Map 28.1. Major Hasidic Centers in Israel, 2015
THE STATE OF ISRAEL: HAVEN IN ZION
WHEN ZIONISM EMERGED IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, it drew the support of some Orthodox Jews and the opposition of others; yet the fight over Zionism within Orthodoxy at that time was over ideology and politics, not faith and lifestyles, so that it was a dispute between two parties within the same world. Orthodox Zionists and Orthodox non-Zionists followed the same religious lifestyle, lived in the same neighborhoods, and married each other. After the creation of the State of Israel, the Zionists and anti-Zionists gradually split into radically dissimilar camps, with almost all Hasidim identifying as anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox (or haredi; plural: haredim—a term invented in the nineteenth century for the Orthodox generally but since the 1950s designates those more conservative and less Zionist than the Zionist modern Orthodox; we will use this term interchangeably with ultra-Orthodox). The typical religious Zionists observed Jewish law less rigorously than the typical ultra-Orthodox. Haredim established neighborhoods and communities of their own. Synagogues became identifiable as religious Zionist or haredi on the basis of whether or not they recited a prayer for “The Peace of the State” instituted by the Chief Rabbinate. Religious Zionists accepted the authority of the State’s Chief Rabbi while the haredim did not; religious Zionists accepted the kashrut certifications of the Chief Rabbinate, whereas most of the haredim deemed them insufficient. Religious Zionists gradually built the “national-religious” educational system, while the ultra-Orthodox established their own system. Religious Zionism also set up its own system of yeshivot, blending Torah studies with army service, whereas haredi Judaism consistently sought to avoid such service. Students in haredi yeshivot do not study from texts authored by religious Zionists rabbis—even those dealing with Talmudic scholarship—and haredi authors did not quote from them. Religious Zionists approve of university studies with approval, but the haredim oppose it.
The haredim preserve the traditional Eastern-European form of dress, with only minor changes, while the religious Zionists adopted modern Israeli dress, eventually inventing the “knitted yarmulke,” which became the clear sign of identification for its males. Religious Zionists speak modern Hebrew, while many of the ultra-Orthodox, especially Hasidim, keep faith with Yiddish. The vast majority of the haredim do not serve in the Israeli army, while most of the religious Zionists serve with high motivation, often in combat units. The ultra-Orthodox marry at an earlier age than religious Zionists and raise much larger families. And it is almost inevitable, given all of the preceding, that haredim and religious Zionists would never marry each other.
In general, the ultra-Orthodox world in Israel maintained the bifurcation between Hasidim and Lithuanians (Litvaks), even though, as we have seen, their old conflict had largely receded by the interwar period. The Hasidim retained their traditional divisions into courts and dynasties; their leaders were the rebbes, most of them Holocaust survivors who had immigrated to Israel and sought to reestablish their courts there after the war. Some of these rebbes chose to settle in Jerusalem, the Holy City and center of the Old Yishuv, while others at first settled in Tel Aviv—the “First Hebrew City” and informal capital of the Zionist New Yishuv—although over the years they abandoned it. And there were some who went farther afield, to places such as Haifa or Rehovot. And thus the young State of Israel, with its secular-nationalist ideals, its socialist hegemony, and its modernist spirit, became the modest springboard for the revival of Hasidism in the post-Holocaust period.
Much of the secular majority of the time viewed Hasidism, like haredi Judaism as a whole, as an anachronistic vestige of a lost world, a useless limb that soon would fall from the tree or, at most, a sort of “museum diorama” of diaspora Judaism. And yet, within two generations, Hasidism, like the rest of the haredi world, was destined to achieve a renaissance that even its leaders could not have dreamed of. And as the values of modern secular culture came under attack, Hasidism in particular became the source for a new spirituality, attracting significant numbers of secular Israelis.
Immigration Patterns and Geography
On the eve of World War II, there were already a few Hasidic leaders in Palestine, but they were not especially influential. Yet the war turned everything upside-down. Hasidism’s centers in Eastern Europe were on the verge of destruction or already destroyed, whereas the Land of Israel became one of its major centers, especially with the arrival of rebbes who came as refugees. Among these were three who already had run large and powerful courts in Eastern Europe: the tsaddikim of Ger, Belz, and Vizhnits. In just a few years, these three branches of Hasidism became the largest in the Land of Israel. Ger in particular provided a home for surviving Hasidim whose courts in Poland were destroyed during the war, a role similar, as we saw in the last chapter, to that played by Satmar in New York. The Satmar Rebbe, Yoel Teitelbaum, also arrived during the war and remained for several months, but finding little success among the Jews of the yishuv then left for the United States. His relative, the Rebbe of Sandz-Klausenburg, took the opposite route: he moved to the United States after the Holocaust but came to Israel in 1960. The rebbes of smaller Hasidic branches likewise tried to establish their courts in the new-old homeland, usually meeting with success. There were also some large branches, such as the Polish Aleksander dynasty, which had suddenly become small branches as a result of the Holocaust, and these too found a home in the Land of Israel. This process took place mainly in the 1940s and 1950s.
Avraham Mordechai Alter, the Rebbe of Ger, moved to Palestine in 1940, as we learned in an earlier chapter. He had visited several times previously, and in 1935 even tried to settle there, but returned to Poland. This time he settled in Jerusalem, where he founded the Ger yeshivah named after his father, Yeshivat Sefat Emet. By contrast, Aharon Rokeah of Belz chose initially to settle in Tel Aviv after fleeing Hungary in the summer of 1944. He rejected the entreaties of his Hasidim to come live in Jerusalem, and gave as his explanation that in Tel Aviv there were no mosques and churches. Yet choosing the secular city of Tel Aviv may have been a result of his moderate approach to the modern world.
However, his nephew and successor moved to Jerusalem, where he built the Belz yeshivah as well as other educational institutions. Other rebbes, notably those of Ruzhin and Modzits also left Tel Aviv, in their cases for Bnei Brak. Hayim Meir Hager of Vizhnits (1887–1972) took a different path. He too fled Hungary in 1944 and relocated in neighboring Romania. His son, Moshe Yehoshua, had already immigrated to Palestine in the summer of that year. After the war, the rebbe returned to his town of Grosswardein (Oradea), by then under Romanian control, but found it impossible to reestablish his court there, as there were not enough Jews left. In 1946, he immigrated to Belgium, but a year later came to Israel. He first tried to settle in Tel Aviv, but soon relocated to the suburb of Bnei Brak, which in those days was just beginning to be a center of Torah study. Around 1948, Hager decided to create a neighborhood called Shikkun Vizhnits, a Hasidic quarter such as had never been seen before. All the Vizhnits Hasidim were to be concentrated in a defined geographic area, with the full panoply of Hasidic services in the same location: educational institutions, a hotel, wedding-hall, bakery, and so forth. Even Bnei Brak’s haredi graveyard (called Shomrei Shabbat) would have a section marked off for the Vizhnits Hasidim. The rebbe’s son was appointed as the neighborhood rabbi. All the neighborhood’s apartments were to be sold to Vizhnits Hasidim, who could sell them only to other Vizhnits Hasidim. Even if this requirement wasn’t fully met in practice, clearly the dominant power in the neighborhood would remain that of the Vizhnits Hasidim. The neighborhood thrived, and the numbers of Hasidim who moved into it steadily grew. Thus, for those rebbes who found Jerusalem too insular and fanatical, but also rejected the secularism of Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak provided an intermediate option: a young settlement, part of the New Yishuv but one in which the religious population was dominant. Soon it came to be known as the capital of the new haredi society.
There were other, albeit less popular, sites of settlement such as Haifa, Rishon LeZion, and Rehovot. Yohanan Perlov of Stolin-Karlin, for example, on arrival in the Land of Israel, settled in Haifa, also known as “Red Haifa” owing to the dominance of left-wing workers’ parties. He immigrated to Brooklyn two years later during the Israeli War of Independence, but another leader, Barukh of Seret-Vizhnits, the brother of Hayim Meir Hager, also founded his community in Haifa and later built a Hasidic neighborhood there on the model of the Vizhnits neighborhood in Bnei Brak. David Moshe Rosenbaum (1924–1969) of Kretchnif, a scion of the Nadvorna dynasty who had a reputation as a miracle-worker, settled in Rehovot in 1948, tried to found a congregation there, but felt alienated by that secular city. Yet, within a few years, his Hasidim took up residence near him; he built a neighborhood for them and founded institutions in it. Menahem Mendel Taub of Kaliv (b. 1923), a Holocaust survivor who devoted much of his life to the commemoration of the Holocaust in the haredi public, built a neighborhood in Rishon LeZion in the early 1950s, but later moved to Bnei Brak and eventually to Jerusalem.
Yekutiel Yehudah Halberstam, the Rebbe of Sandz-Klausenburg, who moved to New York after the Holocaust, built a large neighborhood in Netanya including a hospital and hotel in the mid-1950s. The institutions serve not only the Sandz Hasidim but also the residents of the whole area, including Arabs. In 1960, when he immigrated to Israel, the rebbe settled in this Netanya neighborhood, and encouraged his Hasidim in the United States to follow in his footsteps. Kiryat Sandz, as this neighborhood is known, is in many ways the closest to the reestablishment of an Eastern European shtetl in Israel and resembles in some respects the villages north of New York City of Satmar, Skvira, and Vizhnits, discussed in the last chapter.
As a result of the enormous natural fecundity of the Hasidim, the older cities had difficulty accommodating their families. They became overcrowded, facilities deteriorated, and the quality of life there declined. Housing prices in these areas rose. Owing to these difficulties, a trend developed in Israel, beginning mainly in the 1980s, of relocation to the country’s periphery. Thus neighborhoods for Ger Hasidim were built in Ashdod in Israel’s south and in Hatzor Haglillit in its north. A large Hasidic neighborhood was built in Beit Shemesh, not far from Jerusalem. This region houses mainly the Hasidim of Toldot Aharon and Toldot Avraham Yitshak, who moved there from Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim and Batei Ungarin neighborhoods, turning it into a stronghold of the most fiercely extremist Hasidic camp in Israel.
Settlement across the Green Line became increasingly attractive, not for ideological but for economic reasons. Barukh Meir Shohet, the Rebbe of Karlin-Stolin, who emigrated from the United States in 1991, was the first to settle beyond the 1967 border when he founded a community in Givat Ze’ev just to the north of Jerusalem. Hasidim moved into new ultra-Orthodox towns in the West Bank: Immanuel (1983), Beitar Illit (1988), Modi’in Illit (1990), Elad (1994), and others. Naturally, much of the natural growth over the Green Line occurred in Orthodox (haredi) populations, amounting according to a 2015 survey to 40 percent of the total. Almost all the growth took place in two West Bank locales: Betar Illit and Modi’in Illit.
Elad became a center for smaller branches of Hasidism, while Modi’in Illit managed to gain its own rebbe, Shlomo Rokeah of Yaroslav, a scion of the Belz dynasty, who broke off and formed a small court of his own, and Yeshaya Ruttenberg, the Rebbe of Ruzla, of the Koson dynasty. There are also Hasidim or quasi-Hasidim, especially associated with Chabad and Bratslav, in some of the illegal “hilltop” settlements in the West Bank. These youngsters are for the most part of religious Zionist background and are not recognized as Hasidim by the mainstream Hasidic communities. In chapter 31 of this book, we will examine Yitshak Ginsburgh, who is loosely affiliated with Chabad but serves as a quasi-rebbe to certain elements in the settlement community.
