Studies in Judaism 5

Studies in Judaism 5

And this Divine Word it was, which a persecuted religion has sought to

preserve intact through so many centuries of persecution, and for the sake

of which no labour seemed too severe, no sacrifice too large. "Bethink

Thee, O God," exclaimed one of our Jewish sages who flourished about the

same period, "bethink Thee of Thy faithful children who, amid their

poverty and want, are busy in the study of Thy Law. Bethink Thee of the

poor in Israel who are willing to suffer hunger and destitution if only

they can secure for their children the knowledge of Thy Law." And so

indeed it was. Old and young, weak and strong, rich and poor, all pursued

that single study, the Torah. The product of this prolonged study is that

gigantic literature which, as a long unbroken chain of spiritual activity,

connects together the various periods of the Jews' chequered and eventful

history. All ages and all lands have contributed to the development of

this supreme study. For under the word Torah was comprised not only the

Law, but also the contributions of later times expressing either the

thoughts or the emotions of holy and sincere men; and even their honest

scepticism was not entirely excluded. As in the canon of the Bible,

Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon found place in the same volume that

contains the Law and the Prophets, so at a later time people did not

object to put the philosophical works of Maimonides and the songs of Judah

Hallevi on the same level with the Code of the Law compiled by R. Isaac

Alfasi, and the commentaries on the Bible by R. Solomon b. Isaac.(7) None

of them was declared infallible, but also to none of them, as soon as

people were convinced of the author's sincerity, was denied the homage due

to seekers after truth. Almost every author was called Rabbi ("my master")

or Rabbenu ("our master"),(8) and nearly every book was regarded more or

less as a contribution to the great bulk of the Torah. It was called

Writ,(9) and was treated with a certain kind of piety. But, by a series of

accidents too long to be related here, sincerity ceased and sport took its

place. I refer to the casuistic schools commonly known by the name of

Pilpulists(10) (the "seasoned" or the "sharp" ones), who flourished in the

last two centuries preceding ours. To the authors of this unhappy period,

a few glorious exceptions always allowed, the preceding Jewish literature

did not mean a "fountain of living waters," supplying men with truth and

religious inspiration, but rather a kind of armoury providing them with

juristic cases over which to fight, and to out-do each other in sophistry

and subtlety. As a consequence they cared little or nothing for that part

of the Jewish literature that appeals less to the intellect than to the

feelings of men. In short, religion consisted only of complicated cases

and innumerable ordinances, in which the wit of these men found delight.

But the emotional part of it, whose root is the Faith and Love of men, was

almost entirely neglected.

 

But it was precisely these higher religious emotions that were Baalshem's

peculiar province, and it was to them that he assigned in his religious

system a place befitting their importance and their dignity. And the

locality where his ministration lay was curiously adapted for such

propaganda. To that universal study of the Law of which I have just spoken

there was one exception. That exception was amongst the Jews in the

territories which bordered on the Carpathian Mountains, and comprise the

principalities of Moldavia, and Wallachia, Bukowina, and the Ukraine.

 

It is historically certain that the first arrival of the Jews in Roumania

was at a very early date, but there is no trace of any intellectual

productivity among the immigrants until recent times, and it is admitted

that the study of the Law was almost entirely neglected. It was in these

districts of mental, and perhaps we might add of even spiritual, darkness

that Chassidism took its rise and achieved its first success. "The sect of

the Chassidim," says one of the bitterest but most trustworthy of their

opponents, "first gained ground in the most uncivilised provinces; in the

wild ravines of Wallachia and the dreary steppes of the Ukraine."

 

Apart from the genius of its founder, Chassidism owed its rapid growth to

the intellectual barrenness of these districts as compared with the

intellectual fertility of the other regions where Jews most thickly

congregated. The Roumanian Jews were to some extent under the jurisdiction

of the Rabbis of Poland. Now the Poles were celebrated even in Germany for

the elaboration of their casuistry. These over-subtle Rabbis, delighting

in the quibbles of their sophistry, and reducing religion to an unending

number of juristic calculations and all sorts of possibilities and

impossibilities, were but too apt to forget the claims of feeling in their

eager desire to question and to settle everything. They may have been

satisfactory guides in matters spiritual to the men of their own stamp,

but they were of no avail to their Roumanian brethren who failed to

recognise religion in the garb of casuistry. It was, therefore, not

surprising that a revolt against the excess of intellectualism should have

sprung up and flourished in those districts where the inhabitants were

constitutionally incapable of appreciating the delights of argument. The

field was ready, and in the fulness of time came the sower in the person

of Baalshem.

