Neo-Hasidism: The Questions are Theological

Abstract

I

Hasidism is a wide-ranging religious movement that has existed within Judaism for more than 250 years. In the mid-nineteenth century, it was dominant in large parts of Eastern Europe. Although much diminished in influence in more modern times, it still has a following of hundreds of thousands, primarily in Israel and the U.S., though in various other centers as well. It began in the late eighteenth century as a mystically inspired movement of religious revival, but afterwards directed that inspiration toward serving as a bulwark against modernity and resistance to change.

Neo-Hasidism began in the early twentieth century within intellectual and literary circles of Westernized European Jews. It sought to recover what it saw as the beauty of Hasidic life and thought for Jews who lived fully in the modern world but sought to enrich their spiritual lives through the insights of the Hasidic masters. Its most important theoreticians were Martin Buber¹ and Hillel Zeitlin.² There was much romanticization in their portrayals of Hasidism, but also deep insight into the original teachings and religious impulses that had inspired it. Their emphasis, from the beginning, was on Hasidism in its earliest years, including both the personalities and the teachings that had first shaped it.

Buber wrote in German for audiences both Jewish and Christian. From the beginning, his romance with Hasidism was part of a broader fin-de-siecle discovery of mysticism and the inner life. As Buber’s philosophy developed over the years, so too did his understanding of Hasidism. Zeitlin, living in Warsaw and writing in both Hebrew and Yiddish, was able to reshape the insights of the early Hasidic masters into a contemporary theoretical framework. His neo-Hasidism and his passionate concern for the future of Eastern European Jewry were of a piece. His vision was snuffed out by his death in the Holocaust, only to be rediscovered much later by spiritually thirsty Israelis.

Neo-Hasidism was created again in North America beginning in the 1960s under the influence of two rabbis who had arrived in the U.S. as adolescent refugees from war-torn Europe and bore within themselves a living link to what had been lost. Shlomo Carlebach brought an endless wealth of Hasidic tales and teachings to a spiritually thirsty generation of young American Jews, borne on the wings of his great musical creativity. Carlebach’s Hasidism was deeply linked to the losses of the Holocaust, and he maintained a close connection to elements within the surviving traditional Hasidic community that was re-establishing itself in America. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi represented a stronger break from traditional Hasidism than did his friend Carlebach. (Both had been shaped by years together within Chabad.) Schachter-Shalomi was much more open to learning from non-Jewish sources, including both teachers of other religions and contemporary Western intellectual discourse. Ultimately, he attempted to take what he considered the best insights of Hasidic teaching and to link them to the emerging new-age spirituality that became current on the American scene from the 1960s onward. He created the Jewish Renewal movement, which continues in this direction. Carlebach had a close connection to Israel and his influence is felt there as well. Schachter-Shalomi’s version of neo-Hasidism is present mainly in North America.³

It is noteworthy that neither Carlebach nor Schachter-Shalomi followed the earlier neo-Hasidic pattern of emphasizing the teachings of Hasidism in its first generations. Carlebach was most attracted to the Izbica/Radzin tradition of late nineteenth-century Poland and to the Piasecner rebbe, who died during the Holocaust. As a highly skilled talmudist, he especially loved deriving Hasidic insights from fine points of halakhic discourse, also typical of Hasidism in its later incarnation. Schachter-Shalomi’s link to Hasidism was largely through Chabad and he tended to draw on teachings from all generations within that school. Although quite far from the Chabad community in both practice and worldview, he continued to see himself as a disciple of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, and he maintained personal contact with some others who shared that identity.

Both Carlebach and Schachter-Shalomi were charismatic personalities who succeeded tremendously in injecting into Jewish life a much-needed new dose of joyous and colorful spirituality. Communities ranging from Reform to Modern Orthodox learned from them to set aside dry formality in worship and to be open to enthusiastic singing and creative reinterpretation. Many Jews who had not previously seen any possibility of passionate religiosity within Judaism had their eyes and ears opened by these two teachers and their willingness to re-create Hasidism in a North American post-1960s setting.

In the early twenty-first century, some fifty years after Carlebach and Schachter-Shalomi began their effort, there emerged yet another phenomenon called neo-Hasidism. This one had its roots in Israel but has found a home also within modern Orthodox circles in the U.S. In Israel, it has come forth as a reading of Judaism that is an alternative to the extreme religious nationalism promulgated by the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook and his followers, although the two sometimes exist in combination. In a broader sense, it may be seen as a religious version of the Israeli turn from collectivist and nationalist ideologies to a concern for an individual quest for meaning and self-care. Israel is awash with meditation retreats, yoga studios, ever-new bodywork techniques, and psychedelic circles. The turn toward Hasidism overlaps with these. Given the tremendous revival within Bratslav Hasidism in Israel, it is not surprising that the most avidly studied sources within these circles are the teachings of Rabbi Nahman, alongside those of Izbica and R. Zadok ha-Kohen, another key figure of the late nineteenth century.

As conventional boundaries between the so-called “religious” and “secular” populations in Israel have become increasingly blurred in the past two decades, neo-Hasidism has emerged within “secular” sectors of Israeli society as well. There it overlaps significantly with interest in Eastern spiritualities and psychedelics. In such groupings, one surprisingly can meet hasidim (both current and former) alongside “secular” seekers. But there are also circles of study (again often emphasizing Bratslav in particular) and there is a growing if vague sense that a Hasidism-based approach to Judaism might speak to contemporary seekers. A parallel phenomenon exists in small numbers—including many liberal rabbis—in North America. Unfortunately, there the walls between Orthodoxy and the broader Jewish community remain higher and there is little contact between neo-Hasidic circles on the two sides of the dividing line. But my many introductions to and translations of Hasidic sources have been an important resource for both of these groups.

Here it seems right to say a few words about my own journey to Hasidism and neo-Hasidism. I met Reb Zalman during my undergraduate years (the late 1950s!) and was very much influenced by him. It was he who suggested that I read Hillel Zeitlin, who almost immediately became my most important guide and teacher. I was not attracted to joining the contemporary Hasidic community or imitating its way of life. I discovered the Hasidic masters after living through a period of intense piety during my adolescent years. Once I had left that behind, I sought a very different approach to Judaism, one more deeply spiritual and less obsessed with details of observance. The Hasidism I found, first in Zeitlin, but then in the many sources he quoted, was one that began not with God as commander and the need to follow the rules, but rather with a world flooded with divine light and with the human struggle to discover the magnificence of that light, which lay hidden beneath the veneer of daily life. The sublime was to be found within the ordinary, visible as soon as we could come to realize that there was nothing “ordinary” about it. The quest to find it, uplift it, and live in response to it was called ‘avodat ha-kodesh, divine service. I signed up.

