MARTINA URBAN

HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL

Biblical Imagery and Tropes of Ecstatic Experience in Buber’s Early Interpretation of Hasidism

In his first sustained presentation of Hasidism, Die Legende des Schem (1908) Martin Buber presents a phenomenology of Hasidic spirituality. Its unconven- tional poetic style and organization evidently militated against a proper assess- ment of the work’s hermeneutic objective. Not disguising his disappointment with the reception of this book, Buber writes to his friend Gustav Landauer, with whom he shared a profound interest in the anarchistic impulse and revitalizing power of mystical language: ‘the book, which contains a good piece of my life, seems to have been accorded much less understanding than the incomparably more literary Nachman [Die Geschichten des Nachman, 1906]. It had received much praise, but no genuine word of understanding’.1 Indeed, the Jew- ish intellectual Friedrich Gundolf dismissed the Legende as a work that failed to achieve no more but a poetic rendering of the Hasidic sources; others criticized Buber for his proclivity to abstraction.2 This essay will examine and analyze the nature of the hermeneutical practice Buber had in mind when he composed the Legende. The Legende is designed as a continuation of the project of anthologizing and representing by retelling Hasidic lore that began with the Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman; both works were part of a never completed cycle.3 Buber opens the Legende with a chapter entitled ‘The Life of the Hasidim’ (‘Das Leben der Chassidim’).4 In his introduction to Hasidic spirituality, Buber combines a genre of religious literature hitherto unknown to the German Jewish and Christian reader with a novel way of reading Jewish religious experience. He refracts a

1 Buber to G. Landauer, 21 Sept 1908, in: Briefwechsel aus sieben Jahrzehnten (1897-1965), vol. 1 (Ed. G. Schaeder), Heidelberg 1972, 265. 2 Cf. S. Aschheim, Brothers and strangers, Madison 1982, 133. 3 See the letter of Buber to Horodezky, 20 June 1906, Briefwechsel I, 244. 4 References to the English edition (The Legend of the Baal-Shem, trans. M. Friedman, New York 1955) will be given in parentheses. Friedman’s translation is based on the revised edition of the Legende des Baal Shem (Frankfurt a.M. 1908, hereafter: LdB) of 1932. All translations from the original German version of the LdB are mine. 20 MARTINA URBAN phenomenological interpretation of the ecstatic experience through what he deems to be Hasidism’s four cardinal religious values – hitlahavut (ardor), ‘avo- dah (service), kawwanah (mystical intention), and shiflut (humility).5 In addition, though more implicit, he weds his description of ecstatic with con- temporary philosophical issues. Another important feature rendering the ‘The Life of the Hasidism’ unique within Buber’s writings on Hasidism is his acknowledgement of the influence of Gnostic metaphors and kabbalistic concepts (e.g., the ‘root of the tree of the world’,6 the demonic ‘other side’)7 on Hasidism.8 In Hasidism, as Buber avers, understanding is primarily linked to a ‘mode of being’, that is, cognition as grounded in the experience of the divine reality. Determining the meaning of a Hasidic text he is but secondary to an understand- ing through experience. On the basis of this experiential encounter with a text, Buber developed what may be called a ‘hermeneutics of renewal’. By a considered use of scriptural metaphor and citations, amplified by a phenomenological evo- cation of the inner-life of the Hasidim, Buber induces the Jewish reader to engage the text experientially. In pursuing this objective, Buber incorporates into his interpretive representation of Hasidic lore several well-known metaphors of mys- tical-spiritual transformation; most of these metaphors are of scriptural origin. Metaphorization, as Paul Ricoeur has argued, serves already in the Bible as a prime means to arouse the reader’s imagination.9 Metaphor, like figurative speech in general, he notes, impedes an automatic processing of meaning and must first be filtered through one’s imaginative faculty. By simultaneously disclosing and concealing, metaphorical expression preserves for Buber the mystery of ecstatic experience. Through figurative language the Hasidim describe the tension between their ecstatic mode of being with God and their existence in the mundane realm. For Buber, the most recurrent image capturing the divine reality in the percep- tion of the Hasidic mystic is that of the (supernal) ‘root’, symbolizing the onto- logical source of oneness. The mystic is constantly impelled to overcome the experience of duality of existence and of that within his own self by performing

5 For a brief discussion of Buber’s interpretation of the four Hasidic ‘life forces’, see G. Schaeder, The Hebrew humanism of Martin Buber, Detroit 1973, 78-83. 6 LdB, 9 [omitted in Friedman]. 7 LdB, 34 [Friedman, 44]. 8 G. Scholem, ‘Martin Buber’s interpretation of Hasidism’, in: idem, The messianic idea in Judaism and other essays in Jewish spirituality, New York 1995, 227-250, esp. 231. On this section of the LdB, see M. Friedman, Martin Buber’s life and work, vol. I: The early years, 1878-1923, Detroit 1988, 115-119. 9 Cf. P. Ricoeur, Figuring the sacred: Religion, narrative, and imagination (Ed. Mark I. Wallace), Minneapolis 1995, 160-166. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 21 the spiritual ascent to the supernal root. This continuous striving to overcome duality is also emblematic of the challenge posed by the abiding condition of exile and alienation experienced with particular acuity by the modern Jew.

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Buber composes his representation of Hasidic aphoristic teachings as a skein of quotations which are in themselves quotations-within-quotations. Here he prac- tices to some extent what has been labeled in later poststructuralist theory ‘inter- textuality’. According to this theory every text is framed by other texts and exists only in relation to other texts; writing is tantamount to rewriting. Apparently Buber understood Judaism as an intertextual weave of diachronic traditions that are in constant flux and hence continuously rewritten. As a consequence, he was not concerned with authorship and regards it unnecessary to identify either the author or the source of the Hasidic teachings which garnish his interpretation of the mystic path. In these teachings we not only find material adapted from the mystical tradition but also from the Mishnah,10 Gemara,11 and (see below). Further, he marks paraphrases as quotations, and purposely leaves it to the reader to recognize the scriptural verses. This disregard for scholarly protocol is, however, in consonance with traditional Jewish practice, especially as mani- fest in Hasidic texts. The Hasidic masters turned to Scripture as a fount of figurative language to be drawn upon in fostering their new religious doctrines.

Scriptural metaphors serve Buber as a means of reorienting his readers from a conception of Judaism as a fixed normative religion to an appreciation of its spirituality. Whereas the Hasidic masters scan Scripture for metaphors that illus- trate the nature of the spiritual life of the ecstatic mystic, Buber in fact interprets these metaphors. In doing so, the original meaning of the metaphor is frequently transgressed and its original meaning altered, as we shall presently examine.12 King David, for instance, represents in Hasidic imagination the archetype of the ecstatic mystic, as Buber indicates by quoting Psalm 119:19: ‘I am only a sojourner in the land’ [do not hide your commandments from me]. This outcry

10 LdB, 12 [Friedman, 25]: ‘Aus jeder Tat wird ein Engel geboren, ein guter oder ein böser. Aber aus halben Taten, die ohne den Sinn oder ohne die Kraft sind, werden Engel geboren mit ver- renkten Gliedern oder ohne Haupt oder ohne Hände oder ohne Füsse’. Cf. Pirkei Avot, Ch. 4: Mishnah 13a. 11 LdB, 9 [Friedman, 23]: ‘Grösser ist das letzte Wunder als das erste’. Cf. BT Taanit 24a. 12 See in this context B. Debatin, ‘Metaphorical iconoclasm and the reflective power of metaphor’, in: B. Debatin, T.R. Jackson & D. Steuer (Eds.), Metaphor and rational discourse, Tübingen 1997, 147-155. 22 MARTINA URBAN of the Psalmist serves as a metaphor for the via solitaria of the ecstatic mystic but also mirrors the modern condition of the human being as an existential ‘stranger’.13 Dwelling in the material and the spiritual realm, mystical love knows of two forms of love: the concealed and the revealed or public expression. As publicly manifest, the sibling love between brother and sister is considered in Hasidism as the higher form of love of God, for it denotes the yearning for mys- tical communion with God (devequt) that is to be achieved in the material world and in the social realm. The Hasidic masters derived this new interpretation of devequt as the beginning of the mystical ascent from Song of Songs 8:1: ‘Oh that you were really my brother, who had sucked the breasts of my mother, that I might find you in the street and kiss you’. Buber cites this scriptural verse to illus- trate the true meaning of ‘avodah (divine service) and not, as one would expect, to describe hitlahavut (ecstasy) or for that matter mystical communion. ‘Avodah is not limited to the prayer and ritual but is extended to the public sphere in which one mingles with one’s fellow human beings while clinging with one’s heart to the divine Presence. The hidden love, which, as Buber indicates, is on a lower level in the Hasidic hierarchy of values, represents the traditional concept of ‘love of God’ attained through the study of the , prayer, and the per- formance of the commandments. Hasidism’s tendency to endow scriptural metaphors and images with new meaning is shared by Buber and particularly evident in his rendering of Psalm 84:8, ‘They go from strength to strength, appearing [yera’eh] before God in Zion’. The metaphor ‘from strength to strength’ is para- phrased in Buber’s phenomenology of hitlahavut to articulate a subdued critique of halakhic practice: ‘When man moves from strength to strength and ever upward and upward until he comes to the root of all teaching and all command, to the “I” of God, the simple unity and boundlessness – when he stands there, then all the wings of command and law sink down and are as if destroyed. For the evil impulse is destroyed since he stands above it’.14 Buber inscribes into his section on ‘avodah one of the most recurrent images in Hasidic literature, namely, the image of ‘man as the ladder’. This trope for the process of the mystical ascent and descent is drawn from Jacob’s dream: ‘He had a dream; a stairway [sulam] was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it’ (Gen 28:12). The stairway is usually rendered with ladder. The ‘ladder set up on the earth’ has become the image which signifies the service through prayer for both the ascent of prayer and that of the soul.

The earliest source for linking Genesis 28:12 to the concept of ‘avodah be-gash- miyyut (service through corporeality) is Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef. R. Ya‘aqov Yosef

13 See also A.J. Heschel, A passion for truth, New York 1974, 201. 14 LdB, 4 [Friedman, 19]. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 23 ha-Kohen of Polonnoye († 1782), author of the Toledot, teaches that when the service through corporeal things is linked with thought, yiÌud (unification) can be effected in the upper worlds. R. Ya‘aqov Yosef seeks to convey in reference to the biblical verse the importance of conjoining oneself to the Âaddiq, for the spiritual ascent. The common men are the ‘legs’ (symbolizing the body) who abide and remain in the material world; yet through good deeds they can prompt the Âaddiqim to ascend higher.15 R. Ya‘aqov Yosef differentiates here between two types of pious men: the first type ascends the ladder to the world-to-come through preparation and the merit of his deeds (i.e., through the performance of the commandments), the second type, which is the Âaddiq as the ‘spiritual man’, knows in addition how to descend the ladder.16 The Âaddiq occasionally falls from his higher spiritual rung of gadlut (expanded state of consciousness) to the lower level of qa†nut (restricted state of consciousness), but only to con- tinue to ascend to a higher rung than the one he achieved in his previous ascent. R. Moshe Îayyim Efrayim of Sudylkow († ca. 1800) likewise relates the scrip- tural verse and image allegorically to the doctrine of the Âaddiq, and specifically to the problem of gadlut and qa†nut.17 R. Elimelekh of Lyzhansk († 1787) detects in the identical numerical value of s(u)lam and sinai (symbolizing the giving of the Law) a reference to the value of humility. He holds that the words muÂav ’arÂah (set on earth) denote ‘great humility’ which is required to attain holiness.18 R. Levi YiÂÌaq of Berdichev († 1810) considers the image as a symbol for exile which, due to the captivity of the , is said to ‘reach unto ’,19 and Habad Hasidism understood the image to signify ‘the realm in which the Yesh and the ’Ayin unite, i.e., human understanding and its divine source’.20 In the teachings of the founder of Hasidism, the († ca. 1760, also referred to by the acronym BeShT), the image of the ladder is connected to the concept of study of the Torah lishmah (for its own sake).21