The formation of Hasidic neighborhoods strengthened the larger courts, but also permitted the invigoration of relatively smaller ones. When these smaller courts did not have enough Hasidim to form an educational institution, they joined pan-Hasidic or pan-haredi schools. The phenomenon of the splitting of courts, which had always characterized Hasidism, soon renewed itself in its new home, and within a few decades the Hasidic world in Israel became crowded with rebbes and courts, most of them small. At times, the descendant of a “holy dynasty” would announce the formation of some new court even when there were no Hasidim for it. The rebbes of such courts carried the title of Admor (a Hebrew acronym for “Our Lord, Teacher, and Rabbi,” frequently used as a title for rebbes), dressed like rebbes, and displayed other behavior characteristic of rebbes such as employing a personal gabbai, but without Hasidim. This phenomenon already had precedents in pre-Holocaust Eastern Europe, as we saw earlier, such as with the Nadvorna dynasty, in which nearly all of the male offspring were rebbes.
Another consequence of the homogeneous Hasidic neighborhoods was to create an insular social and cultural space. Within this space, a Belz Hasid would typically marry someone from a Belz family, receive housing from a Belz housing development, study in a Belz yeshivah, pray in a Belz synagogue, receive charity from the Belz gemah (charity fund), consult the Rebbe of Belz or his agents on personal or halakhic questions, and send his children to Belz educational institutions, thus starting the whole life cycle again. In this way, the renewed Hasidic dynasties in the State of Israel replicated the world they remembered—often nostalgically—from the destroyed communities in Eastern Europe, but with even tighter social bonds.
Hasidism and the Israeli State
The Hasidic camp is an inseparable part of the haredi society in Israel and the relationship of this world to the state has shaped its character. One of the central characteristics of the Israeli haredi community is what Menahem Friedman has called the “society of scholars,” a phenomenon unique in Jewish history and perhaps even beyond. In traditional Jewish society in Eastern Europe, most males who studied did so until their marriage or a few years afterward. In ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, the overwhelming majority of young men continue their study in the kollel until about age forty. They make their living from a mix of sources: their wives’ employment, transfer payments from the state (especially Social Security for families with many children), and the modest stipend from the kollel, which also stems largely from the State. These revenue sources do not permit a high standard of living, and a large portion of this population lives below the poverty line, requiring additional assistance from their community’s mutual aid societies. This “scholars’ society” was initiated by the descendants of the Lithuanian yeshivah world, but the Hasidim joined it as well, if to a lesser degree. For example, among the Hasidim it appears that the average age of exit from the kollel is lower than among the other haredim.
One of the motives for the scholars’ society was to avoid conscription to the Israel Defense Forces. Already in the early days of the State, then prime minister and defense minister David Ben-Gurion agreed to the request of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox rabbis to release from conscription about 400 yeshivah students for whom “Torah is their vocation,” so that they would be entirely free to study. Over the years, the draft deferment was gradually broadened, while those who were not released from the army made efforts to obtain releases on other grounds such as poor health. In 1977, when the Likud Party rose to power, the coalition agreement with the Agudat Yisrael party stated explicitly that the release applies universally to everyone for whom “Torah is their vocation.” In this manner, the State unintentionally encouraged the haredim to go study in the kollelim and thus avoid working for a living, which shifted the task of providing for their living upon the State itself.
The ultra-Orthodox oppose military service for three reasons. First, out of genuine commitment to Torah study and its institutions (this is a traditional value, but in a sense it is also circular reasoning; the idea of universal study was itself a reaction against military service). Second, because the army replaces the mechanisms of social control wielded by the haredi world with a different social framework, giving the power to command to young people, some of them secular, instead of older rabbis. It does not rigorously separate men from women and thus exposes them to sexual temptation. And, finally, some hold that a state that is secular has no authority to make life-and-death decisions, since its leaders do not follow halakhic criteria. This latter argument, which the haredim do not generally express in public owing to its sensitivity, is usually attributed to Rabbi Yitshak Ze’ev Soloveitchik of Brisk (1886–1959), the leader of the Lithuanian stream in Israel in the 1950s, but the Satmar Rebbe, Yoel Teitelbaum, embraced it in his book Al ha-Geulah ve-al ha-Temurah (1967). Most Hasidic leaders probably do not subscribe to this position. Either way, from the 1970s on, nearly all the Hasidim have rejected conscription. The exception is Chabad, many of whose Hasidim do enlist at a relatively advanced age and therefore are granted a shorter term of service.
The Agudat Yisrael Party, founded in 1912 and the main organ of ultra-Orthodox politics in interwar Poland, continued after the foundation of the State of Israel to be the body representing haredi Judaism within the political arena. To its “right” stood the Edah Haredit, the umbrella organization for the isolationist haredim in Jerusalem who embrace an extreme anti-Zionist ideology and do not take any part in the state. To its “left” was the Po’alei Agudat Yisrael (Workers of the Agudat Yisrael), which initially was the workers’ division of the mother movement, but gradually evolved into an independent pro-Zionist movement, more open to socialist values. Hasidim were prominent in all three camps. Agudat Yisrael had representation from many of Hasidism’s branches, although historically Ger was the main force in it in Poland. The Edah Haredit included Hungarian Hasidic groups, the dominant group of which was Toldot Aharon. Po’alei Agudat Yisrael embraced various moderate branches of Hasidism and had as its prominent leader Binyamin Mintz, a Ger Hasid. This last party weakened over the decades, disappearing from the political map in the 1980s.
Chabad occupies a unique place in the Israeli political firmament. Except for a single election cycle (1988), it never joined Agudat Yisrael and even opposed it on some issues. Its leader after the creation of the state, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, retained the anti-Zionist rhetoric of his predecessors, going so far as to avoid the words “State of Israel” (he preferred “Land of Israel”), yet in practice his attitude reflected a greater openness to Zionism and a deep solidarity with the state. Although he never set foot in Israel, he showed a keen interest in Israeli society and politics, and quite often did battle on important issues. Among these was his insistence that only Jews converted according to Jewish law be recognized under Israel’s “Law of Return.” He also took an uncompromising position against withdrawal from the territories captured by Israel in the Six Day War. Even though he justified his stance on halakhic grounds, it appears that he was also driven by his burning messianism, since he viewed the expansion of the state’s borders as part of the preparations for redemption. Most other Hasidic leaders rejected his messianism, although quite a few shared his opposition to territorial concessions. On the other hand, the heads of the three largest Hasidic branches—Ger, Vizhnits, and Belz—on the whole took a more flexible and dovish stance on the question of the territories that Israel came to control after the 1967 War.
Agudat Yisrael was always a coalition between different haredi groups, which, while hostile to the Zionist state and refusing to sit in its cabinet, was still willing to run for elections and derive benefit from the state. The divisions between the Litvak (or Lithuanian) and Hasidic factions, which were relatively muted in the interwar period, reached unprecedented levels in the period when Elazar Menahem Shach (1898–2001) led the Litvak camp. Although he himself rejected this argument, many thought that Shach’s war against the two major Hasidic groups of Ger and Chabad resurrected the old battle between Mitnaggdim and Hasidim. Rabbi Shach was a staunch, dogmatic ideologue, who sought to impose his will on all sectors of haredi society. His fundamental belief was that the Torah—mainly study of Torah, but also observance of its commandments—was the foundation stone of the people of Israel, and that human ideologies by contrast had no divine legitimacy. All possible resources must therefore be recruited for the sake of the “Torah world,” the system of yeshivot and kollelim.
Shach was particularly antagonistic toward Chabad, based on his rejection of its messianism: he would refer to the Chabad rebbe as “the false Messiah” (and in private as “Shabbetai Tsvi,” the messianic figure from the seventeenth century who converted to Islam and whose movement was condemned by the rabbis) and to Chabad itself as “that well-known sect,” which implied a heretical sect. Shach was also incensed by Chabad’s relative openness to secular Israeli society, its popularization of a relatively open Judaism at the expense of rigorous Torah scholarship, and, finally the rebbe’s opposition to territorial concessions (Shach was also relatively dovish on this question).
Shach also waged bitter battles with Ger, mainly over power within Agudat Yisrael. As a result of these battles, Agudat Yisrael disintegrated, largely along the old lines of Hasidim and Mitnaggdim. The movement’s supreme rabbinical body, the Council of Torah Sages, ceased to function. Agudat Yisrael’s educational network for girls, Beis Ya’akov, split into a general network and a network for Hasidic girls in general (and later specifically girls of Ger). Even the party’s veteran newspaper, Ha-Modia, which was largely controlled by Ger Hasidim, ceased to be the exclusive organ of the Agudah in 1985 when followers of Rabbi Shach set up a newspaper of their own, Yated Ne’eman, which claimed to offer a better representation of da’as Torah (the “view of the Torah”—that is, the haredi ideology as expressed by the main spiritual leaders of the community).
These battles reached their climax in the run-up to the elections of 1988. Shach, who still earlier had given his backing to the Sephardi ultra-Orthodox party Shas, withdrew from Agudat Yisrael and formed his own party, Degel ha-Torah (The Banner of Torah). Agudat Yisrael, with its historical brand-name, became the sole preserve of the Hasidim. Only a single Hasidic leader, the Rebbe of Belz, with the tacit support of the Rebbe of Sandz-Klausenburg, joined the Lithuanians. In light of this development, the Rebbe of Lubavitch, despite a long tradition of maintaining a distance from Agudat Yisrael, decided to support the party and to deploy Chabad’s well-oiled public relations engine for its advancement. The result was astounding: whereas prior to 1988 Agudat Yisrael usually had four seats in the Knesset, after this election, the party won five seats and Shach’s Degel ha-Torah another two. The conclusion was that Chabad was “worth” three seats, much more than it could have obtained from all of its Hasidim in Israel. This rise in the power of the haredi parties increased their bargaining power with the large parties, and provoked charges of political blackmail from the secular media.
In the elections of 1992, it was clear to the haredim that they could not repeat this achievement. Agudat Yisrael and Degel ha-Torah again joined to form a new party, United Torah Judaism, which preserved the barrier between the two parties of which it was comprised, yet ran as a unified list. The Chabad Rebbe announced that he was returning to his nonpartisan stance, and the percentage of votes for the unified party dropped to its historical average.
In addition to the role of Hasidic leaders in party politics, they also play a role for secular Israeli politicians, who, like their counterparts in the United States, pay them visits, converse with them on the issues of the day and receive their blessings, thus giving them a secular stamp of approval. This phenomenon was especially common in the 1980s and 1990s, when the ultra-Orthodox parties were the swing votes and politicians from the large parties hoped to curry favor with their leaders. In fact, these meetings made no difference whatsoever. The Hasidic rebbes usually received the visiting politicians politely, perhaps extracted a promise or two from them, but evidently never formed their positions on the basis of such meetings. Their attitude toward the Israeli politicians, as to the political system as a whole, was and remains entirely instrumental.
Hasidic Education in Israel
Hasidic life in its various branches is built to a great extent around educational institutions. For small children, there are either Talmud Torah institutes, where pupils are taught virtually no secular subjects, or schools of the independent educational system, which teach fractionally more. Young boys age thirteen to sixteen study in “lower” yeshivot, while older boys before marriage attend the “upper” yeshivot. And, as we have already seen, married scholars study in kollelim. The educational institutions for girls follow a formula similar to that of the secular educational system: elementary school from age six and a “seminary” at high-school age.
