LITHUANIA, WHITE RUSSIA, AND THE LAND OF ISRAEL
MOVING NORTH FROM THE UKRAINIAN HEARTLAND in which the Chernobyl dynasty would become especially dominant, we come to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which, in the eighteenth century, included what is today Lithuania, Belarus or White Russia, and parts of northeast Poland. Lithuanian Hasidism—as we will refer to it as a shorthand form—is usually depicted as more scholarly than what developed in Ukraine and Central Poland. This was partly owing to the image of Lithuania as the seat of Talmudic learning, a product of the ideology of the Mitnaggdim, and partly a projection of the elitist Chabad movement that came to dominate large areas of Lithuania. But it would be a mistake to assume that all Hasidic groups in Lithuania adhered to some scholarly or intellectual ideal. Even to speak of “Lithuanian Hasidism” is as potentially misleading as to speak of “Russian” or “Polish” Hasidism.
In the larger Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and mainly in its more northwestern provinces (Vilna and Kovno), the number of Hasidim was always smaller relative to other regions; yet the image of Lithuania as an area devoid of Hasidism needs correction. There were well-known courts in the southwestern regions—the provinces of Minsk and Grodno—and in the final third of the eighteenth century there were groups in the northeastern regions as well, even if these were rather small and were at times persecuted by the majority in the Jewish communities. As early as the first years of the nineteenth century, there were Lithuanian communities that Hasidic groups controlled through their own political power or with the help of the local authorities. As our discussion of the opposition to Hasidism showed, even in Vilna itself, the stronghold of the Gaon of Vilna and the Mitnaggdim, there were already Hasidim in the early 1770s. Although the Mitnaggdim at times had the upper hand—for example, in instigating the arrest of Shneur Zalman of Liady—Hasidim were elected to the community institutions in the years 1802 and 1805 and also set up prayer houses, on the basis of their strength among the Jews of the town.
In the White Russian part of Lithuania, two students of the Maggid of Mezritsh were the preeminent Hasidic leaders: Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk (1730–1788) and Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk (Kołyszki) (1741–1810). Following their immigration to the Land of Israel in 1777, there was a leadership vacuum, soon filled by the rise of Shneur Zalman of Liady, and from here on, the Hasidism of this region was equivalent to the history of Chabad (discussed at length later), as very few tsaddikim from other branches attempted to settle or recruit followers in the region. Chabad’s dominance in such a large area explains a great deal of the character of this unique court.
Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk functioned as a tsaddik first in Minsk and then moved to Vitebsk. There, as we have already seen, he was among the leaders who tried—and failed—to stop the eruption of organized opposition to Hasidism at the end of the Maggid’s life. Menahem Mendel’s main teachings appear in his book of homilies Peri ha-Arets, published in 1814 in Kapuste (Kopys, Kaposzt) and in his numerous letters from the Land of Israel to his Hasidim who remained in White Russia. Some of these letters were printed in 1794 in the book Iggeret ha-Kodesh and include many instructions about ritual and worship practices. Menahem Mendel emerges from these writings as a mystic with many similar traits to the Maggid of Mezritsh. He was preoccupied with theological questions about the nature of God, the conception of evil, and the interpretation of the myths of Lurianic Kabbalah. He speaks at length about the ideal of devekut, which he understands as a total experience very much like the Christian unio mystica.
As against many of the tsaddikim of his time who practiced magic and were known as miracle workers, Menahem Mendel explicitly avoided such activities. When one of his students who was childless asked him to intervene on his behalf, Menahem Mendel said:
I am ashamed! For am I to stand in the place of God? It was so in the days of the Ba’al Shem [Tov] that whatever God decreed he had the power to influence and make come true, but there was only one such person and since then no one else has arisen [who has such powers]. Even though there are tsaddikim in our generation who promise to make their utterances come true, I am not one of them.1
Menahem Mendel evidently believed that a tsaddik as a spiritual leader should not act on material requests like that of his Hasid, but instead only address questions of belief and worship. However, a tsaddik’s willingness to meet the material needs of his adherents determined his public image and dictated the kind of audience that came to follow him. There were not many tsaddikim like Menahem Mendel who declared explicitly that they refrained from such matters, and the few tsaddikim who tried to imitate him eventually buckled under the pressure of their Hasidim to fulfill this earthly role.
Not far from Vitebsk, Avraham of Kalisk (Kołyszki), one of the youngest of the Maggid’s students, led a group of ardent Hasidim. In 1798, a conflict broke out between Avraham and Shneur Zalman of Liady. Shneur Zalman claimed that Avraham was responsible for provoking opposition to Hasidism because of the behavior of his Hasidim, who used to perform kuliyen zikh—somersaults—as an expression of their ecstatic devekut, and that they also showed disdain for rabbinical scholars. Shneur Zalman reported some twenty-five years later that at the meeting held toward the end of the Maggid’s life in the summer of 1772 at his home in Rovno in order to formulate a response to the bans announced by the Mitnaggdim, the Maggid berated Avraham for this provocative behavior:
I traveled with him to the community of Rovno to our great rabbi, may he rest in peace, in the summer of 1772‥… And my eyes beheld and my ears heard how he [the Maggid] spoke with him [Avraham] sternly about his bad leadership of our followers in Russia.… Namely, that all day long they engage in revelry and silliness [holelut ve-letsanut] and make fun of those who study and scorn them … and also perform somersaults with their heads down and legs up in the air in the marketplaces and the streets, and thus they defame the name of God in the eyes of non-Jews, as they do with other kind of merriment and joking in the streets of Kalisk.2
Since this letter was written long after the 1772 gathering in the context of a dispute partly over money between Avraham and Shneur Zalman, it probably reflects more on the later dispute rather than reporting accurately the events of that meeting.
Menahem Mendel and Avraham of Kalisk were among the first Hasidic masters who emphasized the centrality of the “communion of the [Hasidic] comrades” (dibbuk haverim) as another layer of devekut, in addition to devekut with God or with the tsaddik. The Kabbalistic tradition emphasized the “love of comrades” (ahavat haverim), as an intimate, even quasi-erotic, bond between the members of a tiny elitist group possessing esoteric secrets. It appears already in the Zohar and in the traditions of the Safed mystics of the sixteenth century. From the very beginning of Hasidism, there was an understandable tension between the ideal of individual devekut and the collective communal bond, which was also a key part of the ethos of the Hasidic movement. And this egalitarian ideal coexisted uneasily with the hierarchical relationship of tsaddik and Hasid.
Once he immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1777, Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk invoked the concept of dibbuk haverim when he tried to lead his Hasidim who remained in White Russia from afar. He beseeched his Hasidim, who had remained behind like a flock of sheep without its shepherd, to adopt an alternative model of leadership by creating a framework of mutual support among their fellows. As one of the key leaders among the students of the Maggid, Menahem Mendel exemplifies the new idea of the tsaddik as the singular leader of his followers, while the Maggid himself portrayed the tsaddik as a much more individual, isolated mystical figure who may operate within a group of mystics like himself, but does not necessarily attract a congregation of adherents.
Among the descriptive terms used for the Hasidim in the early polemical writings of the Mitnaggdim and in the various official Russian documents, we find the words “Mezritsher” and “Karliner,” but not “Beshtian!” We gather from these terms that the Mitnaggdim may have regarded the various Hasidic groups as independent of each other, each having a leader and a circle of admirers mainly in his geographic realm of influence. The appellation “Karliner” refers to the first Hasidic center in Polesia, headed by a student of the Maggid of Mezritsh, Aharon “the Great” of Karlin (1736–1772). These terms also demonstrate that Hasidism in this period was not necessarily identified as a movement established by the Besht.