This was the Hasidism of the earliest generations; it was that to which my soul was drawn more than sixty years ago and continues to be drawn today. Across these many decades, I have studied, taught, and translated that Torah, trying to render it accessible to contemporary seekers, both in Hebrew and in English. Over the years, I have settled into life as a traditionally observant Jew, although my relationship with halakhah is far from that of the contemporary Hasidic community. The sacred texts with which it is my great privilege to engage nearly every day run from the written Torah to the Zohar and other Kabbalistic sources and, most especially, to Hasidic teachings.

II

The Ba‘al Shem Tov (Yisra’el ben Eliezer, 1698–1760) sought to bring about nothing less than a religious revolution within Judaism. He asked himself “What would the Jewish world be like if we truly took seriously the notion that Y-H-W-H is everywhere, filling all of space, present in every moment, object, event, and action?” Phrases like “the whole earth is filled with His glory,” or “there is no place devoid of Him” were of course available in the rhetoric of earlier generations. There were Kabbalists, particularly those of the school following Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, who emphasized them and sought deeply to live in response to their call. But for them, this monistic perception of reality was to remain a secret truth, shared only amid small groups of Kabbalists and attained through arduous study and meditation. The idea of building a society and reconstructing all of Judaism around this single insight, stripped of all excessive kabbalistic complexity, and refitting everything else around it, emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century, inspired by the BeSHT (Ba’al Shem Tov).

Needless to say, this notion of both God and religion is very different from that of the biblical sources themselves. There the emphasis is on a national, collective account of the Israelite people and its fate. God is Creator, Redeemer, and Commander. Loyalty to him and to His teachings is what is demanded. The otherness and superiority of God are unquestioned.

It also differs from the rabbinic enterprise of deriving both law and moral teachings from the biblical text. Although continuing both the rabbinic assumptions about the divine origins of the text and the homiletical methods of rabbinic aggadah in interpreting them, the outcome sought was quite different. For the early Hasidic preacher, the goal is usually mystical/devotional, using the text as a way to open the hearer or reader’s heart toward attachment to the ever-present Y-H-W-H, rather than toward establishing a code of proper moral behavior.

Neo-Hasidism, as I conceive it, should be based on an expansive and universalized reading of the teachings of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, the Maggid of Mezritch, and others in the early Hasidic generations. It is a Judaism that takes as essential their awareness that Y-H-W-H is everywhere and in all things, events, and moments. The purpose of human life is to discover, uplift, and unify the sparks of holiness scattered throughout time and space. Undertaking this task is meant to be joyous and transformative; Hasidism calls for ‘avodat ha-shem be-simhah, “serving Y-H-W-H in joy,” meaning the joy of this discovery and act of uplifting. Torah is given as a guide to this quest and to the cultivation of the inner life. Neo-Hasidism means creating a contemporary religious language nurtured by the tremendously bold and creative theological insights that are found in early Hasidic sources, updating them for contemporary use. It is not just an excuse for religious enthusiasm and a positive approach to mitzvot, although I rejoice in these as well. It needs to go deeper, asking what Y-H-W-H seeks to teach us through the Hasidic lens at this particular hour.

Neo-Hasidism in the early twenty-first century comes to us in a time of grave theological crisis. Old answers to some of the eternal questions no longer work and yet we are only beginning to develop new ones. The two great conflicts that roiled religion from the late nineteenth through the late twentieth century were those around creation versus evolution and biblical criticism versus literal divine revelation. In all general intellectual circles, both of those debates have ended, neither of them in a manner that favors traditional religious views. Jews tended to stand mostly on the side during the creation/evolution debate. We saw ourselves as respecting science (and wanted our kids to get into medical schools!). We found ways of saying that religion and science were two different types of speaking or thinking, appealing to different parts of the mind, etc. But the debate around biblical criticism, including especially the origins, documents, and editing of the Torah text, was one we could not avoid.⁴ It involved both biblical scholarship itself and broader comparative studies in the emerging discipline of History of Religions. The documentary hypothesis, modified versions of which are now universally accepted in academic circles, combined with comparative aspects of Ancient Near East Studies, does not leave room for literal revelation of even the legal texts, undermining any literal sense of divine authority as standing behind Jewish praxis, halakhah. Combine these two with the difficulty a post-Holocaust Jew has with faith in particular providence and that gives you a moment of full-blown religious crisis.

To all of these must be added, in 2024, the manipulation and distortion of Judaism by far-right nationalistic circles in Israel and their supporters in the diaspora. Judaism, it sometimes seems, has fallen into the hands of those demanding absolute loyalty to an expansionist and Kahanist-led version of Zionism, characterized by utter indifference to the fate of non-Jewish populations standing in its way. The more exclusivist and racist their claims become, the less attractive Judaism becomes to the rest of humanity, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

While surely not having all the “answers,” neo-Hasidism is valuable here because it reframes much of the conversation about faith in a post-existentialist way. Its truth requires neither historical nor nationalist justification. Hasidism’s turn away from Kabbalistic metaphysics toward a focus on the inner life of devotion emphasizes the present moment in the life of the devotee and the struggle to open the heart. This makes for a different sort of religious conversation. Neo-Hasidism follows this example, interested more in devotional psychology and inner experience than in metaphysical claims. Religion comes to be about cultivation of inward awareness and a life of holiness rather than about belief in a particular set of propositions summarizing religious truth. Derekh ha-‘avodah rather than derekh ha-emet.

For a great many Jews (and I include myself among them) who find ourselves on the far side of any literal belief in the biblical/rabbinic depictions of God, revelation, or providence, yet still feel both a love of Jewish texts and praxis and a calling to an inner spiritual life, Hasidism and Neo-Hasidism become old/new gateways into the tradition. We read the entire prior corpus of Jewish teaching through the lens of the early Hasidic masters. “How might the disciples of the Ba‘al Shem Tov or the Maggid have heard this verse? What insight might they have derived from this passage in the Talmud? And how might we, in their spirit, seek yet new levels of inspiration from it? How did it, or could it, serve as yet another vehicle for the singular goal of devekut, intimate attachment to Y-H-W-H, that stands at the heart of Hasidic religiosity?”