15 Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef, ‘wa-yeÂeh’, 1962, fols. 22bc. 16 R. Ya‘aqov Yosef distinguished between the Âaddiq as the ‘spiritual man’ and the common man as the ‘physical man’. Such a differentiation contradicts, however, the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov. Cf. R. Elior, Îerut ‘al ha-luÌot: Ha-maÌashavah ha-Îasidit, Meqoroteyah ha-mis†iyim we-yesodoteyhah ha-Qabbaliyim, Tel Aviv 1999, 240. 17 In ‘Arevey NaÌal (‘wa-yeÂeh’) all of Israel is likened to ‘a ladder placed on earth, that is, the smaller ones (ha-peÌotim) are the aspect of the legs and stand on earth, and behold, the angels of God, that is, the Âaddiqim, ascend and descend on it’. R. Ya‘aqov Yosef refers to the prin- ciple that ‘all of Israel must join together as one’ as the ‘bonding between the great and the small’. 18 No‘am Elimelekh, Jerusalem n.d., ‘wa-yeÂeh’, fol. 12a (p. 23). 19 Qedushat Lewi, Jerusalem 2001, ‘wa-yeÂeh’, s.v. ‘we-al zeh’, fol. 64a. 20 Cf. Elior, Îerut, 66. 21 Keter Shem ™ov, part I, Lemberg 1858 [Zolkiev 1794], 12a. 24 MARTINA URBAN

Citing faithfully the first part of the verse according to its most common Hasidic formulation, Buber narrows the image of the ladder to a simple univocal signi- fication and message: ‘Man is a ladder, placed on earth and touching heaven with its head. And all his gestures [Gebärden] and affairs [Geschäfte] and speaking [Reden] leave traces in the higher world ’.22 Both sentences are marked as a quo- tation from Hasidic literature, although the second sentence is apparently but a paraphrase. In Buber’s rendering, the ladder does not symbolize the Âaddiq who joins the people of Israel to God, but refers to man in general. In focusing on the emotional aspect of Hasidic worship and inner experience, Buber omits ‘thought’ in his representation of the original teaching. To be sure, the Baal Shem Tov held that the world was created through ‘thought, speech, and deed’ and that man can affect the cosmic order through each of these activities. Thought is held to be an important means in worship, for it precedes speech and deed. An interpretation of the image of the ladder which is closer to Buber’s view of Hasidic spirituality is found in ’Imrot ™ehorot of R. Moshe of Kobryn († 1858) and marked by Buber in his personal copy: ‘And behold a ladder set up on earth’. By virtue of this every Israelite is to be strengthened, this is what is meant by, ‘You have restored me to health and revived me’ [Isa 38:16]. ‘And behold a ladder set up on earth’, even though I am [but] a ‘potsherd of earth’ [Isa 45:9], thus his [man’s] head reaches the , his soul [nefesh] emanates from the heavens above and his deeds reach heaven. And behold, the ascent and descent of the angels from above is dependent on the deeds of human beings.23 R. Moshe of Kobryn indeed assigns here no role to thought for attaining a near- ness to God. The ladder symbolizes man’s spiritual condition in this world. Man continuously ascends or descends, going either to a higher or a lower spiritual level. Even though man dwells primarily in the material world he can reach through spiritual perfection and the uniting of body and soul a status similar to that of the angels. Although Buber relates the image of ‘man as the ladder’ to the goal of unifi- cation (yiÌud), his interpretation differs from the above noted Hasidic readings.

22 LdB, 13 (emphasis mine) [Friedman, 26]. Cf. M. Buber, Die Erzählungen der Chassidim, Zürich 1949, 325, 643. The source for Buber’s interpretation could have been Ma‘aseh Åaddiqim, Lemberg 1897, 49. In his personal copy Buber marked in the margin the following two teach- ings: ‘There is no deed and movement (tenu‘ah) which does not unify wonderful unifications (yiÌudim nifla’im)’; and ‘Man effects through his speech during prayer and his teachings divine abundance in all the worlds’ (Ma‘aseh Åaddiqim, 54-55). Buber’s personal collection of Hasidica is housed in the Martin Buber Archive at the National and University Library, Jerusalem. 23 ’Imrot ™ehorot, Warsaw 1910, ‘wa-yera’, s.v. ‘wa-yiÌlom’, 6. Though ’Imrot ™ehorot was only pub- lished in 1910, the interpretation of R. Moshe of Kobryn may have been recorded in an earlier collection of Hasidic teachings. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 25

He prefers a non-midrashic mode of interpretation. Consequently, he neglects the possible meanings, connotations, and the intrinsic polysemy of each word in the scriptural verse in favor of a simple message which is both comprised in one sentence and intelligible even without the scriptural verse. The plain didac- tic message of Buber’s rendering is that every activity in this world, the world of action, can facilitate the ascent of the soul. It can be argued that without such a limitation of connotations the modern reader would not have discerned any meaning in the symbol of the ladder.

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In contrast to kabbalistic theosophy, Hasidism achieved, as Buber noted in his later writings, a ‘de-schematization of mystery’.24 But, as scholars in the field have observed, Hasidism’s reorientation from abstract mystical theories to ecstatic experience did not lead to an abandonment of all theosophical interest. Hasidic literature is replete with theosophical formulae such as ‘the mystery of speech’, ‘the mystery of yiÌud’, or the ‘mystery of Ìiyyut’.25 Buber narrows these recur- rent idioms in Hasidic parlance solely to processes bespeaking duality. For him, hitlahavut and ‘avodah determine the experiential rhythm of the Hasidic mystic oscillating between ‘having and seeking’ of God. Hitlahavut denotes in his poetic commentary ‘the mystery of unity’, ‘avodah ‘the mystery of having and seeking’, kawwanah ‘the mystery of redemption’, and shiflut ‘the mystery of community’. For Buber, these interrelated aspects of religious devotion determine the process of ‘raising the corporeal to the spirit’, that is, the transformation of the corporeal back to its spiritual essence, restoring the state of things prior to primordial sin. Hasidism’s paradoxical interpretation of the notion of exile, from a barren state of consciousness to a condition that engenders spiritual renewal, was per- ceived by Buber as the most significant change in the messianic idea. Through- out his rendering of the four Hasidic values Buber refers to an idea found already in , namely that of the exile of the Shekhinah – the divine Presence – from God. Similar to the Shekhinah, the Hasidic ecstatic mystics ‘wander over the earth’.26 Seeking nearness to God through perfection of ‘wor- ship in spirituality’, they are but strangers in the corporeal world. Duality and the exile of the Shekhinah began, Buber asserts in allusion to Lurianic myth, with ‘the created world and its deed’.27 As a result of ‘human deed’ (i.e., the sin of

24 M. Buber, Der grosse und seine Nachfolge, Frankfurt a.M. 1921, xxiv (hereafter: DgM). 25 Cf. Degel MaÌaneh ’Efrayim, Jerusalem 1995 [Korets 1810], ‘tezaweh’, s.v. ‘she†ey’, fols. 113ab. 26 LdB, 8 [Friedman, 22]. 27 LdB, 14 [Friedman, 26]. 26 MARTINA URBAN

Adam), God has ‘fallen into duality’, that is, into the now concealed divinity, ‘Elohut’, and ‘God’s Glory’, the Shekhinah. This is Buber’s point of departure from which he shows how the theme of duality works itself out with respect to the opposites of good and evil and to the notion of redemption. Buber relates in this context primarily to the theory of the wandering of the souls and sparks of souls and the task of uplifting of the sparks from their state of captivity in the corporeal world. In his interpretation of kawwanah, he notes that the sparks sank ‘at the time of the original darken- ing of the world or through the guilt of the ages’.28 Primordial sin caused a separation of the soul from its divine source and a fracturing of the divine unity. This event is referred to in kabbalistic symbolism as the ‘cutting of the shoots’ (qiÂÂu ha-ne†i‘ot), which is yet another trope used in Buber’s representation.29

HITLAHAVUT – ON ECSTATIC IMMEDIACY

Buber regards hitlahavut as ‘the primal principle [Urprinzip] of Hasidic life’.30 Ekstase, Wonne (bliss), Inbrunst (fervor, ardor) are synonyms employed to trans- late the term hitlahavut. Indeed, the words derived from the Hebrew root l-h-v (burning, flame, to be inflamed) evoke several of the central features attributed to Hasidic mysticism. Although hitlahavut ‘is the burning’,31 it is not to be con- fined to the ardor of ecstasy, but is the value denoting enthusiasm which ‘unlocks the meaning of life’.32 For Buber, burning devotion rather than mystical communion (devequt) is at the core of Hasidic worship; it is the beginning of the mystical ascent, informs all other dimensions of Hasidic spirituality, and, unlike mystical communion, can be practiced by everyone. Scholem would demur, for he regarded devequt, the doctrine of the constant cleaving to God, to be the distinctive aspect of worship of God in Hasidism.33 Yet Hasidic literature does contain formulations that lend themselves to emphasize hitlahavut over devequt. In his personal copy of a late Hasidic collection of teachings, Ma‘aseh Åaddiqim, the following sentence is marked with pencil: ‘The roots of Hasidism are three: humility [shi- flut] and joy [simÌah] and burning fervor [hitlahavut] in all things of worship’.34

28 LdB, 24 [Friedman, 35]. 29 LdB, 15 [Friedman, 27]. 30 LdB, 29 [Friedman, 40]. 31 LdB, 2 [Friedman, 17]. 32 Ibid. 33 G. Scholem, ‘ or communion with God’, in: idem, The messianic idea in Judaism, 203-227, esp. 203. 34 Ma‘aseh Åaddiqim, Lemberg 1897, 50. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 27

But devequt, even if it gains a new meaning in Hasidism as an emotional- devotional value, nevertheless echoes the biblical command ‘you shall cleave to God’ (Deut 10:20; 11:22; 13:5). Buber, the religious anarchist, thus highlights hitlahavut for its non-normative quality. While both concepts often merge into one another in Hasidic discourse, they are not identical. Buber refers in his presentation to hitlahavut as the ‘highest rung’ of mystical experience, the end and apex of mystical ecstasy in which one transcends all being.35 He indicates the task of ‘cleaving to God’36 without, however, noting that this practice requires the intellectual effort of the meditative fixation of one’s thoughts on the divine attributes. The early Hasidim continued the practice of the Kabbalists, who meditated upon the sacred Hebrew letters (Âerufey ’otiyot) and on binding one’s thought to the root of Torah for the sake of effecting the unification in the upper worlds. Although Buber alludes in his interpretation of kawwanah to the practice of meditation on the Hebrew letters, he clearly does not wish to associate the use of specific techniques with Hasidic spirituality. Buber also neglects, as noted, the role of maÌashavah (thought) in Hasidism. But the Baal Shem Tov, in spite of his cultivation of ecstatic and spontaneous religiosity, stressed that man’s thought determines in which realm he dwells spiritually.37 ‘Sometimes one serves God with the soul alone, that is with thought, and the body stands [still] on its place’.38 By means of thought man divests himself of corporeality, cleaves to the Shekhinah and raises the holy sparks or, in the language of the BeShT, ‘raises the rupture’.39 Spiritual worship meant for the BeShT to serve God through the purity of one’s thought, for the divine essence enveloped in every created thing is not accessible to sensual perception. The Âaddiq can receive mystical revelations or apprehend supernal truths through the attaching of his thought and spirituality (maÌashavato we-pnimiyyutaw) to the spirituality (pnimiyyut ruÌaniyyut) contained in the Hebrew letters.40 But more important, this mental effort of concentrating on the letters is the path to spiritual perfection and mystical communion with God and, according to the Baal Shem Tov is the inner meaning of Song of Songs 1,2, as ‘the mystery of “He kissed me with the kisses of His mouth”’.41 In Hasidic literature the observance of the commandments with hitlahavut leads one by means of detachment from the physical world (hitraÌaqut mi-ha-Ìomer) to