 

In the above estimate of the Polish Rabbis there undoubtedly lurks a touch

of exaggeration. But it represents the view which the Chassidim took of

their opponents. The whole life of Baalshem is a protest against the

typical Rabbi thus conceived. The essential difference in the ideals of

the two parties is perhaps best illustrated in those portions of their

biographical literature where legend treads most closely upon the heels of

fact.

 

The hero of Polish Rabbinic biography at five years of age can recite by

heart the most difficult tractates of the Talmud; at eight he is the

disciple of the most celebrated teacher of the time, and perplexes him by

the penetrative subtlety of his questions; while at thirteen he appears

before the world as a full-fledged Doctor of the Law.

 

The hero of the Chassidim has a totally different education, and his

distinctive glory is of another kind. The legendary stories about

Baalshem's youth tell us little of his proficiency in Talmudic studies;

instead of sitting in the Beth Hammidrash with the folios of some

casuistic treatise spread out before him, Baalshem passes his time singing

hymns out of doors, or under the green trees of the forest with the

children. Satan, however, says the Chassid, is more afraid of these

innocent exercises than of all the controversies in the Meheram Shiff.(11)

It was through external nature, the woods of his childhood, the hills and

wild ravines of the Carpathians where he passed many of his maturer years,

that Baalshem, according to his disciples, reached his spiritual

confirmation. The Chassidic hero had no celebrated Rabbi for his master.

He was his own teacher. If not self-taught, it was from angelic lips, or

even the Divine voice itself, that he learned the higher knowledge. From

the source whence the Torah flowed Baalshem received heavenly lore. His

method of self-education, his ways of life, his choice of associates were

all instances of revolt; not only did he teach a wholly different theory

and practice, but he and his disciples seem to have missed no opportunity

of denouncing the old teachers as misleading and ungodly. Among the many

anecdotes illustrating this feature, it is told how once, on the evening

before the great Day of Atonement, Baalshem was noticed by his disciples

to be, contrary to his usual custom, depressed and ill at ease. The whole

subsequent day he passed in violent weeping and lamentations. At its close

he once more resumed his wonted cheerfulness of manner. When asked for the

explanation of his behaviour, he replied that the Holy Spirit had revealed

to him that heavy accusations were being made against the Jewish people,

and a heavy punishment had been ordained upon them. The anger of heaven

was caused by the Rabbis, whose sole occupation was to invent lying

premisses and to draw from them false conclusions. All the truly wise

Rabbis of the olden time (such as the Tannaim, the Amoraim(12) and their

followers, whom Baalshem regarded as so many saints and prophets) had now

stood forth as the accusers of their modern successors by whom their words

were so grossly perverted from their original meaning. On this account

Baalshem's tears had been shed, and his prayers as usual had been

successful. The impending judgment was annulled. On another occasion, when

he overheard the sounds of eager, loud discussion issuing from a

Rabbinical college, Baalshem, closing his ears with his hands, declared

that it was such disputants who delayed the redemption of Israel from

captivity. Satan, he said, incites the Rabbis to study those portions of

Jewish literature only on which they can whet the sharpness of their

intellects, but from all writings of which the reading would promote piety

and the fear of God he keeps them away. "Where there is much study," says

a disciple of Baalshem, "there is little piety." "Jewish Devils"(13) is

one of the numerous polite epithets applied to the Rabbis by the friends

of Baalshem. "Even the worst sinners are better than they; so blind are

they in the arrogance of their self-conceit that their very devotion to

the Law becomes a vehicle for their sin." It will be found when we deal

with the most positive side of Baalshem's teaching that this antagonism to

the attitude and methods of the contemporary Rabbis is further emphasised,

and it will readily be seen that his whole scheme of religion and of

conduct in relation to God and man rendered this acknowledged hostility

inevitable. In approaching this part of our subject it should be

remembered that, as stated above, Baalshem himself wrote nothing. For a

knowledge of his sayings we are therefore dependent on the reports of his

friends and disciples. And it is not unfrequently necessary to supplement

these by the teaching of his followers, whom we may suppose in large

measure to have caught the spirit of their master. Unfortunately the

original authorities are in a difficult Hebrew patois which often obscures

the precise meaning of whole passages.