It is important, for multiple reasons, that these gateways not be slammed shut in the name of some sort of theological orthodoxy (the lower-case “o” is intentional). The drift of huge numbers of younger Jews toward Eastern religions, having found the Judaism they encountered to be spiritually vacuous, is winding down. There is now a current going in the other direction, many seeking to come home to find a Judaism that might work for them, one open to seekers and meditators. If the wave of antisemitism that seems to threaten right now continues to grow, their numbers will increase. Our doorways should be wide open, to them and to others who seek a religion in the renewed spirit of early Hasidism. Hillel Zeitlin, writing in the mid-1920s, said of his proposed neo-Hasidic circle Yavneh:

Yavneh wants to be for Jewry what Hasidism was a hundred and fifty years ago. This was Hasidism in its origin, that of the BeSHT. This does not mean that Yavneh wants to be that original Hasidism. It rather wants to bring into contemporary Jewish life that freshness, vitality, and joyful attachment to God that was present in the style, concepts, mood, and meaning of the BeSHT. We offer these to Jews just as the BeSHT did—in his time—according to the style, concepts, mood, and meaning of onetime Jews. Yavneh wants especially to revive the soul of Jews…The ideal of Yavneh is to seek out and unify those individuals who can feel newly born in God each day (“You are my son; this day I give birth to you.” [Ps. 2:7]), along with the great joy of that rebirth and the intense holiness that accompanies it. In that sense Yavneh does not intend to remain only a society for inner religious experiences. Yavneh is also a society of Torah. As such, it demands of its members that their inner life in God be expressed in holy and pure actions.⁵

The early Hasidic sources attempted to read the entire Torah as a guide to the inner life of the God-seeker. That is why its literature is largely composed of homilies around the Torah text. It is endlessly looking for insights within the text into the path a person should walk in order to achieve devekut [clinging to God]. That is the goal; everything else, including both Torah study and mitzvot, are means toward it. Creative and startling readings of familiar texts are used as devices for awakening the mind, leading to a shift in consciousness.

It is fair to say that this highly rarified form of Hasidism is found mainly in the writings of early preachers and leaders, most of them from the circle of R. Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch. It is hard to know how widely it was practiced on the ground, although I suspect it was limited to an inner circle of close devotees. As the movement grew in popularity, much of its more intense spiritual demands came to be expected of rebbes and their close disciples (future rebbes), but not of the broader Hasidic community. There is no question that intense devotionalism waned within it as extremist traditionalism grew to be its defining characteristic. In the nineteenth century, as Hasidism became more the established way of Jewish communities, and as it saw itself standing in opposition to the emerging forces of modernization, it moved in entirely different directions.⁶ It took on the role of defending tradition, even in its most extreme forms, and played a major role in creating what was to be called “Orthodoxy,” especially in Galicia and Hungary. For the most part, it lost (or intentionally retreated from) its most creative theological edge.⁷

For the original Hasidic authors, of course, given the reality and mindset of the late eighteenth century, that seeker was necessarily a Jew. For the neo-Hasidic reinvention of Hasidism, it was necessary to universalize that and to find a way to make it applicable to a broader range of interested seekers. More on that below.

At this point, I wish to turn to a few key theological questions as they are treated in an array of early Hasidic sources and ask how they might be addressed by a contemporary neo-Hasidism seeking to offer a means of response to the contemporary theological dilemma. For each, I will first quote one or more Hasidic sources and then go on to discuss how they might be re-read or expanded in a neo-Hasidic context.

III

We need to start at the beginning, asking ourselves what we mean when talking about God and the relationship between God, world, and person. We begin with this question because Hasidism itself is a very God-centered approach to religion. It is a form of devotional mysticism, which is all about the individual’s relationship to the Divine. But what we mean by “God” makes all the difference.

Because Hasidism is a very late development in the history of Judaism, it rests upon the language and thought of all those stages that preceded it. The way of tradition is cumulative rather than dismissive. This means that all the truths of prior generations are affirmed, while reinterpreted to fit emerging new understandings and experiences. Thus, the personal God of biblical and rabbinic tradition is fully present within Hasidism, while refined by the insights of both medieval Jewish rationalism and the long and varied kabbalistic tradition. Those kabbalistic insights are then radically abbreviated and themselves reinterpreted, as already indicated above.

But if we ask ourselves what is new or different in Hasidic theology, rather than simply inherited from the past, we will get a clearer answer. Here are three key sources that will offer us glimpses of what the Hasidic writers mean when talking about “God.” Two of them are the opening teachings in well-known Hasidic classics.⁸ (The emphases are mine throughout.)

1

It was through Torah, called “the beginning of His way” (Prov. 8:22), that God created the world. All things were created by means of Torah and the power of the Creator remains within the created. Thus, Torah’s power is present in each thing, in all the worlds, and within the human being. Of this Scripture says: “This is the Torah: a person” (Num. 19:14), as will be explained. Torah and the blessed Holy One are one, [as the holy Zohar teaches (1:24a)]. Thus the life of God is present in each thing. “You give life to them all” (Neh. 9:6). God reduced Himself down to the lowliest rung; a portion of divinity above was placed within the darkness of matter. The whole point was that those lowly rungs be uplifted, so that there be “a greater light that emerges from darkness” (Eccles. 2:13).

A person who pays attention to the life that flows within all things is fulfilling “I place Y-H-W-H ever before me” (Ps. 16:8). In each thing you place before you the Being that causes all things to be.⁹

2

“In the Beginning God created heaven and earth (Gen. 1:1).” The point is that the blessed Creator created all and is all. His influx has never ceased; in every instant He flows into His creatures, into all the worlds, the [heavenly] palaces, the angels, and all the holy beings. That is why we say that He “forms light and creates darkness;” not that He created them [in the past tense, but] creates them, in the present. He is creating in every moment, causing His vitality to flow into all that lives. All is from His blessed and perfect Self. He includes all.