35 LdB, 6 [Friedman, 21]. 36 ‘Wenn der Mensch sich an Gott schliesst’ (LdB, 3); ‘Gott immerdar anhängen’ (LdB, 9). 37 llk bwcm eie alv fvilye jlvyb eie al jav ave bwcm jdaw vmkw Åawa’at ha-Rivash, Lemberg 1797 [Zolkiev 1794], siman 69. Cf. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fols. 7b, 24a. 38 Åawa’at ha-Rivash, siman 84. 39 Cf. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fol. 7b. 40 Cf. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fols. 6a-b. 41 Cf. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fol. 6b. 28 MARTINA URBAN the cleaving to the ‘inwardness of the commandment’ (pnimiyyut ha-miÂwah) or to the ‘inwardness of Torah’ (pnimiyyut ha-torah).42 These concepts point to the esoteric dimension that the original kabbalistic doctrine of devequt retains in Hasidic thought. Given his above noted effort to present Hasidism as a ‘de-schema- tisation of mystery’, Buber places at the core of Hasidic piety the emotional state of hitlahavut, which makes the desired proximity to God attainable to everybody. But when Buber acknowledges that true communion with God can be attained only in solitude (hitbodedut) he defines an aspect of devequt, rather than of hitla- havut.43 The same is true when he describes hitlahavut not as a ‘sudden sinking into eternity’ but as an ‘ascent to the infinite from rung to rung’ (i.e., from one level of holiness to a higher level of holiness).44 Indeed, devequt is not confined in early Hasidism to the state of mystical communion with God but to devo- tion. The absorption of aspects of devequt into hitlahavut is a consequence of Buber’s nigh-single focus on the phenomenological evocation of the dynamic and emotional pathos of Hasidism. In accord with another Hasidic trope, Buber depicts the Âaddiq as ‘the man who is detached [from being]’ and becomes a ‘friend of God’.45 By virtue of his burning enthusiasm he ‘raises everything cor- poreal to spirit’46 and in attaining to a spiritual state of being reversed the sin of ’adam. This presentation of the concept of abstracting oneself from corporeality is, however, deficient, for the state of removing oneself from concrete reality requires in Hasidic thought not only fervor but paradoxically the intellectual effort of a total voiding of thought. Buber simplifies the complexity of this men- tal effort: ‘Thus ecstasy completes itself in its own sublimation [Aufhebung]’.47 In using the word Aufhebung he associates the inner motion with Hegel’s dialec- tic of annulment and preservation, which he seems to have read through Sim- mel’s caveat, cautioning that the ‘absolute sublation’ of the other as in ecstasy would render the ‘meaning and content’ of religiosity null and void.48 Further,

42 Cf. Qedushat Lewi, Jerusalem 2001 [Slavuta 1788], ‘devarim’, s.v. ‘dibber mosheh;’, fol. 333b; Maor wa-Shemesh, ‘bereshit’, s.v. ‘wa-yomer’; Degel MaÌaneh ’Efrayim, ‘wa-yera’, s.v. ‘yoqeaÌ’. 43 LdB, 13 [Friedman, 26]. Cf. Åawa’at ha-Rivash, siman 80. Green identifies these spiritual conditions as the development of two kinds of Âaddiqim in the early writings of Hasidism, the one ‘who is only for himself’, and the one ‘who is for himself and for others’, a concept referred to in ’Or Torah of Dov Baer and in No‘am ElimelekÌ. Cf. A. Green, ‘Typologies of leadership and the Hasidic Zaddiq’, in: idem (Ed.), Jewish spirituality, vol. 2, New York 1988, 135. See also M. Piekarz, ‘Hasidism as a socio-religious movement’, in: A. Rapoport-Albert (Ed.), Hasidism reappraised, London-Portland (OR) 1996, 237. 44 LdB, 3-4 [Friedman, 18-19]. 45 LdB, 8 [Friedman, 22]. 46 LdB, 2 [Friedman, 18]. 47 LdB, 6 [Friedman, 21]. 48 G. Schimmel, Die Religion, Frankfurt a.M. 1906, 13. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 29 this philosophical term mitigates the extreme implications of the doctrine of the mystical annihilation of the self (bi††ul ha-yesh), which would have to be translated as Leugnung des Selbst (denial of the self) or Nichtung des Selbst (anni- hilation of the self). Possibly Buber feared that mystical self-effacement could be identified with a total self-denial which would run contrary to the modern ethos. In his poetic description of hitlahavut, Buber tends to conflate the various concepts that denote in Hasidism either different spiritual states of the mystical path or the mental efforts connected to hitlahavut such as hishtavut (mystical equanimity of the soul), hitbonenut (contemplation), hitkalelut (mystical absorp- tion), hitpa‘alut (ecstatic rapture), and hitpash†ut ha-gashmiyyut (the divesting oneself of corporeality).

The spiritual act of divesting oneself of corporeality is, as Buber indicates, a dialectical process. The mystic is an agent of (cosmic) renewal,49 for he reverses the process of divine Creation and transforms corporeal reality back to its spiritual essence. This spiritual conversion of things involves a dual movement: ‘It enlarges the soul to the all. It narrows the all down to nothing’ and, as Buber adds citing from a Hasidic source that reflects the teaching of R. Dov Baer of Mezhirech († 1772), ‘[t]hey [the Âaddiqim] turn the something back into noth- ingness’.50 Buber repeatedly refers to the activity of the attainment of the state of nothingness as the eternal beginning of (the activity of) Creation. He offers but a vague phenomenological description of what occurs at the apex of the ecstatic experience. ‘If it appears to offer an end, arriving, an attaining, an acquiring, it is only a final no, not a final yes: it is the end of constraint, the shaking off of the last chains, the liberation which is lifted above everything earthly’.51 It remains unclear whether the attainment of ‘simple unity’ is to be understood as a submersion of the self into the absolute divine Presence. Buber’s reading of hitlahavut is confined to the dialectic of the ‘primeval duality’, epitomizing a pantheistic view, ‘Everything is God. And everything serves God’.52 His single focus on the ‘earthly life of hitlahavut’ compels Buber to detach the dialectical movement of the world of Creation from that of the world of Emanation. He fails to indicate, however, that the task of transformation – the spiritual conversion of things back to their primordial nonexistence – is one that reen- acts the eternal movement of contraction and expansion within God. His account of the mystical path is but a truncated presentation of the dialectic of yesh (something) and ’aiyn (naught), the ‘paradigms’ of the mystical ascent (Rachel

49 Buber, cf. ‘continual renewal is the actual life-principle of the Zaddik’, in: DgM, xxxiii. 50 LdB, 9 [Friedman, 23]. 51 LdB, 4 [Friedman, 19]. 52 LdB, 10 [not in Friedman]. 30 MARTINA URBAN

Elior). The mystical ascent is attained by the ‘stripping away of corporeality’ (through the nullification of will) whereas the mystical descent entails the bring- ing down of the supernal influx into the corporeal world (i.e., the materializa- tion of the divine will).53 Through the stripping away of individuality, the soul becomes a vessel for the divine influx and prepares itself for the renewal of creation. For creation is a continual dual process, an active creating (to identify the divine with the material, created world in an intense spiritual act) and the converse, a passive ‘being-created’ (the emptying of the spirit in order to become a vessel for the divine life-force): ‘For creating means to be created: the divine moves and overcomes us’.54 With oblique reference to the teachings of R. Dov Baer of Mezhirech, Buber presents this process as an act of divine grace and identifies God as the animating force and source of renewal.55 Parenthetically R. PinÌas of Korets († 1791) emphasizes that renewal of Creation is a continuous process in which both man and God participate: ‘God wants to renew His world’.56 Further, Buber stresses the process of bringing oneself to mystical passivity and points to the overcoming of selfhood required for a transformative experience: ‘only he who sinks into the nothing of the Absolute receives the forming hand of the Spirit’.57 The anthropomorphic metaphor of the ‘hand of the Spirit’ is yet another prominent biblical image interpolated by Buber. Moreover, it is the most common metaphor to denote divine providence. The corresponding phrase in Hasidic literature is the ‘Hand of Holiness’ (yad ha-qedushah). The prophet’s transformative experience of the Spirit of God (1 Kings 18:46), ‘[t]he hand of the had come upon Elijah’,58 alludes in Hasidism, as Buber suggests in his usage of the metaphor, to the state of mystical rapture.

The various metaphors related in Hasidism to the description of the flow of the divine effluence into the world of emanation and creation – e.g., the divine

53 Cf. R. Elior, The paradoxical ascent to God: The kabbalistic theosophy of Habad Hasidism, New York 1993, 31. 54 LdB, 30 [Friedman, 40]. Cf. Elior, Paradoxical ascent, 61. 55 Cf. Buber’s description of ‘avodah: ‘God works in man, as He worked in the chaos at the time of the world’s becoming’ (LdB, 11); cf. his reading of shiflut: ‘and God pours His Glory into him’ (LdB, 35). 56 Midrash PinÌas ha-Shalem, Ashdod 2001 [Lemberg 1872], 32, siman 46. 57 LdB, 30 [Friedman, 40]. Cf. LdB, 72 [Friedman, 69]: ‘And he felt the kneading hand of the spirit’. 58 This metaphorization of the ecstatic union as an act of divine grace denotes in Scripture the power that creates the psychological precondition necessary to induce the prophet’s revelatory state of mind. Cf. 2 Kings 3:15; Ezek 1:3; 3:22. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 31 fullness, light, or vitality59 – are subsumed in Buber’s commentary under the generic term grace. Yet without a distinction between the technical Hebrew terms shefa‘ (abundance, grace) or Ìiyyut (vitality) one can hardly gain a proper under- standing of the process of spiritual renewal in Hasidism. These technical terms do not easily lend themselves to metaphorization. Thus Buber preferred to construct his text with metaphors of the ecstatic experience of which devequt is central. Although scholars have noted that the kabbalistic concept of devequt has undergone a radical change of meaning in Hasidism where it advanced to the prime religious value,60 what devequt denotes specifi- cally is anything but clear.61 Indeed, it was a basic principle of early Hasidism that the ‘fruit of the Torah is ‘cleaving to God’ (meqasher u-medaveq ’et ‘aÂmo).62 According to , devequt signifies in a much wider, non-elitist sense ‘the performance of a pious deed with devotion and enthusiasm’63 and not strictly the objective of the ascent, the communion with God, attained by a few. The understanding of devequt as primarily an emotional value crystallized only with the generations succeeding R. Dov Baer of Mezhirech.64 But devequt, as Piekarz points out, also has a doctrine bearing a specific socio-religious function.65 He refers to the teaching of Ya‘aqov Yosef of Polonnoye who made it mandatory for every

59 Among the expressions used in Hasidism as tokens for experiencing the divine Presence are, ‘the light of the divine Glory’, LdB, 21 [Friedman, 32]; ‘he is full of the power of God’, LdB, 29 [Friedman, 39]; ‘the vessel pours from out of its fullness’, LdB, 33 [Friedman, 42], man can ‘bring down the overflowing blessing’, LdB, 33 [Friedman, 43]. 60 Cf. I. Tishby & J. Dan, ‘Îasidut’, in: Ha-Encyclopedia ha-‘Ivrit, Jerusalem 1949-1984, XVII, cols. 800, 805. 61 Mendel Piekarz claims that a clear-cut delineation of Hasidic concepts is in particular difficult with respect to defining the precise meaning of the doctrine of devequt. It can denote in Hasidic literature the religious experience, a state of mind without distinct content, or piety in general. Cf. ‘Hasidism as a socio-religious movement’, 229. Scholem faced the same problem with regard to yiÌud. Cf. ‘Devekut’, 214. For a review of the scholarly evaluations of the concept of devequt, see I. Etkes, ‘Ha-BeShT ke-mistiqan u-va‘al be-shurah be-“avodat h”’, in: D. Asaf (Ed.), Zaddiq we-‘Edah, Jerusalem 2001, 120-121, 125-127. See also Z. Gries, Sefer, Sofer we-Sippur be reshit ha-Î asidut, Tel Aviv 1992, 96-98. 62 Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef, ‘Ìayye Sarah’ (Jerusalem 1962), fol. 20a. 63 M. Idel, Hasidism: Between ecstasy and , Albany 1995, 237. Yet the observance of a miÂwah is also a means to attain devequt. Cf. Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef, ‘Ìayye Sarah’, fol. 20a. 64 Cf. R. Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as mysticism: Quietistic elements in eighteenth-century Hasidic thought, Princeton 1973, 323. 65 In this context see also Shmuel Magid who argues that through its ‘messianic antinomianism’ Hasidism formulated a social critique in promoting a democraticization of devequt. Cf. S. Magid, ‘The intolerance of tolerance: MaÌaloket (controversy) and redemption in early Hasidism’, in: Quarterly 8 (2001) no.4, 344-345. 32 MARTINA URBAN believer to realize adhesion to God, although he conceded only the Âaddiqim can truly fulfill the commandment of ‘to Him you shall cleave’ (Deut 11:22; 13:5).66 In principle, Buber would have agreed with Scholem’s contention that the doc- trine of devequt became in Hasidism ‘a starting-point’ rather than ‘the end’ of wor- ship.67 But he remains unclear whether in mystical ecstasy the Hasidic masters indeed attained unio mystica, that is, a state of absorption of the soul into the divine Real- ity.68 Phrasings in Buber’s text such as ‘it is given to man at every place and any time to unite with God’ or ‘ecstasy seeks nothing but completion in God’ are accordingly ambiguous and can be read to mean either unio mystica or mystical communion.69

