Neo Hasidism

Each of the three great religions of the Western tradition is based upon a narrative that stands at the centre of its faith. For Judaism, it is the Exodus from Egypt and the receiving of Torah at Mount Sinai; for Christianity, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ; for Islam, the hijra and the revelation to Muhammad. Each sees its own narrative as standing at the centre of human history as the 'greatest story ever told', and its truth (however that term is conceived) is vital to all the faithful. Each of these faiths also bears a long history of more abstract theological truth claims, involving such issues as the unity (or trinity) of God, providence, divine authority for the rule of law, the importance of good works, and so forth. In these, the traditions may be shown to have much in common with one another, making for interesting conversation across religious lines. But the core narratives seem to stand in eternal competition with one another, and it is in their utter loyalty to them that the faiths and their faithful remain most deeply divided.

The Confessions of Saint Augustine, here translated into Hebrew from Latin by Paul Philip Levertoff, is considered one of the most influential masterpieces of European literature, modern philosophy, and Western culture in general. Before us lies the spiritual autobiography of Augustine, the hedonist in pursuit of pleasure who became a visionary saint. It is an expression of the man in search of God who did not find what he sought in the world of philosophy or the academy. The estranged and wandering Augustine, yearning after tranquility and rest, finally finds his place of repose in God – not through critical contemplation but through an existential-mystical experience. The first Hebrew translation, by the convert Paul Philip Levertoff (1878-1954), was composed under the influence of the early writings of Martin Buber. Levertoff, a quintessential Hebrew author, could be seen as one of the younger members of the circle of Yosef Hayyim Brenner, Uri Nissan Gnessin, and Gershon Shoffman. However, after he converted to Christianity, he was rejected and forgotten. Nevertheless, his influence on Jewish thinkers like Hillel Zeitlin, Brenner, and Rabbi Binyamin was significant. In his translation, Levertoff wanted to present the modern Jew with a way to search after God in places which were invisible to philosophers, as well as to influence the formation of a new Jew; a Jew who, alongside the Hasidic tsaddik, could receive religious inspiration even from a Christian saint. The introduction to the book locates the translation in its historical and literary contexts, and views it as an expression of contemporary intellectual trends related to Orientalism and mysticism. The tension in the text between the Christian original and the Jewish translation give it a unique literary potential and opens a fascinating window onto the world of Jewish thought at the beginning of the 20th century.


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במאמר זה אבקש להתייחס לתופעה זו, דהיינו לפריחתה של הנאו–חסידות בחברה
הציונית–דתית בישראל. לצורך כך תחילה אסרטט את הרקע הכללי לתופעה;
אמשיך בתיאור מופעיה בישראל, ובעיקר בציונות הדתית; משם אנסה לאפיין את
התופעה, ובכך גם להבין את מקורה ודפוסי התפתחותה; ולבסוף אקדיש מקום
ליחסה של הציונות הדתית אליה, מתוך התייחסות חוזרת לפרטים שמניתי לעיל.
לטעמי אין ספק שמדובר באחת ההתפתחויות המשמעותיות ביותר שעוברות על
הציונות הדתית, וממילא גם אחת התופעות שתשפענה במידה ניכרת על החברה
בישראל.

In the second half of the twentieth century, American Jewry was faced with multiple issues that challenged its sense of identity and ideology. The aftermath of the Holocaust and the impact of the destruction of European Jewry alongside the powerful forces of acculturation at work in modern American society, posed the need for a reevaluation of traditional practices and ideologies and their place in Modern day society. The adjustments and challenges within American Jewry were consistent with those taking place in the American society at large.

Within this context, Shlomo Carlebach, a young European Hasidic scholar, was sent by the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe in the late nineteen-forties, to do pioneering 'missionary' work in America. Carlebach’s success depended upon his ability to be creative, innovative, and adaptive in his attempts to transform the acculturated youth that he targeted. By the time Carlebach died in 1994, he had become famous as “the foremost Jewish religious songwriter of the 20th century” and as a pioneer figure of Jewish spiritual renewal in America and worldwide.

Beyond his use of music and song, one of Carlebach’s main medium was through storytelling. Through his own unique and distinct style, Carlebach enchanted his audience with Hasidic tales and lore, creating an atmosphere of authenticity that both attracted and magnetized his audience. Rather than challenge modern society, Carlebach’s recreated stories which paradoxically provided a sense of past and present at once, synthesizing Hasidic legends with the trends and ideologies of his time. Similar to his acquaintance, Martin Buber, Shlomo Carlebach provided a romantic, bizarre, eccentric and selective account of Hasidic tales, which not only constitutes a link to the past - but created a sense of Jewish identity in the modern day world as well.