Therefore, a person who comes to a state of nothingness [transcending the ego-self] and knows that he is nothing other than that into which the blessed Creator places energy, names blessed Y-H-W-H as Creator, in the present, creating even now.¹⁰

3

It is a high rung when you contemplate constantly in your heart that you are in the presence of the blessed Creator, who surrounds you from all sides. You are so attached that you no longer need to repeatedly reassure yourself of that presence. Just see the Creator with your mind’s eye, [knowing] that He is “the place of the world.” This means that He existed before creating the world and that the world exists within the blessed Creator. That being the case, the main object of your sight should be the Creator. Do not look first at the world and then secondarily at the Creator. No, you should mainly be seeing the Creator…

Think that the Creator is endless, surrounding all the worlds. His blessed influx flows downward from above through channels that run through all the worlds. We are walking about constantly within the blessed Creator. We cannot make a single move without His influx and vitality.¹¹

We have here the opening teaching of two of the great Hasidic classics and a passage from early collected teachings attributed to the Ba‘al Shem Tov. All of them reflect an emerging panentheistic view of God and the world. We exist inside the One, as part of the all-embracing single reality called Y-H-W-H, that which was, is, and will be, ever-flowing forth in an endless stream of vitality that causes the universe to exist. Here it seems wisest to abandon the misleading English word “God,” derived, after all, from the languages of pagan northern Europe, and to turn instead to the Hebrew Y-H-W-H, the is-was-will be of the Torah itself. This name, which we do not pronounce, contains within it something of ineffable mystery, a whispered breath that transcends language itself. While these Hasidic sources use the inherited term “Creator,” what they really mean is the endless Source of the energy-flow that sustains existence in every moment.

In a twenty-first-century neo-Hasidic context, we may say that we understand Y-H-W-H as “the force of being” or “that which embraces, vitalizes, and underlies all that is.” The question “Does Y-H-W-H exist?” thus becomes somewhat trivialized. Of course, being is. Yes, reality is real. Life is vital. There is a force that makes for existence. Can we ask Henri Bergson to point to the elan vital? You do not “believe in” or “not believe in” Y-H-W-H as understood in this way. Here theology leans toward the experiential rather than the metaphysical. The question is whether you pay attention to or are aware of this force that renews existence in every moment. Do you take the time to notice? Do you stop to pay attention to your breathing, allowing yourself to feel in it the presence of all that is, to hear in it the echo of eternity?

If you do, you are moved to gratitude. You are grateful for the fact of being alive at this particular moment, as well as for the opening of mind that has allowed for this deep insight. You stop and breathe again, or maybe go back into a state of meditation. But then you find yourself asking: But to what am I grateful? Or to Whom? What does it mean to say “Thank You” to Y-H-W-H, the vital Source of Being? Is this not a something—or perhaps a no-thing, rather than a someone? But I find that my gratitude forces me to personify. I want or need there to be someone to thank for what feels like these gifts of both life and awareness. Gratitude, as I experience it, is an inter-subjective feeling; there needs to be another subject, a “You” to whom to be grateful, to enable me to say “Thank You.” For the sake of expressing that gratitude, I permit myself to address that Source of Being as a “You.”

This reflection enables and prepares me (and hopefully “us”) to say barukh atah Y-H-W-H (blessed are you Y-H-W-H). This moment becomes a meeting place of the mystical/panentheistic and the existential/dialogic approaches to inner religion.

IV

We turn now to the question of Torah, the teaching. The term Torah can be used in broad or narrow senses, either including the entirety of emerging tradition over the ages (called “Oral Torah”) or restricted to the Five Books of Moses, contained in the “Written Torah” kept in the ark and read in weekly cycle in the synagogue. We have also seen in the passage quoted above from Me’or ‘Eynayim, that Y-H-W-H and Torah are identified as one. Torah is the verbalized presence of Y-H-W-H, divinity enrobed in language.¹²

The disciples of the Ba‘al Shem Tov understood that both Creation and the giving of the Torah were self-manifestations of the divine One. In the created world, this manifestation was to be found in nitsotsot kedushah (sparks of holiness), scattered throughout Creation.¹³ Israel’s task was to discover and uplift these sparks, restoring them to their divine source, reuniting heaven and earth. Torah is given to serve as the guidebook to this process, a manual of practices and devotions for this process of uplifting. The Zoharic rubric of the parallel between the ten utterances of Creation (Avot 5:1) and the Ten Commandments is repeatedly read in this way. Bereshit, the first of the utterances (cf. Megillah 21a) equals Anokhi, the “I am” of Sinai; Y-H-W-H is manifest throughout Creation. Human language, embodied in Torah, is the vehicle of meaning through which we articulate the divinity that abounds within Creation.

But in what sense do we understand Torah to be true? Are its accounts of Creation, the patriarchal narratives, and the tale of Exodus and Israel’s wandering in the wilderness to be taken literally? Is their historical truth essential to Jewish faith? What do we do when science, history, and archaeology seem to tell us otherwise? Generations of Jews since the dawn of modernity have struggled with these questions. A selective reading of Hasidism, too, has something to say about them.

I present two texts using the phrase Mashal ha-Kadmoni, “the ancient parable,” taken from I Samuel 24:14. RaSHI (1040–1106) commenting on (Ex. 21:13 and Makkot 10b) tells us that this refers to Torah, which is the primordial parable or possibly the parable of the most Ancient One. This becomes the departure point for these Hasidic readings:

1

The reason why Torah is referred to as “the primordial parable:”

What is a parable? When a sage wants to express his wisdom before simple people, he dresses the matter up in words they can understand, derived from a place they can grasp. If he is talking to merchants, [his parable will tell of] business; if he is addressing builders, it will be about construction. [He does so] to help them understand, to bring them near to true wisdom. In this way, he raises those people up to the place of wisdom as he understands it….

Sometimes that parable will be an account of events that never happened, in order to uplift those who are on a low level, still attached to lies, bringing them from there to wisdom. Then the good is clarified and evil falls away on its own.

Torah is true and its parables are true, as [= in the way that] King Solomon said “To understand parable and rhetoric, [words of the sages and their riddles] (Prov. 1:6).” The parable may be of a wayward woman and rhetoric of idolatry, or the parable a good wife and its rhetoric Torah. Both are possible ways of understanding the parable. So too is Torah the root of all worlds above and below, the root of all creatures, as is said: “I was His artisan, delighting before Him day by day.” …

All is included in the Torah that the blessed Holy One gave to Israel, everything from end to end. That is why [Torah is] “deeper than the sea and broader than the earth.” She is boundless. But each person receives and grasps Her in accord with [the teachings] he has received and the root of his soul. She reveals Her secrets to him in accord with his passion and love for Her, as I have said on the verse “He is like a bridegroom coming forth from his canopy (Ps. 19:).” The person is the bridegroom of Torah, to whom She reveals Her secrets.