Aharon settled in Karlin, a twin town with Pinsk, in the 1760s, founded a Hasidic minyan there, and set about trying to spread the Hasidic message in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The center in Karlin acted in parallel to the one in Mezritsch, and pilgrims came to it seeking to learn there about Hasidic ways, as Solomon Maimon attests in his memoirs: “pilgrimages were made to K[arlin], M[ezeritsh] and other holy places, where the enlightened superiors of this sect abode. Young people forsook parents, wives and children, and went in troops to visit these superiors, and hear from their lips the new doctrine.”3 Few details are known to us about the brief life of Aharon, and almost nothing has been preserved of his teachings and writings, apart from his ethical will, a Shabbat song, and a few sayings.
There are some who have tried to describe the image and public activity of Aharon as part of the “social” turn that marked Hasidism at its inception—that is, a shift to the improvement of the lot of the lower classes and a popular revolt against the old communal and religious institutions. These accounts are based, among other things, on the discovery of Aharon’s signature on the margins of the kropki tax legislation from 1769 in the community of Nieswiez in Lithuania, which was meant to protect the rights of members of the community, especially its weaker elements. Yet Aharon was not acting exceptionally here or at his own initiative: he was merely a significant personage who did what was required for the affairs of the community, at the moment it had to update its tax regulations, by adding his credentials to the list of new regulations, which were standard and conventional, as a way of reinforcing their validity. As Aharon’s remarks in the margins of the legislation indicate, his authority beyond the limits of his congregation derived from the fact that he was the Maggid’s disciple: “I have in my hand the authorization from the Admor [the honorific title of the Maggid], may his light shine, the righthand pillar, the rabbi of the sons of the diaspora, the preacher of righteousness of the community of Mezritsh.”4 This statement implies that the Maggid’s fame was extensive and that Aharon regarded himself as acting on the basis of his teacher’s public moral authority.
The sole letter of the Maggid of Mezritsh that has reached us, and whose authenticity is unquestioned, is addressed to two rabbis from Pinsk, Hayim of Wolpa and Eliezer Halevi, who were both his followers. Contrary to an idea that prevails in conventional scholarship, this letter has nothing to do with the battles between Hasidim and Mitnaggdim in the Pinsk community (actually, as we saw in chapter 3, in Pinsk they coexisted rather peacefully), but rather with tensions between some of the Maggid’s acolytes who were active in Pinsk and Karlin, whom the Maggid sought to reconcile. In his letter, the Maggid implores the two addressees to cooperate with his student Aharon: “I came to arouse them to have peace in their dwellings and work in unison together with our friend the honorable famed Rabbi Aharon, may his light shine, as it is known that his guidance is good in the eyes of the Lord.”5 The Maggid’s letter is based on the assumption that the local power struggle was between his associates; he is effectively authorizing Aharon of Karlin to act as his agent in the local circle.
As already noted, very little is known of Aharon of Karlin’s teachings. He appears to have endorsed asceticism, albeit within limits, as he wrote in a letter to his cousin:
What your father-in-law and mother-in-law say in opposition to your ascetic practices, fasting and ritual immersions should not concern you.… However, to multiply fasts, self-mortifications and immersions might encourage the Evil Inclination to distract you from your studies and your prayers by causing you to pray with weakened strength and a confused spirit. So, it would certainly be better to eat a little bit each day.6
This text demonstrates Aharon’s moderately positive view of asceticism, possibly derived from the Maggid and reflecting a compromise between old-style pietism and the antiasceticism of the Besht.
Even though Aharon was the first leader of the Karlin dynasty, which is active to this very day, he died young and probably gave no instructions for succession. His first successor as leader of the Hasidim in Lithuania was his student Shlomo (1738/1740–1792); his son Asher was a young boy at the time of his father’s death and was not even considered for the role. Under Shlomo, the influence of the court at Karlin spread into northern Belarus, especially once a leadership vacuum formed there when two of the leading tsaddikim, Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk and Avraham of Kalisk, immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1777, and before Shneur Zalman of Liady rose to prominence. Like Levi Yitshak in neighboring Pinsk, Shlomo was forced to leave Karlin in 1784 and to settle in Ludmir (Włodzimierz Wołyński) in Volhynia, where, according to Hasidic tradition, he met his death at the hands of a Russian soldier while standing in prayer in the local synagogue. During his residence there, he attracted students in this region too, and his influence spread even further. Like his teacher, Shlomo left no writings. Tradition relates that he perceived the tsaddik’s role as one of responsibility for the material welfare of his Hasidim, and that he gained public fame as a miracle worker. He is known for his practices of ecstatic prayer, characterized by loud cries, which were adopted by his followers and eventually became one of the defining features of the Karlin community of Hasidim for generations.
While Shlomo was wandering from place to place, Aharon’s son, Asher Perlov (1765–1826) settled in Zelekhev in Central Poland, where he formed relationships with the tsaddikim in the surrounding area and particularly with Israel Hopstein, the Maggid of Kozhenits (Kozienice); he returned to Karlin and restored the court there only around 1801. His return to Karlin also restored the scepter of Hasidic rule to the family of Aharon, thus forming a local dynasty that became the largest form of Hasidism in Polesia, although by then there were several other courts in this region that operated alongside that of Karlin.
The Karlin Hasidim thus became one of the dominant groups in Lithuania, alongside Chabad, which had concentrations of its Hasidim in numerous communities there. The Karlin dynasty also sent out offshoots whose courts functioned in parallel with the one in Karlin. One of the most important of these rebbes was Hayim Haykl, a student of the Maggid of Mezritsh and of Aharon of Karlin, who set up shop in Amdur (Indura), which is near Grodno. There is reason to believe that Hayim Haykl and several of his followers had previously been associated with the circle of the Vilna Gaon, before the latter came out vigorously against the Hasidim. The first Mitnagged polemical tract, Zmir Aritsim ve-Harbot Tsurim, names several Hasidim who had been active in Vilna and had raised the Gaon’s ire, among them a preacher named Hayim and his deputy Israel (Isser), who were compelled to confess to following Hasidism and were sentenced to lashings in the synagogue of Vilna. Once he became known for dishonoring the Gaon, Hayim was forced to leave Vilna and the local Hasidim were persecuted. The names of the Hasidim from Vilna reappear also in the later Mitnagged accounts about the court in Amdur, so presumably after they were expelled from Vilna, they settled in Amdur and resumed their Hasidic activity there. These sources hint that Hayim Haykl may have been a Lithuanian scholar who moved from the Gaon’s camp to that of the “new Hasidim.”
In Amdur, Hayim Haykl gained prominence as one of the most important tsaddikim in the Lithuanian realm. The first evidence for the existence of a local court is from 1773, yet Amdur’s main fame began in the early 1780s and lasted until Hayim Haykl’s death in 1787. Unlike other courts of the period, evidence has been preserved of its methods of operation. Our information comes mainly from the descriptions of the author of the anti-Hasidic tract Zimrat Am ha-Arets, who resided for a period in Amdur in order to find out more about Hasidism. He left us a rich, piquant, and detailladen account of the goings-on in the local Hasidic court. His tract resists the overheated rhetoric typical of polemical texts and functions more like historical or ethnographic testimony (this testimony is treated at length in chapter 9). In this account, Hayim Haykl emerges as a vigorous evangelist for the spread of Hasidism and as the founder of a developed court that had formal arrangements for hosting guests and providing meals to those who entered its gates. The anti-Hasidic author describes the emissaries—in his language mesitim (“corrupters, inciters”)—whom Hayim Haykl sent out to persuade young men to visit his court: “And they gathered to him riff-raff and he began to speak his doctrine before them and sent inciters to other communities.”7 Some of those emissaries are described by name; at times, they held additional functions in the court apparatus, such as servants, beadles, and assistants to the tsaddik. The Mitnagged author describes Hayim Haykl as a vulgar ignoramus, who would express himself crudely and display contempt for anyone who opposed him. Apparently, his Hasidim would confess their sins to him, and he would arrange absolution for them in exchange for the payments they made to the court, a system called pidyon that we will describe at length elsewhere.