This paper will analyze the ideological themes concurring in Carlebach’s stories and the paradoxical sense of “modern-day authenticity” as portrayed through them.

A bibliographic resource to support scholars, students, and seekers in their studies of neo-Hasidism.

From the introduction:

“Neo-Hasidim” (sing. Neo-Hasid) are non-Hasidic Jews who draw upon Hasidism for purposes of spiritual or cultural renewal. Neo-Hasidism is thus rooted in a belief that the core of Hasidism—often identified with the movement’s earliest generations—is transferrable to other sociological contexts. Neo-Hasidim tend to be more secular and liberal-minded than Hasidim, but this is not necessarily the case. Note that even the most radical innovators within Hasidism itself, such as Nahman of Bratslav, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno, or Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson, are not “neo-Hasidic” per se, since they operated within Hasidic communities. A border case, however, is women from Hasidic families who have been excluded from the central sites of Hasidic identity performance due to their gender and yet drawn deeply upon Hasidism in their own lives. When neo-Hasidism emerged in Central Europe at the dawn of the 20th century, it represented a striking cultural shift. From the Enlightenment through the 19th century, liberal Jews had generally cast Hasidism as backward, superstitious, and irrational. This was largely a strategic position: by differentiating themselves from “uncivilized,” “oriental” Ostjuden (Eastern European Jews), especially those ecstatic Hasidim, liberal Jews could demonstrate their own worthiness of citizenship and civil rights in modern nation-states. Around the turn of the century, though, a new generation of Jews rejected these bourgeois, assimilationist aspirations. On one hand, unmitigated discrimination against Jews and a rise of racial anti-Semitism seemed to suggest that liberal Jewish denigration of Ostjuden was unproductive, if not immoral. On the other hand, at the same time, a wave of neo-Romanticism swelled in the region, as more and more Europeans asserted that modernist rationalism, promises of progress, and industrialization and urbanization had only bred disenchantment and alienation. Many turned to folk cultures, mythologies, and mysticisms as keys to a renewed vitality. From this perspective, Hasidism took on a new aura. The first wave of what came to be called neo-Hasidism began as a literary phenomenon. Modern Hebrew and Yiddish writers such as Y. L. Peretz (b. 1852–d. 1915), Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky (b. 1865– d. 1921), and Samuel Abba Horodezky (b. 1871– d. 1957) wrote glowingly about Hasidism from decidedly non-Hasidic—or, in some cases, ex-Hasidic—vantage points. Around the same time, Hillel Zeitlin (b. 1871– d. 1942) and Martin Buber (b. 1878– d. 1965) celebrated Hasidism as a resource for Jewish religious renewal. Decades later, a second wave of neo-Hasidism took shape among spiritual seekers in the North American Jewish counterculture of the 1960s. Sparked initially by immigrants who had fled the Shoah (Holocaust)—most notably Abraham Joshua Heschel (b. 1907– d. 1972), Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (b. 1924– d. 2014), and Shlomo Carlebach (b. 1925– d. 1994)—the neo-Hasidic ethos gained steam through activities of US-born seekers and scholars, especially through the Jewish Renewal movement. Additional, and sometimes surprising, offshoots of neo-Hasidism continue to spread through today.

The genesis of this paper lies in two places. One is the work I have been doing, for the past year or so, on Hillel Zeitlin, translating selected writings into English and preparing a collection for publication. 1 Zeitlin's work, particularly his 1910 essay Ha-Jfasidut 2 had a decisive influence on me when I read it at about age twenty. Since nothing other than on. e or two prayers of Zeitlin has ever appeared in English, I promised long ago that I would edit such a volume, and I am now engaged in fulfilling that promise. The other is Joel Reeker's very interesting review of the Matt translation and my Guide to the Zohar. 3 These two are connected by a notion ofNeo-Hasidism, including my claim that Zeitlin is the real founder ofNeo-Hasidic thought, and that means an important spiritual ancestor of my own, and Reeker's claim that both Matt's and my readings of the Zohar are in fact Neo-Hasidic. 4 As I read the Hecker piece, which at first glance shocked and even annoyed me, I came to understand that by 'Neo-Hasidic' he meant 'experientially based', that is to say that I (I'll leave Matt aside here; he can well represent himself) understand much of the Zohar, especially the whole world of sefirotic language, to reflect the inner experience of the authors, or to serve as an attempt to articulate the reality of such a realm of essentially trans-verbal experience. To say it more broadly, I emphasize the mystical side of the Zohar, as distinct, shall we say, from the metaphysical, historical, and ideational. 2 Forthcoming from Paulist Press in the Classics of Western Spirituality series.

