In His Review of My Book, the Messianic Secret of Hasidism

Published in: Ha'aretz, Arts and Letters (29.8.2003).

In Response: Hasidism's Messianic Matrix

By

Mor Altshuler

In his review of my book, "The Messianic Secret of Hasidism," (Ha'aretz, 18 July 2003) Mendel Piekarz describes me as a young scholar; however, he couples this compliment with such epithets as "bulimic" and "not very knowledgeable." I regret the fact that he chose to concentrate on tasteless comments on my personality instead of talking about the book and the findings it contains.

However, to the heart of the matter, this senior researcher on Hasidism presents shopworn arguments. He uses categorical generalizations: "This is what we learn!" or "A close reading of the difficult commentaries in `Or Hame'ir' clearly proves ..." or "... after prolonged study of the books of pious Jews and Hasidism, I have learned that ... " However, instead of proving decisive facts, he repeatedly quotes hagiographic (that is, fictional and non-historical) Hasidic traditions and he adopts their anachronistic nature. In doing so, he adopts the position of a Hasid instead of engaging in a critical analysis
of the sources, as would be expected from any self-respecting scholar.

Even when he attempts to prove his prowess in dealing with minute details, he fails, and even misleads his readers. For example, he portrays me as someone who "did not bother to open the collection of writings that is the most celebrated and the most accessible to every beginning student in this field: `Maggid Devarav Le'Yaakov' (`He Conveys His Words to Jacob') by Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch." However, Dr. Piekarz deliberately overlooks
the fact that "Maggid Devarav Le'Yaakov" is referred to in my book 22 times. The references include a detailed discussion of the issue of the identity of the preacher whose sermons are printed in that collection. It is quite possible that Dr. Piekarz rejects my conclusion - namely, that the preacher is Rabbi Yechiel Michel, the Maggid (itinerant preacher) of Zlotschov, rather than Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezrich; however, precisely because of his objections, he should have squarely dealt with the evidence I present, instead of masking the shallowness of his own arguments with a contemptuous attitude that certainly does no justice to the person who expresses it.

Apparently, Dr. Piekarz thinks the readers of Haaretz are ignoramuses. That is probably the reason for his declaration that "anyone who reads the words of Rabbi Meshulam Feibish will sense that the dominant spiritual figure hovering above the text is that of Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezrich." He makes this declaration despite the fact that Rabbi Meshulam Feibish Heller, one of
the personalities referred to in my book, proclaims that his rabbi and mentor is Rabbi Yechiel Michel, the Maggid of Zlotschov: "... most especially ... what I heard from a sacred mouth ... the distinguished rabbi, Yechiel Michel, may his candle continue to burn brightly." Rabbi Meshulam Feibish Heller goes on to say that he visited Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezrich, only once. Furthermore, it was the late Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer ("Hasidism as Mysticism"), not I, who identified the "Maggid" in Rabbi Meshulam Feibish Heller's writings as Rabbi Yechiel Michel, the Maggid of Zlotschov, rather than Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezrich. As it turns out, Dr. Piekarz seems to have a low regard for both Prof. Schatz Uffenheimer and for her scholarly knowledge.

Relying on a colon

A characteristic example of his slovenly approach is his quoting from a late edition of Rabbi Ze'ev Wolf of Zhitomir's classic Hasidic text, "Or Hame'ir" ("The Illuminating Light"): the New York edition printed in the Hebrew calendar year 5714 (1954) which is a photo-offset printing of the Lemberg (Lvov) edition, which appeared in 5635 (1875). The only reason I mention this point is that Piekarz makes a mountain out of a molehill: He bases himself on the colon appearing between two passages in order to determine who is the Maggid referred to in "Or Hame'ir." In contrast, I have focused on the literary structure of the passages, comparing their content to similar sermons in the writings of other students and dating the event depicted in those two passages in line with the sermon based on the weekly Torah portion read in the synagogue. As is customary in scholarly research, the quote in my book was taken from the text of the first edition of "Or Hame'ir," which was published in Korets in 5558 (1798) and whose appearance received the blessings of the author's sons and the blessing of his friend, Rabbi Levy
Yitzhak of Berditchev. The edition I used is part of the Gershom Scholem collection in the National Library in Jerusalem. An examination of that edition would have saved Piekarz from a reliance on a colon appearing in a later, random edition in order to prove such a central issue. During his visit, he would also have enriched his knowledge by taking a look at the comments
that Scholem jotted down in the margins of the book's pages.

These examples are sufficient proof that Piekarz could have saved himself considerable embarrassment had he openly admitted that, failing to find flaws in my research method, he had simply invented flaws to camouflage the dissatisfaction he felt when he read my conclusion: The Hasidic movement has messianic roots.

Granted, the late Isaiah Tishby also reached a similar conclusion; however, Tishby could be forgiven because he was Piekarz's teacher and mentor. I, on the other hand, am a young, rash individual who refuses to accept threadbare and incorrect formulas just because they are "conventions" and purportedly self-understood.

