The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 121 The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture, by Allan Nadler. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. 254 pp. $35.00. Dr. Allan Nadler, director of research at the VIVO, has presented the reader with the fruits ofhis investigations into what he calls "the faith of the mithnagdim." In contrast to the plethora ofstudies about Hasidim, studies in the "faith," in contrast to the history, of the mitnagdim have been slender indeed. While taking up the teachings of the two most noted leaders ofthis movement, the Gaon ofVilna and Hayim ofVolozhin, about whom works have appeared in recent years (e.g., studies ofR. Hayim's masterpiece, Nefesh HaHaim, by Norman Lamb and Immanuel Etkes), Nadler breaks new ground in his exploration of the works of another such figure, namely R. Phinehas ben Judah, the Maggid of Polotsk. Nadler takes up such issues as the mitnagdim and the immanence of God, Kabbalah, ascetism, Halakha, and the centrality ofTorah study, adding considerably to what we have known about the teachings of those who opposed the Hasidim. In regard to the mitnagdim's attack on the lack ofTorah study and the unmannerly form ofprayer of the Hasidim, it has been suggested elsewhere that instead of seeing the Hasidic movement through the eyes of socialist historians as revolt, a rebellion of the masses against rabbinic authority and learning, Hasidism is better understood as restoration, an attempt to balance the scales which had been upset in the course of history-Torah-study over prayer, knowledge over feeling, gloom over joy, intellectuality over simple virtue, asceticism over serving God through the material world. Nor is this a matter of past history alone. Evidence of such distortion is in our face even today: for example, holding a Mishna in one hand and the siddur in the other and flipping between the two while at worship, implying that prayer is only a required interruption from study. Nor is the plague of conversation-filled synagogues much different from what must have prevailed in the time ofthe Besht. (Recall the tale of the Besht's refusal to allow his disciples to pray in a certain synagogue because it was "filled" with prayer, that is, with insincere prayer which congested the room because it did not rise to heaven.) To the perennial question as to the astonishing growth of Hasidism in so short a period oftime-a thousand or so followers at the death of the Besht in 1760 to a third of the Jewry of Eastern Europe fifty years later in 1810-and why it has been reborn once again since the Holocaust, Nadler provides an answer. It is found at the end of Phinehas' central work, Even Bohan, purporting to be a death diary written in the author's youth. It deserves lengthy citation. The contrast to Hasidic joy is startling. . . . Woe to us for the humiliation that is man ... the lowly product of a repugnant drop which twice must pass through the urinary shaft submerged in blood ... Man spends his pubescent years screeching and crying ... Marked by shame, they match him with a wife; she too is a repugnant dribble ... never really more than a container filled with manure ... 122 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 No man enjoys a single hour's respite from his wife ... [who brings him] anguish, worry, pain, sadness and feuding ... Throughout the days of your meaningless life, she will drive you to hoard money ... to forsake your mother and your father and even to desert your Lord, in order to fill your house with silver and gold. She will dissipate your soul and disperse your wealth, so that neither frost nor heat, stormy seas nor deep rivers ... will deter you from heeding her will. And if you do, she will certainly lead you down into Sheol. [Her bearing children] will shorten your days, deny you sleep, and increase the burden ofyour labors. She will bicker and bellow at you from all sides with her screeching voice ... [Further,] evil will beset you ... from your own children, who will damn you. Then you will wonder, "Woe, what have I done?" and will realize that you wasted all your...