Megaleh Temirin (Revealer of Secrets), first published in Vienna in 1819, is one of the sharpest and wittiest pieces of Jewish literature written in the first half of the nineteenth century, and is perhaps the most important piece of Hebrew prose composed before the stories of Mendele Mocher Seforim. A sly and complex story deriding Hasidism and Hasidim, it is told through the correspondence between the beadles of Hasidic courts and contemporary rabbis, and it presents a dark picture of  avaricious frauds and swindlers whose main concern was control over territory and the souls of believers, a goal achieved by beguiling the authorities and attacking all opponents. Perl lends his book a ‘Hasidic’ feel both in its physical design and in its language, presenting a Maskilic version of In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov that lays Hasidism bare so that no reader will ever be able to look at that, or any other Hasidic book, in the same way again. In addition to the book’s satiric sting, which would have been enough to bring its readers a dual pleasure, Perl’s hints at contemporary people and places, hidden within anagrams and numerological tricks. With the unraveling of these clues, which also include the use of actual Hasidic sources, the book is a valuable, contemporary view of historical reality. A meticulous reading of the book may therefore open a window on the hidden worlds of Hasidism and the Haskalah at the start of the nineteenth century.

The first volume (Imagined Hasidism) serves as an introduction to the complex satirical writings of Josef Perl of Tarnopol (1773-1839). At the center of the book stands an analysis of the satires, Megaleh Temirin (1819) and Bochen Tzadik (1838), including a systematic treatment of the ‘characters’ in the central works and a discussion of the dozens of manuscripts to be found in the Perl Archive in Jerusalem. Perl’s writings are analyzed here in the fuller context of Hebrew and Yiddish literature in general and Maskilic and Hasidic literature in particular, as well as other polemical writings and governmental records critical of Hasidism. The study thus presents a complex and nuanced picture of the relationship between literature and history, between the anti-Hasidic reports and the more complicated historical reality, and lays the groundwork for further research into the genre of nineteenth-century Maskilic satire.

The second and third volumes (Megaleh Temirin) present for the first time an annotated edition of Megaleh Temirin. It is based on the first edition and the scattered manuscripts and it includes a comparison to its Yiddish translation. The book is accompanied by appendices on its origins and contents, including fundamental treatments of several passages: an explication of the encoded names, the Hasidic sources used by the author, and the variants found in the manuscripts and in the only edition of the book in Yiddish.

The editor of the book, Professor Jonatan Meir, teaches in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. He has published several articles on the Haskalah of Eastern Europe, Hasidism, and a number of varied topics in twentieth-century Kabbalah.



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Contents


Introduction                                                                                     
Scholarship on the anti-Hasidic writings of Josef Perl • Hasidic hagiography and the emergence of satire • Two-fold reading of Perl’s writings and the gematriyot • Satire, literature, and history • ‘Holy Books’ and subversive books

Chapter 1: Josef Perl, Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov, and the ‘Holy Books’
Prayer of the fall of Hasidism and the expungement of their books • Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht and the critique of hagiography • Sefer Sipurey Ma‘asiyot and the parodic response to it • Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov, ‘heretical books’ and the ‘Holy Books’ • In praise of the true Tsaddikim • ‘Laughter of the heretics’: testimonies about the polemics against Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • ‘Holy Books’, ‘sacredness of hagiography’, and parodies of hagiography • Appendix: Parodic manuscript about an opponent of the ‘Holy Books’ who was reborn as a horse

Chapter 2: Speaking Names in Sefer Megale Temirin                             
Time of the composition of Megale Temirin, censorship, and a note on the Buch • Hasidic books and the emergence of parody • Structure of Sefer Megale Temirin • The Introduction to Sefer Megale Temirin • Main Hasidic courts • The court in Żołyń (Łożne) and the peregrinations of the Buch • The court of Dishpal (Międzyboż), moneyboxes of the Besht, the holy relics • The court in Aklo (Olika) and the ritualized reading of Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • Function of the footnotes and the parodic hagiography • History of the rabbis – clandestine opponents of Hasidism • The Besht in Tarnopol • Rabbi Meir Jacob of Zasław and the letters from Galicja  • Zaddikim in Galicja • Ciphered stories • ‘Holy Places’: reincarnations of a praise from Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht • The revelation of the Buch and the death of the secretary • ‘Gang of criminals’: another death and an escape to the Land of Israel • The End: Ovadia Ben Petahia and the rabbi of Opatów

