T-H-E HAflDIC PAr~AB L-E An Anthology with Commenta1y Aryeh Wineman Ttt-E t-tA!IDIC PARABL-E Ttt-E t-tAfl DIC PARABL-E Aryeh Wineman ._1i:1i:The Jewish Publication Society ......J~"... Philadelphia 2001 • 5761 Copyright © 2001 by Aryeh Wineman First edition. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any infor­ mation storage or retrieval system, except for brief passages in connection with a critical review, without permission in writing from the publisher: The Jewish Publication Society 2100 Arch Street, 2nd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19103 Cover Art by Baruch Nachshon Composition by Sasgen Graphic Design Design by Sasgen Graphic Design Manufactured in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 10987654321 Library of Congress Cataloging-inPublication Data Wineman, Aryeh. The Hasidic parable / Aryeh Wineman. p.cm. Includes 40 parables translated from Hebrew. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8276-0707-5 1. Hasidic parables. 2. Hasidic parables--History and criticism. 1. Title. BM532.W46 2001 296.1'9 21; aa0512-07-dc00 00-067287 In memory of my parents f:::;:::::=y CoNT-ENTf Preface ........................................... x1 Introduction .................................... xiii Paradox and the Unexpected .................. .1 Sadness in finding a Treasure ............................ 3 The Clown on the Day of Judgment ....................... 6 Chipping Away at the Mountain ......................... l O God in Transit ...................................... 15 The Correct Motivation ............................... 20 The Talking Bird .................................... 23 Compassion as Punishment ............................ 26 That Each Occasion Be like the Very First .................. 29 The Evil Inclination .................................. 33 Redefinitions ................................... 35 The Crown and the Container .......................... 3 7 Beyond Request .................................... .41 Sound without Words ............................... .43 On the language of Melody ........................... .49 When Truth Confronts limited Understanding .............. 52 When a House of Sticks Ts Shattered ...................... 56 The Suffering of the Shekhinah .......................... 58 Unconventional Ways to Serve .......................... 61 On the Need for the Spontaneous ........................ 65 The Miraculous within the Everyday ...................... 68 Seeing a Woman's Beautiful Clothing ..................... 74 ix x T1I L t-t ;\j I D I C p ;\ I\ ;\ ll L L Deepening the Implications of Divine Oneness .............................. 77 The Barriers to the Palace .............................. 79 The King's Two Messengers ............................. 82 On Evil as a Divine Instrument .......................... 85 On Inlruding Thoughls ................................ 88 It Is God Who Awakens Our Minds . .91 Child and Parent ..................................... 94 The Ultimate Disloyalty ............................... 101 Transforming Sadness from Within ...................... l 03 Echoes and Transformations of Older Motifs ................................ .101 The World Is like a Wedding Feast: A Parable Tradition ....... 109 The Exiled Prince and the Gem on the Ocean Floor: A Parable Tradition ............................... 118 The Polemics of an Hour of History ......... .139 Arms without Fire ................................... 141 On the Inability to Hear the Melody ...................... 145 A Holy Man's Dependence upon His Followers .............. 148 Parables by Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav ........................ 151 To Break Down All the Doors and Locks .................. 159 Which Class Really Makes the Wheels Go Around? .......... 162 More Treasure Tales ................................. 165 Where the True Treasure Is to Be Found .................. 172 Glossary of Terms and Personalities ......... 179 Sources and Bibliography . ..................... 185 Preface 5iLer examining narraLive dimensions of earlier phases of Jewish mysticism, I was drawn to the hasidic parable as a logical contin­ uation of my previous research and writing. This book is the natural cul­ mination of my immersion over the past several years in a study of the parables. While seeking to clarify their meaning as well as the historical and literary significance and concepts inherent in them, l also became interested in the nature of the genre of the hasidic parable itself. l hope that l have been able to cast some light upon the parables in this collection and perhaps upon the phenomenon of the hasidic parable. I have Lried Lo convey Lo the reader my own appreciation for many of Lhe