FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN
FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN My introduction to Chasidic thought came not from Martin Buber or Gershom Scholem but from an amiable rabbi named Jacob Minkin, who wrote a book called the Romance of Chasidism...
...ordinary folk are taught to depend on him to carry their prayers upward as they go about their everyday lives...
...But, with all due respect to the memory of Rabbi Minkin, for me the romance of Chasidism faded long ago, killed off by what I have seen in practice...
...the joy and optimism it offered a people bent by persecution...
...Chasidim in the world today—estimates range from several hundred thousand to more than a million (there are about 35,000 Satmar and 25,000 Lubavitcher Chasidim in Brooklyn alone...
...The seductiveness of Chasidism— with its rebbes and its mysticism, its absolutes and determined air of authenticity—lies at the core, also, of the financial support given by many Jews outside the movement...
...its inclusion of ordinary Jews, not only scholars, into the heart of Jewish life...
...I had met Rabbi Minkin at the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I worked for a while after graduating from the Seminary College and where he came to do research...
...Nobody knows the exact number of Conservative and Reform Jews, on some level of guilt, support a Chasidism that is inauthentic, male-dominated, intolerant and anti-Zionist...
...True, Moses was the great intermediary between God and the Israelites during their wanderings, but Moses longed to have "all the Lord's people" be prophets like himself (Numbers 11:29...
...amendment to Israeli law, designed to void Conservative and Reform practice...
...Little could either of us have known then that the movement he had advocated because of its gentle warmth would become one of the most powerful and—in my opinion—dangerous Jewish groups, or that the people he had labeled neglected would gain enough influence to sway Israeli politics and try to disenfranchise other Jews...
...FRANCINE KLAGSBRUN My introduction to Chasidic thought came not from Martin Buber or Gershom Scholem but from an amiable rabbi named Jacob Minkin, who wrote a book called the Romance of Chasidism (Macmillan, 1935), one of the first works to popularize Chasidic lore for American readers...
...More to the point, that budget and the activities it sponsors are supported by charity from other Jews, large numbers of them Conservative and Reform...
...In its emphasis on a godlike man as mediator between God and the people, it smacks of Christological influence...
...I found much to admire in the Chasidic movement: the breath of fresh air it brought to Jewish thought when it began in the 18th century, at a time when rabbinic leaders had narrowed their focus to the minutiae of the Law...
...Moreover, the negation of a political state has not prevented these groups from manipulating Israeli politics for their own financial and political ends...
...and, of course, the charm of its tales and legends...
...Anti-Zionist in their outlook, many Chasidic sects insist that a true state cannot be established without the advent and leadership of the Messiah...
...It is an outlook that flies in the face of the seminal texts of Judaism—the Mishnah and Talmud, the Bible itself— all of which simply assume that the people of Israel make up a political entity, independent of the Messiah...
...That closing off and shutting out has led to the concept of other Jewish viewpoints as illegitimate—led also to such proposals as the "Who Is a Jew...
...That view was epitomized some years ago in a series of New Yorker articles (later turned into a book entitled Holy Days [Summit, 1985]) about a Lubavitcher family by Lis Harris, a secular Jew...
...Describing, for example, "modern American seders" as "fairly slapdash affairs," she contrasted them to the "slow moving and stately" Chasidic seder—again, Chasidim as the source of authenticity...
...The centrality of the tzadik, affectionately called the rebbe, although the source of many beautiful tales, raises questions of its own...
...On some level of guilt, these people see the Chasidim as authentic Jews and their own denominations as not quite valid...
...This utter reliance on the rebbe made it possible for the Lubavitcher's Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, as everybody knows, to thwart the Israeli Labor Party's chances of forming a government last spring by influencing his followers to drop their support of the Labor party...
...Although begun with revolutionary fervor directed against rabbinic rigidity, Chasidism has become the most rigid of movements...
...Male-dominated, it relegates women to strictly limited roles centered on home and children...
...The Lubavitch, with about 1,000 centers throughout the world, operate on an annual budget that may be close to $100 million...
...Rabbi Minkin has long since passed away, and his book has been displaced by others...
...But what kind of Judaism are these supporters of Chasidism today marking as authentic...
...That was back in the late 1950s and early 1960s...
...The other irony is that in backing the exotic, the unreachable and the rejecting, these supporters are not drawing closer to Judaism but are distancing themselves from their own sources of Jewish life, from recognizing and expressing their own authenticity...
...8* Journalist Francine Klagsbrun writes and lectures on such Jewish issues as family, social change, ethics and feminism...
...They're the ones who are keeping Judaism alive" is the explanation usually given for support of Chasidic sects...
...Her book Voices of Wisdom—Jewish Ideals and Ethics for Everyday Living (David Godine, 1990) was recently published in softcover...
...I continue to admire, as I did in early days, many aspects of Chasidic thought...
...Reliance on the rebbe is also one of the main reasons for the success of the aggressive Lubavitch outreach programs...
...In Chasidic thought the tzadik alone is deemed capable of reaching the highest realm of closeness and devotion to God...
...By genealogy and temperament I had always aligned myself with the mitnaggedim, the opponents of Chasidism, who emphasized intellect and talmudic study over mysticism and prayer...
...The cultlike promise of spirituality through obedience to the rebbe and his teachings has been a seKLAGSBRUN continued from page 11 ductive draw for young people and others in search of absolutes...
...Insulated against the outside, it is shut off not only from secular knowledge, but also from knowledge of other ways of thinking within the Jewish world—a far cry from the talmudic sages who argued with each other from a dozen different positions across rooms and centuries...
...His enthusiasm for a movement he felt had been neglected by American Jews, coupled with his presentation to me of an autographed copy of his book, led me to delve more deeply into Chasidism than I had previously been inclined to do...
...The irony, of course, is that it is support proffered to the very people who would delegitimize the supporters...
Vol. 15 • December 1990 • No. 6