Hayim Haykl’s writings remained in manuscript as possessions of the Karlin court and were printed only in 1891. In comparing his Hayim va-Hesed with the accounts of the Mitnaggdim, one is struck by the contradiction between the restrained and spiritual tone of his homilies and the wild “popular Hasidism” portrayed by his opponents. The image cultivated by the Mitnaggdim led Simon Dubnow to describe him as “a rebellious tsaddik, who hates the Rabbinate with all his heart.”8 His book, on the other hand, which includes several doctrines also found in the sermons of his teacher the Maggid of Mezritsh, gives an entirely different picture. We can also learn much about Hayim Hayke’s personality and thought from two letters; one he wrote to his Hasidim (printed in 1794), and the second written to his son (printed as an appendix to his book in 1891). In the letters, Hayim Haykl expresses his discomfort with the materialistic-hedonistic trends that were spreading among certain Hasidic circles, and instructs his students to restore the divine presence to her proper place by renouncing materiality and the pleasures of this world, a stance similar to that of Aharon of Karlin. He attacks those Hasidim who “made nearly the entire Torah easy for themselves so that it is permissible to eat and drink to excess,”9 thus employing Hasidic concepts to justify hedonism. Instead, emphasizing mankind’s distance from divinity, he preaches a more ascetic path as the means for bringing one closer to the transcendent God. Hayim Haykl appears to be responding in these remarks to the explicit criticism leveled by Mitnaggdim that the Hasidim “make every day a holiday.” In terms of asceticism and theology, Hayim Haykl appears to be close to the Gaon of Vilna, which might support the supposition that he was originally part of the latter’s circle.
On the other hand, his views on prayer place him squarely in the Hasidic camp: he rejected styles of prayer that are too quiet and introverted, and called on his Hasidim to conduct extroverted and ecstatic prayers. In his prescriptions for prayer, Hayim was responding to the different worship styles that were beginning to develop among the Hasidim in his day, and, like several other contemporaneous authors, he was actively engaged in shaping emerging Hasidic practice. His style of prayer corresponds closely to the descriptions of his court by the Mitnaggdim. David of Makow, the author of Shever Poshim, for example, describes the extravagant prayer in the court at Amdur, which was a point of pride for the adherents of the court. According to David, the Hasidim of Amdur, striving for constant joy, ended up in clownish behavior such as performing “somersaults” before and during prayer, as well as a sort of game involving mutual fondling. These eccentric and light-hearted modes of worship, carried out in the private sections of the tsaddik’s court or in the synagogue, were a direct result of Hayim Haykl’s theory of prayer.
Amdur is an example of a dynastic succession that did not last. One of the two sons of Hayim Haykl, Shmuel inherited his place as head of the local court and became one of the first tsaddikim who was the son of a tsaddik. He is mentioned in the writings of the Mitnagged Israel Löbel as one of the important tsaddikim of his day, influential primarily in the Grodno region. Yet with his death, circa 1798, the dynasty came to an end, a mere decade or so after it had begun.
Despite the end of the Amdur dynasty, other offshoots of Karlin Hasidism continued to exert an influence through some of its disciples. One of the students of Shlomo of Karlin, Mordechai of Lekovich (Lachowicze; 1742–1810) was the founder of an important Hasidic court that became the source of several influential dynasties in the nineteenth century. During the disputes between Shneur Zalman of Liady and Avraham of Kalisk, Mordechai took the side of Avraham, who had appointed him and Asher of Karlin to head their own funding body for the Hasidim in the Land of Israel, which was founded in 1805. In a letter sent by Avraham of Kalisk to the Hasidim of Lithuania in 1806, he encouraged them to continue to donate to his fund and urged them to stay faithful to Mordechai and his collection system. After the death of Mordechai, his son Noah of Lekovich and his student Moshe of Kobrin succeeded him as leaders each in his own court.
In comparison to the eastern parts of the Duchy of Lithuania, its western regions were almost devoid of Hasidim, a fact that seems not to have had anything to do with the success of the Mitnaggdim in driving them out. It is rather more likely that the German culture of the neighboring province of East Prussia and the Duchy of Courland influenced the intellectual elite to embrace the early Haskalah and Western culture generally. These modernizing ideas may have prevented wealthy individuals from supporting local Hasidic institutions that might have spread the movement’s message as they did in other regions such as the northeastern, despite the absence of strong Hasidic courts in those regions.
Chabad
A special place in the history of eighteenth-century Hasidism must be reserved for Chabad, a court distinguished by its singular intellectuality, doctrines, and organization. As we will see in section 2, it was one of the first to develop a strong dynastic imperative, which persisted until the death of its famed seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson in 1994. And, as will be discussed in section 3, even after the death of its last rebbe, Chabad persists as a powerful movement well into the twenty-first century.
We have already had occasion to meet Chabad’s founder, Shneur Zalman of Liady (also known as the Alter Rebbe or Old Rebbe; 1745–1812), in the context of the battles between the Mitnaggdim and Hasidim in Vilna. His two arrests and interrogations provide us with some of the first police reports on Hasidism. But Shneur Zalman’s importance lies primarily in his rigorous thought and his organizational abilities. One of the youngest disciples of the Maggid of Mezritsh, he was among the most important and original Hasidic leaders of his day, whose personality left an impact on the entire movement. In addition to his literary and organizational activity, there is a wealth of information about his life and thinking, which allows for a detailed portrait of his personality compared to his contemporaries. The Alter Rebbe was not just the founder of an important Hasidic dynasty, but also one of the shapers of Hasidism’s ethos for generations to come.
Shneur Zalman’s rise to leadership was, in fact, the result of fortuitous circumstances. After the Hasidic leaders from Belarus, Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Avraham of Kalisk, and Israel of Polotsk immigrated to the Holy Land in 1777, they tried to lead their followers who remained by means of letters (see the concluding section of this chapter on Hasidism in the Land of Israel). Only after this method proved a failure did they consider anointing a few of the leaders still resident in their home regions of Eastern Europe, among them Shneur Zalman, to serve as substitute leaders, providing advice and spiritual guidance to the Hasidim, while the tsaddikim in the Holy Land would continue to officially hold the reins of leadership. Shneur Zalman was approached with this proposal in 1785. At the time, he was already known as a scholar of great spiritual standing, one of the leading interpreters of the teachings of the Maggid of Mezritsh, and as a figure possessing great organizational ability. After careful consideration, Shneur Zalman finally agreed to take on the yoke of leadership. While at first there were some who did not accept him, as of 1788, with the death of Menahem Mendel in the Land of Israel, he acquired the status of more than just a local leader.