The most important and prestigious upper yeshivot are those of the Lithuanians, while the Hasidic yeshivot are thought to place less emphasis on scholarly excellence and more on the Hasidic lifestyle, inculcating faithfulness to the rebbe and to his court. In some of these yeshivot, the classical texts of Hasidism are taught, although in those of the Sandz, for instance, they are not. In most Hasidic yeshivot, students are not allowed to read newspapers (even haredi ones), use a cellular telephone, hold a driver’s license, or smoke inside the bet midrash (although smoking itself is widely practiced, except in Ger and Karlin-Stolin). A student who demonstrates exemplary “fear of God,” impassioned prayer, or self-mortification will often win prestige at a level not inferior to that of a brilliant scholar. In these yeshivot, Talmud is studied in a style similar to that of the Lithuanian yeshivot; at times, they are even staffed by Litvak teachers. An important exception is Sandz, whose yeshivah stresses rapid study of the whole Talmud with few commentaries. Unlike the Lithuanian yeshivot, though, which accept limited numbers of youths from Mizrahi (Middle Eastern or North African) background, in the Hasidic yeshivot no such youths are to be found at all, with the exception of Chabad and Bratslav. Conversely, all the youths of the Hasidic court to which the institution belongs will be accepted without distinction. Over the years several “pan-Hasidic” yeshivot have been established—not belonging to particular branches of Hasidism—and at least two of them, the Kokhav MiYa’akov yeshivah and the Nezer Hatorah yeshivah, have even earned a certain degree of prestige.
The Hasidim of “Holiness”: Ger, Slonim, and Toldot Aharon
In this section, we turn to three groups characterized by strict rules of sexual asceticism. As we have seen in earlier chapters, Hasidism since its very origins was divided between affirmation of the body and sexuality, and renunciation and asceticism. In the nineteenth century, certain strains of Polish Hasidism, notably those connected with Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, extended and deepened the ascetic tendency. Ger Hasidism traces its lineage to Kotzk, but, as opposed to Kotzk, it developed in nineteenth-century Poland and the interwar period into a worldly and political movement.
Avraham Mordechai Alter, the last Polish leader of Ger, was less opposed to Zionism than other Hasidic leaders. He was among the sponsors of a day of fasting and prayer in 1942 on behalf of European Jewry in conjunction with the Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, Yitshak Herzog. Jerusalem’s zealots, who were opposed to collaborations with the Zionist rabbinate, boycotted the event. In his final years, when he realized that he had lost over a hundred of his relatives and tens of thousands of his Hasidim, his mental and physical condition declined precipitously. He seldom appeared in public, spoke very little, and likely was in a state of depression. According to a testimony of some of his Hasidim, he was heard to say that the establishment of the State of Israel was the athalta di-geulah (“the beginnings of the Redemption”), an expression usually identified with religious Zionism. He passed away on the Shavuot holiday of 1948, at the height of the War of Independence, and was buried in the courtyard of the Sefat Emet yeshivah in Jerusalem.
Alter’s son, Yisrael (1893–1987), became the Rebbe of Ger when his father died in 1948. Israel was known as an especially strict and charismatic leader. His penetrating gaze and terse responses were legendary; his photographs never show him smiling. Reminiscent of the figure of Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, he often terrified his Hasidim. He could rage mercilessly at them, at times even slapping them in the face either softly or with blows that really hurt. His Hasidim related to these assaults as if he was a Zen master: “[They] wanted and loved to receive a blow and a slap from the Rebbe; each slap was a sign of love from him and they were glad to earn one.”1 On the other hand, he also knew how to show affection or esteem to his guests by making them a gift of fancy cigars or a bottle of wine. “Someone who didn’t live in the time of [Rabbi Yisrael] can’t comprehend how, with him, fear and love were so tightly intertwined,” said his nephew, Ya’akov Meir Alter.2
Directly upon taking the throne of Ger, Yisrael Alter applied himself to the building of institutions for the few Hasidim he had in Israel, while also expanding their ranks by attracting youths from other circles. To stress the importance of Torah study, he established the practice of fartogs (Yiddish: “before sunrise”)—that is, rising before dawn for Torah study. The main locale for such study was the rebbe’s bet midrash in the Mahaneh Yehuda neighborhood in Jerusalem. The rebbe would invite the most studious of the early risers to his place to drink a cup of tea. Many scoffed that the fartogs did not increase in Torah study, since many of the early risers would go back to bed in the day and in effect sleep more than those who woke at normal hours, yet the new custom was a symbol of the rebbe’s demanding nature and of the ideal of Torah study. Ger had been known already in Poland as a scholarly branch of Hasidism, which drew the more studious to its ranks and three of the Ger rebbes who preceded Yisrael Alter were distinguished rabbinical scholars, although the demand for such excellence in Yisrael’s time was largely symbolic.
Within a short time of becoming rebbe, Alter’s charisma began to attract not only Hasidim from other courts but also youths from Lithuanian yeshivot and even from the religious Zionist camp. The Ger yeshivah students were organized by Rabbi Yisrael into havurot (fellowships) and placed under the supervision of kommedanten (commanders), as in prewar Poland. Some of the leaders of these havurot, such as Zelig Shtitzberg and Ya’akov Bruner achieved renown and their pupils who formed close bonds with them were called by their names (“Zeligists,” “Brunerists,” and so on). Not only did these leaders not undermine their rebbe’s authority, but they actually strengthened it.
The spirit of Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, inherited by Yisrael Alter, is characterized as sharfkeit (Yiddish: “sharpness”). It is hard to define this value precisely, but it usually denotes a kind of extremism in the practice of Hasidic precepts, especially loyalty to the rebbe and also contempt for the affairs of this world such as social conventions, family life, and so forth. In Polish Hasidism, the term is also associated with a laconic and abrasive style of speech.
As with many rebbes before him, in Rabbi Yisrael’s writings, there is virtually no reference to the affairs of the day. But his followers believe from hints in his writings that he regarded the Holocaust as one of the “birth pangs of the Messiah” and that God was present and revealed even in the ovens of Auschwitz. Basically, his concept of faith was simple and lacked theological convolutions. Although he reportedly studied Kabbalah for many years, there is no sign of any Kabbalistic influence on his writings. He opposed attempts to seek reasons for the commandments, and even saw such efforts as akin to secular studies (referred to as “external wisdoms”).
Alter’s most distinctive innovation was Ger’s “holiness regulations” (takkanot), prescriptions for overcoming the sexual drive, which he sometimes suggested were the foundational principles of Judaism. These rules became the virtual trademark of Ger in Israel. Over and over, Rabbi Yisrael spoke of avoiding the “sin of youth” (a traditional reference to masturbation). However, holiness applied less to bachelorhood, and much more to married life, even when sexual relations are permitted.
These are the primary takkanot:
1. Relations must take place no more frequently than once a month, on the evening after the woman immerses herself in the mikveh (that is, a week after the end of her menstrual period), when, according to tradition, sexual relations are a commandment. Later, relations were permitted also on the Sabbath eve immediately after this immersion.
2. Abstention from sexual relations from the seventh month of pregnancy.
3. Abstention from relations for three months after giving birth.
4. Sexual relations should be carried out with as little physical contact between the couple as possible. The husband and wife should be clothed and he should wear tsitsit (fringes), which are considered as an amulet against the evil instinct.
5. Physical contact between husband and wife should be minimized at other times as well. Kissing is forbidden even during sexual relations.
6. Specific instructions are given for distracting one’s thought at the time of sexual intercourse to prevent erotic pleasure.
In addition to these regulations, there are a variety of other directives: a husband and wife should not be seen in public together; they should not sit on the same bench on a bus or the same seat in a taxi; if they do go out in public, they should be separated by roughly two meters, with the husband walking ahead of his wife; the husband should never call the wife by her first name; and the husband should not take an afternoon nap at home when the children are not there.
There are norms that pertain to unmarried boys and young men. When they attend a wedding, they are not allowed at the huppah (marriage canopy) itself, since they might catch a glimpse of the face of the bride, even when she is veiled. Indeed, even uttering the word “bride” is prohibited for a male. Some other regulations stem from fear of homosexuality. Two boys in a Ger yeshivah must never be alone in a dormitory without the presence of a third (this rule applies as well to boys in the yeshivot of other groups). A few years ago, the present Rebbe of Ger reportedly issued an order forbidding men from shaking hands with other men, arguably on the grounds that it could lead to forbidden intimacy.
Alter initially would give instruction to young Ger Hasidim about to get married, but he soon set up a system of counselors to whom he issued oral directives. Each Hasid would choose a counselor before his wedding and would continue to consult with him in the early period of his marriage. Although every Ger Hasid knows the regulations, they have never been published or even set down in writing, since writing them would itself violate the modesty required by the subject. Although Alter based his view on ideas taken from the bible commentaries of the medieval sages Rashi and Nahmanides, in an epistle written in the 1920s before he became the rebbe, he argued that “holiness” was a necessary response to the present generation’s decline into sexual permissiveness.3 Some Ger Hasidim have suggested he promulgated these rules for “rationalist” reasons, such as a desire to protect the wife, especially after pregnancy, or for considerations of family planning—that is, as a means of preventing excessively large families. However, these apologetic explanations match neither the spirit of the regulations nor the temperament of their author.
The takkanot are directed to the men of Ger, and they in turn are expected to enforce them on their wives. The role of the women is to enable their husbands to follow the regulations. Paradoxically, the women of Ger are considered among Hasidic women to be somewhat freer: they dress more beautifully and are more likely to work in modern professions, such as fashion and computers. The very strictness of the regulations within the family seems to have created a space for female self-expression in the outside world.
The takkanot have had a profound effect on the young men of Ger, increasing their esprit de corps and serving as a badge of pride that marks them off from other Hasidic courts. In Rabbi Yisrael’s time, they attracted youth from other Hasidic groups, Lithuanian yeshivot, and even religious Zionists who were seeking a spiritual challenge, thus bolstering Ger’s numbers. But, conversely, they make Ger Hasidim less attractive in the haredi marriage “market.”
During Yisrael’s lifetime, his regulations drew some opposition, mainly from Lithuanian quarters. The greatest halakhic authority of the day in Israel, Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (the Hazon Ish), rejected sexual abstinence, especially during the first year of marriage when the Torah demands that the young husband “be available for his home,” that is, free to attend to his wife.4 Still sharper criticism was voiced by the Hazon Ish’s brother-in-law, Ya’akov Israel Kanievsky, and by Yitshak Aizek Scher, head of the Slobodka yeshivah. Nevertheless, these Lithuanian leaders never waged a public battle over the holiness regulations.
Despite the stringencies of these sexual norms, Rabbi Yisrael Alter’s Ger is not one of the most extreme and insular forms of Israeli Hasidism; it is considered a mainstream group in nearly all other realms of life, and even moderate with respect to Zionism, the State of Israel, and the secular public. Alter was opposed to excessive halakhic restrictions in terms of kashrut supervision and certifications. Even on other issues dealt with by the classical musar literature—eating, drinking, and so forth—he permitted some degree of pleasure-seeking, especially with respect to wine and cigars.
Rabbi Yisrael did not leave surviving children. After his death, his brother, Simhah Bunem (1898–1992), called the Lev Simhah after his written work, assumed the throne of Ger. This brother had a different personality. Although authoritarian and at times stubborn, he treated his Hasidim paternally and concerned himself with their material needs. The most famous regulations that he authored involved limiting the number of guests at celebrations, with the aim of holding down the costs of these events. He initiated the construction of Hasidic neighborhoods in the more peripheral parts of Israel, and out of concern for his Hasidim’s health waged a determined war against smoking. Revocation of the holiness regulations was out of the question while he was alive, since they were deeply rooted in Ger Hasidism, but Simhah Bunem did reduce the period of sexual abstention after pregnancy and was prepared to grant individual exemptions in certain circumstances.
