the resemblance, too, is obvious. Imitatio, the pattern of which is a concrete life-history, is realized as a practical way of life. Sympathy, whose object is an inner spiritual reality, is a disposition of the soul. The prototype of imitatio is an unchanging model; a constant traditional knowledge of it indicates a ready path to be followed. Pathos, on the other hand, is ever changing, according to the circumstances of the given situation. The content of sympathy is not fixed by any predetermination. What is abiding in it, is simply the orientation toward the living reality of God.

Imitatio is concerned with a past, sympathy with a present, occurrence. Imitatio is remote from history; what is at stake in sympathy is an actual historical situation.

(Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrikson, 2010], Part Two, p. 102)

And again, in even more strident terms:

The goal of sympathy is not to become like unto God, but to become effective as a prophet through approximation to the pathos of God. In sympathy, divine pathos is actually experienced in the moment of crisis; in imitatio, the fixed pattern is transmitted. In the former case, an assimilation or creative understanding is necessary; in the latter, mere knowledge is sometimes sufficient.

In imitatio, the whole being of the deity is often taken as the pattern; in sympathy, only its aspect as pathos is taken as the pattern.

(Ibid. pp. 102-103)

We read that when a meeting was arranged between Rabbis Heschel and Soloveitchik in the 1960s to map out a strategy for confronting the Vatican, at their initial encounter, these two Jewish leaders (whose parallel paths traversed Warsaw, Berlin and New York) discussed (at Rabbi Soloveitchik’s insistence)—Yiddish literature. Perhaps the time has come for the denizens of the worlds of Halakhah and Aggadah to discuss—Prophecy.