Chapter 3: Joseph Perl, Hirsh of Zydaczów, and the Polemics of Gematriyot
Reb Zevi Hirsh of Zydaczów and Hasidism in Galicja • Maskilic opposition to the Zydaczówer • Letters concealed in Sefer Megale Temirin • A manuscript about the misdeeds of the Hasidim • Books, education, and a note on Reb Nathan of Nemirov • Zydaczówer’s ban on the Maskilim and the first Gematria • Parodic letter of Perl and the second Gematria • About the parodic letter and the jumble of gematriyot • Denunciation and expulsions of R Zevi Hirsh • ‘Father of impurity’: Joseph Perl and the writings of the rabbi of Komarno • Final note • Appendix: Parodic letter against the Zydaczówer

Chapter 4: Speaking Names in the Book of Sefer Bohen Zaddik               
The manuscript of Sefer Bohen Zaddik and the difficulties with its publication • Structure of the book • In search for the true Zaddik and the rabbi of Opatów • Travels of Ovadia Ben Petahia between the towns of Galicja • Kromcza Ruska (Zaleszczyki) or the entrance to Galicja • ‘Briks’ (Tarnopol): Rabbi Jehoshua Heschel Babad and the school • ‘Bicik’ (Lemberg) Rabbi Jacob Orenstein and a ban on the Maskilim • ‘Abdera’ (Brody) Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Margaliot and Sefer ha-Zoref • The explanation of the names of the rabbis • Utopia and dystopia • The hidden butcher and his kabbalistic writings • The discovery of the colonies • The image of the disciples of the Gaon and the ‘true Hasid’ • ‘The solution for the East’ or heterotopia •  The will to flee and the emissary

Chapter 5: The Imaginary Influence of Sefer Megale Temirin                     
The myth about the success of the book • Pamphlet Megale Sod • The manuscript about the misdeeds of the Hasidim • Dialogues about Sefer Megale Temirin • For whom Sefer Megale Temirin was intended and who read it • Note concerning Sefer Megale Temirin in Yiddish • Influence real and imagined • Was Sefer Shivhe ha-Besht written by a parodist? • Temerl Bergson and Sefer Megale Temirin • Writ of defense of Hasidism • Sefer Megale Temirin and the Hebrew literature • Appendix: writ of defense of Joseph Judah Lob Sossnitz

Afterword: Note on the Anti-Hasidic Outlook                                       

Bibliographic Abbreviations   

Reviews:
(1) Dan Meron, 2013, ‘Megaleh Temirin’, Kivunim Hadashim 29, 55 pages (Hebrew)
(2) David Assaf, 2014, ‘Hasidim will not Read it but Tear it’, Haaretz, Tarbut ve-Sifrut, p .6 (Hebrew) http://onegshabbat.blogspot.co.il/2014/04/blog-post_18.html
(3) Eliezer Brodt, 2014, 'New book Announcement- Megale Temirin', The Seforim Blog http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2014/01/new-book-announcement-megale-temirin.html
(4) Matan Hermoni, 2014,  הסבתא המופקרת של הספרות העבריתHaaretz, Sfarim (Hebrew) http://www.haaretz.co.il/.premium-1.2382365
(5) Shinichi Yamamoto, 2015, 山本　伸一, "ヨナタン・メイール編著『想像のハシディズム』", ユダヤ・イスラエル研究　第28号  http://www.waseda.jp/assoc-jsjs/jistudies.html
(6) David Biale and David Assaf,, 2015, 'Revealer Revealed', Jewish Review of Books, pp. 17-21  http://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1454/revealer-revealed/
(7) Hillel Halkin, 2015, "Sex, Magic, Bigotry, Corruption- and the First Hebrew Novel', Mosaic Magazine,  http://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2015/05/sex-magic-bigotry-corruption-and-the-first-hebrew-novel/
(8) Tomer Persico, 2015, "Interview", Lula'at haEl http://tomerpersico.com/2015/08/10/meir_perl/
(9) Ariel Evan Mayse, 'Review', Jewish History (2015)ת  http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10835-015-9245-2
(10) Review - Gal-Ed