The blessed Holy One gave Torah to Israel in letter combinations that fit this world, so that they would grasp that which is hidden within the tales and accounts of what happened to Israel. Surely the sage will perceive there lights and divinity. The Tikkuney Zohar refers to this in saying “It is fools who look at the garments.”

That is why [words of Torah] are called “the primordial parable”—it is like a parable through which one understands awesome and sublime wisdom, that in which primordial wisdom is garbed. That is what Torah is.¹⁴

2

It is known that the holy Torah pre-existed the world by two thousand years. It was then [composed of] pure and sparkling lights, in the secret of hokhmah and binah. Its lofty and holy root lies within hidden primordial wisdom, that which cannot be attained; “thought cannot grasp it at all.” It was the most hidden of all things. But it was the will of the Creator, blessed be He and His name, that it come to be revealed, so that His people, children of the living God, might merit to benefit from its shining glory and the beauty of its light.

This is why the holy Torah is called “the primordial parable.” It is like a parable when compared to the primordial hidden Torah, that which preceded the world. This is hinted at in the words zot hukkat ha-torah. The aspect of zot [=shekhinah], the revelation of Torah, is a hukkah (=hikkui, “imitation”) of the primal Torah of hidden wisdom, that which we cannot describe other than by the secret of hakikah, “imitation.” Understand this. And from there derives the revealed zot, the revelation of holy Torah.¹⁵

Both these texts understand the written Torah to be a parable, pointing at a mysterious truth that lies behind it. That truth may be understood or interpreted in multiple ways, depending on the person doing the interpreting. But, as the Degel Mahaneh Ephraim says quite explicitly, parables are precisely made up of tales that are not true in themselves; they are stories that never happened about people who don’t really exist. Torah is true in a parabolic sense, one that can be read in multiple ways. It is pointing, as both authors make clear, at sublime mysteries that can only be attained through penetrating its secrets.

The pursuit of secrets to be found beneath the outward text of Torah was well-known to Jewish literature since at least the Middle Ages. The fourfold interpretation of Torah as PaRDeS, meaning literal/linguistic, homiletical, philosophical, and kabbalistic readings, was a creation of the thirteenth century.¹⁶ The Kabbalistic preference for secret meanings over the seemingly trivial literal sense is well known from famous passages in the Zohar (“Woe to those who think of the Torah as mere stories…!”).¹⁷ But the claim that the Torah text in its entirety was given as a parable seems to significantly up the ante of these readings. If both the narrative and the laws of Torah are parables, pointing toward a mystery that lies behind them, then the whole dependence of faith on the literal or historical validity of the text is rendered irrelevant. Did God call to Abraham? Were Israel ever in Egypt? Did Sinai really happen as described? It doesn’t make any difference; they’re all part of a parable. And parables are precisely tales that didn’t necessarily happen. Expend your effort on getting to the nimshal, the point of the parable, rather than on defending the unlikely historicity of the parable itself.

The point of the parable will go right back to the essential values of Hasidism: the quest for devekut, intimate attachment to Y-H-W-H; the life of kol mitsvotai, “all My mitzvot,” meaning to do everything as a way of joining oneself to the divine will; ha‘ala’ah, uplifting all the fallen sparks to their home in the One; and making oneself into an earthly mishkan, a dwelling-place for shekhinah. The entire Torah is given as a guide to the devotional life.

But “given” by whom? Is there still to remain a gap between an “Orthodox” neo-Hasidism that will answer “Given by God,” and therefore authoritative and necessarily expressed through halakhah, and a “heterodox” neo-Hasidism that will say “given to us by tradition, by the ongoing creativity of our ancestors,” and therefore beckoning and beloved, but less than authoritative? Yes, that binary probably will remain, despite the difficulty an Orthodox neo-Hasidism will have in defining exactly what “given by God” needs to mean. The lines should be considerably softened around the edges when we remember what we might mean by Y-H-W-H, that which “surrounds and fills all the worlds.” Is a divinely given Torah, emerging from within the “heavens” that are actually the depths of the heart, the same as that given in the mashal (parable), delivered from heaven to the top of the mountain? Can we accept Sinai as a vertical metaphor (mashal) pointing toward an inward event? If our ultimate loyalty is to the nimshal (the point), how tightly do we have to hold on to the mountain of the mashal?

V

From the question of Torah, we turn to the related matter of mitzvot, the essential forms of religious devotion in rabbinic Judaism. Early rabbinic tradition counted a total of 613 mitzvot to be found in the Torah, but the specifics of this enumeration were up for grabs well into the Middle Ages. Of course, many of the commandments could not be observed in post-Temple times or outside the Holy Land, but they remained “on the books” as part of the Jew’s ideal of full religious observance.

There is no question that the original meaning of mitzvah is “commandment,” deriving from the Hebrew verbal root ts-v-h, which means the same. But Hasidic sources lend much weight to two additional interpretations of the word. These are both taken from earlier devotional writings but are given a place of primacy in Hasidism. The question of the ultimate purpose of the mitzvot and how they are to be seen is also a major subject of concern for our early Hasidic preachers. Here are three texts for consideration:

1

The mitzvah itself is our combination of the hidden and the revealed. Ayin, or Nothingness, refers to that which is beyond nature, while yesh, or being, is within the natural world. We link the two of them by Torah and the mitzvot, as Scripture says: “The life force ebbs and flows” (Ezek. 1:14). This is why the Zohar teaches that the mitzvah and Torah are both hidden and revealed, referring to both Nothingness and Being, constituting a link between the two. The word mitzvah, in its first two letters mem and tsade, refers to the divine name yod heh, but in a reverse alphabet. This is the Naught [the name of God in hiding] while the concluding vav heh of the word mitzvah refers to being.¹⁸

Let us explain what are the hidden and revealed aspects of the mitzvah. The fact that we bring pleasure to blessed Y-H-W-H by performing the mitzvah is hidden from us, not obvious to us. But the good we do for ourselves is indeed apparent. This is the meaning of “The hidden things are for Y-H-W-H our God; the revealed are for us and our offspring, forever” (Deut. 29:28). “Hidden” is that aspect within the mitzvah that we do “for Y-H-W-H our God,” since it remains hidden from us. “The revealed” is indeed for us and our offspring, as we bring about the influx [of worldly blessing] that is revealed to us.¹⁹

2

Our sages tell us that “A mitzvah is its own reward.”²⁰ This means that Y-H-W-H gave us the mitzvot so that through them we might cleave to Y-H-W-H. Thus the reward of a mitzvah is itself a mitzvah, [the latter] drawn from the [Aramaic] tsavta, “together.” By means of the mitzvot we are joined together with Y-H-W-H. There is no reward greater than that.