‘AVODAH – ON MYSTICAL SELF-SACRIFICE

The second value that Buber interprets is ‘avodah (lit. ‘work’, here: divine serv- ice). ‘Avodah is nigh-synonymous in Hasidism with prayer and considered in the movement’s early stage more important than the study of Torah. Prayer is the primary means of the inner ascent of the soul to God, that is, the path to the rap- turous mystical encounter with the divine. The remembrance of the atoning func- tion of the ancient temple rite sacrifice is part of the traditional liturgy specifi- cally on the Day of Atonement. ‘Avodah thus evokes the religious concepts of sin,

66 Piekarz, ‘Hasidism as a socio-religious movement’, 232. Åofnat Pa‘aneaÌ, fol. 95a. According to Scholem, it is hard to establish, whether this was a binding commandment or an ideal for the pious alone. Cf. ‘Devekut’, 205. 67 Scholem, ‘Devekut’, 208. 68 and Joseph Weiss have pointed to the scant evidence of such unifying expe- riences in . Here the doctrine of ecstasy and ecstatic practices ‘played a much less important part than, for example, in Christian mysticism’. J. Weiss, ‘Some notes on ecstasy in Habad Hasidism’, in: idem, Studies in eastern European Jewish mysticism (Ed. D. Goldstein), Oxford 1985, 202-208, esp. 207. 69 Buber, Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman, 15 [omitted in Friedman]; LdB, 17 [Friedman, 29: ‘hitlahavut is the individual way and goal’]. The suggestion that in the state of devequt the mys- tical adept overcomes the ontological distance between himself and God, and attains a unio mys- tica, was much disputed. Scholem argued that Jewish mysticism in general and the in particular do not support the concept of a unio mystica but rather that of communion with God, which preserves the Urdistanz between God and man. Cf. Scholem, ‘Devekut’. For a counter position, see M. Idel, Kabbalah: New perspectives, New Haven-London 1988, 59-73. See also Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as mysticism, 46-50. Scholem responds here also to the charge made by Christian theologians and scholars of religion that in Judaism unio mystica is totally absent and thus the vitality that defines a living faith. Maurice Friedman attempted to correct the view that Buber portrayed the apex of the mystical experience as an absorption into the deity: ‘[…] it is clear that he did not see the mystic experience as the Christian unio mystica or as an encounter with a power that accosted and seized him, but as a turning inward to some ground of being beneath the individual “I”’. Friedman, Martin Buber’s life and work, I, 86. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 33 repentance, atonement, and purification. The recital of prayer – beyond the goal of unification of the Shekhinah and God70 – is understood in Hasidism in a literal sense as sacrifice, as a giving of oneself to God in form of Kiddush ha-Shem (sanctification of God’s Name through martyrdom). Accordingly Buber distinguishes the two spiritual modes of ‘avodah and hitla- havut with symbolism from the sacrificial cult: ‘Hitlahavut is the mystical meal; Avodah is the mystical offering’.71 The ‘mystic meal’ is indeed in Jewish mysticism traditionally a symbol for the ecstatic bliss of mystical communion with God; the symbol points to man as the recipient of the divine shefa‘. By contrast, ‘Avodah entails the notion of self-sacrifice and as such demands man’s uncondi- tional movement of total subservience to God in ecstatic prayer.72 However, only the reader with knowledge of Hebrew is able to discern that this metaphoriza- tion of sacrifice is nurtured by the Hebrew root q-r-b, which means ‘to draw near’. The common German translation of qorban (sacrifice) as Opfer does not inspire such an innovative reading.

Buber holds that Hasidic worship entails the polar experiences of preparatory mystical contemplation (internalization) and religious-spiritual activity directed to the physical world (externalization). ‘Here the inner meaning of ‘avodah is intimated, coming from the depths of the old Jewish secret teaching and not clarifying, but obfuscating the mystery of the duality of ecstasy and service, of having and seeking’.73 The having and seeking of God as the spiritual movement of the Âaddiq corresponds, as Buber explains in his essay ‘Sinnbildliche und sakramentale Existenz im Judentum’ (1935), to the unity of passion and action in the life of the prophet.74 This having and seeking of God (in allusion to Prov 8:17) is the axis of spiritual worship in Hasidism. It is a seeking of the divine within oneself. In contradistinction to ecstatic communion, ‘avodah cannot be confined to isolated inwardness, for it demands communal God-intention or a communal God-seeking: ‘In the narrow room of self no prayer can thrive’.75

70 LdB, 14 [Friedman, 27]. 71 LdB, 10 [Friedman, 24]. 72 The mystical idea of self-sacrifice plays also a central role in the theology of the Orthodox thinker Rav Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, who relates it to devotional suffering, for man’s affinity to God is expressed in constant sacrifice and cannot be achieved without suffering. For Soloveitchik, the religiously sanctified privilege of self-sacrifice is a fundamental expression of one’s freedom to choose unconditional faithfulness to God. Rather than a substitute sacrifice God demands man himself. As he explains, ‘[t]otal and unreserved offering of soul and body is the foundation of Judaism’. P. Peli (Ed.), Soloveitchik on repentance, New York 1984, 142. 73 LdB, 14 [Friedman, 26]. 74 M. Buber, Deutung des Chassidismus: Drei Versuche, Berlin 1935, 65. 75 LdB, 15 [Friedman, 28]. 34 MARTINA URBAN

Through the congregational service of prayer one transcends the self. Hence communal prayer counterbalances the seclusion of the self required for mystical ecstasy and expresses the collective will to establish a unity below as well as above. Prayer is ‘all action bound in one’76 and as such symbolizes for Buber the ‘secret of community’.77 ‘The willing ones [die Wollenden] bind themselves to one another for greater unity and might’.78 In contrast to hitlahavut, ‘avodah is based on directed intention (kawwanah), that is, on a volitional act of drawing near to God. Buber stresses through the previously noted parable of the BeShT about the ‘human lad- der’, in Simmelian terms the mutual dependence of the Âaddiq and the congrega- tion of Israel (kneset yisrael): ‘the lower need the higher, but the higher also need the lower’.79 Here he captures an important phenomenological and psychological aspect of prayer in Hasidism. The Âaddiq and the congregation experience together and through one another the mystery of holiness. As a mediator between God and man, the Âaddiq assists others in the ascent of their prayer.80 He binds him- self ‘with the whole of Israel’.81 The reciprocal interaction between the Âaddiq and the simple pious individual is necessary to realize the unification of all souls towards their ultimate restoration in the supernal abode, the ‘All-Einung’.82 The Âaddiq is, as opposed to the angel, a Wandelnder,83 that is, one who trav- erses between the material and the spiritual world. The life of the Âaddiq is devoted to the attainment of holiness; it unfolds between potentiality and actuality. Although Buber indicates the superior religious rank of the Âaddiq, he is not inter- ested in elucidating the doctrine of the Âaddiq; he differentiates only once explic- itly between the Âaddiq and the ordinary pious man: ‘But if it is only those blessed ones who can plunge tranquilly into the darkness in order to aid a soul which is abandoned to the whirlpool of wandering, it is not denied to even the least of per- sons to raise the lost sparks from their imprisonment and send them home’.84 ‘The righteous’ (der Gerechte) or ‘the saint’ (der Heilige) is primarily presented by Buber as the helper of God who draws the truly devoted souls of Israel near to Him.

76 LdB, 12 [Friedman, 25]. 77 LdB, 16 [Friedman, 29]. 78 LdB, 17 [Friedman, 29]. 79 LdB, 16-17 [Friedman, 29]. 80 LdB, 16 [Friedman, 28]. 81 Ibid. In his poetic commentary to the Hasidic teachings Buber retains the concept of ‘the Congregation of Israel’, but he avoids its particularistic nuances, e.g., as expressed in the ideal of the ‘love of Israel’ (’ahavat yisra’el). 82 LdB, 29 [Friedman, 40]. 83 LdB, 4 [Friedman, 19]. Buber cites here from an unidentified Hasidic source. Cf. DgM, xxxiii. 84 LdB, 26 [Friedman, 37]. Cf. LdB, 25 [Friedman, 36]. Cf. DgM, xlvi. Scholem criticized Buber for obscuring the difference between the Âaddiq, as the true spiritual man, who alone can achieve the highest ideal of worship, and the simple man. See Scholem, ‘Martin Buber’s inter- pretation of Hasidism’, 237. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 35

The dual nature of divine service is one of communion (implying spiritual passivity) and intention (implying spiritual activity): ‘He who thus serves in perfection has conquered the primeval duality and has brought hitlahavut into the heart of ‘avodah’.85 This fusion of spiritual passivity and spiritual activity constitutes a new understanding of the nature of worship. On the ‘altar of the soul’ the Âaddiq offers himself unreservedly unto God: ‘When the holy man brings ever new fire that the glowing embers on the altar of his soul may not be extinguished, God Himself says the sacrificial speech’.86 Buber describes the dialec- tic informing this extreme religious experience of cleaving to God metaphorically as the ‘grace of ecstasy’.87 Indeed, the BeShT held that continuous devequt would necessarily imply the death of the body.

In the theoretical literature of Hasidism the symbolism of ‘the soul as an altar to God’ points to a cluster of ideas related to the concept of mystical annihilation of the self. Hasidism uses the concept of mesirut nefesh (lit., ‘giving one’s life’) which, in associating devotion with an act of ‘sacrificing of oneself’ to God, accentuates the intensity required for spiritual worship.88 In prayer, according to R. Moshe of Kobryn ‘we sacrifice ourselves before you [God] in the place of the animal sacrifice’.89 Buber uses the metaphorical expression of the ‘altar of the soul’ to epitomize the total devotion of soul and body that ecstatic prayer requires in Hasidism.90 This image of prayer as the giving of oneself to God is associated with sacrifice and mystical death. To depict the withdrawal of the soul into God, the Hasidic masters also evoke the image of the ‘kiss of God’ (Songs 1:2), denoting the

85 LdB, 20 [Friedman, 32]. 86 LdB, 11 [Friedman, 24]. Cf. Åawa’at ha-Rivash, siman 43: ekinpl fbrq imoy ha birqel 87 Cf. Geschichten des Rabbi Nachman, 17 [Friedman, 14-15]. Only through the divine shefa‘ does man remain alive after prayer. Cf. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fol. 19a and Åawa’at ha-Rivash, siman 35. The spiritual descent and re-entry into the physical world is, according to the BeShT, a necessary aspect of ascent. Without the experience of re-entry man would not become aware of the rap- ture he experienced in the process of devequt. See I. Etkes, ‘Ha-BeShT ke-mistiqan’, 135-136. 88 Åawa’at ha-Rivash, siman 43. Midrash PinÌas ha-Shalem, p. 4, siman 2. See also Elior, Paradoxi- cal ascent, 185-189. 89 ’Imrot ™ehorot, Warsaw 1910, 47. 90 The symbolism of man as the altar was read already read allegorically by Philo: ‘The true altar of God is the thankful soul of the sage, compacted of perfect virtues unsevered and undivided, for no part of virtue is useless. On this soul-altar the sacred light is ever burning and carefully kept unextinguished, and the light of the mind is wisdom […]’. Philo, On the special laws (De specialibus legibus) I, 287, vii, 267. See also On dreams (I, 243, v. 425): ‘The whole world is an offering dedicated to God, and He it is who has created the offering […]’. See in this context Buber’s article ‘Philon und Cohen: Ein Fragment’, in: Juedische Rundschau 33, nos. 64-65 (17 Aug. 1928), 463. 36 MARTINA URBAN martyrological love of God.91 Buber provides some key words for his Jewish read- ers to recall those aspects of Jewish liturgy that nurtured the imagination of the ecstatic mystic. This ideal of worship has as its starting point, as correctly captured by Buber, the initiative of man. For the BeShT and his followers, this is indicated in the law of the burnt offering of Leviticus 6:6: ‘A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out’. R. Moshe Îayyim Efrayim of Sudylkow compares the burning devotion expected from the Âaddiq to the sacrifice offered by the ancient priest for atonement. The Âaddiq has to keep the fire of hitlahavut burning all night in his heart, as if it were on the altar, in order to take upon himself the sufferings of the Shekhinah (i.e., the condition of captivity in the night of exile) until dawn (i.e., the morning of redemption).92 But above all, the mystic’s prayer qua self-sacrifice requires – and Buber glosses over this important detail – the recital of specific prayers with the intention of kiddush ha-Shem, namely, the Shema‘ and its benedictions. The Shema‘ also serves as a means for attaining the ecstatic withdrawal into the divine. In its proclama- tion of the unity of God, the Shema‘ dictates the unification of the lower with the supernal world as the purpose of service.93 The BeShT regards ecstatic prayer with kawwanah as the prime means and religious activity by which the mysti- cal ascent and the state of utter attachment to God is realized.94 Buber’s reading of prayer as the ecstatic service of the heart and mind does not, however, imply that he utterly ignored the traditional paths to holiness: ‘through the teaching and prayer and the fulfillment of the commandments [shall one serve God]’.95 But mystical prayer is, as he emphasizes, only one aspect of worship. The process of transforming the incomplete back to its original harmony includes ‘every deed’,96 that is, every deed that originates ‘from a unified soul’.97 ‘For he who has ascended from ‘avodah to hitlahavut and has submerged his will in it and receives his deed from it alone, has risen above every separate service’.98 As underscored in Buber’s commentary on the aforementioned teachings, Hasidism provides insights on the contemporary problem of alienation. The modern experience of individuation in the empirical world need not be understood as a constricting,