The annual Eranos conference in Ascona, Switzerland, contributed immensely to discourse about religion and spirituality from its inception in 1933. These gatherings, which revolved largely around the psychologist Carl Jung, investigated religious consciousness by way of spiritual “symbols” or “archetypes.” Such images were generally treated as timeless, autonomous phenomena that penetrate beyond historical particularities and social forms into the transcendent depths of the mystical Self. Discourse at Eranos thus portrayed the essence of religion as decontextualized and deethicized. The present article demonstrates that the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber was already sensitive to the sociopolitical dangers of this approach when he lectured at Eranos in 1934. The essay that emerged out of those lectures, “Sinnbildliche und sakramentale Existenz im Judentum (Symbolic and Sacramental Existence in Judaism),” is widely read as a classic of Buber’s writings on Hasidism. And yet, the historical details surrounding Buber’s Eranos lectures, especially as evidenced in the unpublished letters between him and the conference organizer, Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, as well as the stenographer’s typescript of Buber’s live orations, shed remarkable new light on the well-known essay. “Sinnbildliche und sakramentale Existenz” was, in fact, composed largely as a polemic against Jung and his followers at Eranos, a number of whom were aligned with National Socialism and other fascist movements. In an act of scholarly resistance, Buber challenged widespread perspectives at Eranos regarding symbolism, Gnosticism, and the nature of religion. In so doing, he anticipated later critiques of Eranos that took shape in the 1990s.

You have seen their flowing beards and pe'ot. You have seen their gartlach(prayer belts) and pocket editions of Sihot Ha-Ran. Perhaps you have even seen them clap and jump in your otherwise uneventful morning minyan. We all call them neo-Hassidim, a term coined to account for the renewed popularity of Hassidic texts and customs in non-Hassidic circles, ranging from Modern Orthodox post-Israel youth, to Haredi rabbis. But beneath the external trappings, who are these bohemian firebrands? What do they really believe, and why do they encounter so much cynicism from onlookers?

In this paper I analyze and contrast Schachter-Shalomi's conception of gender through relating his thought to its Habad origins, utilizing Elliot Wolfson's study of Menahem Mendel Schneerson as a prism. I further contrast Schachter-Shalomi's thought with other New-Age movements and specifically the neo-Kabbalah of Michael Laitman and Berg family. Lastly, I read his "dream tale" regarding the Maiden of Ludmir with the use of Bracha Ettinger's theories as well as other psychoanalysts.

This paper is mapping the discourse about the Hasidism in one of the most significant public platforms of historical Hungarian Jewry, the weekly Egyenlőség. The articles written by József Patai and Lajos Szabolcsi play important role also from the aspect of their literary career, because they wrote the first Hasidic stories in Hungarian. The study explores their representation of the tradition and essentially different relationship with the Hasidism. In Pataiʼs early, pioneering articles (1904–1911) the Hasidic tradition and legends are often compared to classical mythology and myths of another European nations. Author also draws a parallel with literary motifs and characters. This emancipatorical standpoint emphasizes the cultural coequality of the culture of Jewish people. On the other hand, by alluding to the liberty of imagination, a counterpart is given to the scientific-rational standpoint of so-called cultural mission. Szabolcsiʼs articles (1921–1922) bears the signs of the changed era and mirrors the identity politics of the author. The Hungarian Hasidic world of Szabolcs country is a symbolical representation of the Hungarian Jewish twofold (national and confessional) identity.
     
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Jelen tanulmány a történelmi magyar zsidóság fontos fórumának a haszidizmusról szóló diskurzusának egy szeletét dolgozza fel. Patai József és Szabolcsi Lajos haszidizmusról írott cikkei azonban a két szerzői életmű felől vizsgálva is fontos szerepet játszik, hiszen a magyar nyelvű haszid történetek első képviselőiről van szó. A tanulmány a szerzők és a haszidizmus hagyományának kapcsolatát vizsgálja, mind az életrajzi vonatkozások, mind az identitás, a reprezentáció, a hagyomány artikulációit tekintve. Patai korai cikkei (1904–1911) úttörőnek minősülnek, s bennük a haszid hagyományt és legendákat gyakran hasonlítja az antikvitás, vagy más nemzetek mitológiájához, párhozamot von világirodalmi példákkal. Az emancipatorikus gesztus a zsidó nép kulturális egyenrangúságát hivatott aláhúzni, ugyanakkor a fantáziára hivatkozva a tudományos-racionális kultúrmissziós álláspontot ellensúlyozza. Szabolcsi cikkei (1921–1922) nemcsak a megváltozott kor nyomait viselik magukon, de a szerző identitáspolitikáját is tükrözik: az általa prezentált szabolcsi magyar haszid világ (akárcsak elbeszéléseiben) magyar zsidó kettős (nemzeti-felekezeti) identitást képezik le.