After his death, his half-brother, Pinhas Menahem (1926–1996), filled his seat. This rebbe, who served for only four years, was a dynamic leader and also brought back strict enforcement of the holiness rules. When he died, the leadership did not pass to his son, but instead to Ya’akov Aryeh Alter (b. 1939), the son of Simhah Bunem, who again softened the implementation of the takkanot, but also issued rules of his own—the first such in Ger—codifying the appropriate dress for women.
The holiness regulations are unique to Ger Hasidism, but similar values operate in other branches of Hasidism as well. A striking example is Slonim, which inherited its approach from its distant origins in the Hasidic branches of Lakhovits and Kobrin, which had spoken of the importance of suppressing bodily desires through abstinence. From Slonim traditions, it appears that the rebbe who turned this value into practical instructions was Avraham Weinberg the Second (1884–1933; there have been four Slonim rebbes named Avraham Weinberg). Slonim was a fairly small Hasidic branch, and we do not have sufficient information about it to indicate how successful the rebbe was in inculcating this value in his Hasidim. The rebbes of Slonim who succeeded him did not stress holiness as much. It appears that the main influence on present-day Slonim came from Shalom Noah Berezovsky (1911–2000), whose views on the Holocaust we have already discussed.
Berezovsky immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1935 and became the son-in-law of Avraham Weinberg the Third (1889–1981), who was then serving as the Rebbe of Slonim. In the 1940s, he was appointed to head the Slonim yeshivah in Jerusalem. He was an open-minded scholar who behaved paternally toward his students; these qualities made him an admired educator and esteemed leader, to a great extent eclipsing his uncharismatic father-in-law. Like Yisrael Alter, Berezovsky’s relationship to the State of Israel was relatively accommodating, and he even showed some excitement over its victory in the Six Day War.
In 1981, Shalom Noah Berezovsky rose to the position of rebbe. There was a conflict over his ascension that led to a split in Slonim between the followers of Avraham Weinberg the Fourth, a scion of the Slonim dynasty, and Shalom Noah’s group. Shalom Noah’s faction, whose center remained in Jerusalem, was called “Slonim Vaysse” (White Slonim), alluding to their moderation, while Weinberg’s faction, whose center was in Bnei Brak, was called “Slonim Shvartze” (Black Slonim), alluding to their extremism.
In contrast to his moderation on other issues, Berezovsky embraced the older Slonim tradition of holiness, which he preached with considerable rigor. Two letters that he wrote in the 1950s to young prospective bridegrooms, instructing them in the ways of abstinence, have become core documents of the tradition of Slonim, and are transmitted to this day only to its most faithful Hasidim. As with Ger, they have never been published. As opposed to the clear position of rabbinic sources, Slonim Hasidim are discouraged from having sex on the Sabbath. The Slonim Hasidim organize gatherings after the rebbe’s Sabbath tish so that they delay returning home. Unlike Yisrael Alter of Ger, Shalom Noah did not promulgate formal regulations. He taught rather that each person should try to adhere to the value of holiness “according to his moral stature.” In the culture of Slonim, the “serious” Hasidim make efforts to avoid having conjugal relations with their wives to the greatest extent possible, and indeed, to avoid as far as possible tempting situations resulting from proximity to their wives.
Shalom Noah’s Netivot Shalom has become a core text of modern Hasidic literature; we already encountered its contribution to post-Holocaust Hasidic theology. This multi-volume work was built out of the rebbe’s talks, originally delivered in Yiddish but rendered into almost-modern Hebrew. Faith, he argues, needs to be simple and innocent, without theological or philosophical investigations; the main aim of Hasidism is to achieve devekut, which is accomplished via observance of the commandments, study of Torah, virtuous behavior, and, of course, holiness. Our life in the present world is a system of challenges for achieving proximity to God, and therefore a man must not despair when he fails in his efforts to ascend—for example, when he fails to maintain sexual purity; he is always given another chance, so long as his intentions are pure. The challenge of this generation of the people of Israel is Torah study, which reflects his awareness of secular culture. Because of its broad message, Netivot Shalom is regularly read in non-Hasidic circles, including by religious Zionists. Those outside of Slonim circles are not always aware of the meaning of “holiness,” and some readers innocently assume that the reference is to a general desire for spiritual exaltation.
Another court that claims the mantle of “holiness” is Toldot Aharon. Aharon (Reb Arele) Roth (1894–1947) founded this branch of Hasidism as a havurah, called Shomer Emunim (guardian of faith) or Shomrei Emunim (guardians of faith), in Satmar between the wars. This is a small, intimate community with minimal hierarchy between the rebbe and his Hasidim. Reb Arele believed that Hasidism had abandoned its old values, and he cultivated a rigorous practice of lengthy and fervent prayers characterized by yegi’ot (exhaustive effort). From its inception, it was regarded as a peculiar phenomenon in the Hasidic world, and drew the ridicule of Yoel Teitelbaum, who was then the town rabbi in Satmar.
Reb Arele’s Hasidim wear black and white striped caftans during the week (which is why they are sometimes referred to as “zebras”) and striped gold caftans on Shabbat. The women dress with special modesty, all shaving their heads entirely after marriage and wearing black kerchiefs. Following a Hungarian tradition, Reb Arele also dictated that one should not wear wool in order to avoid even the slightest suspicion of sha’atnez (the mixing of wool and flax). The Toldot Aharon Hasidim, successors of Shomrei Emunim Hasidim, are highly insular, avoiding as much as possible the non-haredi public, and relying on mutual aid.
Like Ger and Slonim, the Toldot Aharon Hasidim have a strict code of sexual conduct, which, as opposed to their counterparts, has been printed in a slender volume titled Divrei Kedushah (Words of Sanctity) but is given only to married Hasidim. This booklet does not go into details: these the rebbe left for the marriage counselors under the leadership of the chief counselor, Daniel Frisch (1935–2005). A Kabbalist who authored a multivolume commentary on the Zohar, Matok mi-Devash, Frisch also wrote a book titled Kedushah u-Tsni’ut (Sanctity and Modesty), which was published in numerous editions with Divrei Kedushah. Frisch is remembered to this day as a dominant personality among the Hasidim: some of them recall him as the “terror of the bridegrooms,” while others recollect him as someone who tried to help them overcome the traumatic transition from bachelorhood to married life.
The holiness rules of Toldot Aharon are less stringent than those of Ger and Slonim. Women are given equal treatment with a set of modesty rules that parallel the holiness rules for men. Conjugal relations are allowed with greater frequency, and there is no attempt to prevent conversation between husband and wife, to have the husband stay away from home or to frown on emotional intimacy in marriage. Expressions of endearment are allowed between husbands and wives, which is quite the opposite of Ger and Slonim and, in general, in line with the Hungarian Hasidism, Toldot Aharon consider a warm family life a positive aspect of divine worship. But this group places great restrictions on female appearance: garments must be shapeless and colorless, and no makeup or jewelry, with the exception of tiny earrings, are allowed.
Reb Arele immigrated to Jerusalem in 1940 and established a branch of his havurah there, instructing his Hasidim to remain in a confined geographic area, not far from the future Jerusalem neighborhood Kiryat Shomrei Emunim. In the Land of Israel, he followed the Hungarian Hasidic tradition by taking a rigidly anti-Zionist line. A short while after his death, Shomrei Emunim split into two groups, the first led by his son, Rabbi Avraham Hayim (1924–2012), which continued to bear the name Shomrei Emunim, while the second was led by his son-in-law, Rabbi Avraham Yitshak Kohn (1914–1996), which took the name Toldot Aharon (the descendants of Aharon). Shomrei Emunim moved its headquarters to Bnei Brak, but Toldot Aharon remained in Jerusalem, where it became the more dominant of the two. The Jerusalem faction also became one of the most extreme groups in Jerusalem, taking a leading role in the public battles between anti-Zionist haredim and the secular population of the city. Its members are known as Reb Aralekh, after the founder of the group. After the death of the Rebbe of Toldot Aharon in 1996, a long and bitter succession battle ensued. In the end, the court again broke in two: Toldot Aharon and Toldot Avraham-Yitshak. A third son also opened a small and uninfluential court. A split took place in the Bnei Brak faction as well. When the Rebbe of Shomrei Emunim passed away, his four sons all became rebbes, including one who sat in jail for the rape of a relative, an ironic commentary on the rules of sexual holiness.
Thus sexual abstinence in married life has developed into a primary tenet of at least three Hasidic courts from different Eastern European origins: Poland, Russia, and Hungary. In all three, this value is rooted in a strand of earlier Hasidism, but it has become a dominant trademark in these three groups only in Israel of the twentieth century. There are at least three factors that may explain this development. First is the inherent need for Hasidism, as a movement whose raison d’être is spiritual revival, to impose challenges that provide its adherents with a sense of exaltation, perhaps serving as a substitute for the mysticism of the first generations in the eighteenth century. Second is the way the modern culture of sexual permissiveness creates a challenge for Hasidism as a conservative traditionalist movement: this sort of reaction is widely familiar in societies of this kind in other religions. And third is the need of these groups to rebuild themselves after the Holocaust and distinguish themselves from competing groups. In each of the three instances noted earlier, the leaders of the Hasidic branches decided to make their mark by combating that ancient foe, the sexual instinct.
“Regal” Hasidism: Vizhnits, Ruzhin, Chernobyl, and Karlin
As we have seen in section 2, an ostentatious court became central to certain branches of Hasidism, especially Ruzhin-Sadagora and its many offshoots. Two of these offshoots, Boyan (discussed in chapter 27, although its court is presently located in Jerusalem) and Vizhnits (whose main courts are located in Bnei Brak and Monsey, New York) have both preserved regal traditions in today’s Israel. The majority of other courts—notably Karlin-Stolin—have also adopted “regal” patterns. On the other hand, the Ukrainian Chernobyl dynasty, which broke into many small courts, has generally abandoned the “regal way.”
The regal courts have not typically joined the extremist wing of haredi Judaism. In the nineteenth century, the modern behavior of the rebbes of the Ruzhin dynasty and its offshoots aroused the wrath of Hayim of Sandz, while in the twentieth century many of their rebbes became supporters, overt or covert, of Zionism and settlement of the Land of Israel. The Hasidim of Chernobyl and Karlin were among the first to come to the United States, a clear hallmark of moderate tendencies (see chapter 25). However, the relative moderation of Ruzhin lasted for only one generation in the State of Israel. Yitshak Friedman of Bohush-Shpikov, for instance, the rebbe of a small Hasidic court from the Ruzhin dynasty, settled in Tel Aviv. He was a Zionist and celebrated Israel Independence Day. But his grandson and present successor, Ya’akov Mendel, is notable for his anti-Zionist zealotry. A similar development took place with the Rakhmistrivka court, the most prominent branch of Chernobyl. Its former rebbe was a mildmannered and moderate personality, whereas his son, the present rebbe, was a student of one of the leaders of haredi anti-Zionism. Once he rose to the office of rebbe, he refused to accept funds from the state, a hallmark of haredi extremism.