91 See in this context M. Fishbane, The kiss of God: Spiritual and mystical death in Judaism, Seattle- London 1996. 92 Degel MaÌaneh ’Efrayim, Jerusalem 1995, ‘zaw’, s.v. ‘wa-yedabber’, fols. 138a-d. 93 See also Fishbane, Kiss of God, 117-118. 94 The BeShT experienced mystical ecstasy, in particular during the recitation of the ‘Amidah with great concentration. Reciting the Shema‘ was central for the ‘coming to the world of emanation’ until the soul cleaves to the divinity. Cf. Midrash PinÌas ha-Shalem, 8, siman 8. 95 LdB, 13 [Friedman, 26]. 96 LdB, 12 [Friedman, 25]. 97 LdB, 18, 20 [Friedman, 30-31]. 98 LdB, 20 [Friedman, 31-32]. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 37 irreversible process of alienation. Through its emphasis on spiritual perfection Hasidism teaches ways of overcoming individuation. By virtue of free will and in conjunction with a yearning for nearness to God, the ecstatic mystic can attain an experience of oneness. In what appears to be an argument on the meaning of divine Providence in the modern world, Buber suggests that it is in the power of the indi- vidual to reverse ‘the multiplicity within himself’. An unidentified Hasidic source serves Buber as a prooftext: And as when the world began to unfold and He saw that if it flowed further asunder it would no longer be able to return home to its roots, then he spoke ‘Enough’ – so it is that when the soul of man in its suffering rushes headlong, with- out direction, and the bad [das Übel] becomes so mighty in it that it soon could no longer return home, then His compassion awakens, and he says ‘Enough!’ But man too can say ‘Enough’ to the multiplicity within him. When he collects him- self and becomes one, he draws near to the oneness of God – he serves his Lord. […] All action bound in one and the infinite life enclosed in every action: this is avodah.99 Here we have yet another example of how Buber uses Jewish traditional litera- ture in his representation of Hasidic teachings. In Midrash Genesis Rabbah XLIV.5 the divine name Shaddai is interpreted as Sha-dai, the one who says ‘dai!’ – enough! to the world, thus placing through His attribute of justice a limit to the initial expansion of the cosmos.100 God gives creation and His creatures their boundary. This boundary is required to realize one’s potential for self- perfection.101 Analogous to the limiting power of God at the moment of creation it is possible to ‘limit’, i.e., transform one’s condition of spiritual fragmentation into a state of spiritual oneness. The Midrash thus obtains a contemporary read- ing. Moreover, Buber re-reads this rabbinic explanation of one of the divine names with reference to the problem of evil. The phrasing, ‘the soul of man in its suffering rushes headlong, without direction’ introduces the question of theod- icy and ‘direction’ provides a key term central even to Buber’s treatment of the issue in later years. As he elaborates in his Images of Good and Evil (1952), evil becomes an actuality when one cannot overcome a state of confusion and inde- cision and – by resorting to ‘pseudo-decisions’ – detaches oneself from the divine reality. In such situations of failure to respond to a situation with a unified, ‘whole soul’ one plunges into chaos.102

99 LdB, 12 [Friedman, 25]. 100 Cf. E.E. Urbach, The sages: Their concepts and beliefs, Jerusalem 1975, 498, and 909: fn. 60; cf. BT Hag 12a; Cant.R I,14. 101 See M. Buber, ‘A God who hides his face’, in Nahum N. Glatzer (Ed.), The dimensions of Job: A study and selected readings, New York 1969, 63. 102 M. Buber, Good and evil: Two interpretations. I. Right and wrong. II. Images of good and evil, Upper Saddle River (NJ) 1997, 121-132. 38 MARTINA URBAN

KAWWANAH – ON REDEMPTIVE DEVOTION

Buber employed an interpretive translation. He uses German words whose mean- ing elicit specific conceptual associations. Given the semantically closed language of Hasidism, this procedure is problematic. A special case in point is the terms he employs in his interpretation of kawwanah (‘intention’). In Hasidism, kaw- wanah denotes the act of directing one’s prayers through mystical meditation towards the unification of God (leshem yiÌud). In German works on Hasidism of the time, kawwanah is often translated as Andacht (devotion).103 But Andacht does not quite capture the unique devo- tional and intentional quality of worship in Hasidism. Searching for a German equivalent for kawwanah unencumbered by kabbalistic inflections and medita- tive practices, Buber’s choice fell upon the term Weihe (consecration). While eliciting the sublime aura of religious inwardness, this term with its archaic rever- berations was familiar to the German reader and frequently used in the poetry of German Romanticism. Although this distinctive term is occasionally used today by scholars of Hasidism, it is not conceptually anchored in Judaism. Further, it belongs in its historical semantics to the lexicon of Christian faith and has distinctive ecclesiastical connotations. It is indeed difficult to find a word in German that fully captures the meaning of kawwanah. Yet within the context of the fin de siècle in which Buber’s Legende is situated the semantic resonances of the term Weihe raise questions regarding its appropriateness to capture the conceptual and phenomenological nuance of kawwanah in Hasidism.104 To be sure, Buber’s poetic composition occasionally has distinctively Christian inflec- tions, which come to the fore in expressions such as ‘Becher der Gnade’ (goblet of grace) and ‘Sohn Gottes’ (son of God).

Buber defines purity and consecration of the soul as the constitutive aspects determining man’s relation to God. Consecration denotes the special aura of total dedication of the self that is required for the religious act: ‘At times it [hit- lahavut] expresses itself in an action, which it consecrates and fills with holy meaning’.105 But consecration can also describe a passive spiritual condition:

103 Cf. A. Katz, Der Chassidismus, Berlin 1904; J. Günzig, Rabbi Israel Baal-Schem, der Stifter des Chassidismus, Brünn 1908. 104 Until the thirteenth century the term ‘consecration’ meant the act of sanctification (cf. Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bd. 3, Tübingen 2000, 4th rev. ed.). Consecration denotes in general ‘a liturgical act by which the object (person or thing) is placed in a special relation to the sacred realm, albeit different forms and degrees have to be distinguished’. Cf. Evangeli- sches Kirchenlexikon, Göttingen 1962 (2nd ed.), s.v. ‘Weihe’, col. 1741. 105 LdB, 6 [Friedman, 21]. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 39

‘The man of ecstasy [der Inbrünstige] rules life, and no external happening that penetrates into his realm can disturb his consecration [Weihe]’.106 Apparently Buber refers here to the preparatory state necessary to achieve mystical ecstasy. But the German term Weihe is misleading, for it denotes in its ecclesiastical use a ritual modus operandi. The act of spiritual concentration is in Hasidic rites referred to as an act of self-sanctification. One sanctifies and purifies oneself (leqadesh we-le†aher ’et ‘aÂmo).107 This principle constitutes a contemplative exer- cise whereby one brings down upon oneself holiness, empowering one to perform a religious act with due spiritual concentration.108 While the term consecration does capture this feature of Hasidic practice it hardly covers its full range of meaning, for as R. MenaÌem Mendel of Vitebsk († 1788) warned, in contrast to the Âaddiq the ordinary man cannot achieve the requisite spiritual focus solely on one’s own.109 Nor does the term adequately convey the transformative power of the contemplative process to render the self a mystical naught (’ayin we-’efes).

Buber’s absolute spiritualization of worship often collapses into apodictic statements such as ‘[i]t is not the matter [Materie] of the action, but only its consecration [Weihung] that is decisive’.110 The discipline of contemplation, which entails mental concentration to attain total attachment to the divine Pres- ence, is transformed into an unspecified act of consecration. Buber attributes exclusive importance to the power of the devotional attitude by which the deed turns into a sacramental act and can awaken the sacred essence in things and redeem it,111 for to redeem is to renew: ‘through him [who does everything in holiness] the fallen sparks are raised and the fallen worlds redeemed’.112 The term Weihe was already appropriated by the German Romantics in their rediscovery of the Greek mystery cult. However, the religious use and semantic

106 LdB, 5 [Friedman replaces Weihe with ‘inspiration’, 20]. 107 Cf. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fol. 10a. See also Idel, Hasidism, 59, who quotes R. Aharon Kohen of Apta in his ’Or ha-Ganuz relating the self-sanctification and purification to the preparatory state to . 108 Buber was aware of the formula leqadesh ’et ‘aÂmo, for he marked it in his copy of Ma‘aseh Åaddiqim (p. 52). The difference between the degree of holiness attained by the Âaddiq in bod- ily things, and that of every man is, frequently pointed out in Hasidic literature. The Âaddiq sanctifies himself more during eating than during prayer (for it is more difficult to maintain devequt while partaking in the pleasure of eating), whereas it is the opposite with the rest of the people (who cannot practice devequt at all times and could not achieve this level of spiritualization). No‘am Elimelekh, ‘koraÌ’, fol. 60b (p. 119). 109 Cf. Peri ha-are u-peri ha-eÂ, shoftim. 110 LdB, 27 [Friedman, 37]. 111 Cf. Buber, Drei Reden über das Judentum, Frankfurt a.M. 1911, 87; DgM, xxxvii; Cf. Buber, Deutung des Chassidismus, 92. 112 LdB, 27 [Friedman, 38]. 40 MARTINA URBAN meaning of the term was established in Catholicism.113 The biblical locus classicus for the use of the term consecration (as dedication to holiness) is Exodus 28-29, the account of the induction of Aaron and his sons into priesthood. The most significant technical term in this chapter is derived from the pi‘el of the Hebrew root m-l-a. The initiation ritual opens with the grammatically difficult formula il fekl jhva wdql (Exod 29:1), translated, for instance, by standard Catholic Bible translations and by Luther as ‘to consecrate [weihen] them’, or by Zunz114 ‘to sanctify [heiligen] them’ for priesthood. In the standard German Bible trans- lations we find both ‘consecration’ and ‘sanctification’ used for the Hebrew stem q-d-sh (to sanctify, to make holy).115 The word Weihe is in Catholic Bible translations further applied to symbolic acts of initiation, such as the ‘filling of the hands’ (mile’at ’et yadam), which marks the receiving of priesthood and the obligation to ritual purity or the offering of the milu’im, the ram of initiation (eyl ha-milu’im).116