From the outset, Shneur Zalman’s style of leadership differed significantly from the doctrine formulated, for example, by Elimelekh of Lizhensk, who saw the tsaddik as an intermediary between his Hasidim and God, responsible for both the spiritual and material well-being of his Hasidim (see the discussion of Elimelekh in chapter 6). Shneur Zalman, by contrast and like his teacher Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, disapproved of the notion that the tsaddik was responsible for providing the material needs of his Hasidim. Abjuring miracle-working, the stock-in-trade of other tsaddikim as well as pre-Hasidic ba’alei shem, he believed that the tsaddik’s role was primarily to be an educator and a spiritual guide. It was possible, he believed, to spread the message of Hasidism, despite its esotericism and elitism, among less-educated followers. Each individual Hasid had to use what the rebbe taught to contend with life’s challenges. He explicitly articulated his desire to avoid any involvement in the daily life of the many Hasidim who frequented his court in a letter he wrote to his adherents in 1793:
Was there ever anything like this before? And where did you find this custom in any of the books of the early or the late sages, that it is customary and acceptable to ask for practical advice as if it were religious, about what to do regarding worldly affairs …? For this was only for the real prophets who stood before the Israelites … because truly all the material needs of man, with the exception of Torah teaching and fear of God, can be obtained only through prophecy: bread is not dispensed by sages.10
Since he considered himself a scholar and not a prophet, he expected his Hasidim not to turn to him in practical matters that might involve working miracles. While he was willing to give them advice regarding their faith and spiritual growth, it was too much of an emotional hardship for him to listen to their personal problems:
It is very difficult for me to write to you because of the great bitterness which is so ruining my life due to those who come to tell me their sorrows. I can’t bear the vexation and how it distracts my attention from the worship of God when I have to devote my thoughts and my mind completely to their problems in order to respond appropriately.11
His adherents—who were familiar with the workings of other tsaddikim—at times forced him to accede to their demands. Despite his reluctance to involve himself in the lives of his Hasidim, he had to find a middle ground that would accommodate the expectations of his adherents in accordance with the customary practice of his day.
Shneur Zalman’s interactions with his Hasidim took place at his court, which was first situated in Liozna and later in Liady. Like other tsaddikim of the time, he held private meetings with his Hasidim called yehidut. Public sermons were also major events in which Hasid and tsaddik had direct contact. During yehidut, the Hasid would open his heart to the tsaddik and lay bare his spiritual difficulties and failings and Shneur Zalman would offer him ways to restore his faith. He would give the Hasid individual guidance based on his Hasidic teachings according to the individual’s personality and intellectual abilities.
The numbers of Hasidim streaming to Shneur Zalman’s court in the early 1790s for an intimate encounter with the tsaddik forced him to adopt organizational measures that were unheard of in any other court at the time. As opposed to the prevailing tendency of tsaddikim to encourage increasing numbers of Hasidim to visit their courts, Shneur Zalman limited such visits (a similar practice existed in Bratslav). These measures prefigure how later leaders of large Hasidic movements would regulate the relationship between the central court and the periphery, represented by local Hasidic minyanim in their own communities. Shneur Zalman published several sets of regulations, the earliest dated 1793, in which he defined two types of Hasidim: yeshanim (veterans), who had already met with the rebbe in private, even if just once, and hadashim (newcomers), who had not yet met with him. The yeshanim were permitted to visit the court only once a year on the specific Sabbath assigned to them. Three Sabbaths of the month were reserved for hadashim. These regulations were designed to increase the number of new adherents while allowing the tsaddik time for intimate meetings with every person who came to the court. The Hasidim, however, had difficulty abiding by these restrictions, which led the rebbe to warn those who thought to disobey him: “[S]top the people traveling to our camp, and warn them not to be the reason for my discontent or to be made unhappy because their travel is not at the appointed time … doubly and stringently warn them that they not disobey.”12
Despite his repeated entreaties and warnings, there were some Hasidim who violated the regulations and came to the court at unassigned times. As a result, Shneur Zalman was forced to update the regulations repeatedly. He also ordered his local representatives, called gabba’im, to issue the pilgrims permits that confirmed that they had not visited the court for a year. As the number of pilgrims increased, he canceled yehidut for all the older Hasidim and appointed underlings at the court who were authorized to answer the Hasidim’s questions and mediate between them and the tsaddik. The newer regulations show Shneur Zalman’s desire to be personally attentive to his adherents, but also the enormous burden this type of leadership imposed. As the Chabad movement grew and cast its net over a wide geographical area, the tsaddik necessarily grew more distant from his Hasidim.
We do not have exact data regarding the number of visitors to Shneur Zalman’s court, but based on various sources it is possible to estimate that on the holy days set aside for general gatherings of Hasidim, numbers reached as high as 1,000 to 1,500, while on most Sabbaths there were several hundred at the court. Those with means found lodging in the homes of Jews living in the town. The poor ate with well-to-do householders on the Sabbath and at the soup kitchen set up inside the court during the week. To finance the poor at the court, money was collected from all the Hasidim, with additional funds drawn from pidyonot (monetary gifts, singular: pidyon) given by the wealthier visitors, though giving was not mandatory and amounts varied. As Shneur Zalman himself noted, the upkeep of the court and his family did not come from pidyonot, but rather from the ma’amadot (singular: ma’amad)—the regular annual contributions of the Hasidim collected by a system of emissaries. After the court relocated to Liady, the poor were given monetary allotments to help pay for their food and lodging during their stay, funded by donations that Shneur Zalman’s Hasidim contributed based on each person’s estimated income. The monetary system of the court covered the needs of the permanent residents—in other words, of Shneur Zalman as well as his extended family (see chapter 9). The family lived in a large house, where the rebbe also met privately with his Hasidim. Upkeep of the rebbe’s residence and other buildings at the court, including buildings for worship, study, and Hasidic gatherings required considerable sums, in addition to the allowances that needed to be paid to various other court functionaries as well as to service providers. Besides the income from donations and ma’amadot, Shneur Zalman received income as an arbiter of business disputes as well as a salary from his appointment as an official maggid for the Liozna community. In addition, his wife Sterna conducted a trade in grain and managed a tavern in the town market square.
The housing, supervision, and regulation of visitors’ stays at the court necessitated a network of intermediaries that included family members and individuals who were especially close to Shneur Zalman. His son Dov Ber and his disciple Aharon Halevi, for example, were authorized to answer questions posed by Hasidim in matters of Hasidic teachings and religious guidance, and others, such as his son Hayim Avraham, handled the everyday affairs of the Hasidim, but they all acted in his name and with his authority.
Besides Shneur Zalman’s personal contact with his Hasidim in the courts in Liozna and Liady, he created a long-distance network to govern the Chabad Hasidim in their various communities throughout greater Lithuania. These relationships were based on correspondence with the court, of which many letters survive. Some of these letters were intended for the mentoring of a specific Hasid, an extension of the practice of yehidut, but many letters were addressed to the Hasidim in general or to the Hasidim of a particular community and included general guidance in addition to specific instructions. Messengers from the court delivered the letters, which the Hasidim studied as sacred texts. Noteworthy in the letters was Shneur Zalman’s authoritative instruction regarding prayer, which he viewed as the focus of the religious life of the Hasid. In addition to these letters, Shneur Zalman delegated some of his authority to selected individuals who functioned as heads of local minyanim. These local functionaries collected donations for Hasidim in the Land of Israel, enforced obedience to the tsaddik’s regulations, gave advice to Hasidim in need of guidance, and delivered lessons in the teachings of Chabad.
Like other tsaddikim, but even more so, Shneur Zalman’s actions were not limited to his Hasidim or just to spiritual matters; he also dealt with broader communal affairs. He was uniquely positioned to act on behalf of Jews in Russia generally after the partitions of Poland because of his dominant leadership, large constituency, and the organizational network he had created (his dynastic successors would continue this tradition). Although part of this activity was probably kept secret, some sources show that he helped Jews who were in trouble with the authorities. For example, he organized a drive to release some thirty Jews who were imprisoned and in danger of being expelled, probably to Siberia, after quarreling with the noble owner of their estate in the first years of the nineteenth century. The collected funds enabled him to finance the several shtadlanim (lobbyists or intercessors) who worked to convince the authorities to release these Jews. This effort was crowned with success, although it is not known what measures were necessary to make it happen.