It is not too difficult to understand Piekarz's awkward feelings: The issue of messianism in Hasidism constitutes for many people a serious problem because this issue has implications for what preceded that messianism (the link with Shabbatean messianism) and what developed in its wake (the connection with Zionism). In other words, the topic touches the very heart of a major historiosophic debate that has molded the Israeli psyche – our attitude toward the past - especially from two standpoints: our attitude toward the Diaspora and the link between Zionism and the messianic movements that preceded it in the process of the Jewish people's return to its homeland. One of those movements was Hasidism.

This is not the context for developing these subjects, although suffice it to say that, in academe, an erroneous solution was found in the theory of Gershom Scholem, who argued that Hasidism did not begin as a messianic movement andeven defined Hasidism as the neutralization of the messianic impulse. Two scholars have a totally different approach and they consider Hasidism
to have an unmistakably messianic basis: historian Ben-Zion Dinur and a scholar of kabbala, Isaiah Tishby, who was one of Scholem's students. Their views were rejected for a long period while Scholem's dominated the field.

However, since the early 1990s they have once more become the starting-point for research on Hasidism - for example, the work of Moshe Idel and Joseph Dan, who has defined contemporary Hasidism as a post-messianic movement. In other words, the initial stage in Hasidism's development was a messianic one. The messianic secret of Hasidism was thus not the product of an iconoclastic desire but was rather part of an ongoing effort undertaken by scholars and other intellectuals to reconcile the paradox between Scholem's mistaken definition and what emerges from the texts themselves. Today, Dr. Piekarz is the only scholar who still holds the view that Hasidism is an anti-messianic movement. The messianic excitement around the figure of the Lubavitcher Rebbe has erupted because the members of the Lubavitcher Hasidic movement simply did not read the right learned articles…

Hidden prophecies
The innovative feature in my book is its exposure of the entire messianic matrix, whose extensive nature has hitherto been hidden from view: The prophecies of the Redemption that was to take place between 5500 and 5541 (1740-1781) led Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, or the Baal Shem Tov, to make an unsuccessful attempt to travel to Jerusalem in 1740. The next product of the prophecies was the activity of his student, Rabbi Yechiel Michel, the Maggid of Zlotschov, a charismatic leader who was described as the
"soul of God". That soul includes the souls of all Jews and will be the instrument to redeem those souls from their sins. The Maggid of Zlotschov
founded a small kabbalistic-messianic group whose goal was to usher in the Redemption before 1781. Some of the group's members moved to the Holy Land in 5537 (1777), settling in Safed and Tiberias. They hoped that they would be able to transmit to their coreligionists in the Diaspora the message concerning the resurrection of the dead, an event that, so it was believed,
would begin in the Galilee. Their immigration to the Holy Land, which was intended "to redeem and be redeemed" - that is, to redeem the Shekhina (the divine presence) from its exile and to, in turn, be redeemed by the Shekhina - can be seen as a pioneering prototype of the waves of Zionist immigration that would come later and whose goal was "to build and be built".

The messianic venture ended in bitter disappointment, with the death of the Maggid of Zlotschov and the disintegration of the first Hasidic "court." It was only after the Maggid's death that the Hasidic courts of his students developed. Each of these courts had a post-messianic structure in which the tzadik (righteous leader) functioned as a surrogate-messiah. The eruption of messianic fervor surrounding such charismatic tzadikim as Rabbi Nachman
of Bratslav, the Seer of Lublin and Rabbi Israel of Rozhin in the 19th century and the Lubavitcher Rebbe today should come as no surprise, because the Hasidic tzadik originally had a messianic mission. These developments are rather embarrassing for the Hasidic world as a whole because the revelation of one of the tzadikim as the messiah will render the other tzadikim irrelevant and will threaten the survival of both the dynasties of tzadikim and
the Hasidic courts they lead.

Admittedly, the messianic matrix portrayed in "The Messianic Secret of Hasidism" vastly differs from the old picture that Dr. Piekarz clings to so steadfastly. The exposure of this matrix enables us to understand the period of Hasidism's initial consolidation and to link up the Hasidic movement's history with its theological structure, namely, Hasidism's unique theory of the tzadik. The clarification of the Hasidic court's messianic character merges
the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Earth into a single unit that can explain the movement's history and theology. Thus, we can now understand both Hasidism's post-messianic present and the isolated outbursts of a fervor that is buried deep underground. In my view, this insight is my book's contribution to the study of Hasidism and to the study of messianic movements in general.

Since Dr. Piekarz ends his review article with a selection of the warnings issued by Hasidic leaders against the satanic fire of the Sitra Akhra, (the Other Side) of messianism and their words of praise for the Diaspora, I will end my response with a question: Why did he not think twice before offering
so many statements calling for the Diaspora's perpetuation and singing its praises? Dr. Piekarz should instead have remembered the end of the European Diaspora he so vigorously lauds: a horrifying fire that consumed much of our people.

The End