 

The originality of Baalshem's teaching has been frequently impugned,

chiefly by the suggestion that he drew largely from the Zohar (Book of

Brightness).(14) This mystical book, "the Bible of the Cabbalists,"

whether we regard its subject-matter or its history and influence, is

unique in literature. Its pretended author is Simeon ben Yochai, a great

Rabbi of the second century, but the real writer is probably one Moses de

Leon, a Spanish Jew, who lived eleven centuries later. The book is one of

the most interesting literary forgeries, and is a marvellous mixture of

good and evil. A passage of delicate religious fancy is succeeded by

another of gross obscenity in illustration and suggestion; true piety and

wild blasphemy are strangely mingled together. Baalshem undoubtedly had

studied the Zohar, and he even is reported to have said that the reading

of the Zohar had enabled him to see into the whole universe of things.

But, for all that, Baalshem was no copyist; and the Zohar, although it may

have suggested a hint to him here and there, was not the source whence his

inspiration was drawn.

 

Its attraction for Baalshem is sufficiently explained by the fantastic,

imaginative, and emotional nature of its contents. It lent itself more

easily than the older Rabbinical literature to new explanations unthought

of by its author. But even the Talmud and its early commentaries became

apocalyptic to the heroes of Chassidism. Nay, the driest and most legal

disquisitions about _meum_ and _tuum_ could be translated into parables

and allegories and symbols full of the most exalted meanings. Baalshem,

like every other religious reformer, was partially the product of his age.

The influences of the past, the history and literature of his own people,

helped to make him what he was. But they do not rob him of his

originality. He was a religious revivalist in the best sense; full of

burning faith in his God and his cause; convinced utterly of the value of

his work and the truth of his teaching.

 

Although there can be no real doubt of Baalshem's claim to originality, it

should be borne in mind that his teaching is not only distinctively

Jewish, but that for every part of it parallels and analogies could be

found in the older Hebrew literature. Indeed it is not wonderful that in a

literature, extending over 2000 years, of a people whose chief thoughts

have been religion, and who have come in contact with so many external

religious and philosophic influences, the germs can be discovered of

almost every conceivable system, and the outline of almost every

imaginable doctrine.

 

The keynote of all Baalshem's teachings is the Omnipresence, or more

strictly the Immanence, of God. This is the source from which flows

naturally every article of his creed; the universality of the Divinity is

the foundation of the entire Chassidic fabric. The idea of the constant

living presence of God in all existence permeates the whole of Baalshem's

scheme; it is insisted on in every relation; from it is deduced every

important proposition and every rule in conduct of his school.

 

All created things and every product of human intelligence owe their being

to God. All generation and all existence spring from the thought and will

of God. It is incumbent upon man to believe that all things are pervaded

by the divine life, and when he speaks he should remember that it is this

divine life which is speaking through him. There is nothing which is void

of God. If we imagine for a moment such a thing to be, it would instantly

fall into nothingness. In every human thought God is present. If the

thought be gross or evil, we should seek to raise and ennoble it by

carrying it back to its origin. So, if a man be suddenly overwhelmed by

the aspect of a beautiful woman, he should remember that this splendour of

beauty is owing to the all-pervading emanation from the divine. When he

remembers that the source of corporeal beauty is God, he will not be

content to let his thought abide with the body when he can rise to the

inward contemplation of the infinite soul of beauty, which is God. A

disciple of Baalshem has said: Even as in the jewels of his beloved the

lover sees only the beauty of her he loves, so does the true lover of God

see in all the appearances of this world, the vitalising and generative

power of his divine master. If you do not see the world in the light of

God you separate the creation from its Creator. He who does not fully

believe in this universality of God's presence has never properly

acknowledged God's Sovereignty, for he excludes God from an existing

portion of the actual world. The word of God (to Baalshem, a synonym for

God himself), which "is settled in heaven" and "established on earth," is

still and always speaking, acting, and generating throughout heaven and

earth in endless gradations and varieties. If the vitalising word were to

cease, chaos would come again. The belief in a single creation after which

the Master withdrew from his completed work, is erroneous and heretical.

The vivifying power is never withdrawn from the world which it animates.

Creation is continuous; an unending manifestation of the goodness of God. All things are an affluence from the two divine attributes of Power and Love, which express themselves in various images and reflections.