parables included in this volume along with the preciousness of the spir­ itual core of Hasidism's worldview and of its value system. The hasidic legacy is an indispensable key in the quest for a spirituality rooted in Jewish sources, and in discovering an inwardness and depth often over­ looked in more conventional expressions of Jewish teaching. An examination of some of the parables found in the classical hasidic texts reveals spiritual directions that might have become lost in the con­ text of Hasidism's historical hostility toward modernity throughout much of the nineteenLh and twentieth cenLuries. The parables convey that beyond the facade of contemporary institutional Hasidism and its cultural identification with the past, the very core of its teaching is soulfulness itself. l wish to thank the editors of Judaism, Hebrew Studies, and Prooftexts:A .Journal of.Jewish Literary History for permission to draw upon studies I've written that first appeared in those journals. I am grateful for opportunities to present papers relevant to the subject of this book at conferences of the Association for Jewish SLudies and Lhe xi xii T1I L t-t ;\j I D I C p ;\ I\ ;\ ll L L Nalional Association of Professors of Hebrew. I would also like to thank my congregation for affording me the opportunity to utilize the resources of the National Library in Jerusalem and the Gershom Scholem Center there in order to complete my research for this project. My appreciation to Dr. Ellen Frankel, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Publication Society, for her interest and encouragement in this project, and to Carol Hupping, managing editor, and editor Sam Cardillo for all their assistance in preparing my manuscript for publication. ""':· -Aryeh Wineman Troy, New York Fall, 1999 Introduction men one thinks of Hasidism-the Jewish pietist movement that emerged in the eighteenth century in the Carpathian Mountains of the Ukraine and spread with remarkable rapidity among a large sector of Eastern European Jewry-certain basic cultural associations almost immediately come to mind. Among them is parable. An impressive array of striking parables can be found in texts from Hasidism's classical period, from the late eighteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. One does not find parables in all hasidic texts from this period; some have none, some provide very few examples, while still other texts, including some of the basic collections of homilies from Hasidism's most creative period, abound with parables. The most basic definition of parable is an imaginative story whose meaning refers to something quite beyond itself; it alludes to an analogy or application not contained within the story proper. A parable is a work of fiction, necessarily brief and compact, which is not told for its own sake, hut to make a point and speak a truth. The phenomenon of parable has its roots in oral tradition and folk lit­ erature, and the prevalence of parables in many of the classical hasidic texts testifies to the oral context of hasidic teaching. In earlier stages of Jewish mystic tradition, teachings were essentially transmitted via written texts; authors and students of such texts may never have shared any geo­ graphical proximity or engaged one another face-to-face. In sharp con­ trast, Hasidisn1 functioned as a circle of mystics and their students, and later as communities comprising a definite social context. Consequently hasidic teaching was articulated and transmitted orally in a setting of stu­ dents or followers who heard, rather than read, the master's discourse, 1 and this naturally fostered the creation of parables. xiii xiv T1I L t-t ;\j I D I C p ;\ I\ ;\ ll L L As a literary genre, the parable was known as far back as the ancient world, where examples in the Bible, in the Christian Gospels, and in tal­ mudic and midrashic texts all testify Lo the flourishing of parable as a rhetorical form. (Throughout this book, Talmud references are referred to as follows: Babylonian Talmud is B., for example, B. Pe'ah, and Jerusalem Talmud is]., as in]. Pe'ah.) Such ancient sources, in tum, inspired the use of parable in later Jewish and Christian preaching and also in medieval philosophical and kabbalistic texts. Parable is common also in the mystic teachings of other religious traditions, including Islamic mys­ ticism (Sufism) and Zen Buddhism. Even the opponents of the emerging hasidic stream employed parables, as is evident most notably in those of Ya'akov ben Ze'ev Krantz, known as the Dubno Maggid.2 Hasidism, however, gave new life to the parable form. Compared with examples found either in various earlier sources or in texts contemporary with emerging Hasidism, many parables found in the teachings of the