On another occasion, he waged a campaign to help tens of thousands of Jews facing expulsion from their villages toward the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century. He left his court and traveled to Ukraine in order to collect money for this purpose. Shneur Zalman’s activities reflect the development of Hasidism into a significant civic entity that increasingly took on some of the functions formerly performed by the kehalim. He seems to have operated with the conviction that he was responsible for the entire Jewish population in Russia, thus setting the stage for Chabad’s later public activity, which culminated with the last rebbe whose influence spanned the entire Jewish world.
One of Shneur Zalman’s primary activities, which went back to his initial appointment as a tsaddik, involved collecting funds for Hasidim in the Land of Israel, a role that subsequent Chabad rebbes would also play. From the beginning of his leadership, he worked intensively on managing this campaign, spurred his followers to regularly contribute their share, and closely followed the work of the emissaries who were charged with collecting the donations from every Chabad community.
Chabad’s Teachings
In Chabad Hasidism, the sermon given by the tsaddik is called divrei elohim hayim (literally: “the words of the living God”). Occurring about ten times a year at Shneur Zalman’s court, this collective name given the sermons suggests their theological import. Shneur Zalman’s sermons relied deeply on Kabbalistic literature, which he saw as the foundation for the Hasid’s worship of God and whose secrets he desired to reveal to the public. Many of the sermons were compiled in two volumes, Torah Or and Likkutei Torah, which were printed only several decades after his death, with additional teachings appearing in the series titled Ma’amarei ha-Admor ha-Zaken. The process of publication began with Shneur Zalman enlisting his brother Yehuda Leib of Yanovitch, a recognized scholar in his own right, to write down his oral sermons after he had delivered them. Yehuda Leib turned the complex content of the oral teaching into a sermon written in Hebrew. His Hebrew texts were the basis for the printed compilations of Shneur Zalman’s teachings, but many other versions, some in Yiddish, of the sermons circulated among Hasidim in various congregations. According to a Chabad custom, one way the teachings were preserved and disseminated was that hozrim, Hasidim with exceptional memories who could hear a sermon once and repeat it word for word, would recite what they had heard to Hasidim who were either not present or who wished to hear it again. Sometimes the sermon would be written down based on this recitation. According to Chabad tradition, Dov Ber, the son of Shneur Zalman, and Shneur Zalman’s leading disciple, Aharon ha-Levi, customarily held lessons at the court that consisted of repeating and interpreting a sermon for those who found it difficult to understand.
The transcription of these sermons served as the background for Shneur Zalman’s most important literary endeavor, the Sefer Likkutei Amarim, more familiarly known as Sefer ha-Tanya, or Tanya, a work that was unprecedented in the history of the Hasidic book. The stated reason for printing the Tanya was that many corrupted and unauthorized copies of the rebbe’s teachings circulated among his adherents. This book, the main part of which was first published in 1796, countered the defective versions of the teachings with a thematic, orderly presentation of Shneur Zalman’s doctrine. It eventually became one of the most influential books in the history of Hasidism, and was studied not only by Chabad adherents, but by other Hasidim as well.
While other contemporary Hasidic books consist of homiletic texts, often arranged according to the weekly Torah reading, or instruction manuals (hanhagot), the Tanya is a systematic work organized to give the individual Hasid spiritual guidance based on Kabbalistic foundations. Shneur Zalman sought to create a unique way of worshipping God grounded in the mystical ideals of early Hasidism. He spelled out the purpose of his book in a letter he sent to his Hasidim around the time of the book’s printing:
Listening to ethical teachings and seeing and reading them in books are not the same thing. For the reader reads according to his own way and mind and according to his own mental abilities and thinking.… However, since there is no more time to respond individually to questions in detail, and there is also the matter of forgetting, therefore I wrote all the answers to all the questions so that they will be clear for everyone. And there will be no more pushing and shoving for yehidut with me, because in these pages will be found comfort for the soul and good advice for every difficult thing in the worship of God … and whoever has difficulty understanding the advice from these pages, let him speak with the scholars in his town and they will explain it to him.13
The Tanya was therefore a response to the clamoring of Shneur Zalman’s Hasidim for private audiences. Like the system of local representatives he set up to give advice to his Hasidim on his behalf, his magnum opus was designed for his followers to live a Hasidic life independent of direct contact with their rebbe.
At the same time, the book was not intended for the uneducated but rather for Hasidim knowledgeable in Torah study, familiar with Kabbalistic language, and able to meet the demanding spiritual challenges presented in the book. The main portion of the book, which was expanded with additional sections over time, is called Sefer shel Beinonim (Book for the “Average” or “Intermediary Person”). The beinoni is neither a tsaddik who has successfully overcome his Evil Inclination with his godly soul, nor an evildoer who purposely transgresses the Torah’s commandments. Outwardly, the average person looks exactly like the tsaddik, never disobeying a single commandment, but inwardly, he is in a constant battle between good and evil. This intermediate level is the most demanding because the war against emotions and desires is unrelenting. Yet every person has the ability to embrace this status: “for every one can choose to be beinoni at any time and at any moment.”14
The category of beinoni includes “the simplest of the simple and [unintentional] sinners … and even if they are simpletons and ignorant and do not know the greatness of God.” Even the lower levels of Jewish society are able to aspire to the status of beinoni, to appear like the righteous and despise the pleasures of this world. Throughout the book, Shneur Zalman offers the beinoni a plethora of advice on how to prevail in the mental battle raging within him. The main weapon that he can use for his intellect to conquer his emotions is prayer, during which the Hasid gazes upon God’s greatness and embraces the religious intentionality that must accompany performance of all the commandments.
At the center of the book is Shneur Zalman’s interpretation of the Kabbalistic doctrine of the soul and its implications for the moral-religious world of the Hasid. Based on the writings of Isaac Luria’s principal disciple, Hayim Vital, Shneur Zalman presents the theory of the two souls that inhabit the Jewish body: the animalistic, which originates in the sitra ahra (“other” or “evil” side) or the yetser ha-ra (“evil instinct”) from which man’s vitality and passion originate, and the divine soul, the godly element that every Jew possesses according to his spiritual level (Shneur Zalman’s intended audience consists only of male Jews). The inner world of the Jew is torn between these two souls, the sacred on the one hand and the klippah (material shell) on the other. Shneur Zalman turns the Lurianic doctrine of the soul into a psychological theory of the struggle between the intellect and the emotions. The goal of worship for the Hasid is to impose the rule of the intellect, or cognition, identified with three of the higher Kabbalistic sefirot—hokhmah, binah, and da’at (wisdom, insight, and knowledge, whose acronym is Chabad)—on the “heart,” the seat of physical desires, which are identified with the lower sefirot (called the middot, which represent the human emotions or qualities). Resolving this monumental battle between the two souls is the central challenge for the Hasid to whom Shneur Zalman addressed his teachings, both oral and written.
