THE THEME of rationalism, linked with the question of study of secular knowledge, has been a key issue in the relationship of the Jewish community with general society and in defining its own self-image from the Middle Ages to the present. In the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century, the Jews of central Europe found a variety of ways to synthesize Judaism and rationalism under the influence, to a greater or lesser extent, of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. For the hasidim of eastern Europe, however, who sought to maintain the intense spirituality of hasidism, rationalism and secular study presented a challenge to their identity. This chapter explores some aspects of the Habad responses to this issue, from the beginning of the movement to the period of leadership of the last Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson (1902–94), in the second half of the twentieth century.

IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY of hasidism, Habad is often portrayed as the ‘rational’ hasidic branch. Shimon Dubnow describes the Tanya as ‘a kind of Guide of the Perplexed of hasidism’, a work tending towards philosophy in a milieu in which, as he depicts it, the supra-rational held sway and ‘the faintest tinge of philosophy was forbidden’.

Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer went further, depicting R. Shneur Zalman as an anti-spiritualist in the hasidic fold. While the hasidim in general sought to transcend the finite limitations of existence, in her view, R. Shneur Zalman focuses on normative halakhah and exudes an atmosphere of rationality and normalcy.

This perspective was modified by Joseph Dan and Isaiah Tishby, and later by Moshe Hallamish and Rachel Elior. The ‘anti-spiritualist’ label was qualified or rejected. Today R. Shneur Zalman is often seen as teaching a boldly spiritualist path, leading his disciples to an otherworldly mode of perception that even tended to acosmism. All existence is subsumed in the infinite radiance of the Ein Sof: ‘There is nought apart from Him’ (Deut. 4: 35).

These contrary views of early Habad are due to an intriguing feature of this school. Both rational and supra-rational elements are, in fact, present in it, and there is a constant interaction between them.

Looking at Rabbi Shneur Zalman's Tanya, the immediate impression is of a highly organized work, as Dubnow noted.