Studies in Judaism 7

Studies in Judaism 7

Upon the continual and uninterrupted study of the Law, Baalshem lays but

little stress. He accepted the ordinary belief that the Law (under which

term are included not only the Pentateuch, but the whole Old Testament and

the major portion of the old Rabbinic literature) was a revelation of God.

But, as the world itself is equally a divine revelation, the Torah becomes

little more than a part of a larger whole. To understand it aright one

needs to penetrate to the inward reality--to the infinite light which is

revealed in it. We should study the Law not as we study a science for the

sake of acquiring knowledge (he who studies it so has in truth been

concerning himself with its mere outward form), but we should learn from

it the true service of God. Thus the study of the law is no end in itself.

It is studied because, as the word of God, God is more easily discerned

and absorbed in this revelation of Him than in any other. The Torah is

eternal, but its explanation is to be made by the spiritual leaders of

Judaism. It is to be interpreted by them in accordance with the Attribute

of the age. For he regarded the world as governed in every age by a

different Attribute of God--one age by the Attribute of Love, another by

that of Power, a third again, by Beauty, and so on--and the explanation of

the Torah must be brought into agreement with it. The object of the whole

Torah is that man should become a Torah himself. Every man being a Torah

in himself, said a disciple of Baalshem, has got not only his Abraham and

Moses, but also his Balaam and Haman: he should try to expel the Balaam

and develop the Abraham within him. Every action of man should be a pure

manifestation of God.

 

The reason why we should do what the Law commands is not to gain grace

thereby in the eyes of God, but to learn how to love God and to be united

to Him. The important thing is not how many separate injunctions are

obeyed, but how and in what spirit we obey them. The object of fulfilling

these various ordinances is to put oneself, as it were, on the same plane

with God, and thus, in the ordinary phrase of the religious mystic, to

become one with Him, or to be absorbed in Him. People should get to know,

says Baalshem, what the unity of God really means. To attain a part of

this indivisible unity is to attain the whole. The Torah and all its

ordinances are from God. If I therefore fulfil but one commandment in and

through the love of God, it is as though I have fulfilled them all.

 

I have now briefly to refer to the three virtues to which the Chassidim

assigned the highest place of honour. Of these the first is called in

Hebrew "Shiphluth,"(15) and is best rendered by our word "Humility," but

in Chassidic usage it includes the ideas of modesty, considerateness, and

sympathy. The prominence given to these qualities is in sharp contrast to

the faults of conceit, vanity, and self-satisfaction, against which

Baalshem was never weary of protesting. He regarded these as the most

seductive of all forms of sin. But a few minutes before his death he was

heard to murmur, "O vanity, vanity! even in this hour of death thou darest

to approach me with thy temptations: 'Bethink thee, Israel, what a grand

funeral procession will be thine because thou hast been so wise and good.'

O vanity, vanity! beshrew thee." "It should be indifferent to man," says

the master, "whether he be praised or blamed, loved or hated, reputed to

be the wisest of mankind or the greatest of fools. The test of the real

service of God is that it leaves behind it the feeling of humility. If a

man after prayer be conscious of the least pride or self-satisfaction, if

he think, for instance, that he has earned a reward by the ardour of his

spiritual exercises, then let him know that he has prayed not to God but

to himself. And what is this but disguised idolatry? Before you can find

God you must lose yourself." The Chassidim treated Shiphluth from two

sides: a negative side in thinking humbly of oneself, a positive in

thinking highly of one's neighbour, in other words the love for our

fellow-man.

 

He who loves the father will also love his children. The true lover of God

is also a lover of man. It is ignorance of one's own errors that makes one

ready to see the errors of others. "There is no sphere in heaven where the

soul remains a shorter time than in the sphere of merit, there is none

where it abides longer than in the sphere of Love."

 

The second Cardinal Virtue is "Cheerfulness," in Hebrew "Simchah."(16)

Baalshem insisted on cheerfulness of heart as a necessary attitude for the

due service of God. Once believe that you are really the servant and the

child of God and how can you fall again into a gloomy condition of mind?