Shneur Zalman redirected the Hasidic notion of devekut from an experience of mystical ecstasy to normative Torah study and fulfillment of the commandments. In his teaching, these duties are the clearest expression of God’s presence in the world. He reserved the ecstatic state attained through mystical contemplation only for certain elevated individuals. Experiencing love and fear of God is not a goal in itself, but is rather intended to direct the study of Torah and fulfillment of the commandments to the higher realms. By restricting devekut in this way, Shneur Zalman moderated some of the teachings of early Hasidism. As we have already observed, the Besht taught that one should elevate “alien thoughts” (mahshavot zarot) based on the concept of divine immanence. Shneur Zalman contradicts this teaching by arguing that the beinoni should not attempt this mystical procedure, but rather view such thoughts as an opportunity to overcome one’s desires. One must ignore those stray thoughts that enter one’s mind while praying and suppress them:
Do not give any answer or make any claim against the alien thought, because one who wrestles with a bastard becomes one … one should just pretend as if he does not know and does not hear the thoughts that have fallen upon him and he will remove them from his mind and add bravery to the power of his intent … and let him not be so foolish as to uplift the alien thoughts, as is well known.”15
Shneur Zalman limits the Besht’s mystical practice only to tsaddikim. As opposed to the teaching of the Besht and some of his disciples to avoid feelings of sadness, Shneur Zalman viewed such feelings favorably when they awaken the beinoni to repair his moral failings. At the same time, he also emphasized that study and prayer should be undertaken with joy. He thus tended toward a moderate kind of asceticism that partially contradicted the Besht’s teachings.
In the second part of Sefer ha-Tanya, titled “Sha’ar ha-Yihud ve-ha-Emunah” (The Gate of Unity and Belief), Shneur Zalman presents the theosophic system underlying the religious practice discussed in the first part. In these latter chapters, he presents his interpretation of the Lurianic myth of creation. Scholars are divided on the extent to which Shneur Zalman’s theosophic system was a continuation of the mystical theories of his teacher the Maggid of Mezritsh, or whether he deviated from the Maggid by turning the mystical quest for devekut into a purely psychological process. There is also a debate whether Shneur Zalman espoused “acosmism”—that is, the belief, associated with the Maggid, that the material world is an illusion and that God is everywhere. Either way, Shneur Zalman taught that the purpose of creation is for man to bring divinity into the world. But what for other Hasidic thinkers might be accomplished through such mystical actions as raising “alien thoughts,” for Shneur Zalman was much more conventional and normative: Torah study and performance of the commandments are the way the Hasid must bring God into the world and commune with Him.
As we have already seen in our earlier discussion of opposition to Hasidism, Shneur Zalman found himself on the front lines of polemics with the Mitnaggdim. Even after the conflict had gone on for a generation, in his letters to his adherents, who were fighting for the right to establish Hasidic prayer groups in their own communities, he counseled the kind of self-restraint that the Maggid had outlined for his disciples in his final days. As we have also seen, Shneur Zalman paid a heavy personal price in the form of denunciations to the Russian authorities and two subsequent imprisonments. On May 8, 1798, an anonymous informer, who was evidently a Jew from Vilna, wrote the following to the tsarist authorities:
In the region of Belarus, in the town of Liozny, there is one R. Zalman son of Baruch, who conspires and gathers up young Jewish ruffians, intentionally draws up lists to help the revolution taking place in France, and they do nothing else while they are waiting, living lives outside the framework of the law, filled with various pleasures and luxury, drinking and eating and wandering around aimlessly, making others go astray, and they are also thieves and bribe-takers.16
As a description of Shneur Zalman’s activities, this diatribe couldn’t have been farther from the mark. As we have just seen, indulging in “pleasures and luxuries” was the antithesis of his teaching. And, as would become clear during the Napoleonic Wars, his hostility to the French Revolution led him to declarations of allegiance to the tsar.
The investigation initiated by the governor of Vilna exposed Shneur Zalman’s involvement in collecting and sending funds to the Hasidim in the Holy Land, ruled at the time by the Ottomans, Russia’s traditional enemy. Investigators were not able to glean much information about the mysterious new cult, but the results of the findings were sufficient for the tsar to order the arrest of Shneur Zalman, and he was brought to St. Petersburg for questioning in early October 1798. The list of questions the investigators asked him and his handwritten answers in Hebrew were preserved. Shneur Zalman undoubtedly calculated his responses to what he thought his Russian interlocutors would find exculpatory. However, while there are many ways to express the truth, outright lying would have been highly risky. Therefore, a critical reading of his responses can significantly contribute to our understanding of Shneur Zalman’s view of Hasidism in general and himself as a leader.
The investigators evidently regarded Shneur Zalman as the leader of all the Hasidim and demanded to know whether Hasidism was a new religion, whether he had made contact with revolutionary forces beyond Russia’s borders, and whether he was transferring funds abroad. In his reply, Shneur Zalman explained the Hasidic principles of worship of God, while denying the importance of the changes made by Hasidism to traditional Judaism. He presented the Hasidic ethos as the correct expression of the traditional religion and the Mitnaggdim as a vocal and militant minority who did not express the will of the majority. According to him, the Hasidic tsaddik is not a new type of religious leader, but a traditional maggid (preacher) who puts great emphasis on the value of prayer: “And therefore now other maggidim were added [to those already in existence], whom those who hate us refer to as ‘new rabbis’ … because they [the old maggidim] do not require purity of the heart and prayer with intention.”17 Shneur Zalman himself served both as tsaddik and maggid, and apparently saw the two roles as really one.
In his reply, Shneur Zalman discussed the diversity within the branches of Hasidism. He claimed that there were various styles of preaching among different tsaddikim, and each one of these adopted a distinct method of leadership. He himself, so he claimed, enjoyed great success because his own sermons contained sophisticated theological notions that were not to be found in much of his contemporaries’ courts. He believed that jealousy over his success and his moral honesty caused him to be denounced, incarcerated, and investigated:
I did not know what my crimes were, for which I was placed under guard. If it is for my sermons, I do not receive satisfaction from those who travel to me, for they do not give me even one cent when they come to our camp [that is, court] … and if the almighty Tsar is suspicious [that] perhaps [Hasidism] is a new religion, Heaven forbid, may he command with all his mercy and goodness to demand an investigation of the many wise and intelligent Jews who have heard my sermons … and they will all testify that all my sermons are about purity of the heart for God and for humankind.18
It was, of course, not true that Shneur Zalman’s Hasidim paid him nothing when they came to his court. He listed his various occupations and incomes in order to fend off allegations of corruption. He also tried to convince his interrogators that including Kabbalistic teachings in his sermons was not unusual, and that all his knowledge came from canonical religious books. He also said that he did not deal in magic or practical Kabbalah. Furthermore, he diminished the importance of the whole enterprise of collecting funds for those living in the Holy Land, portraying his role in it as nothing more than just another contributor.
On November 16, 1798 (19 Kislev in the Hebrew calendar), after the arrest and interrogation of additional Hasidim and mutual denunciations to the government by Hasidim and Mitnaggdim in Vilna province, the tsar decided that Hasidism did not pose any threat to the public or the state. He released Shneur Zalman and the other Hasidim, but also authorized an ongoing investigation into their affairs. Shneur Zalman interpreted his release from his month-long imprisonment as divine intervention affirming him as the representative of Hasidism in general. He also felt it to be acknowledgment by the government of the legitimacy of the movement’s activities in Russia. In Chabad tradition, the date of Shneur Zalman’s release from prison became a holiday known as the “Holiday of Redemption.” Adherents viewed this as a turning point in the history of Hasidism that amplified the teachings of Shneur Zalman and his Chabad successors.
However, Shneur Zalman’s difficulties did not end there. Barely two years later, he was rearrested following another informant’s report, this time by Rabbi Avigdor ben Hayim of Pinsk. The Hasidim had forced Avigdor’s removal from his rabbinical post in Pinsk, and in spring 1800, he filed a complaint to the tsar in which he portrayed Hasidism as a continuation of Sabbatianism. An investigation by the local officials refuted this allegation and found no fault with the Hasidim. But Shneur Zalman was arrested nevertheless on November 9, 1800, and sent once again to the capital for interrogation. In this instance, too, his investigation included his written answers to questions prepared ahead of time by Rabbi Avigdor himself. Some of the questions touched on matters of Hasidic doctrine and on various alleged practices of Hasidism, such as their wild behavior, blind obedience to the will of the tsaddikim, disloyalty to the government, and the like. In his responses, Shneur Zalman tried to refute the claims made by Avigdor by interpreting certain passages from the Hasidic books and defending the collection of funds for the Jews living in the Land of Israel. He also defended the conduct of the tsaddikim in his day. This investigation also ended without finding anything after the authorities understood that what was at stake was an internal quarrel between two factions of Jewish society. Shneur Zalman was released from arrest after eighteen days.