The word mitzvah in fact is made up of the very letters of the name Y-H-W-H, but the first two are in a reverse alphabet, where mem and tsade represent yod and heh, respectively. Why should the first two letters of God’s name be hidden in this way? The point is that God is both hidden and revealed, revealed through His actions, the miracles and wonders He has done for us and continues to do in each moment, but hidden in terms of His essence. Nevertheless, the revealed itself also contains the hidden, for the divine essence is the life-force within the revealed.

Scripture speaks of the hidden things that belong to Y-H-W-H our God, and the revealed things [belong] to us and our descendants forever, fulfilling all the words of this Torah (Deut. 29:28). Why was the phrase all the words necessary in this verse? God has given us the revealed Torah to study. But we need be aware of the following. When you speak with a person, for example, with whom is it that you are speaking? It is that person’s soul and vital essence. Surely if that soul were to depart and he die, you would no longer be speaking with him! So too when we study the revealed Torah, we have to be aware that we are conversing with the vital soul of the revealed, which is the hidden, the very essence of Y-H-W-H. God is the soul of souls, the vitality of all the worlds. Thus, our sages refer to “bodies of Torah.” All the written and oral Torah, including the revealed commandments, are Torah’s body. But these must also contain a vitality, an inwardness that comprises the “secrets of Torah,” God’s own essence. We need to unify that body with its soul. This is all the words of this Torah, uniting body with soul, which are Torah’s secrets.²¹

The Mishnah teaches: “Do not be like servants who serve the master only for the reward. Be rather as servants who serve with no anticipation of reward.”²² Why were both halves of this sentence necessary?

There are righteous individuals who serve God by fulfilling the commandments. They are very careful not to transgress even the smallest commandment and do their best to observe it properly. Still, they are not at the level where these commandments bring about attachment and longing for God. Such people can anticipate a reward in the World-to-Come.

Then there are righteous individuals who serve by means of their pure thoughts. They use the commandments to connect to the Creator with great passion and attachment, constantly witnessing the greatness of God. They draw the pleasures of the world-to-come to them and they enjoy (as it were) the light of the Divine presence in this life. Such righteous ones do not anticipate the pleasures of the World-to-Come because they are already enjoying them in this life.

... This is the explanation of the Mishnah: “Do not be like servants whose service is for the reward” refers to people who anticipate reward in the world to come. In saying “be rather as servants who serve with no anticipation of reward” the Mishnah tells you to rise to the level where you are rewarded immediately at the moment of fulfilling the commandment, as we have explained. Use the commandments to cleave to God and draw pleasure to yourself.

This is the meaning of: Bring me an offering (terumah, lit. “uplifting”). Strive to enjoy the light of My divine presence in your life—uplift (terumah) and take it from the world-to-come. This is why RaSHI explains the words bring Me as “for My [name’s] sake.” The verse tells you to take and draw the Blessed Creator to you and take pleasure in the Divine presence.²³

As is the case throughout the mystical tradition, the mitzvot are understood as sacraments, mysterious embodiments of infinite sacred meaning, only partially accessible to our limited human understanding.²⁴ They are vehicles through which we may attain “togetherness” or intimacy, devekut, with Y-H-W-H. To engage with Torah is to address its inner soul, which is none other than Y-H-W-H. To partake of mitzvot is tsavta, togetherness or intimacy with the One. That is the only reward sought by the true devotee, who does not need to be paid for his service. Of course, Hasidim believed that the mitzvot were divine commandments as well. But if we ask what is original to hasidut, rather than simply accepted from the past, it is the emphasis on the two other explanations of the word mitzvah that stands out.

In a heterodox neo-Hasidic context fashioned for the twenty-first century, the “commander” aspect of divinity has become difficult. There are two reasons for this. Contemporary theology does not leave much room for a sense of ritual behavior as divinely commanded. We know too much about the origins of religion, including our own, to be naïve believers. Both biblical criticism and comparative phenomenology of religion render the “leap of faith” required to affirm divine ritual command more difficult than ever. The other reason is that the idea of God as an authority figure has become problematic for most contemporary Jews. The feminist critique of religion surely has much to do with the undermining of a top-down notion of authority in Judaism. Men as well as women have been challenged by many of the questions raised in rebellion against a male-depicted God giving the Law to a man from the mountaintop, to be passed on to all-male legal authorities, whose crowning moment was fixed in the sixteenth century. What about the Torah of Miriam, one that wells up from within the earth and is carried by family tradition, rather than dictated and codified from the mountaintop above? Perhaps that is the real strength of our religion, largely ignored by male codifiers over the centuries.

This objection to the authority-based understanding of Judaism has been augmented in recent years by the large and often vocal numbers of “refugees” from the ultra-Orthodox, including the Hasidic, communities, who have written and spoken up. They were raised in a highly defensive and frightened community, where threats, guilt, and lack of general education were used in extreme ways to keep them loyal. This often brought about much pain, family division, and violent actions. While surely not all of haredi Jewry bears this character, it is widespread and well-known enough to affect the broader conversation.

In the face of these objections, the two other readings of the term mitzvah need to come to the fore. Mitzvah as the half-hidden name of Y-H-W-H is a way of saying that there is a mysterious power to these deeds that we are not willing to cast aside. We may not be able to say with the Kabbalist’s confidence that this particular wave of the lulav affects those particular sefirot, or that our tefillin parallel those worn by God Himself. But the sense that these actions, accompanied by kavvanah (intention) touch us in deep inward places that go beyond explanation is something we cannot deny. The other reading of mitzvah, as that which brings us together with Y-H-W-H, is even more readily adaptable to our own way of thinking. The mitzvah is an opportunity li-heyot be-tsavta, for intimacy with the divine, that is to say with awareness of Y-H-W-H, the One who fills and surrounds all that exists. We turn to the mitzvot as ways of allowing our soul to awaken to the miraculous quality of existence, to the sense that life should never be seen as “ordinary,” that each moment is filled with shekhinah’s presence.