Nor should the inevitable sins which we all must commit disturb our glad

serenity of soul. For is not repentance ready at hand by which we may

climb back to God? Every penitent thought is a voice of God. Man should

detect that voice in all the evidence of his senses, in every sight and

sound of external nature. It is through his want of faith in the

universality of God's presence that he is deaf to these subtle influences

and can read only the lessons which are inscribed in books.

 

The reader will be prepared to learn that Baalshem, taking this cheerful

view of things, was opposed to every kind of asceticism. Judaism, or

rather Israelitism, it is true, was not originally much of an ascetic

religion. But there can be little doubt that in the course of history

there came in many ascetic doctrines and practices, quite enough at least

to encourage such tender souls the bent of whose minds lay in this

direction. To one of these, a former disciple, Baalshem wrote: "I hear

that you think yourself compelled from religious motives to enter upon a

course of fasts and penances. My soul is outraged at your determination.

By the counsel of God I order you to abandon such dangerous practices,

which are but the outcome of a disordered brain. Is it not written 'Thou

shalt not hide thyself from thine own flesh?' Fast then no more than is

prescribed. Follow my command and God shall be with you." On another

occasion Baalshem was heard to observe that it is a machination of Satan

to drive us into a condition of gloom and despondency in which the

smallest error is regarded as a deadly sin. Satan's object is to keep us

away from the true service of God, and God can only be truly served from a

happy and confident disposition. Anxious scrupulosity in details is

therefore to be avoided. It is the counsel of the Devil to persuade us

that we never have done and shall never do our duty fully, and that moral

progress is impossible. Such ideas beget melancholy and despair, which are

of evil.

 

The third virtue is called in the Hebrew Chassidic literature

"Hithlahabuth,"(17) and is derived from a verb meaning "to kindle" or "set

on fire." The substantive "Hithlahabuth," so far as I am aware, was first

coined by Baalshem's followers. It is best rendered by our word

"Enthusiasm." Every religious action, to be of any avail, must be done

with enthusiasm. A mere mechanical and lifeless performance of an

ordinance is valueless. A man is no step nearer the goal if he thinks,

forsooth, that he has done his duty when he has gone through the whole

round of laws in every section of the code. This essential enthusiasm is

only begotten of Love. The service of fear, if not wholly useless, is yet

necessarily accompanied by a certain repulsion and heaviness, which

effectually prevent the rush and ardour of enthusiasm. The inspiration of

true service is its own end. There is no thought of this world, and there

is none of the world to come. In the Talmud there is frequent reference to

one Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah, an apostate from Judaism, who, when urged to

repent, replied that repentance was useless, and that for this mournful

belief he had direct divine authority. For he had been told by a voice

from heaven that even though he repented he would be excluded from sharing

the happiness of the world to come. Of him it was said by one of the

Chassidim, "This man indeed missed a golden opportunity. How purely could

he have served God, knowing that for his service there could never be a

reward!"

 

From the conception of Enthusiasm springs the quality of mobility,

suggesting spiritual progress, and commonly opposed by Baalshem and his

followers to the dull religious stagnation of self-satisfied

contemporaries. Man should not imagine himself to have attained the level

of the righteous; let him rather regard himself as a penitent who should

make progress every day. Always to remain on the same religious plane,

merely repeating to-day the religious routine of yesterday, is not true

service. There must be a daily advance in the knowledge and love of the

Divine Master. Mere freedom from active sin is not sufficient; such

negative virtue may be but another word for the chance absence of

temptation. What boots it never to have committed a sin if sin lies

concealed in the heart? It is only the uninterrupted communion with God

which will raise and ennoble your thoughts and designs, and cause the

roots of sin to die. The patriarch Abraham, without any command from God,

fulfilled the whole Torah, because he perceived that the Law was the life

of all created things. In the Messianic age the law will no longer seem to

man as something ordained for him from without; but the law will be within

the hearts of men; it will seem natural and self-evident to them, because

they will realise that God and life are manifested through the law.

 

Baalshem, who dealt largely in parable, has left the following, which we

may fitly add to our somewhat inadequate presentation of his doctrine.