In this first installment of a two-part series to be published in Yeshiva University's Kol HaMevaser journal, I present my assessment of the spiritual climate at Yeshiva University in terms of both institutional infrastructure and organic, student-driven activity. As context for the more thorough retrospective analysis of the next installment, I suggest a paradigm-centered model for the development of an atmosphere of devotional intention and vivacity based on the successes of 20th century Neo-Hassidic movements and communities.

Title (Article) ヒレル・ツァイトリンとポーランドにおけるユダヤ神秘主義の再生
Author ヨナタン メイール. 向井 直己 訳.
Series etc. 2015年度文化講座より
Parallel Title Hillel Zeitlin and the Renaissance of Jewish Mysticism in Poland
Call No. Z71-D380
Title (Journal) ナマール = נמל = Port : 港 / 日本・ユダヤ文化研究会 編.
Publisher etc. 神戸 : 日本・ユダヤ文化研究会, 1996-
Vol. / Date (20):2015
Vol. / Date (20):2015
Pages 28-38
ISSN 2188-5621

The first part of Hillel Zeitlin’s (1871-1942) mystical diary appeared in print in Warsaw 1919. Zeitlin continued to write the diary till the holocaust, and the manuscript is presumed lost. In this paper, I shell reconstruct the content of the lost part of the diary on the basis of the manuscript correspondence between Zeitlin and other Authors. I shell also discus the unsuccessful attempts of Zeitlin to have his diary published. In this discussion, mystical aspect of Zeitlin’s work will come forth.

The Hasidic story is an impor tant dimension of Jewish folklore and modern Jewish lit er a ture. Alongside the Hasidic homiletic lit er a ture, which holds the main religious and spiritual messages of Hasidism, the Hasidic story pre sents the most impor tant inner-Hasidic foundation for understanding its social and ethical worldview, and perhaps its history. This literary corpus encompasses hundreds of compilations containing thousands of Hasidic stories, legends, and tales, mainly in Hebrew and, to a lesser degree, in Yiddish, written or printed over the last two centuries. The development of the Hasidic tale as an impor tant genre in the movement's literary production must be studied as part of modern Jewish lit er a ture written from the eigh teenth through the twenty-first centuries.

has not fared well among students or fe tioners of contemporary Jewish theology. Disciples and adm taking the trouble to criticize Heschel's failings, have tended thought in mounds of undifferentiated praise.' Critics ha either on the difficulties of Heschel's style and manner of on his notoriously problematic notion of divine pathos.2 Th remarkably little attention to other principal themes in Hesch and indeed have utterly ignored entire portions of his wor example that Heschel's massive two-volume study of rabbin Torah Min Ha-shamayim, is rarely encountered in the scho ture.3 Note as well the widespread focus, as in a recent full-len upon an undefined and undefinable state of being called "f than upon the clearly defined regimen to which Heschel sou his readers: the life of mitzvot, commandments.4 The present fore, will offer both a reading and a re-reading: the form exposition and analysis of Heschel's many writings on the a purpose of the mitzvot; the latter an attempt to re-orient thin Heschel's thought as a whole, by considering it as a wholetention on works and themes which to date have rarely com cal view.

This paper was written for a book presented to Rav David Zeller z"l on the occasion of his 60th birthday in 2006. Sadly he became ill soon after and passed away in the spring of 2007. In honor of his 8th "yartzheit" tonight I am uploading the paper with minor stylistic editing. May his memory be for a blessing.

It this article I would like to explore the rise of what can be called "the utilitarian self" in the contemporary spirituality arena in Israel. This social reality, which has its origins in the religious field of late nineteen century America, is in Judaic social circles quite a recent development, and has begun to play a significant part of Israeli contemporary spirituality only since the 1990's. I would like to suggest that the proliferation of certain Neo-Kabbalah and Neo-Hasidic movements since the 1990's is indicative of its rise. By examining these we can better understand the utilitarian self, which lies at their background and presents the cultural conditions for their popularity.