The Karlin branch of Hasidism underwent several splits also related to the ideological tension between moderation and extremism. In 1985, a small group of Hasidim from the Karlin-Stolin court were incensed by the “modern” and “compromising” approach of the rebbe and his willingness to receive state funds, so it seceded and formed a Karlin community without a rebbe, calling itself Kehal Hasidei Yerushalayim (Congregation of the Jerusalem Hasidim). A few years later, however, it decided to turn the leader of the group, Avraham Hanun, into its rebbe, and from then on became a Hasidic court of the usual type, but one that hewed to an extremist line.
Especially interesting is the story of Vizhnits, for a long time the second-largest branch of Hasidism in Israel. Vizhnits of Eastern Europe was at once regal and populist—that is, it had an opulent court but appealed to a wide array of uneducated people. Its rabbis tended to welcome all sorts of people, even simple Jews whose religious observance was minimal. When its rebbe Hayim Meir Hager came to the Land of Israel, he continued this open approach, although several Hasidim of a more zealous background also joined the court. His brother, Barukh, who founded a court in Haifa, took a similar line.
Hager appointed his son, Moshe Yehoshua (1916–2012) as the rabbi of the Vizhnits neighborhood and as the head of the yeshivah, and his wife, Leah Esther (Leitche), was put in charge of the educational institutions for girls. Leitche, who had relatively modern inclinations, was an assertive woman. At a certain stage in the 1960s, she decided that the instruction in the educational institutions for girls would take place in Hebrew. This step provoked the ire of extremist youth, who viewed it as a manifestation of Zionism and a rapprochement with the state. Since they could not blame the rebbe himself for this “perversion,” they blamed his son and primarily his daughter-in-law, making their protests public. The rebbe, who was not prepared to see his son treated with contempt, ordered that the wayward youths be expelled from the yeshivah. Their names were announced in the main Vizhnits synagogue on Shabbat, and right after the close of Shabbat the Hasidim rushed to their dormitory rooms and chased them out. As a result, these zealous youths were expelled and thus acquired the name nidohim (“the banished”). Gedaliah Nadel, the head of the yeshivah, and several other administrators who had supported the protest, stepped down from their posts in protest over the expulsion.
When Hayim Meir Hager passed away in 1972, his court split between his two sons. The eldest, Moshe Yehoshua Hager, was appointed as the Vizhnits Rebbe of Bnei Brak, while the second son, Mordechai (Motele) Hager, became the rebbe of the Monsey, New York, community (see chapter 27). Vizhnits of Bnei Brak continued to follow its relatively moderate line, whereas Vizhnits-Monsey was characterized by much greater extremism. A bitter feud erupted between the two courts. As of today, several of the “banished” of the 1960s have found their place with Motele Hager in the United States, a sign of Hasidism’s “globalization.”
At about the same time as the expulsion from the yeshivah, a drama began to unfold within the family of Moshe Yehoshua. He in turn had two sons: Yisrael, nicknamed “Srultche” (b. 1945), and Menahem Mendel, nicknamed “Mendele” (b. 1957). Srultche was known for his zealous and puritanical nature, whereas Mendele was perceived as intellectually mediocre. According to various versions, already in Srultche’s early youth his mother, Leitsche, did not love him; according to other versions, it was the lad Srultche who rejected his mother and drew her wrath. Either way, there were hostile relations between the two, and disputes arose, mainly over the son’s zealotry. According to persistent rumors in Bnei Brak, Srultche did not like his mother’s “modernist” spirit, burned her “prohibited” books and newspapers, smashed the mirror in their home, and even tried to turn his father against her. He also maintained ties with a few of the nidohim.
Moshe Yehoshua appointed his son Srultche as the neighborhood rabbi, a position that indicated that he was destined to be his father’s successor. However, the tense relations between Srultche and his mother, which also poisoned his relationship with his father, continued to worsen. Accusations against Srultche began to circulate concerning debts he incurred, apparently involving mismanaged charities. In 1984, the rebbe decided to remove his son from the position of neighborhood rabbi, banish him, and cut off all contact. His Hasidim followed suit. Srultche left the Vizhnits neighborhood and at a certain stage found shelter with his uncle in Monsey, among his father’s enemies, the erstwhile nidohim. After a while, he returned to Bnei Brak and opened a small synagogue of his own. Despite all the persecution and harassment, he did not utter a single word against his father and even attempted to reconcile with him, but the now-aged rebbe stood firm. A few years later, circa 1990, likely under pressure from the rebbetsin, the rebbe gave his second son, Menahem Mendel, the position of neighborhood rabbi, indicating that he was now the crown prince. However, Mendel, whose mastery of halakhah was unimpressive and who was not blessed with much charisma, acquired quite a few critics.
In 1993, the rebbetsin Leitche passed away and the rebbe married a woman named Sheindel who was twenty years his junior. The rebbetsin Sheindel quarreled with Mendele, and urged the rebbe to renew contact with his eldest. At first the rebbe refused, but in 2000 Srultche was injured in a traffic accident, and the rebbe paid him a visit in the hospital. This event opened the door to reconciliation between father and son. In 2002, the rebbe made a dramatic announcement: he was discharging Mendele and appointing Srultche in his stead. Many of the Vizhnits Hasidim greeted the event with joy, while others, who had persecuted Srultche in his days of exile, feared his wrath. Yet Srultche was wise enough to treat his past enemies forgivingly and successfully established himself as the inheritor of Vizhnits.
Shortly afterward, in 2003, the aged rebbe became too infirm to function. Srultche and Mendele now ran two rival camps, called the “Srulists” and the “Mendelists,” reminiscent of the split we related in the last chapter in the case of Satmar. It was clear that the court was headed for a split, yet, while their father was still alive, they had to continue their succession struggle under the same roof. They waged this battle, as Hasidim tend to in such matters, with great passion and even violence. When the rebbe finally passed away in 2012, the two courts formally declared themselves as separate entities. Although they formally reconciled at the instigation of Mendele, relations between the two brothers and their courts remained strained for a few years. Today, however, the two brothers are almost friendly to each other.
The soap opera of the Vizhnits dynasty is not just a riveting melodrama. It gives us a window into the family dynamics of Hasidic courts and of the problems of succession in post-Holocaust Hasidism. It also sheds light on the broader tensions between the zealous antimodernists and more moderate (or pragmatic) factions in courts, especially those previously thought to be moderate, but now swept up in increasing extremism of the Israeli haredi world since the 1970s. The zealous line, rejected by Vizhnits of the 1960s, made real inroads first in the Vizhnits of Monsey, and later, although somewhat less so, in the central court of Vizhnits of Bnei Brak.
Belz: Limited Openness to Modernity and the State
As described in chapter 26, the fourth Rebbe of Belz, Aharon Rokeah escaped from Europe to reach the Land of Israel a shattered and broken man. He had lost his wife and all his children to the Nazis in Poland. As mentioned earlier, he took up residence in Tel Aviv and within a short while became a person of note who was admired by the entire Hasidic public in Israel. Aharon behaved quite eccentrically: he would stay awake during unconventional hours and ate and slept very little, preferring to say that he was not “going to sleep” but rather “taking a rest.” He could stand for an hour pondering the Hanukkah candles or sit in meditation for many hours. Though he declared himself not to be a frummer (exceptionally pious), he practiced self-mortification and asceticism, and was strict with customs usually considered of lesser importance. He was extremely scrupulous about purification and avoided touching young children, except via towels, fearing that their bodies were unclean. He believed that the forces of evil were hounding him and took pains to seal off his home against them. His Hasidim did not regard his unconventional habits critically but rather as exalted secrets, and his ascetic practices only strengthened this image. He was thought by many to be the paradigm of the “rebbe of old” (amoliker rebbe), of a type that is nearly nonexistent in our fallen era. In his sermons, he spoke of the tsaddik as a sort of sacrifice, since he elects to undergo trials and tribulations in order to atone for the sins of the age. All of these statements and practices may hint at his losses in the Holocaust, which he otherwise refused to mention.
Rokeah’s attitude toward the secular public and religious moderates departed dramatically from the antimodernist extremism of his predecessors (see the description of Belz in section 2). Where they were fiercely combative, Aharon was more forgiving. He refused to hear anything bad spoken about any Jew. Even when he heard someone use the term “Sabbath-breaker” (one of the standard ways of designating a secular Jew), he would correct the speaker and insist that he say “a person who forgot the idea of Shabbat” or who “believed it was Friday.”5 According to one tale, when he saw a car driven on Shabbat, he would call out to it “mazeltov, mazeltov,” the antithesis of the haredi curse of “Shabbes, Shabbes!” since, he argued, one of the passengers must be en route to a hospital to have a baby (which would be permitted on the Shabbat). In the first years of the state, he supported the United Religious Front, which brought haredim together with religious Zionists in a single political block.
When he first came to the Land of Israel, his brother Mordechai was his right-hand man. However, the brother soon came into conflict with some of the rebbe’s Hasidim. When Mordechai learned that his wife and children had been murdered by the Nazis, he married a woman named Miriam. The Hasidim were not happy about this marriage, because his new wife seemed to them “too modern” and they began to persecute Mordechai in myriad ways, apparently with the rebbe’s knowledge. This marriage yielded their only son, Yisakhar Dov (b. 1948). Aharon showed the newborn great affection. About a year and a half after the boy was born, Mordechai passed away at the age of forty-nine. That year, Aharon himself remarried with a survivor, the widow of a rebbe murdered in the Holocaust (this was his third marriage, since his second, shortly after the war, ended in divorce). No children ensued from this marriage, leaving little Yisakhar Dov as the closest living relative of the Rebbe of Belz.
On the death of Aharon Rokeah in 1957, the majority of the Hasidim chose his nephew as his successor. The nephew, only nine years old, was mockingly called the yenuka, a term that we have encountered before in the history of Hasidism. It was decided that the appointment would come into force once the boy grew up and took a wife. Several of the Hasidic elders objected to this move. For many years, they existed as a group of rebels with synagogues of their own in Bnei Brak, Antwerp, and London. However, when in 1988 a scion of Belz, Yehoshua Rokeah (b. 1959), who was a cousin of Yisakhar Dov, ascended the throne of Makhnovka, many of the rebels accepted him as their rebbe. In the years that followed, the Hasidim of Belz fought the Hasidim of the Rebbe of Makhnovka, since the latter tried to call themselves “Makhnovka-Belz” or to present themselves in one form or another as belonging to the Belz dynasty. As with Hasidic groups in America, the brand of a court was embodied by the irreplaceable town names from Eastern Europe.
At the age of seventeen, Yisakhar Dov was engaged to Sarah, granddaughter of the then Rebbe of Vizhnits (and daughter of Moshe Yehoshua Hager, who would become the Vizhnits Rebbe). Many thousands of people attended the wedding festivities, which lasted several months. In 1966, he was officially crowned as the Rebbe of Belz, and settled in Jerusalem, where he initiated the construction of a Belz neighborhood. However, the haredi world did not accord him respect and Belz Hasidim felt that they were mocking him. This attitude was to create a kind of persecution complex among Belz Hasidim for years to come. In the 1970s, the rebbe, having gained self-confidence, began to distance himself from the Jerusalem Edah Haredit and to join up with Agudat Yisrael, the more moderate political wing of the haredi world. He launched a separate kosher-certification system, the Badats Mahzikei ha-Dat (the religious court for the “keepers of the faith”), and built separate educational institutions. He even voiced criticism of the Satmar Hasidim, the Edah’s patrons and the leaders of the extreme anti-Zionist camp. And in what was regarded as a cardinal sin, he began to accept money from the state. The Edah Haredit launched a frontal attack against him, accusing him of Zionist perversion, to which the rebbe responded with a biting diatribe against what he regarded as pointless zealotry.