 

There was once a king who built himself a glorious palace. By means of

magical illusion it seemed as if the palace were full of devious corridors

and mazes, preventing the approach to the royal presence. But as there was

much gold and silver heaped up in the entrance halls, most people were

content to go no further, but take their fill of treasure. The king

himself they did not notice. At last the king's intimate had compassion

upon them and exclaimed to them, "All these walls and mazes which you see

before you do not in truth exist at all. They are mere illusions. Push

forward bravely, and you shall find no obstacle."

 

We must not interpret the parable to mean that Baalshem denied the reality

or even the importance of the actual phenomenal world. The very contrary

is the truth. The world is for him full of God, penetrated through and

through by the divine, and therefore as real as God himself. It was quite

in Baalshem's manner when one of his disciples declared that only fools

could speak of the world as vanity or emptiness. "It is in truth a

glorious world. We must only learn how rightly to make use of it. Call

nothing common or profane: by God's presence all things are holy."

 

Above we have reviewed the essential doctrines of Baalshem and his

immediate followers; we have now to see how they fared at the hands of the

sect which he founded. This is a sad part of our task, for the subsequent

history of Chassidism is almost entirely a record of decay. As formulated

by its founder the new creed amounted to a genuine Reformation, pure and

lofty in ideal. After his death unhappily it was rapidly corrupted and

perverted. This was due almost exclusively to the dangerous and

exaggerated development of a single point in his teaching. That point, the

honour due to the divine in man, was relatively a minor article in the

original creed. But the later Chassidism has given it a distorted and

almost exclusive importance wholly out of proportion to the grander and

more essential features of Baalshem's teaching, until the distinctive

feature of the Chassidism of to-day is an almost idolatrous service of

their living leaders. What little there is to say of the history of the

sect after Baalshem's death would be unintelligible without some

explanation of the origin and growth of this unfortunate perversion.

 

It has been explained that Baalshem laid but little stress upon the study

of the Law or the observance of its precepts in themselves, but regarded

them only as means to an end. The end is union with God. Man has to

discover the presence of God in the Divine word and will. Now this

mystical service of God, although perhaps sufficing to sensitive and

enthusiastic natures, is scarcely plain or definite enough for ordinary

men. Few can realise abstractions: and yet fewer can delight in them and

find in their contemplation sufficient nurture for their religious needs.

What then had Chassidism to offer to the ordinary majority who could not

recognise God in all the plenitude of His disguise? The want of something

tangible whereon to fix the minds of the people, which has confronted the

teachers of so many creeds, was also encountered by the Chassidim, and

they unfortunately found their way out of the difficulty by relying on and

developing their doctrine of man's position in the Universe. Man's ideal

is to be a law himself; himself a clear and full manifestation of God.

Now, not only is he God's servant and child, but in highest development he

becomes himself a part of God, albeit in human shape, so that he may

become wholly one with his divine Father. But if man may reach this

highest level of holiness, he is virtually a kind of God-man, whom his

fellow-men of lower levels perceive by reason of his manhood, but his

essential office consists in raising them up to God by reason of his

Divinity.

 

The few chosen spirits who through the successful persistency with which

they have sought God in all things have become, though yet on earth,

absorbed in Him, are known in Chassidic literature by the name of the

"Zaddikim." The Hebrew word Zaddik(18) means "just" or "righteous," and

the term was probably chosen in conscious opposition to the title of

Rabbinic heroes, "disciples of the wise." For the Zaddik is not so much

the product of learning as of intuition: his final consummation is reached

by a sudden and direct illumination from God. The Zaddik not only

resembles Moses, but, in virtue of his long communion with the Divine, he

is also the true child of God. He is, moreover, a vivifying power in

creation, for he is the connecting bond between God and his creatures. He

is the source of blessing and the fount of grace. Man must therefore learn

to love the Zaddik, so that through the Zaddik he may win God's grace. He

who does not believe in the Zaddik is an apostate from God. Here then we

have the fatal exaggeration to which I have alluded, and here its logical consequence. The step to man-worship is short.