When these two readings of mitzvah take center stage, the question of “Who gave us the mitzvot?” recedes to the side. We can say that “The mitzvot are a gift of Y-H-W-H.” Does this mean that they came from “heaven” right down to the mountaintop? Or might this “heaven” exist within the collective hearts of Israel, including the generations of sages who had Y-H-W-H in their hearts as they helped to shape them? Since the sages themselves sometimes said “Go out and see what the people are doing!”²⁵ as a way of determining practice, might we say that this divine gift also came to us through folkways carried on by ordinary Jewish men and women?

Thinking this way is not meant to diminish the potential sacredness and mysterious power of the mitzvot. But it does save us from some of the harsh underside of religion in its more authoritarian forms. The image of a God fuming in anger against those who do not follow His mitzvot may be taken out of the ritual realm and reserved for preservation of the moral order, as some of Israel’s ancient prophets would have preferred. The burden of guilt that many feel for not observing mitzvot in the ritual sphere might be considerably lightened if we say that they have merely missed an opportunity to open their heart to Y-H-W-H in this way. Thank God, there are still more such opportunities ahead.

Before we move on from this section, one more text on the meaning of mitzvot will bring these thoughts to a fine point:

3

In the third month after the Children of Israel had left Egypt, on that day they came to the wilderness of Sinai (Ex. 19:1).

The third “month” (hodesh) can also be read as “the third renewal (hithadshut).” First Y-H-W-H took them forth from the iron furnace of Egypt, and they ate those matzah loaves they had brought out of Egypt, tasting in them the taste of manna. Then they rose higher and Y-H-W-H actually brought both bread and meat down from heaven for them. Now they were in their third “hodesh,” at their third renewal, moving still higher, and they drew near to Mount Sinai to receive the holy Torah.

The zodiac sign of this month (Sivan) is Gemini, the twins. This indicates that the blessed Holy One and those who do His will are like twins, as it were. Scientists tell us that if one twin falls ill, the other feels it as well. If one improves, so does the other, since they stand under the same sign, having been born at the same time.

The same is true of our blessed Creator and those who do His will, as it were. We too are twins (See RaSHI to Deut. 21:23). That is why we are call yisra’el, which can be read as yashar el, “straight with God,” meaning equal with God. [The letters of yisra’el may also be read as] rosh li, “I have a head (or ‘I am at the top’).”

Thus they drew near to Mount Sinai in the third month. The blessed Holy One was revealed and spoke to them the way a man speaks to his brother, for they were together under the sign of twins.²⁶

This is an interesting way to hear God’s call to observe mitzvot! Y-H-W-H and humanity are like twin brothers, one dwelling in “heaven” and the other on earth. “My brother,” says Y-H-W-H to the human being, “You are the one who lives on earth. Only you can carry out My will there. Please do it—because we are twin brothers! We were born under the same sign; we are like a single person.” Of course, I want to do this for my brother! I love him and want to help fulfill his desire. He lives in a far-off land, one where this desire cannot be fulfilled; it can only happen through me. I would like nothing better than to do this for my brother. I have to—in the deeply empathetic way only understood by twins.

Texts that depict God as brother are not easy to find in Jewish sources. We are so used to “Father” and “King,” with all their authority, that this is a dimension we seldom seem able to explore. In Christianity the move is made much easier with the presence of God in Jesus, who can play the role of elder brother. Therefore, when we are gifted with such a text we should take it quite seriously. The obligation I feel toward that twin brother is not one of authority. He does not “command” me to do his will. He asks me to do it out of love—a special sort of love that says, “We two are really one!”—and I respond to him in the same way.

This is the meaning of mitzvah, derived from the Aramaic tsavta, “togetherness”—referring to this intimate and mysterious closeness of twins. There is a voice within me that speaks to me of the desire or distress of my twin. That natural sympathy is aroused within me, and I know what it is that I have to do. Could this be how Abraham knew how to fulfill the entire Torah even before it was given? Could he have had that “heart murmur” of sympathy to the universal One that called out from within him and said, “This is the way to live!”

Let us recall that the Kozienicer Rebbe is telling us that revelation could only happen ba-hodesh ha-shlishi, in this third level of renewal—under the sign of Gemini, twins. In the first two months, there was not sufficient equality. First, Y-H-W-H was in the role of redeemer, then provider. Those are not situations in which full revelation of divine truth was accessible to us. We were too dependent, not yet ready for true intimacy. Only when we came to ha-hodesh ha-shlishi, the third level of renewal, where we could be equals, ״twins,״ could we receive Torah. In that sense, “God” and “human” are born in the same moment. This becomes the ultimate meaning of tselem elohim; we are to grow into being God’s earthly twin.

Intimacy is a mystery. We do not know what forces within our minds allow us to fall in love, to open our hearts, and let ourselves become vulnerable, trusting that the other will respond. Devekut, our response to the mitzvot, is such a mystery. Mystery has about it an aura of infinity and ineffability. We cannot fathom how deep into our hearts, or into the universe, our mystery penetrates, nor can we ever give it full expression. Le-nifle’otav eyn heker—There is no plumbing the depths of divine wonder.

A hint at what we might call this religion of intimacy is found in the blessing that talmudic tradition calls upon us to recite before performing any of these mitzvot. The wording asher kideshanu be-mitsvotav may be translated either “who has made us holy through His mitzvot” or, as noted by some of the Kabbalists, “who has betrothed us through His mitzvot.” Betrothal means precisely that we are being brought into that relationship of intimacy. On the verse “Moses commanded us the Torah, an inheritance for the community of Jacob (Deut. 34),” the rabbis commented: “Read not ‘inheritance' (morashah),” but “betrothed (me’orasah).”²⁷ What “Moses” gives us is not the authority of an inheritance, but the new and transformative moment of betrothal.

VI

Now we need to return to the matter of universalization. There is no question that Hasidic authors of the eighteenth century addressed an audience and readership made up exclusively of Jewish men. Gentiles, other than a few government censors (usually converted Jews) did not read their work, nor did Jewish women, who only rarely would have had the education enabling them to do so, and who were certainly not encouraged. The walls of prejudice were high, both from outside the Jewish “ghetto” and from within. The gentile population amid whom Hasidism developed was trained by the churches to think of Jews as Christ-killers and demons. Jews saw the gentiles as lesser human beings, deprived of divine revelation or providence. There were sources within Kabbalah that depicted gentiles’ souls as originating from within the demonic realm. Of course, the Jews were the defenseless minority, and hence were the ones who usually suffered physical harm. But they despised their oppressors fully as much as they were despised by them.