The conflict with the Mitnaggdim offered Hasidim their first direct encounter with higher Russian authorities. As the dominant leader of the Hasidim of White Russia and Lithuania, Shneur Zalman found himself in the eye of the storm, but eventually succeeded quite well in representing Hasidism. He managed to curtail the persecution of the movement by the authorities, to contain the rift that had formed between Hasidim and Mitnaggdim, and to offer Hasidim in general and Chabad Hasidim in particular an opportunity to unite as a group.
Beyond the conflict with the Mitnaggdim, Shneur Zalman was involved in the first recorded internal conflict in the history of Hasidism between himself and Avraham of Kalisk, leader of the Hasidim in Tiberias. This dispute, mentioned earlier, erupted after decades of friendship and close cooperation between the two men and prompted other Hasidic leaders to take sides in the quarrel. The opening salvo was a letter sent by Avraham to Shneur Zalman in 1798 in which he sharply criticized Shneur Zalman’s methods of leadership and theological teachings:
I am not content with your presentation of the teachings of our great and holy Rebbe of Mezritsh, which are the teachings of the Holy Besht, by dressing them up in the terminology of the Holy Ari, of blessed memory … the custom of our rabbis was to be circumspect in what they said in front of most of the people, practically all of them. They rather used the ethical path to bring people into the faith of our Sages.”19
Avraham, who saw himself as responsible for Hasidism in White Russia before leaving for the Holy Land, accused Shneur Zalman of deviating from the path of their predecessors by popularizing esoteric Kabbalistic teachings that, he argued, would have been better kept the preserve of a small and elite group of Hasidim. He challenged Shneur Zalman’s leadership by directly and publicly addressing all the Hasidim in White Russia and Lithuania. He also attacked Shneur Zalman’s rational theology and called instead for worship of God through strengthening faith in the Sages. The controversy also had an economic dimension: the system of collecting monies for the Hasidim in the Land of Israel for which Shneur Zalman was in charge. Avraham blamed him for inefficiency and embezzlement of funds and sought to institute an alternative system that would be under his exclusive control.
During this tortuous public conflict, Shneur Zalman and Avraham traded written barbs that served only to increase the enmity between the two. That other tsaddikim also chose to side either with Shneur Zalman or Avraham only exacerbated the dispute and made evident the growing differentiation between Hasidic groups. Among those siding with Shneur Zalman was Levi Yitshak of Bardichev, while Barukh of Mezhbizh, the grandson of the Besht, stood at the head of Avraham’s camp. In 1805, together with some Hasidic leaders from Lithuania, Barukh founded a new fundraising organization for the Hasidic community living in the Land of Israel. But as a result of this dispute, Shneur Zalman’s status as the independent leader of the Hasidim in Belarus rose, and he even gained recognition among many in the region as the principal legitimate heir of the Maggid of Mezritsh.
The course of Shneur Zalman’s life changed dramatically with Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in June 1812. According to later Chabad tradition lacking any historicity, Shneur Zalman supported the victory of Tsar Alexander and regarded Napoleon as a spiritual danger for the Jews of Russia. According to this tradition, in supporting Alexander, he may have seen the possibility for improvement of the civil status of the Jews in the empire without harming their religion. However, since this tradition reflects later Chabad attitudes toward the Russian state, it is difficult to infer from it what was Shneur Zalman’s real stance on the Napoleonic War.
When Napoleon’s forces entered Lithuania, Shneur Zalman started to formulate plans for escape deep into Russian territory. With the advance of the French army, he undertook to spy for the Russians by collecting information from his emissaries and sending it on to the military commanders, for which he received an award of recognition. As the Russian army retreated, Shneur Zalman fled with his family, with the help of generals with whom he had been in contact. They undertook a grueling journey during which Shneur Zalman had visions about the progress of the war, as his son Dov Ber reported in a long letter that included a description of Shneur Zalman’s activities in his last days. The difficulties of the journey severely damaged his health, and he died far from his court and his Hasidim in December 1812. He was buried in Gaditch.
Hasidism in the Land of Israel
As is related in Shivhei ha-Besht, the Besht attempted to immigrate to the Land of Israel, but was blocked on his way there and returned to Ukraine. The Besht’s brother-in-law, Gershon of Kutow, did succeed in arriving there in 1748 and maintained a correspondence with him from his new home. Likewise, the Besht’s disciple, Ya’akov Yosef of Polnoye, set out for the Land of Israel taking with him the Holy Epistle that the Besht had sent to his brother-in-law; yet, like the Besht, he too was unsuccessful in reaching his destination. A few familiar individuals from the Besht’s circle, including Nahman of Horodenka and Menahem Mendel of Premishlan, did complete the journey and settled in the Galilee in 1764.
However, we can speak of the existence of a genuine community of Hasidim in the Land of Israel only after the emigration of a group of Hasidim in 1777 from White Russia (and hence the reason for including the Land of Israel in this chapter of our book). This band of immigrants, led by the students of the Maggid—Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk, Avraham of Kalisk, and the lesser known Israel of Polotsk—numbered some three hundred individuals, although only a few dozen were actual Hasidim—that is, formally affiliated with one of the rebbes. The core of the immigrants set forth from White Russia in February of 1777; on the way to the Black Sea, in the districts of southern Poland (Podolia and Volhynia), isolated individuals and groups joined them, some of them impoverished people who placed a heavy economic burden on the emigrants. They embarked at the Black Sea for Constantinople and from there left for the Land of Israel on three ships, one of which, with eighty-three Jews on board, sank off of the Crimean Peninsula with only three survivors. The remainder of the immigrants reached the shores of the Land toward the end of the summer of 1777. They settled at first in Safed, but nearly all moved to Tiberias in 1781 on account of the hostile relations that developed with the members of Safed’s Sephardic community. The Hasidic community in the Land of Israel operated as a distant branch of the mother-community in Eastern Europe, conducting itself on the basis of the religious and social principles that it brought from its lands of origin.
As we have seen, Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk and Avraham of Kalisk took steps to sustain the relationship with their Hasidim in the Old Country. During the first year after arrival, they attempted a remote-leadership approach based mainly on letters sent to the entire group or to certain individuals and communities; oral messages too were conveyed via emissaries who linked the residents of the Land of Israel with their mother-communities. Menahem Mendel wrote as follows in 1781:
It is known to my dearest and beloved friends that I am in the Holy Land like one of the officers of the state who has been sent to the royal palace. Nothing for the remedy of the state in any matters, in both body and soul, is hidden from me. In particular [I am mindful of] my beloved friends for all their affairs, who are always with me as if they were truly standing here before me and who are engraved on the tablet of my heart, both in my prayers and when I seclude myself in my home.… Not a day has passed in which the memory of them has not arisen before me favorably.20
The personal bonds already formed between the tsaddik and his Hasidim were supposed to compensate for the geographic distance and to persist even after the tsaddik had settled in the Land of Israel, for he was then empowered to concern himself even more actively, spiritually, with all their needs. A considerable portion of the letters of the leaders from Tiberias that have come down to us are devoted to instructions on matters of divine worship. In this way, the tsaddikim sought to preserve their influence on the nature of Hasidism in White Russia and also to guarantee economic support for the immigrants.
