Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 May 2013
A trenchant and rather paradoxical Hasidic saying asserts the following: He who believes the tall tales told by the Hasidim may be a fool, but he who does not believe them is a heretic. It turns out that many secular writers have in fact read and examined Hasidic tales sympathetically, without necessarily regarding them as true. But what exactly is the relationship of such non-believers to Hasidism? Can a secularist genuinely connect with texts that seem to be totally immersed in their religious context and driven by specifically religious interests? Can a reader who repudiates the assumptions of the original author (and even of his intended audience) nevertheless engage in a personally uplifting or even spiritually-inspired reading of such texts? Is there a spiritual dimension capable of traversing the barriers of religious doctrine, and penetrating the inner world of the heretic?
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30. Interestingly enough, a similar modern and existential use of this specific Hasidic tractate (Zava'at ha-rivash) for healing the modern alienation from spirituality also appears in Yoav Elshtein, Tarbut yehudit be-yamenu (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1983): 77, 80, 84.
31. For example, I. L. Peretz, “Between Two Peaks,” in I. L. Peretz: Selected Stories, 93–95; Manger, Yiẓḥak, “Baal Shem,” Moznayim 21 (1961): 353Google Scholar.
32. On Gershom Scholem's suspicion that Buber remained an atheist even during his later thought, cf. Simon, Ye'adim zematim, 246–250.
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36. Berdichevsky, Mikha Yosef, Sefer Ḥasidim (Warsaw, 1900), 8–9Google Scholar. These words were written in 1894, and from then on Berdichevsky became increasingly smitten by the radical philosophy of Freidrich Nietzsche and his notion of the “death of God.” Such a position seemed to contradict the quests for God related in Berdichevsky's works Sefer Ḥasidim or Ḥorev, but still, we should not forget the distinction between religiosity and the quest for “spirituality,” which even Nietzsche himself continued to strive for.
37. Joseph Klausner, “Sifrutenu ha-yafah bi-shnat taras: skirah bikortit,” in Sefer ha-shanah tarsah 2, 251.
38. For previous examples of Neo-Hasidic writers who also distinguish between the inspiration of early Hasidism and their sense of estrangement from its subsequent developments, see Nicham Ross, Masoret 'ahuvah, 18, 33, 253–254, 171–193.
39. Green, Seek My Face, 193.
40. A good example for this tendency is Yeḥezkel, Mordecai Ben, “lemaḥut ha-ḥasidut,” Hashiloah 17 (1906\7): 219–230Google Scholar.
41. Ross, Nicham, “The Pantheon of the Hasidic Rabbis in Neo-Hasidic Writing: The Charm of Nachman of Breslov as a Test Case,” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 13 (2001)Google Scholar, In Lekket—The World Union of Jewish Studies' online collection of articles.
42. An opportunity to examine the literary and textual scope of this extensive phenomenon is given in David Assaf's bibliographical book, Breslov: biblografiyah mu‘eret (Jerusalem, Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2000)Google Scholar.
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44. See, for example Elboim, Dov, Masa be-ḥalal ha-panuy: autobiografiyah ruḥanit (Tel Aviv: ‘Am ‘Oved, 2007)Google Scholar.
45. Roi, Compare Biti, “Safek ve-ḥidush 'eẓel Reb Naḥman mi-breslav,” Dimui 19 (2001): 48–52Google Scholar. Regarding R. Naḥman's tale “The Humble King,” which describes a quest for a king hiding behind a curtain, Arthur Green writes: “we are forced to ask whether king and seeker are not also separate aspects of the same self. When the curtain is thrown aside, what is it that both king and seeker see?” (Green, Seek My Face, 2003, xvii.). Indeed, as the excerpt quoted above attests, one can say that alongside the “Epicurean” seductiveness of Breslov's “open space” teaching, Arthur Green is attracted no less to the Ḥabadic metaphorical interpretation of the “contraction” teaching, as it allows him to figure a quintessentially immanent divinity, which more closely approximates his own “Epicurean” formulations of the identity relation between divinity and existence itself (ibid., 63, 224).
46. Cf. Magid, Shaul, “Through the Void: The Absence of God in R. Nachman of Braslov's Likutey Moharan,” Harvard Theological Review 88 no. 4 (1995): 495–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and also the following studies: Nov, Devorah, “he-ḥalal ha-panui ve-ha-rek ha-keyumi: ben r. Naḥman me-Breslav le-existentialism,” Dimui 19 (2001): 58–60, 90Google Scholar; Mark, Ẓvi, “Shetika ve-nigun le-or he-halal ha-panui be-kitve reb Naḥman mi-breslav,” Kabbalah 7 (2002): 175–197Google Scholar; Dov Elboim, “Shlemut leshon ha-kodesh” (Master's Thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2005); Zadoff, Noam, “The Open Space, Shabbateanism and Its Melody: Considerations of Teaching 64 of Likutey Moharan from the Estate of Joseph Weiss,” Kabbalah 15 (2007): 197–232Google Scholar; Ornat, Leah, “On the Philosophical Meaning of the Open Space and the Questions Emerging from It in Likutey Moharan,” Da'at 71 (2011): 75–91Google Scholar. A good illustration of the quasi-Epicurean charm of this specific Breslovian teaching is provided by the 2001 issue of the Hebrew periodical Dimui dedicated to the legacy of R. Naḥman of Breslov, which presents this Hasidic rabbi as a “contemporary culture hero.” And here, alongside the extensive attention given in this issue (predictably in a journal devoted to art and literature) to the tales of Breslov, no less than five different articles (by Yehuda Liebes, Menaḥem Fruman, Devorah Nov, Mordechai Gafni and Biti Roi) deal directly with “Teaching 64” of Likkutei Moharan, that is, the teaching that has to do with the idea of the “open space” as an expression of how to properly relate to queries of faith to which there is no answer.
47. Naḥman, R. of Breslav, Likutey Moharan, teaching 64 (New York: n. p. 1976), 79Google Scholar.
48. See, for instance, the centrality of such Breslovic self-testimony in Peretz's, Y. L. “The Chickens and the Parchments,” in Y. L. Peretz's Complete Writings, Vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1962), 83–97Google Scholar, or Arthur Green's explanation of what he believes to be the secret to the charm of R. Naḥman's tale “The Humble King,” which for Green became his own life story (Green, Seek My Face, xvi).
49. Solomon, Robert C., Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There have been of course many other attempts to define spirituality that is not necessarily religion-dependent. See for example: Elkins, David N., Beyond Religion: Eight Alternative Paths to the Sacred (Wheaton: Theosophical Publishing House, 1998)Google Scholar.
50. Solomon, Spirituality for the Skeptic, xi.
51. Solomon, Spirituality for the Skeptic, xii.
52. Solomon, Spirituality for the Skeptic, xii.
53. Solomon, Spirituality for the Skeptic, 28–43. This is the term used as the subtitle of his book.
54. Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man (New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 31, 43–42.Google Scholar
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