From the New York Review of Books:
Four elements were at the center of the Hasidic sensibility. These elements were given different meanings and permutations in subsequent developments, and the weight of each of them differs from one Hasidic court and school to another, but they define what could loosely be considered the core of the Hasidic innovation.
The first foundational element affirmed divine immanence in all dimensions and aspects of reality—in human actions and thoughts, in material objects, and in animate forms of being. God is not a separate and transcendent entity that has to be approached by a flight from the lower material world; rather, God’s essence dwells in the here and now, and the encounter with God consists of the conscious realization of his veiled immediate presence.
The metaphysical meaning of divine immanence was given different interpretations among the second and third generations of Hasidic masters. At the more extreme end of the spectrum was the position that the world we live in is a mere mirage, obscuring an ultimate unity in which only God exists. This view, mainly articulated by Shneyr Zalman of Liady—the founder of Chabad and the most systematic Hasidic thinker—put at the center of religious life the full conscious realization of God’s exclusive and all-encompassing being. Other more prevalent versions of God’s immanence didn’t depict the world as a mere illusion, but rather asserted that every particular entity draws its vitality and existence from the essence of God that dwells at its core.
The idea of God’s immanence had precedents in earlier strains of Jewish mysticism and thought, but in Hasidism it became a dominant theme and entailed far-reaching human and existential implications. One important implication was the principled rejection by Besht of the ascetic practices that were prevalent at the time in Central and Eastern Europe. The ascetic mindset is anchored in the assumption of an inherent tension between body and soul, matter and spirit, in which the denial and repression of bodily urges is a precondition for saintliness. With its theology of divine immanence in the material world, Hasidism rejected the metaphysical dualistic foundation of asceticism, thus denying the holy war on the material. As the authors of Hasidism stress, the anti-ascetic posture of the Hasidic movement wasn’t consistent. The appeal of asceticism is very strong in pietistic traditions and it resurfaced in various Hasidic trends, but fighting this very powerful religious tendency toward asceticism was one of the central religious callings of the Besht.
The anti-ascetic stance implied as well a deeper change in what might be termed the “normative mood.” Ascetic circles tend to adopt and cultivate a severe melancholic attitude as a safeguard from temptation and sin. The psychological flag has to be always at half-mast, since happiness is associated with the spontaneous breaking of boundaries. The Hasidic movement from its inception adopted joy as the preferred human attitude. One of the most creative figures in the history of Hasidism, Nahman of Bratslav, who was himself prone to bouts of depression, considered sadness and melancholy to be inherently sinful. Depression has transgressive potential since with it comes depletion of value, and people who feel they have nothing to lose might turn nihilistic.
…In the case of Hasidism, the shift toward joy had an impact on the most elemental layers of the religious stance; it cultivated a new Jewish type of personality.
* The second fundamental element of the emerging Hasidic sensibility, intimately attached to the element of divine immanence, was the call for worshipping in the material world (avoda be-gashmiyut). This idea enlarged the sphere of religiously meaningful acts to include mundane secular activities as well as rituals and properly ordained religious laws. The line between the sacred and the profane was blurred; every activity performed with the proper consciousness can become a meaningful religious encounter.
In prayer, for example, a person might find that his thoughts are wandering very far from the appropriate devotional intention. He can be seized by what were termed “alien thoughts” (machshavot zarot), which denote erotic fantasies, a possibility that even the most devout cannot fully escape. Such unsettling states of mind were traditionally dealt with through attempts to repress and avoid them.
In line with his metaphysics of immanence, the Besht offered a radically different devotional path, recommending that one dwell in the fantasy rather than helplessly combat it. Since God’s presence is all-encompassing, including in human desires and mental states, by delving into such alien thoughts the worshipper can “uplift them” by connecting the particular passion that he is experiencing to the larger divine animating force that is present in them. With the new call for worship in the material realm, even such embarrassments of the flesh might be embraced as religiously meaningful.
* These two dimensions of Hasidic teaching—God’s immanence and worship in the material world—can be perceived as constituting a mode of this-worldly mysticism, an affirmation of the here and now. This sensibility appealed to neo-Hasidic thinkers such as Martin Buber, who saw in it a path to reenchanting the world in opposition to the spread of technology and instrumental reason. Hasidism presented an openness to revelation while encountering what seemed to be the most mundane matters; for Buber and others Hasidism put at its center a continuous possibility for wonder.
* The third fundamental element at the core of Hasidic teaching—its notion of a mystical state of cleaving (devekut)—grew out of its ambivalent response to the previous teachings of Kabbalah, the mystical Jewish esoteric tradition…. The ambiguous Hasidic attitude toward this vast esoteric learning was expressed in a mystical orientation that asserted that the state of cleaving to God—devekut—is attained by wholehearted inner concentration that is attuned to God’s presence in all being. It is not dependent on or achieved by knowledge of a metaphysical system that is possessed by an esoteric elite.
* The Hasidic ideal of devekut aimed at cleaving to the divine immanent presence in the world. Such a mode of consciousness stood in tension with the scholarly tradition of Talmudic learning, which involved the study of intricate and subtle legal distinctions. In a statement attributed to the Besht, a scholar is advised to interrupt his learning of Talmud in order to attain a higher state of mystical devekut. It was said about a Hasidic master that when he studied a page of Talmud he would contemplate the white spaces between the black letters. The white color that encapsulates the spectrum of other colors seemed to constitute a preferable focus of meditative practice than the particularized legal material of Talmudic discourse articulated in the black letters. Prayer and study became indistinguishable, since they were both consumed by an ecstatic practice of a concentrated mystical cleaving.
* The resistance to Hasidism shaped two distinct cultural and communal camps in Eastern European Jewry—the Hasidim and the Mitnagdim (literally opposers). The difference between them was significant enough that they developed into contrasting stereotypes: the severe, scholarly, and legally pious Mitnaged, in contrast to the joyful, religiously ecstatic, and warm Hasid; one puts at the center of his worship the study of Torah and meticulous observation of the law while the other embraces prayer and religious intimacy as his core mode of devotion.
* One major target of criticism for those who opposed Hasidism was the fourth fundamental dimension of the innovative core of Hasidism, and the least appealing of its teachings—the central role it ascribed to the rebbe (the tzaddik) in the lives of his followers. This dimension, which had been absent in the teaching of the Besht and his earliest students, was developed by the third generation of Hasidic teachers and became the most defining feature of Hasidism. The rebbe was mythologized as a living channel of God’s bliss to the world. In certain Hasidic communities no meaningful decision—be it marriage or a commercial venture—is made without his blessing, approval, and advice. The role of the rebbe, who galvanized and cemented the loyalty of his followers, shaped among other things the hierarchy and rituals of the court.
* Since its inception Hasidism has generated a creative and imaginative body of texts, ideas, and practices. It has given rise to some of the most profound and sometimes exotic thinkers in the history of Jewish thought, persisting into the middle and second half of the nineteenth century with figures such as Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izhbits and Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin. With the expansion of modern secular movements in Central and Eastern Europe, Hasidism adopted a deeply conservative posture in its attempt to safeguard its followers from their corrosive impact and to secure its own continuity. The movement closed its ranks and managed to survive the historical and cultural travails of the twentieth century. Yet this impressive success had its cost. Fear of diminishing loyalty has constricted its inner creative resources. In today’s Hasidism the rebbe is dominant, but other aspects of the movement have mostly receded to the margins. Its successful strategy of combating outside influences might well prove to be its undoing.