Yet this attempt to lead from afar did not yield happy results. The repeated calls of leaders to their Hasidim to resist turning to other tsaddikim in Volhynia and Lithuania are evidence that the Hasidim were dissatisfied with their absent tsaddikim and did not keep faith with them, but rather craved more tangible and accessible alternatives. Some of them turned to Shlomo of Karlin, whose reach extended also into White Russia, and to other tsaddikim. The pleas of Menahem Mendel and Avraham claiming that this was a waste of time and a deviation from their Hasidic principles were to no avail. Gradually, the leaders began to recognize their failure, and called for their Hasidim to turn to local figures instead of traveling to distant tsaddikim. Among those they recommended were Israel of Polotsk (who had returned to White Russia to raise funds on behalf of the Hasidim in the Land of Israel), Yisahkar Ber (a maggid in Lubavitch), and, as we have already learned, Shneur Zalman of Liady. These three were expected to act with the authorization of Menahem Mendel and Avraham and to guide the local Hasidim, without however turning into leaders on their own. When a group of Hasidim in Russia launched an initiative in 1784 to import an “alien” tsaddik who would settle among them, Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk vigorously rejected that overture, and warned them that turning to a tsaddik with whom they were not closely familiar could well lead them into spiritual decline: “There is a genuine—God forbid—possibility of departing from the good path, mercy upon us.… Even if someone ended up becoming your rabbi, all his ways will not give you protection and you shall lose the path of God.”21 In the end, the initiative was withdrawn, yet the leaderless state of affairs did not last long. The leadership vacuum, as we have seen, was ultimately filled by Shneur Zalman of Liady.
The main challenge facing the new Hasidic population in the Land of Israel was to secure their economic existence within the halukah (literally: “distribution”) system. Jewish settlement survived on charitable donations collected in the Diaspora communities and distributed among the various groups residing in the Land of Israel. Even before their emigration, the leaders had arranged for economic support from the Hasidim of White Russia, yet this arrangement was insufficient to meet the needs of all of the immigrants, some of whom were indigent. In a letter sent by Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk to the leaders of the community in Vilna in 1778, he describes the difficult conditions and the poverty affecting the immigrants:
[I am] here in my poverty, even though I have with the aid of God prepared sufficiently to provide for myself and those with me, some of whom are persons of ability and good heart, yet the power of patience has failed and it is beyond bearing, for we have already expended many hundreds on them, since [as the Talmud says] “a hole cannot be filled with its own dirt.”22
Indeed, nearly all the letters of Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk and the Rabbi of Kalisk contain, to one extent or another, descriptions of the high cost of living and the difficulties of daily life in the Land of Israel, and urge the people of the Diaspora to support them. In addition to the daily hardships, an outbreak of plague in 1785–1786 in the Galilee further imperiled the economic and physical existence of the immigrants.
The Hasidim organized themselves into kollelim (singular: kollel), which served the local community as organizational institutions and replaced their own traditional communal structure. The various kollelim represented the communities of origin of the immigrants, where the funds for “distribution” had been collected and sent via emissaries to the Land of Israel; these became the main power brokers in the settlement. Each kollel had its appointed patron (nasi), a famous tsaddik residing in Eastern Europe who maintained the distribution list of Hasidim residing in the Galilee, which was updated continuously. The first kollel of Hasidim was called the Reisen Kollel (Reisen is an area in northeastern Belarus today). In 1781, Ya’akov of Smolany was appointed chief officer of fundraising for the Land of Israel; he worked under the patronage of Shneur Zalman of Liady, who in 1785 began to serve as the kollel’s nasi.
With the increase in numbers of Hasidic immigrants coming from Volhynia, among them several well-known figures (including Ya’akov Shimshon of Shepetovka [Szepetówka], Yisahkar Ber of Zasław, and Yisahkar Ber of Zlotshev), conflicts broke out between the immigrants from Volhynia and Poland on one side and those from Lithuania and White Russia on the other. In 1796, the former formed a new kollel, the Volhynia Kollel (called also the Hasidic Kollel); in a short time, it became the largest and wealthiest of the Hasidic kollelim in the Land of Israel, with its center in Safed. Oversight of the affairs of “Holy Land Funds” in the Volhynia region was taken on by Mordechai of Neskhiz, with Ya’akov Yitshak Horowitz (the Seer of Lublin), Avraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apt, and Israel Hopstein (the Maggid of Kozhenits) working along with him in the philanthropic effort.
Why, we might ask, did these Hasidim immigrate to the Land of Israel, given the difficult conditions of living there? Did they believe that Redemption was near and that their immigration would hasten the coming of the Messiah? Or was theirs a more “traditional” immigration in quest of the special sanctity and prayers possible in the Holy Land? Perhaps the persecutions of Mitnaggdim were what led them to try and establish a new center in the Land of Israel? Various scholars have addressed this issue, which is of course closely tied to the question of the place of messianism in Hasidism in general. Some view the immigration of the Hasidim as an expression of messianic hopes, which are also found in the teachings of early Hasidism (see chapter 7). Others reject this stance because of the silence of the sources, most of which contain no hint of such a motive, and instead view the Hasidic migrations as part of the wider phenomenon of immigration to the Land of Israel, which took place throughout the generations and which gained in intensity in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries owing to favorable political, economic, transport, and security conditions. In our opinion, the immigrations of the Hasidim were driven by a variety of intertwined motives: ideological, pragmatic, and personal. We await the discovery of new sources and future research that will disentangle them.
After the 1777 emigration, Hasidim continued to travel as individuals and to settle in the holy cities of Safed and Tiberias. Jerusalem, though, drew only isolated Hasidim, and a genuine congregation of Hasidim did not take hold there until the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. The immigrants included several famous personages who left a literary mark on the history of Hasidism, but did not achieve fame as leaders of large Hasidic communities. One of them, Ze’ev Wolf of Czarny-Ostrow, who immigrated to Tiberias in 1798, tried as well to lead his Hasidic community from afar, but had no more success with this than his predecessors.
The Hasidic settlement in the Land of Israel was the only enclave of the movement outside of Eastern Europe. Although these Hasidim attempted to transplant the religious and social structures of Eastern Europe, they never succeeded in creating a vibrant and dominant community. That would have to await the great migrations out of Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century and, even more, the resurrection of Hasidism in the State of Israel after the Holocaust.
1 Iggerot Hasidim me-Erets Yisrael, ed. Ya’akov Barnai (Jerusalem, 1980), 154.
2 Iggerot Kodesh, vol. 1, 125.
3 Maimon, Autobiography, 154.
4 See Wolf Ze’ev Rabinowitsch, Lithuanian Hasidism (New York, 1971), 13–14.
5 Mordechai Nadav, The Jews of Pinsk, 1506 to 1800 (Stanford, CA, 2008), 299.
6 Beit Aharon (Brody, 1875), 293.
7 Wilensky, Hasidim u-Mitnaggdim, vol. 2, 171.
8 Dubnow, Toldot ha-Hasidut, 158.
9 Hayim va-Hesed (Warsaw, 1891), 151.
10 Iggerot Kodesh, vol. 1, 56–57.
11 Ibid., 55.
12 Ibid., 54.
13 Ibid., 70–73.
14 Likkutei Amarim-Tanya (Slavuta, 1796), ch. 13.
15 Tanya, ch. 28.
16 Yehoshua Mondshine, Ha-Ma’asar ha-Rishon (Jerusalem, 2012), 30.
17 Ibid., 70.
18 Ibid., 73–74.
19 Iggerot Hasidim me-Erets Yisrael, ed. Barnai, 239.
20 Ibid., 86.
21 Ibid., 108.
22 Ibid., 72–73.