113 In Romanticism the meaning was widened and secularized, bestowing worldly things through the act of consecration with a distinct dignity. Cf. Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (Leipzig 1955), vol. XIV, s.v. ‘Weihe’, cols. 655-664. Of Gothic origin Weihe denotes originally a sacred-magical act, the transformation of a profane object into a holy one by means of transferring sacred power into that object. In the usage of Catholicism it denotes the sacramental act performed by an ordained (i.e., consecrated) clergyman of endowing an object or person with the condition of holiness. 114 Torah Nevi’im Ketuvim. Die 24 Bücher der Heiligen Schrift nach dem masoretischen Texte (Ed. L. Zunz, trans. H. Arnheim, J. Fürst & M. Sachs), Berlin 193517 (1st ed. 1884). 115 Cf. Exod 28:3: ihvnekl vwdql Zunz: ihn zu heiligen, mir ihn zum Priester zu weihen; S.R. Hirsch: ihn zu heiligen, daß er mir als Priester diene. Exod. 28:41: jha hwdqv jdi ha halm Zunz: und fülle ihre Hand und heilige sie; Hirsch: und bevollmächtige sie und heilige sie. Exod. 29:9: vinbv fvrea di halm Zunz: so füllest du die Hand Aharon wie seine Söhne; Hirsch: und du bevollmächtigst damit Aharon und seine Söhne. Exod. 29:33: jha wdql jdi ha alml Zunz: um ihnen die Hand zu füllen, sie zu heiligen; Hirsch: ihnen Vollmacht zu erteilen, sie zu heiligen. 116 To connote the attainment of the state of ritual purity and holiness, the Hebrew root would be n-z-r. With the exception of the priest’s wdvq rzn (Exod 29:6) this Hebrew term is absent in the biblical account of the initiation for priesthood. With respect to the laws of the Nazirite (Num 6:1-21), consecration describes the act of dedicating oneself to God through obser- vance of stringent requirements of abstinence, thereby achieving a (temporary) status of holi- ness resembling that of the priest. The vow of the Nazirite rizel rizn rdn ‘el (Num 6:2) was an act of consecration, a precondition to attain the status of sanctity, even if only temporarily. On the root n-z-r, see W. Gesenius, Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament, Berlin 196217, 494-495. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 41

The does not advance a concept of consecration but rather one of holiness. In Exodus 28-29 holiness is not a mental act but a status achieved by performing a prescribed ritual. In biblical monotheism, as the neo-Orthodox Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch emphasized, nothing is made holy, such that holiness can be concentrated in it, separating it from the profane, but every- thing shall strive to become holy.117 Sanctification of one’s whole being is an imperative deduced from the holiness of God (Lev 19:2). The performance of the commandments as God’s will sanctifies Israel. Thus German-Jewish Bible translators of the nineteenth century, such as Samson R. Hirsch, tend to either avoid the term Weihe or – as in the case of Zunz – apply it only in those instances where it cannot be confused with the biblical concept of holiness.118 Therefore, through his use of the term Weihe Buber implicitly narrows his phenomenology of Hasidic devotional practices to those acts which promote spiritual ascent only. The state of expanded spiritual consciousness (gadlut), in which divinity is brought into the physical realm, is presented by Buber as the norm of the mystical experience. He, in fact, exclusively emphasizes the upward movement of the soul. His description of the four Hasidic values conveys no insight into the dialectic between ascent and descent (for the sake of ascending anew) and lacks any hint of the inevitable disruption of the blissful state of mystical communion, the ‘falling down’ to the state of restricted spiritual consciousness (qa†nut). These aspects are in Hasidism related to the prime task of an uninter- rupted cleaving to God. Yet the Baal Shem Tov maintained that kawwanah, paving as it does the path to gadlut, is not always possible to sustain. Ordinary men can attain this state of consciousness only by attaching themselves to the Âaddiq.119 According to the Baal Shem Tov, one should read the prayers from the prayer book in the state of qa†nut as a preparatory means to return to the higher spiritual state.120 This technique was also applied in early Hasidism to storytel- ling.121 Buber interprets the act of storytelling in Hasidism as ‘the consecration of a holy deed’,122 a description that obscures not only the dialectic thrust of this act but also its possible theurgic power.123

117 Cf. S.R. Hirsch’s commentary to Exodus 29. Der Pentateuch (trans. & comm. S.R. Hirsch), vol. 2, Frankfurt a.M. 1869, 489. 118 More recent German Jewish translations of the Hebrew Bible are less concerned with the semantic and etymological implications of the term. N.H. Tur-Sinai in his translation of 1954 often translates the Hebrew root q-d-sh as geweiht, weihen (Exod 28:4; 28:38; 28:41 passim). 119 Åawa’at ha-Rivash, siman 72. 120 Åawa’at ha-Rivash, siman 40. 121 Cf. Scholem, ‘Devekut’, 222. 122 DgM, vii-viii. 123 Cf. Idel, Hasidism, 186-188. Quoting from Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef (fol. 25a). The legends were often told against the background of concrete events, especially as related from an 42 MARTINA URBAN

Buber’s preeminent concern was, however, to mediate the attitude of devotional purity and sanctity that characterizes Hasidic spirituality. Yet, the term ‘consecration’ does not help the reader to understand correctly this feature of spiritual worship in Hasidism. Consecration should not be confused with sanc- tification or the mystical meditation required for prayer or the performance of a religious act. In normative Judaism, including Hasidism, the concept of holiness is bound to the observance of the miÂwot, prayer, and the study of the Torah. Indeed, Hasidism demanded a direct contact with God in all one’s actions (‘In all your ways acknowledge Him’, Prov 3:6). For R. Dov Baer of Mezhirech and his followers this meant above all the development of one’s ability to relate through contemplation to the divine vitality that inheres in all things,124 and even activate it by an ‘intense mystical effort’.125 The mystical effort also has magical powers, generally referred to in Hasidic literature by the metaphor ‘drawing power’.126 Alan Brill has recently argued that for R. Moshe Îayyim Efraim of Sudylkow Ìiyyut is not only a universal life force directed from below to the world above; the Âaddiq is also a vessel for the divine influx and transfers the divine energy descending into the physical world to objects, channeling and increasing it, and finally himself drawing vitality from it.127 Buber does note the significance for Hasidism of Proverbs 3:6 which he refers to by way of paraphrase, ‘God wills that one serve Him in all ways’ and ‘each motion [Bewegung] of the humble soul is a vessel of consecration and power’,128 creating his own metaphor (vessel of consecration) to describe this inner process. But this rendering fails to convey the divine origin of the individual’s power to sanctify the profane, a fact under- scored by the Baal Shem Tov, for ‘every motion and thought is from God’.129 The concepts of kawwanah, Ìiyyut, devequt and the spiritual processes they bring about are conflated in Buber’s use of the term Weihe, and hence their highly differentiated nature is lost to the reader. As a consequence the theurgic aspect of Hasidic spirituality doesn’t come to the fore. Moshe Idel regards the power by which the Âaddiq brings down the divine illumination from the upper

autobiographical perspective, and also aimed at enabling something either to happen or preventing it from happening. 124 Elior, Îerut ‘al ha-LuÌot, 57. 125 Idel, Hasidism, 237. 126 LdB, 35 [Friedman, 44]; Degel MaÌaneh ’Efrayim, ‘miqeÂ’, s.v., ‘’o ya‘amor’, fol. 55a. cf. No‘am Elimelekh, ‘wa-yera‘’, fol. 7a (p. 13). The ‘drawing down’ of the divine energy requires the observance of the commandments and achieving perfection in the study of Torah. Cf. Toledot Ya‘aqov Yosef, ‘’emor’, fol. 102c. 127 A. Brill, ‘The spiritual world of a master of awe: Divine vitality, theosis, and healing in the Degel Mahaneh Ephraim’, in: Jewish Studies Quarterly 8 (2001) no.1, 37-40. Cf. Idel, Hasidism, 189-207. 128 LdB, 12 [Friedman, 25]; 13 [Friedman, 26]. 129 Cf. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fol. 7a. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 43 worlds as an indication of the synthesis of mysticism and magic in Hasidism.130 Buber includes the image of the drawing power, but neutralizes its magical asso- ciations by use of the term consecration. Thus he diverts attention from the theurgical quality that has been ascribed to kawwanah in Hasidic worship.131 As Buber contends in his interpretive commentary, releasing the sparks is not to be achieved through theurgical formulae or magic.132 Although he concedes that kawwanah, primarily performed during prayer, has the theurgical power to effect unity in the upper worlds, he is careful not to refer to the Âaddiq’s ‘drawing power’ in his interpretation of kawwanah (where he would be obliged to emphasize its magical aspect), and relegates it to his description of the ethical-religious value of shiflut.133 For Buber, the ‘drawing power’ is to be understood as a bringing down the divine effluence, not in order to channel it into the world but into the soul of the God-seeker. Only one who ‘rests in himself as in the nothing’ can become a vessel of the divine influx. Buber’s use of the term consecration elides the fact that it is God’s will which dictates the mystical path. As Rachel Elior observes, Hasidism sees one’s task to be ‘the realization of the will of God to be manifest in perfection’,134 that is, to reveal in everything the divine substance in this world. In heeding this task, one is granted the opportunity for ever-renewed contact with the divine. In his dialogical period, Buber became increasingly alert to the need to diffe- rentiate both Hasidic mystical experience and the function of the Âaddiq from magical practices: ‘The consecration of the everyday stands beyond all magic’.135 In light of this phenomenological distinction, the act of yiÌud as a process of meeting the divine is not identical with the circular causality of the magical act in which man is both the initiator and end.136 The sacred form of existence is

130 Idel, Hasidism, 193-194. Idel (p. 214) argues that there are ‘alternating fluctuations of the relative roles of the magical, mystical, and theosophical-theurgical’ in Jewish mysticism in general and Hasidism in particular. Scholem noted with respect to kawwanah, that even though magic and mysticism ‘represent two fundamentally different categories’, they might meet and interact in the same mind. This comes to the fore in the magical nature of prayer in the Kabbalah, where ‘every prayer […] involves the eternal paradox of man’s hope to influence the inscrutable ways and eternal decisions of Providence’. G. Scholem, Major trends in Jewish mysticism,New York 1988 (repr. from the 3rd rev. edition), 277. 131 As Idel (Hasidism, 213) notes, Buber seeks to differentiate Hasidism as a ‘devotional type’ of mysticism from ‘linguistic magic’. 132 LdB, 27 [Friedman, 37]. 133 LdB, 35 [Friedman, 44]. 134 Cf. Elior, Paradoxical ascent, 63. 135 DgM, xxxviii. 136 In DgM (xxxv-xxxvi), Buber distinguishes the act of yiÌud from a magical act. ‘Der Jichud bedeutet nicht die Einwirkung eines Subjekts auf ein Objekt, sondern die Auswirkung des Objektiven in einer Subjektivität und durch sie: des Seienden im Werdenden […]’. Hence, 44 MARTINA URBAN divine service and not the exertion of power over the holy power inherent in all things.137 For Hasidism, the goal of performing yiÌudim is God. Buber refers once to the unification of God with the Shekhinah,138 without, however, relat- ing it to the contemplative technique of yiÌudim practiced in particular by the Âaddiq during prayer. Buber links consecration with kawwanah and the idea of redemption so as to call to attention the ‘cosmic-meta-cosmic power of respon- sibility of the human being’,139 also referred to as ‘the eternal redemptive power of intention of man’.140 In later years he stressed the paradoxical nature of self- redemption, claiming that every individual can have an effect on redemption, but no one could bring it about alone.141