Only many years later, in 2012, did Belz reconcile with the Satmar faction headed by his brother-in-law, Aharon Teitelbaum. In a rare gesture, the rebbe sent messengers to ask an apology in his name over the graves of the Satmar rebbes of old. Teitelbaum accepted this act of contrition, but Teitelbaum’s brother Zalman Leib, the head of the rival Satmar court, continued the feud (see chapter 27 for an account of this split in Satmar).
In 1988, the Rebbe of Belz surprised the Hasidic world when he decided to secede from Agudat Yisrael and throw in his lot with Rabbi Elazar Shach, the leader of the Lithuanian branch of haredi Judaism who had founded the Degel ha-Torah political party. With all the other Hasidic groups remaining in the Agudah, this division resurrected the eighteenth-century war between the Hasidim and Mitnaggdim. Yisakhar Dov’s decision to break ranks with the other Hasidic courts was said to be retribution for the contempt shown to him by earlier years.
In the late 1990s, the Rebbe of Belz, now a political powerhouse, was one of the first to sound the alarm against the dangers of the Internet, but, unlike other rebbes, he didn’t call for banning it altogether. He permitted the “Kosher Internet” (filtered sites) and later also the “Kosher cellular telephone” both of which filter out unwanted websurfing (see the discussion of the Internet in chapter 30). He was also one of the first leaders to legitimize some kind of academic or semiacademic professional training for ultra-Orthodox men in recognition of the poverty into which the “society of scholars” was driving their families. The programs that he endorsed were ones that had been adapted especially for haredim, with full separation of the sexes, meeting their rigorous halakhah by curricula limited to technical studies, and excluding all subjects inimical to religious faith.
Thus the man mocked as a yenuka became one of the most esteemed leaders of the ultra-Orthodox world. He was also one of the wealthiest rabbis in Israel. A symbol of this wealth is the new multimillion-dollar Belz synagogue, completed in the year 2000 and towering over the city of Jerusalem. The main sanctuary seats six thousand and contains an ornate wooden ark that is 12 meters high, weighs 18 tons, and has the capacity to hold seventy Torah scrolls. The sanctuary is illuminated with nine chandeliers, each standing 18 feet high and 11 feet wide, containing over 200,000 pieces of Czech crystal. While such opulence was common in the nineteenth century in the “regal” courts, nothing of quite this sort was ever built in the Old Country. Belz, which had been the icon of the most conservative, antisecular militancy in Eastern Europe, became, under Yisakhar Dov’s scepter, the vanguard of change in the Hasidic world, even if in its core values, it remained as traditionalist as ever.
Sandz-Klausenburg
Yekutiel Yehudah (Zalman Leib) Halberstam (1905–1994), the Rebbe of Sandz-Klausenburg, is one of the more interesting figures of twentieth-century Hasidism. We have already followed his story from before the war and through the Holocaust. Having survived, Halberstam came to New York, where he reestablished his court. In the mid-1950s, as described earlier, he founded a Hasidic neighborhood in Netanya, a town with almost no Hasidim. In 1960, he immigrated to Israel, a decision that prompted a ferocious attack by his relative, Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, who had previously been a close colleague and friend. Defamations, diatribes, and some physical violence accompanied this clash. In a newspaper interview, later published as a pamphlet, Halberstam explained his change of heart with respect to the State of Israel:
Before the founding of the state, no one asked for my opinion—neither the Zionists, the British, nor the U.N.—and since the state exists today, as a matter of fact, I am exempted from pondering the question whether it was desirable to found it or not….
The practical question currently standing before us is whether under the current conditions we should prefer immigration to the Land of Israel over dwelling in the Diaspora. As long as the holy communities of Eastern Europe stood in their splendor as centers of Torah and Hasidism, a dwelling place for millions of good and complete Jews, the question of immigrating to the Land of Israel depended on personal [religious] level. Thus, my holy great-grandfather … yearned all his life to [come to] the Lord’s courts in the Holy Land, and failed to achieve it. Nowadays, [after the Holocaust], when the whole Jewish world has been utterly destroyed, the Land of Israel seems to be the only refuge for the Torah and, above all—there are no Gentiles there [sic!]. All the plagues we find in the Land of Israel—heretics and heresy, the breach of the Torah and its precepts—exist as well abroad; but abroad there are Gentiles. Accordingly, whoever anchors himself to so-called-religious or spiritual reasons to stay in the Diaspora—virtually anchors himself to the Gentiles that are there.6
And in another place:
We the [God-]fearing ones deal with mere criticism and they, the libertines, deal with practical actions and create facts.… I too was convinced in the past that this was our task.… I would curse the heretics [the Zionists] with intense concentrated prayer … but in vain. On the contrary, it became evident to me that they were only getting stronger. I therefore said to myself: wouldn’t it be better if we switched roles: viz, that I would be the one building the Land of Israel while they, the secular ones, be those who revile me.…7
The experience of the Holocaust was evidently a factor in his new thinking. Indeed, the rebbe himself linked the founding of the Hasidic neighborhood in Netanya, which he viewed as one of the significant achievements of his life, to the experience of his survival in the Holocaust: “Many times I would consider why and wherefore I alone was left alive of all my household and family.… And this day I say, that all this was only so that I would set down, here with my own hands, the cornerstone for the Sandz neighborhood.”8
There was a notable gap between Halberstam’s rhetoric and action. His rhetoric was ultra-conservative, but his practice was often liberal, permitting his followers many of things forbidden by other Hungarian rebbes. For instance, he sharply condemned the use of the Hebrew language, yet permitted it in Sandz schools for girls. He attacked the idea of Torah study for girls, but still permitted such study in the institutions under his patronage, and would even converse with his daughters on religious subjects. He expressed himself with great hostility toward secular Jews, but on many issues was accommodating toward them. He was even more vitriolic against non-Jews, but instructed that in his Netanya hospital there be no discrimination between Jew and Gentile, thus suspending his hostility toward Gentiles, much exacerbated by the Holocaust. Moreover, he ruled, doctors should violate Shabbat if healing a Gentile required it.
The Rebbe of Klausenburg, like many of his predecessors, turned his back on mysticism in favor of a more traditionalist conservatism. This was a Hasidism directed not toward spiritual experience but instead toward ethical behavior, practical commandments, and above all, study of Torah, which had been originally the goal of the Mitnaggdim in opposing Hasidism. In this context, he also founded the Mifal ha-Shas for the encouragement of Talmud study, and forbade his Hasidim from studying Hasidic books in the Sandz yeshivot. He summarized the fundamentals of his doctrine in a talk he gave in 1964 on the anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather, Hayim of Sandz:
Sandz Hasidism is based on the following principles: [study of] Torah, worship, charity, humility, modesty and love of the Jewish people. These are the fundamentals of Sandz Hasidism, all the rest is commentary, go and study it. Much there is to learn and ponder before one is able to comprehend the essence of Sandz Hasidism. The Hasidism of Sandz was never a Hasidism of snatching at the rebbe’s leftovers from the tish [the practice of shirayim], which is easily attainable by everyone, but rather the Hasidism of the great masters of Israel, of the spiritual elite, pious and virtuous men; and our holy rabbi [Rabbi Hayim] of Sandz was a rebbe for rebbes.9
Nostalgia, as typical of Klausenburg as of other Hasidic groups, is part of the effort to ground the present in the authority of the past.
Halberstam represented the early fathers of Hasidism as if they too were committed to the study of Talmud and halakhah. To anchor his statements, he cites the adage that later Hasidic literature attributes to the Besht, and that lists, as the top priorities of Hasidism, three loves: love of God, love of Torah, and love of Jews:
One of the three “loves” which the Baal Shem Tov lists as the basis for his holy path is the “love of Torah.” And since this is one of the fundamentals of the Hasidic way, the tsaddikim, disciples of the Besht, worked and fostered the promulgation of the love of Torah, and hence also its study, among the children of Israel.… And indeed, most of the tsaddikim who were the Besht’s disciples were famously erudite rabbis; many were heads of yeshivas who would expound the Torah to thousands of students, or served as rabbis in large and important communities.… There were then among those who were opposed to the path of Hasidism who spread the calumny that the Hasidim make light of and neglect the study of the legal parts of the Torah. My holy grandfather [Hayim of Sandz] addresses this issue with his full ferocity. According to him this allegation was invented [by the Mitnaggdim] with the aim of covering their own defects.… It was by the power of the Torah, which they [the Hasidim] studied, that they indeed were purified and uplifted to attain all their sacred degrees of elevation.10
The Rebbe of Klausenburg knew, of course, that many Hasidic courts were led by rebbes who were not Talmudic scholars, and that their Hasidim revered them for their clairvoyance, prayers, passion, singing, and dancing. While he regarded these rebbes with contempt, he nevertheless thought that they served a purpose in our degenerate era. He tells a tale of one of his ancestors from the nineteenth century, Tsvi Hirsh of Zhidachov, who, when he once saw a fish continuing to move and jump after its head was cut off, quipped: “Azoi velen tantsin un shpringen rebbelekh ohn kep far biyas hamoshiach” (“thus shall dance and jump the headless rebbes before the coming of the Messiah”).11 And he interprets his forebear’s words as relevant to our own times:
When we behold the fallen state of the generation, … is this the Hasidic doctrine that the Besht founded? And to this we mean to respond … that one must not (heaven forbid) fall into despair when one sees the degraded state of the age, even though the rebbes are headless, that is without intellectual achievement, nevertheless they jump about and they have a bit of vitality to endow the people with unity and a strengthened spirit for the Torah and for Judaism. And as bad as it seems to us, without the Hasidic way it would have been several times worse, and not a remnant would not have been left, without the path of Hasidism, the dress, the gatherings, which every Hasid does with his congregation and his rebbe, all this makes [us] stronger.12
The Rebbe of Klausenburg should be considered one of the most important ideologues of haredi traditionalism in the twentieth century. The nation of Israel is eternal, in his opinion, because it adheres to the Torah, which is the unchanging word of the eternal God, while modern ideologies are transient human inventions. In a jeremiad against modernity, he demonstrates striking awareness of modern political movements, connecting the ideas of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment with twentieth-century Communism:
It is no novelty to reveal the disaster after it has already spread and caused its ruins in the land … There are those who [do not repent] even after they see what is going on today in various countries, such as Communist China, where hundreds of millions of people are subject to terror and harsh servitude, and who knows how many have been murdered there for no crime of their own.… There are such naïve people who still believe in their slogans and propaganda; that this ideology shall save the workers from the exploiting employers and bring blessings to mankind as a whole.… And therefore the tsaddikim of the generation warned against the emancipation laws that Napoleon legislated in France.13
The rebbe took the same attitude also toward the other ideologies that had taken root among the Jewish people, including Zionism. He did not oppose Zionism, as his relative from Satmar did, on messianic grounds, but on account of its secular character, even though he supported the renewed settlement in the Land of Israel.
Unlike secular ideologies, which he entirely repudiated, he was more ambivalent toward secular people as individuals. On the one hand, he coined the hostile term goyhudim (equivalent to “Jewentiles”), which echoes the sharp tone of other Hungarian and Galician rebbes (in Chabad, by contrast, such an expression would have been considered almost heretical). But, on the other hand, he persisted in seeing the positive in nonreligious Jews, especially those who had abandoned the faith as a result of the Holocaust. He directed his harshest rhetoric at secular ideologists, politicians, and the educators, yet even there, he often contradicted his own position. For example, when he met David Ben Gurion, he took off his hat, an expression of respect almost unheard of from other rebbes in their meetings with secular politicians.
