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Create Me Anew: Hillel Zeitlin and Kedusha Discussion Guide

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Create Me Anew: Hillel Zeitlin and Kedusha Discussion Guide Create Me Anew: Hillel Zeitlin and Kedusha Moshe Waldoks orn in White Russia in 1871, Hillel Zeitlin ably unique role in the Warsaw community. Bwas murdered by the Nazis in the process His home on Shliska Street became a salon for of liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. He mystics, occultists, youthful Hasidic seekers was, in many ways, the urvater, the progenitor and skeptics, journalists, and writers. Zeitlin of much of the post-Shoah interest in mysti- began to play the role of an independent cism, Kabbalah, and the Zohar. rebbe. In the 1920s and early ’30s he corre- Zeitlin was a combination of scholar, jour- sponded with Rav Kook and others with mys- nalist, poet, polemicist, mystic, and prophet, tical leanings. inspiring Abraham Joshua Heschel (Zeitlin After the Second World War began, Zeitlin was the first to use the term hishtomemut hane- joined his beloved Warsaw Jews in the ghetto, fesh, “radical amazement,” in a 1911 essay) and refusing many offers to be smuggled out. (His Elie Wiesel. He is also a formative figure in the son, the renowned Yiddish poet Aaron Zeitlin, thought of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, was in America at the outbreak of the war.) In the founder of the Jewish renewal approach the ghetto he gathered around him Bratzlaver to post-Holocaust Judaism in the United and other Hasidic mystics, to usher in the mes- States. sianic redemption of shnat Shabbat [taf shin bet], Writing in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic, 1942. At the close of that year in the Hebrew Zeitlin contributed to the most well-read Yid- calendar the 71-year-old Zeitlin, according to dish newspaper in Warsaw, Der Moment, for Hillel Siedman’s eyewitness account, marched over 30 years, as well as to noted Hebrew and to the transfer point in the Warsaw Ghetto Yiddish journals. He also initiated the project erect and stately, adorned in tallit and tefillin, a of translating the Zohar into Hebrew, a task copy of a Zohar under his arm. His destina- carried out in part by his Warsaw neighbor Fis- tion: Treblinka. chel Lachower and the young Isaiah Tishby In the Harlow machzor, used in many Con- (Mishnat haZohar). He was also a vibrant social servative movement synagogues on the High critic and spiritual activist attempting to create Holidays, one of Zeitlin’s Hasidic poems can “spiritual renewal” groups who would fight the be found. In this excerpt of “Avi Kol Ba-ey forces of both atheistic socialism on the left, Olam,” we see a glimpse of Hillel Zeitlin’s in- and soul-less Orthodoxy on the right. tense spiritual yearnings: Rabbi Moshe Waldoks is Zeitlin’s prophetic tendencies were articu- the spiritual leader of lated in a series of dream diaries as he foresaw Father of all worldly things: Temple Beth Zion (TBZ), the demise of Polish Jewry in visions of Jews You create your world afresh each passing second, an independent congre- being transported in cattle cars and scenes of And were you to withdraw your loving kindness gation in Brookline, mass murder. After an extended period of Jew- from creation, Mass. He is the co- ish political activism and rejection of his tradi- All would be as nothing in the twinkling of an eye. author of The Big Book tional Orthodox background, Zeitlin returned But moment by moment you empty the vessels of of Jewish Humor (just to traditional observance and garb in the years blessing upon your creatures: re-released for its 25th surrounding the First World War. The morning stars appear again and sing you their anniversary). In the interwar years he played a remark- love song Discussion Guide Bringing together myriad voices and experiences provides Sh’ma readers with an opportunity in a few very full pages to explore a topic of Jewish interest from a variety of perspectives. To facilitate a fuller discussion of the ideas, we offer the following questions: 1. Kedusha, holiness, speaks primarily to the concept of separation. What role does sepa- ration play in making our daily lives holy? 2. How does the sound of the shofar inspire you at the High Holidays? September 2007 3. For those that believe that God permeates the entire universe, is anything mundane? Tishrei 5768 4. What stands in the way of teshuvah, atonement, and forgiveness at the High To subscribe: 877-568-SHMA Holidays? www.shma.com 12 And the sun sallies forth boldly to sing its song of fers a vision of yearning and seeking directed strength. to a personal God. And the poor man cloaks himself again and bares In this way, Zeitlin personifies the tension his heart to you, within which Jewish spirituality finds itself: a And again his soul’s prayer cleaves your heavens as world drenched in spirit but enveloped in the it ascends before you, dross of materialism. It is a portrait modified And again his body breaks beneath your terrible by a thoroughfare of human experience that glory, reaches out to a Being beyond. This balance And again his eye is lifted towards you. of the transcendent and the immanent — a But one ray of your light and I abound in light, unification of inner and outer life — is where But one word from you and I am reborn, kedusha, holiness, can be manifest. But one tremor of your eternal life and I am When Jews engage in the celebration of drenched in the dew of childhood. the creation of the universe and humanity O You who create all anew, O Father, create me, your (Rosh Hashanah is called the birthday of the child, anew. world, harat ha-olam), we often strive to bal- Breathe in me the breath of your nostrils and I will ance these vantage points as well. Aside from live a new life, even a new life of childhood. our deep wonder about the place of the Di- vine in the natural world, we also seek ways to Zeitlin, influenced by his early upbringing transcend existence beyond our physical na- among a small subgroup of Chabad followers tures. We strive to provide in our lives a possi- in Korma and Roslavel, is an acosmist, that is, bility of kedusha, a distinctiveness that allows he sees the world as illusory, metahat ayn od. us to transcend those aspects of our natures This almost Buddhist-like denial of sensual re- that mitigate our humanity and its potential ality is modified in his later years by his affinity for creating unity amidst the splendid diversity with Bratzlav Hasidism, an approach that prof- we observe in the world. Sh’ma Partners Hebrew College Rabbinical School Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute Editor-in-Chief and Executive Director: Donations to Sh’ma are tax deductible. Sh’ma is of Religion Susan Berrin available in microfilm from University Microfilms Executive Editor: Yosef I. Abramowitz International, Ann Arbor, MI, and in audio for- Jewish Theological Seminary of America mat from the Jewish Braille Institute. 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