That resentment, fear, and sometimes even hatred of the surrounding gentile world is something almost ubiquitous in the Hasidic sources, although some authors are afflicted with it more than others. As a text for this section, I choose one that strongly and surprisingly goes in another direction.

Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Esau... (Gen. 32:4)…

It is known that a tsaddik’s prayer is answered when praying for a sick person or for others in need. But why? This makes it seem as if the blessed Holy One is subject to change, heaven forbid. But the root of the matter is as follows. The blessed Holy One created letters, which in their original state are pure potential. A tsaddik can reconfigure the letters so that they form whatever words are desired. These reconfigurations are what a tsaddik does in prayer—making new combinations. The tsaddik’s prayer does not cause change in the Creator, as the letters were always there. All the tsaddik is doing is creating new combinations.

But still you could ask: Why is a tsaddik’s prayer more effective than the prayer of any other person?... Why couldn’t any person pray and reconfigure the letters? This is because the Torah was created with love, as in “He chooses His people Israel with love.” A tsaddik also loves both God and every person in the world. For example, R. Yohanan said: I greet every person in the marketplace, including gentiles, before they have a chance to greet me (b. Berakhot 17a). Most people are not like this, and therefore they do not have the power to reconfigure the letters. Only a tsaddik who loves everyone has that power.

This is the meaning of the verse “Your word is well refined and Your servant loves it (Ps. 119:140).” Tserufah, “refined,” refers to the supernal letters that have one configuration in potential and are reconfigured (metsurafim) into actuality by the all-loving tsaddik through the “service of love” (read as avadekha ahavah).

That is the meaning of the verse: Jacob sent messengers. This refers to letters and words which are called “messengers.” Before him means that the letters were already there before him; the potential was there before him. Jacob then made combinations of the letters through the power of his love for all. This is contained in the words “to his brother Esau” implying that he totally accepted even Esau as a brother, like R. Yohanan, whose love included even non-Jews in the marketplace.²⁸

R. Elimelech’s point, expressed with great clarity, is that the tsaddik’s love should not be limited to Jews. “Every person in the world” is to be included in it; this is what gives the tsaddik his power. His sense that Jacob approached Esau and won him over with love is markedly different than what so many others learned from these very verses, that “Esau hates Jacob” eternally.

Neo-Hasidism, from its outset, understood that we live in a very different world. Both Buber and Zeitlin read Hasidism in universalist terms; both were very much influenced by the democratic socialist ethos that was prevalent in their era. Buber’s friend Franz Rosenzweig also expanded the triad of God-Torah-Israel to God-Torah-Humanity in forming his Star of Redemption. Other figures shaped by Hasidism, most notably my teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel, used a Hasidic approach to religion in addressing a broader and not exclusively Jewish audience. So too Reb Shlomo Carlebach and Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, in their post-war neo-Hasidism, were open to such a universalized reading of the Hasidic sources. Only in the latest Israeli incarnation of neo-Hasidism do we sometimes find it linked to an exclusivist understanding of Judaism and a condescending attitude toward others, but this is an exception.

I recall Reb Zalman, who often expressed himself best in Yiddish, saying to me: Yiddishkeyt iz a derekh in avoide, “Judaism is a way of service, a devotional path.” Hasidus, he would have said, is a specific form of that path, and Chabad is an even more specifically defined pathway within that. He also saw Buddhism as a derekh in avoide, Zen as one pathway within it and Therevada as another. So too Christianity, Islam, and all the rest, with their various substreams. All these were equally valid ways up the mountain or into the depths of the Universal Self, the One that underlies all. In his later years, R. Zalman often referred to it as Gaia, but he certainly understood that this was just another of the infinite names of Y-H-W-H.

The seeming modernity of this universalist approach to religion, when compared to the views of our shtetl ancestors, should not blind us to its ancient pedigree. When both the Psalmist and the prophet (Ps. 113 and Malachi) said “From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of Y-H-W-H is praised,” they were not referring to a Jewish traveler putting on tefillin in his Tokyo hotel room. They understood that our own praise is part of a universal human and natural symphony, that is described in quite a number of Second Temple era psalms (104, 145, 148, etc.). It was rabbinic tradition, but most especially its reinforcement over many centuries of oppression, that cemented the more exclusivist vision into place. In this era of Jewish liberation, both in the independent Jewish statehood of Israel and in the free status of Jews in the democratic West, the time has come to liberate ourselves from it.

My own favorite way of doing this is by reading the word yisra’el, which usually designates the Jew in this literature, in a supra-literal sense. We will recall that Jacob was given that name because he was able to wrestle with God as well as humans and survive. If we are willing, in this spiritual sense, to lend the name yisra’el to all those who struggle with Y-H-W-H, with “God,” or with questions of ultimate meaning, we will “widen our tent-pegs” enough to embrace a very wide range of seekers. They should all be made welcome in our midst as we re-discover, re-read, and re-energize the wellsprings of Torah once dug out for us by our Hasidic ancestors.

This cannot mean, however, that we should see ourselves as called upon to universalize ourselves out of existence. While we should indeed welcome other seekers into an expanded notion of “Israel,” that does not mean that the Jewish people, who have for so long been called ‘amekha yisra’el in the tradition, should cease to exist. Yes, we are bearers of a universal message, outlined in all I have discussed here. But we are still needed as bearers of that unique message. Forms that exist to preserve our distinctiveness, including a degree of separation from others, have that positive value. Such are food restrictions, for example, creating distinctive patterns of eating. How far need one go with these? That is up to each of us. Remember, neo-Hasidism is a movement of the heart, not a “denomination” that measures degrees of observance.

So too the existence of Israel as a Jewish State, one guided by the best and most universalist views within our tradition and treating every person equally before its law. The history of the past century has proven that the ongoing existence of the Jewish people, bearers of this message, requires a homeland where we can grow and nourish our distinctive Torah in safety. We need to do those things—including recognition of our Palestinian neighbors’ right to a homeland of their own—that will in the long run foster and protect that safety. The thickness of Jewish religious culture found in Israel is a natural breeding ground for a new movement of religious revival. With proper guidance and leadership, it could again prove transformative.

Footnotes