Inherent in Buber’s phenomenological method is a marked tendency to essen- tialism. This is evident in his representation of the concept of mystical unifica- tion. In describing yiÌudim he omits the erotic inflections of mystical love and the terminology and imagery of the language of lovers, the Bride and Bride- groom drawn from the Song of Songs that resonated with the Jewish mystical imagination. Buber’s account of the mystical path leading to the state of ‘suspen- sion of ecstasy’, is in fact strikingly de-eroticized; he omits metaphors of erotic content which could conflict with the ideal of a pure spiritual love. The ‘kiss of God’ signifying the mystical communion is but one of the symbols which is unnoted in Buber’s account. His interpretation is focused on the imagery asso- ciated with the semantic field of hitlahavut (altar/great glow/fiery sword/fire/flame/sacrifice) rather than that associated with mystical illumination (channels/fount/spring/ river/water) which are given to the symbolism of sexual union. We thus find no reference in Buber’s presentation to a central concept in kabbalistic theosophy, namely that yiÌud requires the unification of the male

yiÌud is tied to the world process of creation: it is the ‘return of the received [emanated] divine power [to its Source]’. Cf. M. Buber, Cherut: Eine Rede über Jugend und Religion, Vienna-Berlin 1919, 2. 137 M. Buber, ‘Sinnbildliche und sakramentale Existenz im Judentum’, in: idem, Deutung des Classidismus, 83. 138 LdB, 14 [Friedman, 27]. 139 DgM, xxiv. 140 ‘Der Chassidismus bejaht das Gesetz schlechthin, aber nicht als Satzung, sondern als die gnaden- reiche Führung, die dem höchsten Vermögen des Menschen, seiner ewigen erlösenden Inten- tionskraft zuteil wird […]’. M. Buber, ‘Ein Wort über den Chassidismus’ (response to Karl L. Schmidt), in: Theologische Blätter 3 (1924), no.7, 160. 141 LdB, 25 [Friedman, 35]. M. Buber, ‘Zur Darstellung des Chassidismus’, in: idem, Werke, vol 3: Schriften zum Chassidismus, Munich-Heidelberg 1962-63, 986. ‘Only through the redemption of the everyday grows the Every-Day of redemption’. M. Buber, ‘Spinoza, Sabbatai Zwi und der Baalschem’, in: Deutung des Chassidismus, 58. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 45

(Tif’eret) and female (Malkhut) within the Godhead.142 According to the Kabbalah and the Baal Shem Tov, unification can be effected not only by prayer but also through physical unification in the world below. The important con- cept that God takes ‘delight’ (ta‘anug) in the sexual deeds of human beings is absent in Buber’s phenomenology.143 Buber stresses that mystical intention contains the twofold dialectical nature of the mystical experience, which corresponds to two different psychological realities. One mode is the passive reception (Verinnerung des Außen/internaliza- tion of the outer) and the other mode is active giving of oneself (Veräusserung des Innen/externalization of the inner). ‘Thus the will of the Hasidic teaching of kawwanah is twofold: that enjoyment [Genuß ], the internalizing of that which is without, should take place in holiness and that creation, the externalizing of that which is within, should take place in holiness’.144 In commenting on this dialectic, Buber amplifies the meaning of redemption: ‘Not only to wait, not only to watch expectantly: man can work toward the redemption of the world. Just that is kawwanah: the mystery of the soul that is directed to redeem the world’.145 Here Buber even speaks of a magical directedness of the soul.146 Kawwanah thus entails both activity and passivity. Releasing the sparks is hence the ‘kawwanah of reception’ as opposed to the ‘kawwanah of giving’, which ‘binds worlds to one another’.147 The ‘kawwanah of giving’ is in Buber’s phenom- enology to be distinguished from the reverse process symbolized in the theory of raising the sparks: ‘He who knows the secret melody that bears the inner into the outer […] he is full of the power of God’ and creates anew.148 Buber asserts that the intentionality required for kawwanah ‘is not will’.149 Perfect kawwanah means emotional not mental intentionality. Hasidism does not demand a non-rational ‘leap of faith’ as Buber critically remarks with implicit reference to Kierkegaard.150 Emotional kawwanah is religious devotion through the directing

142 The BeShT remained indebted to kabbalistic theosophy, in particular to ideas which link speech and eros in the . He identified three kinds of speech which correspond to three kinds of mystical coupling (between the male and female aspects in the Godhead and between the divine Presence and the mystical Congregation of Israel), the ziwwug of the ‘king and the princess (matronita‘)’, that of the ‘king’s son and his spouse’, and that of the ‘servant and the maid’. Keter Shem ™ov, I, fol. 24b, cf. fol. 8b. 143 Buber refers once (LdB, 30 [Friedman, 40]) to ‘holy enjoyment’. 144 LdB, 30 [Friedman, 40]. 145 LdB, 25 [Friedman, 35]. 146 In a footnote to one of the legends presented in the LdB (63), Buber explains kawwanah as follows: ‘Kawwana=Intention: die magische Spannung der auf ein Ziel gerichteten Seele’. 147 LdB, 28 [Friedman, 39]. 148 LdB, 29 [Friedman, 39]. 149 LdB, 22 [Friedman, 33]. 150 ‘No leap from the everyday into the miraculous is required’. LdB, 27 [Friedman, 37]. 46 MARTINA URBAN of one’s senses and actions to God. The ecstatic mystic is the one who paradoxi- cally ‘rules life’, by virtue of his redemptive ‘consecration’:151 It is not the substance of the action that is decisive, only its consecration [Weihung]. Just that which you do in the uniformity of recurrence or concatenation of events; just this answer of the acting person to the multiple demands of the hour, an answer acquired through practice or gained through inspiration, just this contin- uousness of the living stream [of life] is redemptive when performed in consecra- tion [Weihe].152 The oblique reference to Nietzsche’s interpretation of time, condensed in his adaption of Heraclitus’ doctrine of ‘the eternal recurrence of the same’, is an indi- cation of Buber’s attempt to modify Nietzsche’s critique of modernity. Buber understood this doctrine not as a cosmological theory, nor as an extreme expres- sion of nuhilism, but as an alternative to the ascetic ideal through a radical affir- mation of the meaning of each and every lived moment. A mystical pantheism is conjoined here with the idea of metempsychosis. The mystical theory of the wandering of the souls describes for Buber a cathartic process of renewal in which the soul strives to return to the primal soul, the source of oneness. The meaning of recurrence lies in the possibility and cathartic aspect of individual redemption qua perfection. The souls caught in the process of transmigration are the ‘wan- derers of eternity’.153 The attitude of consecration becomes the pre-condition for the lifting of the divine sparks for the redemption of the imprisoned souls.154 Through his reading of kawwanah Buber joins the active mode of consciousness to human passivity engendered by hitlahavut. Althought the cyclical nature of transmigration breaks through Judaism’s linear conception of time; it nonetheless remains linked to the goal of redemption: ‘But there are no goals, only the goal’.155Like creation, redemption is not a one time historical event, but an eter- nal process of releasing the divine essence in all things. This process entails moral responsibility. In Hasidic thought the life of the individual evolves along the recurrent trajectory of creation and redemption. From Buber’s phenomenologi- cal perspective and spiritual view of history grounded in the realization of time- lessness in time, the true meaning of this process is spiritual renewal.

151 LdB, 5 [Friedman, 20]. 152 LdB, 27 [Friedman, 37-38]. Cf. M. Buber, ‘Jüdische Religiosität’, in: idem, Vom Geist des Judentums: Reden und Geleitworte, Leipzig 1916, 62: ‘Nicht die Materie der Tat bestimmt darüber, ob sie im Vorhof, im Reich der Dinge verläuft oder ins Allerheiligste dringt, sondern die Macht der Entscheidung, die sie hervorbringt, und die Weihe der Intention, die ihr inne- wohnt’. 153 LdB, 25 [Friedman, 36]. 154 Cf. LdB, 24 [Friedman, 37]. 155 LdB, 22 [Friedman, 33]. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 47

SHIFLUT – ON RELATION/MITLEBEN

The last of the four values or requisite spiritual postures that Buber considers fun- damental to Hasidism is shiflut (Demut). In Hasidism shiflut is the existential pre- supposition of the religious-ethical task to be assumed by the Jew; without pure humility cleaving to God is held to be impossible. In the theoretical literature of Hasidism shiflut is related to the doctrine of bi††ul ha-yesh (annihilation of the self) and to hishtawwut (equanimity, the indifference of the soul to praise or blame). Hasidism considers shiflut both as a means for the ecstatic experience and as a supreme religious value. The one who lowers himself (ha-mashpil ’et ‘aÂmo) diminishes his value (peÌitut ‘arkho) to a point, where he totally ceases to think of himself and transcends his own being to become a vessel for the divine vitality. Shiflut in the sense of meekness (shiflut ha-ruaÌ) is thus an intense mental exercise and a precondition af all other spiritual values. Hasidism associates the mystical term shiflut with the biblical term ‘anawah and occasionally uses both as synonyms. However, ‘anawah, as the common term for humility, is usually understood in moral-ethical terms, and, in contrast to shiflut, is not associated with the mental exercise of thinking of oneself as non-existent in order to approach the incomprehensible naught of God. In Hasidism, one attains the attribute of ‘anawah through the practice of shiflut (lowliness) as Buber has it. ‘At the goal of shiflut, one resembles the mystical nothingness’.156 The Âad- diq must constantly acknowledge his deficiencies, eschew excessive pride, and ques- tion whether he is worthy of approaching God.157 Without true humility the Âad- diq has no ‘drawing power’. Humility is the ‘outward manifestation of the process of transforming the self to the ’aiyn’.158 Thus the term shiflut is used in Hasidism to denote a more radical concept than the biblical understanding of humility.159 Modern Jewish thinkers tended to regard humility as a virtue central to eth- ical monotheism. For Nietzsche, whose impact on spiritual Zionists like Buber has been often noted, however, humility was among the corrupting moral ideals of Judeo-Christian culture. Humility entails submissiveness and is from the per- spective of Nietzsche’s creative heroism a sign of weakness. Objecting to such a

156 Midrash PinÌas ha-Shalem, 25, siman 33. Middat ‘anawah gains major importance in the thought of R. PinÌas of Korets. 157 For the Âaddiqim, Moses was the perfect embodiment of the virtue of humility; he ‘was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth’ (Num 12:3), while pride (in the sense of dignity) is in Hasidic literature an attribute of Aaron and necessary for the self-esteem required by the high priest (Exod 28:2). For R. Dov Baer of Mezhirech and his followers, Moses was an example of a Âaddiq, who did not ‘return to himself’, but achieved constant adhesion to God. Cf. Idel, Hasidism, 119. 158 Cf. R. Elior, ‘The paradigms of yesh and ayin in hasidic thought’, in: Hasidism reappraised, 179. 159 Cf. Tishby & Dan, ‘Îasidut’, col. 808. 48 MARTINA URBAN reading, Buber begins his interpretation of shiflut by linking it to the concept of the uniqueness (Einzigkeit) of every individual.160 Here he cites a popular teach- ing of R. NaÌman of Bratslav († 1811): ‘God never does the same thing twice’,161 a teaching that could easily be refuted with Job 33:29, ‘Behold, God does all these things two, three times with a man’. Buber interprets R. NaÌman’s teach- ing as an exemplum for the process of spiritual perfection: That which exists is unique and happens but once. New and without a past, it emerges from the flood of returnings, takes place, and plunges back into it unrepea- table. […] Uniqueness is the essential good of man that is given to him to unfold. […] For pure uniqueness and pure perfection are one, and he who has become so entirely individual that no otherness any longer has power over him or place in him has completed the journey and is redeemed and rests in God.162 R. NaÌman understands the cultivation of the divinity of one’s soul as a supreme religious responsibility, that is to say, each individual must acquire knowledge of the Torah according to one’s intellectual capacity.163 Individual uniqueness as the development of one’s unique vocation and creative expression is portrayed by Buber as the avenue to redemption. Aesthetic individuation is the premise for the com- pletion of personal existence. The ideal and hope of attaining unity cannot be realized without a religious or rather mystical understanding of the concept of uniqueness. In allusion to the philosophical doctrines of Heraclitus and Hegel, Buber implies that individuation is an integral aspect of the world’s becom- ing, and thus constitutes the ontological basis of individuality. Even though the soul is of metaphysical substance it still has an existence of its own (Eigendasein).164 Being part of the whole does not conflict with being a ‘the single one’ (der Einzige).165 Buber draws no explicit nexus between the exclusive uniqueness of God and human uniqueness, which is in Judaism the presupposition of imita- tio Dei. In contrast to Schopenhauer, whose conception of the principium indi- viduationis dominated religious as well as philosophical epistemologies at the fin de siècle, Buber disproves of conceiving of individuation solely as a negative process. As read through Hasidism individuation is part of the dynamic process