In this article I explore how Gershom Scholem has been reads by Jewish Orthodox readers and why and how he should be read. I also address how this relaters to current spiritual trends within Orthodoxy.  https://traditiononline.org/orthodoxy-and-the-scholem-moment/

Already at the beginning of the 20th century several prominent neo-Hasidic writers confessed that nostalgia for the attractions and charms of Hasidism in their writing did not reflect any honest attempt on their part to adhere to the religious beliefs of true Hasidim. Modern literary use of the charms and treasures of Hasidic tradition was now meant to serve the purpose of constructing a secular Jewish identity, or at least one which could serve as a distinct alternative to rabbinic notions of Jewish identity and tradition. Secular modern writers and thinkers promoted an amended version of Hasidism precisely because they hoped to rely upon it as leverage for legitimizing their newfound resentment of Halakha, of the rabbis and of the practice of basing Jewish attachment on philosophical and dogmatic properties of the old classical theology.
The next generation of Jewish writers – operating in the following decades of the 20th century from a modern and secular vantage point - features a long line of literary attempts to cling to the unique heritage of Hasidism and reformulate it, not only by abandoning  pretensions of ‘returning to the religious fold’, but also by attempting to ground and justify the spiritual distance felt by both the writers and their new readership from Rabbinic and Orthodox Judaism. However, these writers also exhibit attempts to blur and dull the sense of a chasm dividing between their secular and humanist sensibility and an authentic atmosphere of ‘Jewish spirituality’. Such attempts deliberately make life difficult for anyone who would propose to draw a clear distinction between the religious longing manifest in genuine Hasidic writing and its secular parallel.
Drawing such distinctions becomes even more complicated when we attempt to compare such literary phenomena with contemporary tendencies in American Jewry that speak of ‘Jewish Renewal’ via open and uninhibited return to Jewish mystical and Hasidic sources. On the one hand, such tendencies do not signify a simple ‘return’ to the original fold of the Hasidic movement.  On the other hand, they should also not be taken merely as limited expression of superficial nostalgia for the traditional past.  Rather, they represent an attempt to found a new, modern Jewish identity, aided and abetted by Hasidic precedent.  Moreover, even the specific ’renovations’ or stereotypes through which Hasidism is currently portrayed appear very familiar to anyone who has already witnessed them in the writings of neo-Hasidic secular writers at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite these similarities, I wish to point to a basic difference between recent attempts to revive the Hasidic heritage as a tool or source of inspiration for religious worship, and prior secular attempts to enlist Hasidism for the purposes of constructing a modern Jewish identity that stands in clear opposition to rabbinical Judaism, challenging the assumption that Jewish identity mandates maintaining specific theological positions or dogmas.

This is a transcript of a lecture (with minor corrections) that I gave at a conference on R. Hillel Zeitlein. The conference was held at Tel-Aviv University on May 4, 2017. I discussed Zeitlein's vision of futuristic Hasidism and how it is (or is not) echoed in today's Hasidic and Neo-Hasidic groups.

Michael Levi Rodkinson (1845–1904) was a journalist, author, and publisher whose literary projects spanned numerous countries and continents. Hero to some and scoundrel to others, Rodkinson was a polemical figure whose beliefs underwent many transformations over the course of his life, most significantly from Hasidism to combative Haskalah to eventually anticipating the neo-Romantic trends of the early twentieth century. Throughout his career, Rodkinson’s writing challenged the familiar genres of the literature of Hasidism and the Haskalah, shaping the religious realities of his readers and articulating a spiritual and community life among Jews, who took his ideas to heart in surprising ways.Today, Rodkinson is frequently referred to as a minor Hasidic author and publisher, a characterization based on the criticism of his opponents rather than on his writings. In Literary Hasidism, Meir draws upon those writings and their reception to present a completely different picture of this colorful and influential writer. Examining Rodkinson’s lifelong role as a catalyzing agent of different cultural phenomena, his diverse publishing activities, and his writings in their respective stages, Meir grants readers a provocative new vantage point from which to consider this divisive, enigmatic figure.
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“A must read for anyone interested in the history of Hasidic literature. Jonatan Meir masterfully tells the story of late nineteenth-century eastern
European Jewish scholarship through the bruising battles, big ideas, and petty intrigues of Michael Levi Rodkinson.”
—Eliyahu Stern, Yale University
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Jonatan Meir portrays the career of one of the most ambivalent characters of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, Michael Levi Rodkinson, and his move from the propagation of popular Hasidism to his more grandiose attempts to reframe and restructure the entire Jewish canon. This look into the world of the late nineteenthcentury Jewish Enlightenment will be an eye-opener."—Pinchas Giller, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, American Jewish University
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"Meir has taken the relatively neglected figure of Rodkinson and created a detailed and fascinating portrait. He ably demonstrates that the boundaries between Hasidism and Haskalah were frequently crossed, and this markedly improves our understanding of the dynamics of Jewish intellectual history in the crucial period of the late nineteenth century."—Ira Robinson, Concordia University

When Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson arrived in the United States in 1941, his father-inlaw, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn, asked him to head the new Chabad publishing house, Kehot. It was an inspired decision. A prodigious scholar and bibliophile, the future Rebbe devoted himself passionately to the task of spreading the "wellsprings" of Hasidic teaching "outward" (hafatzat ma'ayanot chutzah). Although Rabbi Schneerson's charismatic personal leadership and the global network of shluchim, or emissaries, he established as the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe have received a great deal of attention in the recent discussions occasioned by his 20 th yahrzeit and the recent biographies by Joseph Telushkin, Chaim Miller, and Adin Steinsaltz, his work as an editor and publisher has been relatively neglected. Yet, it is in the light of this work that some of his most ambitious lifelong goals must be understood.

The Jewish Renewal movement is perhaps best characterized by its apparent contradictions: its eclectic blend of Hasidic mysticism and radical egalitarianism, its messianic utopianism alongside its endorsement of the separation between religion and state. The theology of the Jewish Renewal movement engages in what can be termed a “dialectic of Haskala,” a play on the Frankfurt School’s diagnosis of the crisis of modernity in their influential work "The Dialectic of the Enlightenment." Traditional Judaism and the Enlightenment dialectically transform and negate each other. Similarly, Rabbi Zalman
Schachter­-Shalomi, the founder of Jewish Renewal, calls for “spiritual democracy,” in which radical Enlightenment ideas offer a corrective to parochial Hasidism, asserting the spiritual and political equality of all people, regardless of religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. In this paper, I analyze the Jewish Renewal movement through the lens of Critical Theory in order to to articulate a new understanding of Schachter-Shalomi's theology, an influential yet understudied figure within American Judaism.

This is my introduction to the book "Jewish Spiritual Growth: The Step-by-step Guide of a Hasidic Master", 2016 (place of publication not listed). The book is the English translation of Yaacov David Shulman of the Piaseczner Rebbe's work "Hahsharat Ha'Avreihim" (circa 1935), which was first published in Tel-Aviv in 1962. The introduction appears beginning with the second printing.

This study assembles and analyzes a host of Hasidic and Orthodox responses the efforts of non-Hasidic and secular writers and thinkers who exploit Hasidic heritage and appropriate its image and traditionalist weight for external, modern purposes. In particular, this study examines the claim of Orthodox writers that modem neo-Hasidic literature is occupied with distorting the original authentic image of Hasidism and misrepresenting it in a tendentious manner. The article assembles a wide-range of critics from the Hasidic and Orthodox camp, appearing throughout various decades of the 20th century, dividing classifying such responses from the conservative 'right' into six typical forms: [1] ignoring of differences between an original Hasidic source and its neo-Hasidic adaptation. [2] manifestation of suspicion toward the intrusion outsiders [3] expression of satisfaction over the unexpected embrace [4] criticism of distortion of the facts [5] moderate objection to the use of religious material for literary and aesthetic purposes [6] sharp objection to the transformation Hasidism to heresy.

גילוי, הסתר וצנזורה בכתבי חסידות ברסלב
(ספריית שוקן / 2.1.2017)
יונתן מאיר
בהרצאה זו נתאר בקיצור נמרץ את הדינמיקה המורכבת בין גילוי והסתר בספרותה של חסידות ברסלב, תוך שימת דגש על אופנים שונים של צנזורה פנימית. נציג לראשונה את כתביו הגנוזים של יצחק מאיר קורמן (בהם 'ילקוט הליקוטים' ו'תולדות אדם', הכוללים גם מסורות אזוטריות דוגמת 'מגילת סתרים' והשמטות מ'חיי מוהר"ן'). כתבים אלו נתגלו לאחרונה במכון שוקן, הורכבו וזוהו בידי כותב שורות אלו, ונמצאים עתה בשלבי התקנה לדפוס (חלק מהם מוצגים במהלך הכנס בתערוכה בספריית שוקן). דרך הצגת כתבים אלו נאיר אור חדש על מהות האזוטריקה הברסלבית ועל מסכת הקשרים המפותלת בין חסידי ברסלב בראשית המאה העשרים לזלמן שוקן.

In this first installment of a two-part series to be published in Yeshiva University's Kol HaMevaser journal, I present my assessment of the spiritual climate at Yeshiva University in terms of both institutional infrastructure and organic, student-driven activity. As context for the more thorough retrospective analysis of the next installment, I suggest a paradigm-centered model for the development of an atmosphere of devotional intention and vivacity based on the successes of 20th century Neo-Hassidic movements and communities.