The Eastern European Problem of Hasidic Studies

Abstract

The Eastern European Problem of Hasidic Studies Wojciech Tworek (bio) “Karl marx was a German philosopher,” writes Leszek Kołakowski in the introduction to his history of Marxist thought. “This does not sound a particularly enlightening statement, yet it is not so commonplace as it may at first appear.”1 Mimicking the Polish philosopher, I will begin by saying that Hasidism (lehavdil!) was an Eastern European phenomenon. And while this statement sounds trivial, and recurs in many publications about Hasidism, it has had limited impact on the shape of Hasidic studies. There is little of Eastern Europe in Hasidic studies, and, conversely (and to some extent resulting from this), there is very little Hasidism in the Jewish studies programs taught in Eastern Europe. This short essay is not—and cannot be—a thorough critique of the field of Hasidic studies. Still, my general impression is that there are three dominant modes in which Hasidic scholars engage with Eastern Europe. The first one is inadvertent erasure, in which this geography is relegated to the margins by, to paraphrase Daniel Dennett, free-floating rationales of Hasidic theology. The second one uses Eastern Europe as a symbolic reservoir of Hasidic culture divorced from its complex historical context, a frum variation of the Yiddishland nostalgia. The third one treats Eastern European spaces as actualized by Hasidic performance. My intention is not to discredit the prolific production of Hasidism scholarship in the phenomenology of religion, cultural history, history of ideas, anthropology, literary studies, and so on. Many excellent and illuminating studies emerge from these perspectives, but I would say that their relation to Eastern Europe is tangential at best. For the record, my own work subscribes heavily to the first and third models. [End Page 256] Admittedly, I paint this image of Hasidism scholarship in rather broad strokes. Scholars have criticized some methodological biases of the field, most directly Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern in his description of “star-struck Hasidim,” and Marcin Wodziński in his “five cardinal sins” of research on Hasidism.2 A number of recent works have, in fact, pushed against these tendencies. These important corrigenda notwithstanding, I argue that the Eastern European problem of Hasidic studies is inherent in the construction of this area of research as a subfield of Jewish studies, according to which particular methodological choices are only secondary. Drawing on recent critical discussions of Jewish studies and their implications for identity politics,3 I will focus here on three major consequences of this state of affairs for Hasidic studies. The first one is the parochialism of Hasidic studies, in which—as in Jewish studies in general—research is implicated in the identitarian work of Jewish self-understanding. I do not mean here only overt and covert neo-Hasidic projects, in which Hasidic sources are reinvented as tools for renewed engagement in Jewish theology or praxis. This tendency is clearly visible in the disproportionate interest in the aspects of Hasidism that are vital for the community today. Thus, for example, the most researched Eastern European Hasidic groups today remain Lubavitch and Breslov, not because of their historical role in the Jewish society of Eastern Europe, but because of their communal significance today. The field (including my own work) focuses so much attention on them because it responds to the need of the contemporary community to understand itself and to tell its own story, in which Chabad mitzvah tanks or the crowds at Rabbi Nahman’s tomb play an important if controversial role. Secondly, the orientation inward contributes to the double marginalization of Hasidic studies. If Jewish studies, in general, pursues a path of “splendid isolation” in academia, then the research on Hasidism often doubles down on it. While scholars of Hasidism have drawn on many disciplines, attempts at integrating their research within broader theoretical and disciplinary frameworks are rare, especially with regards to Hasidism as a historical phenomenon in Eastern Europe. Quite tellingly, one will not find research on Hasidism at the Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies conferences, and very few adepts of such [End Page 257] research go on to learn Eastern European languages or incorporate into their work sources other than emic and elitist...