Halberstam was a halakhic authority and in this joined several other Hasidic rabbirebbes scholars call admorim-poskim (rebbes who function as halakhic authorities). His opinions tend toward the conservative end of the legal spectrum. One area in which he showed extreme conservatism was the status of women. As we saw in interwar Poland, a striking revolution in women’s status occurred shortly after World War I when Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, the Hafetz Hayim, permitted Torah study for women. He argued that the prohibition against women studying was no longer relevant, since women do not receive the values of Judaism in their homes and are exposed to secular influences. Without referring to it explicitly, the Klausenburg Rebbe viewed this ruling as tinged with “Reformism” and overturned it, but, here, too, he was not entirely consistent. While women need not aspire to be scholars but should rather support their husbands and run their households, he did allow girls to study Torah in a manner similar to other haredi schools. And he even gave lectures to women, albeit from behind a barrier.
Halberstam died in 1994, and the role of rebbe was split between his two sons. His eldest, Tsvi Elimelekh, became the leader of the Hasidim in Israel with his seat in Netanya; he is called the Rebbe of Sandz. His second son, Shmuel David, took on the leadership of the branch of the dynasty in the United States located in Brooklyn’s Borough Park; he is called the Rebbe of Klausenburg. It is perhaps testimony to Halberstam’s qualities as a leader that the wars of succession that we have observed in other dynasties never broke out in Sandz-Klausenburg. Instead, by making creative use of the doublebarreled name that the dynasty had acquired, as well as its two communities in Israel and the United States, his subjects were able to divide the kingdom harmoniously.
Chabad/Lubavitch
Although the seat of Chabad’s operations was in the United States from 1940 and it never had a large number of Hasidim in the State of Israel, it nevertheless became quite influential there. After the Holocaust, a subtle shift took place in the anti-Zionism of Yosef Yitshak Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of Lubavitch. He gave his blessings to the formation of an agricultural village planned for his Hasidim. Construction of the new settlement, Kfar Chabad, began in 1949, at the close of Israel’s War of Independence. His son-in-law, Menachem Mendel continued to encourage the development of the village. Over the years, the number of farmers in the village declined, but to this day it still has beehives and orchards of oranges and etrogim (citrons). Beyond its agricultural produce, Kfar Chabad became a stronghold of Chabad activity in Israel, the site for a Tomkhei Temimim yeshivah whose main branch is in America, as well as other educational institutions. It also published Kfar Chabad, a newsletter containing much original and internal Chabad writing. After the nuclear disaster in Ukraine in 1986, Kfar Chabad hosted the “Children of Chernobyl” project, which provided medical and educational services to thousands of Jewish children.
Figure 28.1. 770 Eastern Parkway, the house of Menachem Mendel Schneerson and the headquarters of Chabad in Brooklyn, NY. The building became the model for Chabad houses elsewhere in the world. Courtesy of Samuel C. Heilman.
In the 1980s, an exact replica of Lubavitch world headquarters on 770 Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was built in the village (see figure 28.1). Many viewed this action as a sign that the rebbe was the Messiah and that he was building himself a familiar residence in the Land of Israel in anticipation of the moment of redemption. However, similar structures were soon built all around the world (from Brazil to Australia), and some well-to-do Hasidim even constructed private homes that replicated the design. For his critics, erecting such identical buildings seemed to create an idolatrous fetish of the rebbe’s residence; for others, it was a sign of respect. Unlike the much more anti-Zionist Satmar rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson never visited Israel, perhaps in the belief that it would only be timely in messianic times.
As in other places, in Israel, too, Chabad Hasidim began proselytizing secular Jews to “return to the faith” already in the 1950s, yet they only began to have real success after the Six Day War in 1967, a time when many Israelis, including the secular, were infused with quasi-religious sentiments. They targeted different audiences with different approaches: for academics and students, they organized courses in the Tanya; for the less educated, they ran campaigns to don tefillin and light Hanukkah candles, campaigns that were run on city streets, in commercial malls, airports, and other public places. Indeed, practically no town or city in Israel exists today without at least one and commonly more Chabad menorahs lit in the public square on Hanukkah, much as one finds elsewhere in the world where Chabad is active. Chabad also ran kindergartens, held Lag ba-Omer processions, and arranged religious activities in the army, even in remote, hazardous locations.
Many in the Israeli public responded to Chabad’s proselytizing activities with some sympathy, but others were antagonistic. For instance, in 2009, the residents of the Ramat Aviv Gimmel neighborhood of Tel Aviv, a stronghold of the secular elite, opposed the opening of a Chabad house in their neighborhood, arguing that Chabad is a “missionary sect.” In 2012, a commercial mall in the same region refused to allow Chabad into it on the same grounds. Chabad was not used to responses of this kind elsewhere, since they stressed their interest in bringing secular Jews closer to religious Judaism by peaceable means. Here, they had stumbled unwittingly into the Kulturkampf in Israel between religious and secular.
Out of the same desire to avoid conflicts, Chabad largely resisted taking part in Israeli elections. Nevertheless, as we saw earlier, the rebbe did inject himself several times into the public debates that rocked the country. After the Six Day War, he ruled unequivocally that it is forbidden to withdraw from any territory captured in the war, not even in exchange for a peace offer. His justifications for this stance were halakhic, explaining that such a withdrawal is a “prohibited risk,” but many were convinced that his intransigent position stemmed from his messianism. Although Chabad had traditionally been anti-Zionist, his position seemed to be that elements of the despised secular state presaged the coming messianic kingdom.
The rebbe also intervened in the question of “who is a Jew.” The Law of Return grants to every Jew the right to become a citizen in Israel upon his or her arrival. The law defines a Jew as anyone with one Jewish grandparent or who had converted to Judaism. However, a series of legal challenges raised the question whether such a conversion had to be done in accordance with Orthodox procedure. The rebbe took a highly vocal stance in defense of Orthodox prerogatives, at a time when the majority of the haredi leadership in Israel did not attribute much importance to the issue. Since Chabad’s messianic campaign was dependent on spiritually arousing all Jews, it was critical to establish who could be counted as a Jew according to Jewish law.
Only once did the rebbe depart from his practice and direct that votes be cast for a political party, as described earlier, in the elections of 1988. The fact that Agudat Yisrael gained three additional seats in the Knesset seemed to attest to the great popularity of the rebbe among religious Israelis. After that election cycle, however, he returned to his previous practice of staying out of Israel’s elections. Even so, in 1990 he instructed the ultra-Orthodox Knesset members to avoid taking part in a parliamentary action that would bring down the right-wing government of Yitshak Shamir and replace it with a government led by Shimon Peres. That maneuver, later called “the stinking ploy” (ha-targil ha-masri’ah), was indeed headed off, mainly because of the rebbe’s intercession.
Owing to the popularity of Chabad in many circles in Israel, or at least to the perception of such popularity, many public figures and military officers paid visits to the rebbe when they came to the United States. Ariel Sharon claimed that the rebbe enlightened him on military tactics. When Israel’s third president, Zalman Shazar, visited the rebbe in his residence, he was criticized by those who argued that he had dishonored the office of president, since the rebbe should have visited him. Shazar responded that he was visiting the rebbe not as a president but as a Hasid, since, as his original name, Shneur Zalman Rubashov, suggests, this secular Zionist politician descended from Chabad Hasidim.
During the first Gulf War (1990–1991), when Iraq was lobbing missiles at Israel and there was a threat of the use of chemical weapons, the Chabad Rebbe repeatedly emphasized that no place was safer than the Land of Israel, for “it is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end” (Deuteronomy 11:12). He directed that not only should one not leave the Land during the war, but one should also go there, a directive he did not apply to himself. Since the Iraqi missiles didn’t have chemical warheads and only one person died from the conventional strikes, the Chabad Hasidim regarded that relatively favorable outcome as the fulfillment of the rebbe’s prophecy. It also reflected what some Hasidim viewed as a proof of the Rebbe’s supernatural powers.
The rebbe’s stance toward the State of Israel was therefore complex. On the rhetorical level, he continued the anti-Zionism of his predecessors. Like other ultra-Orthodox rabbis, he usually avoided the term “State of Israel,” preferring instead to say the “Land of Israel.” However, he was ceaselessly involved with the problems of the “Land of Israel” and the public debates that affected it. While he generally did so without explicitly recognizing the state’s symbols of sovereignty, he also avoided denigrating those symbols, apparently so as not to sabotage the proselytization efforts of his Hasidim. Officially, he feared for the fate of the land only because it was an important center of Jewish population; in practice, though, he was clearly moved by the fact of a sovereign Jewish state. Although he held that the state itself is not part of the redemptive process, there is no doubt that he viewed many of the events that took place there as messianic.
Through its outreach efforts, Chabad has vigorously missionized in Israel among secular and religious Jews alike, just as they have elsewhere in the world. In fact, Chabad is considered, with a great degree of justification, as the leading force in the broader movement in Israel to convert secular Jews to religious Judaism, and has demonstrated that, even in the very heart of the secular state, a movement of religious revival can flourish. Today, posters and billboards with the image of the seventh Rebbe are ubiquitous in Israel, from the airport to the sides of buses. His image and his campaign for the Messiah have thus become iconic.
Bratslav
Like Chabad, Bratslav has won a prominent place in Israeli society, disproportionate to its actual size, such that today there is almost no Israeli who is unaware of it. Its people dance in the streets and sell booklets and recordings at intersections. Some of them also spray-paint in every possible location the peculiar graffiti “Na-Nah-Nahma-Nahman-Me-Uman.” Perhaps even more than Chabad, many of the Hasidim of Bratslav are converts from secularism. Because it has had no rebbe at its helm since the death of Nahman of Bratslav, especially during the last few decades, it has fragmented into various groups, each often led by a charismatic rabbi who is something less than a rebbe. These groups do not share a common doctrine, except for the teachings of Rabbi Nahman. Politically, Bratslav as a movement does not involve itself in the Israeli national discourse since it focuses mainly on the individual and his internal struggles. Given its ideological fragmentation, there are Bratslav Hasidim who take a decidedly anti-Zionist line alongside others of a Zionist or messianic orientation.
As we saw in chapter 22, Avraham Hazan, the leader of Bratslav in the Land of Israel before World War I, spent his last years (1914–1917) in Uman, the “capital” of Bratslav Hasidism in Ukraine, where he was compelled to remain owing to the outbreak of World War I. There he encountered a new adherent from Poland, Levi Yitshak Bender, whose adventures in evading the Soviet police we have already described. When Bender finally arrived in Israel after the war, he became one of the main spiritual leaders of the small Bratslav community.
Around the time of Bender’s arrival, the small Bratslav center that had existed in the Old City of Jerusalem disbanded, owing to the area’s capture by the Jordanian Legion, and the Hasidim dispersed to other neighborhoods in Jerusalem as well as to Bnei Brak and Tel Aviv. The Bratslav Hasidim later built a center for themselves in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim district, which became a focal point for those Hasidim of a more conservative bent. This community remained quite small in the years following Israel’s War of Independence.
The second Bratslav community was in Safed, where Gedaliah Aharon Koenig (1921–1980) settled following the establishment of the state. Koenig, who had become a Chabad Hasid in his teens, fell under the influence of Avraham Sternhartz, great-grandson of Natan Sternhartz and the leader of the Jerusalem community until his death in 1955. The Safed form of Bratslav Hasidism is often considered quieter and more “introspective,” dealing more with deep study of the teachings of Rabbi Nahman.