160 Hermann Cohen also addresses the question of Einzigkeit. Used once in Die Ethik des reinen Willens (1904), the term gains significance in the posthumously published Religion der Vernunft (1919) where Einzigkeit denotes the pure being of God, the source of all being. Cf. H. Cohen, Religion of reason out of the sources of Judaism (trans. & introd. Simon Kaplan, introductory essay Leo Strauss) New York 1972 (first publ. 1919), Ch. I, Ch. III, 64, 66-67. 161 LdB, 31 [Friedman, 41]. SiÌot haRaN, 54, fol. 40. 162 Ibid. (italics mine). Cf. M. Buber, Ich und Du, Leipzig 1923, 128. 163 Cf. Liqqu†ey MohaRaN, 56,1: hvnicbb vl wiw hvklme hnicb ipl dca lk 164 LdB, 36 [Friedman, 45]. 165 LdB, 33 [Friedman, 42]. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 49 of being and creation. It engenders the conditions for human uniqueness and perfection. It is the task of each human being to unfold one’s potential in order ‘to become entirely individual’166 and thereby to attest to diversity as the goal of creation. The mystic’s awareness of the incompleteness of existence alerts him to the responsibility of developing his individuality, which, in turn, becomes the stimulus for the task of unification (Einung).167 The demanding exercise of self-criticism, which shiflut requires for the perfec- tion in Hasidism is not indicated in Buber’s rendering. He also minimizes the tension between passivity (shiflut) and activity (‘anawah), and presents shiflut primarily as an ethical-religious virtue to be realized in the social realm, ‘in life with the others’.168 This reading overlooks the attitude of the Âaddiqim towards the social sphere as the lowest level of mystical activity. Given the modernist rejection of normative ethics, Buber also maintains that humility results from spontaneous emotion – what he would later refer to as a ‘pure heart’ – bereft of ‘compulsion’ which is characteristic to a ‘willed’ action. In this view, which con- sciously parts from Kant’s foundation of morality as an act of self-coercion under the moral law, Hasidism is presented as cultivating a humility that is utterly bereft of the will yielding to duty. Like kawwanah, humility is not volitional: ‘Humility […] is no willed and practiced virtue. It is nothing but an inner being, feeling, and expressing’.169 As a spontaneous emotion, humility is indivisibly related to love. Originating in one’s undivided self, as Buber notes, love should be the cardinal motive for man’s deeds. He quotes a teaching attributed to the Baal Shem Tov: ‘This is one of the primary Hasidic teachings [Grundworte]: to love more’.170 In his single emphasis on the love of God, Buber sunders the coupling of fear and love of God as the ground of true worship in Hasidism: ‘That is how it is meant: Love of the living [zu den Lebendigen] is love of God and greater than any service’.171 Yet ‘fear of God’, the complementary aspect of religious love, is held by the Baal Shem Tov to be the pathway to the ‘love of God’.172 Parenthetically, the numer- ical equivalence between ’ahavah (love) and ’eÌad (one, unity) nourished in addi- tion the efforts of the Hasidic masters to achieve the unity of God.

The ethos of Hasidism is, as Buber intimates, not based upon a transitory feel- ing of pity (Mitleid, lit., ‘suffering with [the other]’) to silence sudden negative

166 LdB, 31-32 [Friedman, 41]. 167 Cf. M. Buber, Der Weg des Menschen nach der chassidischen Lehre, The Hague 1948, 38-41. 168 LdB, 32 [Friedman, 42]. 169 LdB, 35 [Friedman, 44-45]. 170 LdB, 40 [Friedman, 47]. 171 LdB, 40 [Friedman, 47]. 172 Keter Shem ™ov, I, fols. 23b-24a. Cf. Tishby & Dan, ‘Îasidut’, col. 814. 50 MARTINA URBAN feelings, nor is it induced by negative emotions such as remorse or commisera- tion with the suffering of others. Hasidism attributes no value to the feeling of pity.173 Some Hasidic masters were concerned that pity as a reaction to pain and suffering of others might be prompted by arrogance or self-centeredness. Further, the release of negative emotions impedes a proper, i.e., ecstatic and joyful relation- ship with God. Buber introduces the concept of Mitleben (lit., ‘living with the other’) as a phenomenological gloss on the Hasidic conception of humility. Mitleben is here not an arbitrary neologism but a conceptual term indicating a kind of cognitive empathy. Mitleben is also used by Buber’s teacher Wilhelm Dilthey to denote the ‘inverse operation’ of understanding as a reliving through the process of psychic transposition. Mitleben leads the contemporary reader back to the hermeneutical quest.174 Mit-leben as an empathic act is directed through love to interhuman relationships and as such necessarily rejects the concept of iso- lated existence of the self. Understood in this way, compassion as Mitleben over- comes the passivity that is suggested by the German word Mitleiden.175 Buber offers a critique of a purely conceptual approach to suffering in which the fel- low human being remains a solitary self. In contrast to his later writings on Hasidism, Buber acknowledges in his essay of 1908 the theosophical-kabbalistic context of Hasidic teachings. He specifically alludes here to the monistic view of YizÌaq Luria († 1572) ‘that all souls are one’,176 the idea of the ‘Urseele’177 (primordial soul) and the concept of the ‘Urmensch’ (primordial man). According to Luria, all Israel constitutes – analo- gous to the unity of God – one organism, containing the souls of every individ- ual Jew. This mystical bond between each member of the Congregation of Israel mandates mutual responsibility. The Baal Shem Tov interpreted this belief as a demand for a socio-religious commitment in which one should recognize the imperfection of ‘the other’ as one’s own and strive to correct the corresponding defect in the cosmic order. Buber illustrates this concept of ‘the saint [who] can suffer for the sins of a man as if his own’ through an anecdote of R. Zusya of

173 Cf. Åawa’at ha-Rivash, simanim 9, 44, 46 passim. 174 W. Dilthey, ‘Das Verstehen anderer Personen und ihrer Lebensäußerungen’ (1910), in: idem, Gesammelte Schriften, Göttingen 19928, vol. 7, 214. Although the writing of this essay is dated with some uncertainty to 1910, Buber may have been introduced to the hermeneutic mean- ing of this term in one of Dilthey’s seminars, which he attended at the University of Berlin in the summer of 1898 and fall 1899. 175 Martin Heidegger later placed similar terms at the center of his concept of verstehen, which is in his thought an ontological condition rather than an epistemological problem. For Heidegger, one’s being as a ‘being-in-the-world’ or Mitdasein and one’s relation with a fellow human being does not constitute the Mitsein. Cf. P. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics & the human sciences, Cambridge 1998, 55. 176 LdB, 45 [Friedman, 49]. 177 LdB, 24 [Friedman, 35]; cf. LdB, 45 [Friedman, 49]. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 51

Hanipoli († 1800), a disciple of R. Dov Baer of Mezhirech.178 He refers in this context to the oft-cited metaphor of the ‘broken heart’ (lev nishbar), but typically offers no explanation that would assist the reader to understand the mystical con- notation of this metaphor and its scriptural meaning. The Baal Shem Tov, accord- ing to R. Zusya, once chided a Hasidic master for his self-righteous punishment of a sinner: ‘You have never felt the meaning of sin and you have never felt the meaning of the broken heart’.179 Hasidic masters were wont to speak of the spir- itual condition of the ‘broken heart’, denoting the awareness of distance created between oneself and God by wrongdoing. This feeling of remorse gained from a critical self-examination induces the yearning for reconciliation which gives an impetus to the cathartic renewal of one’s relationship to God. Hasidic masters ascribe an important function to the spiritual condition of the ‘broken heart’ in one’s spiritual effort. The biblical locus classicus for the metaphor of the broken heart is Psalm 34:19, ‘God is close to the brokenhearted’. This theme is recur- rent and resumed in Psalm 51:19, ‘True sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; God, You will not despise a contrite and crushed heart [lev nishbar]’. In Psalm 147:3 the psalmist reaffirms God as the One who ‘heals their [Israel’s] broken hearts, and binds up their wounds’. The metaphor of the ‘broken heart’ points for Buber, paradoxically, to the ideal of service of God out of a unified heart. Buber’s commentary on humility would remain incomplete without elucidating how this posture is linked to another seminal moral value in biblical monothe- ism, namely justice. Buber suggests that humility as empathy with the suffering and sin of others is redeemed by justice. He considers as the basis of justice the capacity ‘to feel the others like oneself and oneself in the others’.180 Buber’s ‘other’ is reminiscent of Hermann Cohen’s conception of the other as the fellow man (Mitmensch), constituting one’s existential and moral community.181 Somewhat similar to Cohen, who would later, in his philosophy of religion, conceptual- ize the suffering other as the condition of the moral self, Buber focuses on Mitleben as both emotional and cognitive empathy. Yet in contrast to Cohen, Hasidism did not develop an understanding of suffering as social injustice result- ing from unjust social conditions. The understanding of compassion as a reflex- ive reaction or as a passive moralistic posture is alien to Hasidic thought. ‘Mitleben alone is justice’,182 for its main impulse is love. Love and not pity gen- erates the ethical will: ‘not to help out of pity, that is, out of a sharp, quick pain which one wishes to expel, but out of love, that is, out of living with the other’.183

178 LdB, 37 [Friedman, 45. The legend of R. Zusya is omitted]. 179 LdB, 37. 180 LdB, 33. Cf. Cohen, Religion of reason, Ch. VIII, 113-143. 181 Cf. Cohen, Religion of reason, Ch. VIII, 141. 182 LdB, 37 [Friedman, 45]. 183 LdB, 43 [Friedman, 48-49]. 52 MARTINA URBAN

Mitleben, borne by the acknowledgement of the uniqueness of every being, over- comes the separating effect of ‘otherness’ (Anderheit): ‘Living with the other [Mitleben] as a form of knowing [Erkennen] is justice. Living with the other as a form of being is love’.184 These examples are meant to present Hasidism as a constructive critique of post-Enlightenment conceptions of the self.

***

In conclusion, Buber combines in his representation of Hasidic thought the most original elements of ecstatic experience with a poetic, associative, non- discursive, and non-theological mode of interpretation which revalorizes Scrip- ture through its ‘ecstatic’ root-metaphors as the source of spiritual renewal. Although Buber’s focus is on the religious experience, he affirms Judaism as a ‘text-centered culture’ (Moshe Halbertal) in the sense that Scripture – as the foundational text which processes metaphors, symbols, and images – provides the shared vocabulary of the Jews. Even though the reader’s degree of familiarity with those images and metaphors is undeniably an imponderable, Buber assumed that his readers would recognize the familiar within the unfamiliar, i.e., the ref- erences to Scripture encoded in his poetic commentary. By describing the ecstatic experience through some of its most well-known metaphorical expressions, he creatively engages the reader in the process of decoding figurative associations. This procedure combined with an evocation of the process of teaching, trans- mitting and interpreting aims at a hermeneutics of renewal. Buber utilizes the metaphoricity of Hasidic teachings to draw the modern reader into a new encounter with tradition, not as a static repository of past wisdom but as an ongoing hermeneutically renewed source of meaning. But as a performative act the read- ing of Buber’s text was not merely an intellectual exercise. Guided by Buber’s phe- nomenological glosses on Hasidic spirituality, the secular reader was to identify imaginatively and emotively with Hasidic ecstatic piety. Through his hermeneu- tics of renewal Buber laid the ground for the rediscovery of Judaism as a spiri- tually meaningful mode of being.

SUMMARY

This article considers the introductory essay to one of Martin Buber’s earliest works on Hasidism, Die Legende des Baal Schem (1908). Entitled ‘Das Leben der Chassidim’, the essay presents a phenomenological account of what Buber regards to be the four main devotional values of Hasidism promoting ecstatic experience. Through a philolog-

184 LdB, 38 [Friedman, 45]. HERMENEUTICS OF RENEWAL 53 ical and semantic analysis of both the original Hasidic sources and their representation by Buber, I argue that his interpretive portrayal of Hasidism as well as his aesthetics of representation were guided by a ‘hermeneutics of renewal’. Specifically, I analyze the hermeneutic implications of Buber’s use of biblical and mystical metaphors and imagery as conveyed through Hasidic teachings. Buber employs biblical tropes as metaphoric expressions to describe Judaism through an ever-unique spiritual experience that evades representation in the written word. Figures of speech do not serve Buber principally to convey ideas but to induce the Westernized Jewish reader, who is no longer part of the text-centered culture that had defined Judaism over centuries, to have an experiential encounter with a text. In this creative exercise the image to be recognized rather than the precise wording of the text serves the function to mediate Hasidic teachings attest- ing to a unique lived experience to the Jewish reader and lays the ground for the renewal of Judaism as a spiritually meaningful experience.

Martina Urban (1965, Berlin, Germany) is assistant professor at the Department of Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University. Address: Department of Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, Box 1585, Station B, Nashville TN 37235, USA. E-mail: [email protected]