The significant turn in the fortunes of Bratslav Hasidism began in the 1960s. The search in Western culture for new forms of spirituality found echoes in the Jewish world, and Israel’s victory in the Six Day War also awakened religious fervor. Bratslav, unlike Chabad, was not blessed with financial resources and a centralized organization, and was populated to a great extent by youthful “seekers.” Yet, although marginalized by many in the Hasidic camp, Bratslav turned into a flourishing and vibrant branch of Hasidism by its success in attracting just such youth, some coming from troubled and even criminal backgrounds. Nevertheless, precisely because so many of its followers were newly religious and many were spiritually eccentric, conservative branches of Hasidism continued to view Bratslav with even greater suspicion. In essence, Bratslav in the last decades of the twentieth century became a kind of anarchistic group, thus renewing its old reputation as a radical and marginal type of Hasidism, shunned and even persecuted by more mainstream courts.
What is the source of Bratslav’s attraction? There is no doubt that the teachings of Rabbi Nahman resonate for modern man, and some have found in it parallels to the philosophy of existentialism (see the discussion in chapter 21). In a departure from the typical Hasidic optimism, Rabbi Nahman’s teachings tell of a struggle with both external forces called “hindrances” (meni’ot) and internal ones called “confusions” (bilbulim), which anyone seeking proximity to God must constantly battle against. Because of its decentralized character, Bratslav is a less-institutionalized branch of Hasidism than its sisters, and has consequently preserved a certain youthfulness, great spiritual intensity, and even some of the practices characteristic of eighteenth-century Hasidism, such as hitbodedut (self-seclusion). As part of hitbodedut, the Hasid is required to find a place in which there are no people, or to select a time when people are not awake, and pour out his soul to his Creator. During this “face to face conversation” with God they often cry out “Tatte!” (the Yiddish word for “Daddy”). The meditative practices of Bratslav bear some resemblance to the forms of meditation in Eastern religion, which explains some of its attraction for spiritual seekers. The fact that there is no living rebbe who might censure or control his Hasidim’s behavior also gives these followers a certain freedom to make their own rules, claiming they have communicated directly with their rebbe on the spiritual level. Yet the fact remains that not every tsaddik has been turned into a romantic or existentialist hero. Rabbi Nahman evidently had this potential, which his followers were able to actualize, especially during the counterculture of the 1960s.
During this same period, new factions began to form in Bratsav itself. Eliezer Shlomo Schick (1940–2015) founded a group that began to function like a full-fledged court. Schick was crowned as its rebbe and even represented himself as the reincarnation of Rabbi Nahman. He established a settlement in the Galilee town of Yavne’el, which gained notoriety for encouraging marriages of minors and for a strict lifestyle involving modest dress for women. At a certain stage, he began to divide his time between Yavne’el and a community he developed in New York. After his death, his sons, following his will, took control of his community organizations while his disciples took control of his spiritual role.
Another Bratslav community formed in the 1960s was led by Rabbi Israel Ber Odesser (1888?–1994), known by the monikers “the Grandfather” or the Ba’al ha-Petek (Possessor of the Note). Odesser came from a family of Tiberias-based Karlin Hasidim; in his youth, he became an acolyte of Rabbi Israel Halpern, one of the Bratslav luminaries of the early twentieth century. He studied for several years in Jerusalem and later returned to Tiberias. He also corresponded with President Zalman Shazar, who, as we have seen earlier, had grown nostalgic for his Hasidic roots in his old age.
Odesser’s name is associated primarily with the story of “The Note,” an event that took place in the year 1922. In that year, on the 17th day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz—a fast day—the young Rabbi Israel felt a great weakness. He decided to break the fast and eat something. The halakhah permits breaking this fast for medical reasons, yet Odesser immediately felt severe pangs of remorse. After prayers and entreaties to God, Odesser felt a need to turn to his library. There, in one of the books, he found a yellowing slip of paper on which were written the following words:
It was very hard for me to descend to you
My dear disciple, to tell you that I was pleased by
Your work so much, and of you I said
Mein feirel vet tlien biz Moshiach
Vet kumen [my little fire shall burn until the coming of the Messiah]
Be strong and of good courage in your worship
Na Nah Nahma Nahman me-Uman
And by this I shall tell you a secret that is full and loaded from edge to edge (patspatsiyah) [a name of an angel responsible of declaring the good deeds of the Jews]
And by a strengthened worship shall you comprehend it; and the sign thereof is:
On the 17th of Tammuz they will say you did not fast.
To Odesser, it was clear that the note had arrived directly from Rabbi Nahman and that it held great and wondrous secrets; yet in his immediate surroundings this explanation was ridiculed. He spoke to no one about it beyond the immediate circle of his associates. However, many years later, in 1984 when he was living in an old-age home, he was “discovered” by several young Bratslav Hasidim, most of them newly religious and of French origin, who decided to make him their quasi-rebbe. Odesser overnight became an admired tsaddik. In every possible place his group spread the slogan “Na-Nah-Nahma-Nahman-me-Uman”—via graffiti, stickers, and other means; the group was derogatorily nicknamed the “Nahnahim” (a wordplay in Hebrew meaning “losers” or “weaklings”). The slogan’s success was enormous; it can be seen today in even the most remote locations.
The tale of the note stirred up considerable controversy among Bratslav Hasidim. Several prominent leaders rejected its authenticity, and some identified its purported author as a Slonim Hasid of Tiberias, who for fun had engaged in a ruse at the naïve Odesser’s expense. Yet the disciples of Odesser saw it as a genuine message from the Upper Worlds, as well as a declaration that Odesser was the rightful successor to Rabbi Nahman. There were those who interpreted the note as hinting that Rabbi Israel would not die before the coming of the Messiah and some of his admirers even consider him the Messiah, especially since he has claim to be a “king” (although it is unclear whether he meant that literally). Odesser died at a very old age—some say at 106—and the group he launched has adherents to this day. The majority of the Bratslav Hasidim who dance in the streets of Israel belong to this group.
Another group of Bratslav Hasidim belong to the yeshivah Shuvu Banim (Return, Ye Sons). The founder of this yeshivah, Rabbi Eliezer Berland (b. 1937), tried at first to attract students from Lithuanian yeshivot, but ultimately had success chiefly with secular youths, some of them with links to the criminal underworld. Berland adopted a peculiar concoction of political ideologies, blending the radical anti-Zionism of Satmar, which usually demands political and military pacifism, with a sharply militant anti-Arabism, of a spirit close to that of the far-right in Israel. In 2010, a tempest erupted in the media over the Shuvu Banim yeshivah, when Shuvu Banim activists announced in Berland’s name that for years his son and grandson, who using violence and ties with criminal elements, had taken over the funds of the yeshivah, enforced new practices there, and kept him from coming and going freely. Rabbi Berland left the yeshivah and settled in the small town of Beitar Illit.
Figure 28.2. Andrey Gorb, At the Jewish New Year, 5764 (2003), photograph. Bratslav Hasidic men make pilgrimage on Rosh Hashanah to Uman to pray at the tomb of their rebbe, Nahman of Bratslav, who died there in 1810. Here they perform the Jewish ritual of tashlikh, praying for forgiveness and symbolically casting their sins into the water. Many wear the white kittl for this ceremony. Copyright © Andrey Gorb (Kiev). Courtesy of Yisrael Nochum Karlinski.
However, the scandals did not cease in his new place of residence either, and in the summer of 2012 rumors spread in the media about a sexual scandal supposedly involving the rabbi. Berland’s Hasidim claimed that the story was the result of an extortion attempt as a result of the rabbi’s entanglement with the underworld. Berland fled from Israel with a small group of followers, and wandered between Morocco, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Holland, and again South Africa, from which he was extradited to Israel in 2016 and, after a short trial, was sentenced to eighteen months of imprisonment. And yet, until he reached his nadir, Rabbi Berland managed to attract many students, some of whom, such as Shalom Arush and Ofer Erez, became Bratslav leaders in their own right.
During the decades when Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, most Bratslav Hasidim were unable to reach the gravesite of Rabbi Nahman in Uman on Rosh Hashanah, to celebrate the kibbuts ha-gadol and recite the tikkun ha-klali. Nevertheless, the especially committed among them made all possible efforts to get there, sometimes at the risk of their lives. Beginning in the Perestroika period and especially after 1991 when Ukraine won its independence, the borders opened and pilgrimage to Uman again became possible (see figure 28.2). The neglected gravesite in the small Ukrainian town now turned into a bustling tourist hub, encouraged by locals who have developed an economy that depends on maintaining a steady flow of Bratslav tourists. But there were also clashes between locals and tourists, mostly incited by criminal elements on both sides. The journey to Uman, especially for Rosh Hashanah, became an Israeli (and not only Israeli) craze; each year, the number of visitors increases. As of the early 2010s, the number of such pilgrims reached in the tens of thousands annually. The gathering has become a kind of “Jewish Woodstock,” a carnival in which the pilgrims celebrate with bonfires and dancing, as well as, on the margins, the overturning of norms with drugs and even illicit sex. Most of the pilgrims, however, seek a genuine spiritual experience. Not all those visiting the tomb are Brastlav Hasidim, for the event attracts also fellow-travelers and curiosity seekers. It appears that the Uman celebration is not only a manifestation of the growing interest in Bratslav, but has also been instrumental in augmenting it. Rabbi Nahman, who foresaw and waged war against the secularity of the modern era, achieved his moment of greatest glory precisely in that era.
As in the United States, then, Israel has become fertile soil for the rebirth of Hasidism after the Holocaust. Even though most Hasidic groups oppose the Zionist state, it has provided them with the security and material conditions to create vibrant communities. Their very oppositional stance strengthens their identity. And the competition between these groups for followers and the splits over succession, far from diminishing them, actually contributes to their vitality.
1 Ya’akov Meir (son of Pinhas Menahem) Alter (editor unknown), Records of Words by Our Teacher Rabbi Y. M. Alter—Not for Publication, Inside Information (private collection), 25, article 89 [Hebrew].
2 Ibid.
3 Yisrael Alter, “Letter of Guidance and Strengthening” [Hebrew], Tsefunot 5 (Tishrei 5750/1989) L 63.
4 Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz and Ya’akov Israel Kanievsky, Iggerot Kodesh (Bnei Brak, 1986), 5.
5 Aharon Rokeah, Kuntres ba-Kodesh Penimah (Bnei Brak, 2007), 190.
6 Yekutiel Yehudah Halberstam of Sandz-Klausenburg, Da’at Torah be-Inyanin ha-Nog’im la-Yehadut ha-Haredit (Brooklyn, 1959/1960), 3.
7 Aharon Sorasky, Lapid ha-Esh (Bnei Brak, 2002/2003), vol. 2, 483.
8 Shefa Hayim Likkut Divrei Torah, F, sec. 335.
9 Yekutial Yehudah Halberstam, “Divrei Aggadah biseudat yom hillula shel hagaon hakadosh mi-Sandz,” Hinnukh Sandz 4 (5724/1964): 8.
10 Idem, Derekh Hayim (Union City, NJ, 1996), 97–103.
11 Idem, Shefa Hayim (Netanya, 1995), Letters, D, 248, 68–69.
12 Ibid.
13 Idem, “Haderekh Nelekh Bah,” in Derekh Hayim, 169–171.
