The relationship between the Jewish religion and modern nationalism was, since the 1880s, the subject of great interest and this shows no sign of abating. Central to this discussion are a number of questions: should Jewish nationalists conduct themselves according to the standards of religious values, as established in exile or according to new European ones? Do modern values contradict the religious ones, or is there a prospect for synthesis? What will be the relationship between the religious and the secular members of the Movement? Who will lead it and according to what cultural and religious criteria? Should the movement include in its agenda cultural and educational activity? If so, what sort of ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’ Jewish activities should it promote? Ironically, such questions are no less relevant in present-day Israel than they were during the lifetime of the Hibbat Zion. The wide-ranging changes that have affected Jews - wholesale emigration from Eastern Europe and the establishment of a new and dominant diaspora community in the United States, rapid secularization and a far-reaching economic transition, even the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel - none of these have either answered these questions or served to blunt their importance.

The Hibbat Zion Movement and the subsequent Zionist Movement relied on a tenuous balance, largely East European, between maskilim and the religious, the haredim. Both realized the impossibility of forcing its value on the other and were thus resigned to working together.

However, every now and then the disagreements intensified and an immediate solution was imperative. How was agricultural settlement to proceed during the biblically ordained Shemita year (the seventh fallow year)? What values and teaching methods should be introduced into the school curriculum in Palestine? Should the institutions of the Zionist Organization operate on the Sabbath? Solutions to these and similar problems were urgently required from the movement's leadership but were not always forthcoming. On the contrary, inside as well as outside the movement, some leaders, public figures, writers and. rabbis tried to utilize these issues to challenge Zionism's position on religion. Some set about doing this by invoking monolithic theories to prove that a new sort of agreement and regulations be introduced based on new, less vague, less elastic assumptions.

The mind of the Cabbalist at prayer confronts not the God of traditional religion, but the whole Sefirotic universe. As he progresses through the fixed prayers, the utterance of each and every word or phrase is expected to cause a particular zone on the Sefirotic map to flash into his contemplative consciousness. Moreover, this system of Kavvanoth, particularly in its Lurianic version, has a strong magical flavor arising from the assumption that human contemplative recollection of Sefirotic processes taking place in the Divine realm is capable of contributing to, and is indeed instrumental in, activating the very same Divine processes.

The Cabbalist's contemplative journey through the zones in the Sefirotic world is not left to the wanton choice of the contemplative traveller but requires extreme discipline and follows clearly charted routes. The strict progression of the Kavvanoth is the very opposite of religious anarchism. The mystic's contemplative thought is not allowed to float indiscriminately or in an irresponsible, arbitrary and capricious way, but is supposed to follow an exact chart directing every movement of the contemplative mind during prayer.

From the situation described a problem inevitably arises: The fixed texts of the traditional Jewish prayers reflect the religious world of Judaism in the first centuries C.E., the time of their formulation. They were left unchanged by the Cabbalists, along with all other Jews, in deference to the well-known conservative tendencies of jewish mystics. Nevertheless, while the Cabbalist uttered the prayers in their traditional wording, his contemplative mind would be at large in an entirely different religious landscape. He had to reinterpret all the elements of a religious conception he had left behind in terms of his Cabbalistic piety revolving round the Sefirotic system and its emanative or copulative intricacies. In other words: it is not the original concern of the petitionary prayer that was at the forefront of his contemplative interest, but the new religious fascination of Sefiroth; their emanations and re-emanations, the descent and ascent of the “upper worlds” or the holy copulation between the male and female aspects of the Sefirotic universe.

But the Cabbalist had to pay a high price for the retention of the traditional formulations of his prayers. It was the price of a certain divorce between the text of the prayer he was uttering and its contemplative meaning.

The following note aims at analyzing certain aspects of the life of “the circle of Naḥman of Kosov” with a view to establishing its historical position between the late Sabbatian and early Hasidic movements. A scrutiny of a short passage in Shivhei ha-Besht, the legendary biography of Israel Baalshem, about the circle enables us to make the following observations:

The circle is called Ḥavurah Kadisha, and its members Benei Ḥavurah Kadisha or Anshei ha-Ḥavurah. Naḥman of Kosov appears on the scene as a well-to-do tax farmer (maḥzik kefar). One may assume that this period of Naḥman's life followed in biographical sequel the one in which, according to the accusation of Rabbi Jacob Emden, he was “an illiterate and a follower of the Sabbatian sect who posed as an itinerant preacher of repentance and was received with great honours.” Whether the accusation was justified or was but another example of the sometimes indiscriminate heresy hunting in which Emden indulged his boundless energies cannot be decided upon owing to lack of independent evidence. But the suspicions of this ruthless enemy of all Sabbatians have often been proved surprisingly accurate, and historical research should therefore not ignore his hints.

One factual point in Emden's description of Naḥman one need not doubt, namely, that Naḥman followed the profession of those itinerant preachers who were wandering among the scattered Jewish communities of Eastern Europe in a social environment from which the later leadership of the heretical Sabbatian movement and also that of the subsequent early Hasidic movement were largely recruited. No wonder, there fore, that the figures of these itinerant Maggidim and Mokhiḥim loom predominant on the pages of Shivḥei ha-Besht. The beginnings of Naḥman of Kosov as an itinerant preacher of penitence fit perfectly well into the same social environment. Even though he left his call as preacher to become a tax farmer, some of his spiritual activities he did not relinquish as a wealthy man. A brief analysis of what is said about him in the Shivḥei might contribute some details to his religious portrait and might also throw some light on the character of the whole group.

Both historians and philosophers of religion have stated as an iron rule that mystical prayer is never petitionary. The naive prayer of the unsophisticated worshiper for help and deliverance appears to the mystic as a demonstration of vulgar egotism. Augustine's advice, nolite aliquid a Deo quaerere nisi Deum, expresses the genuine attitude of the mystic who despises petitionary prayer. Consistent mysticism refrains from addressing supplication to God, since this would be the expression of wish and desire, and the mystical ideal insists on the pursuit of desirelessness as an integral factor in the extermination of selfhood. The attitude of early Hasidism to petitionary prayer will now be examined in the light of this position.

If Hasidism did not wish to be divorced from Jewish tradition—as it patently did not—the statutory prayers of Jewish liturgy, which are all of nonmystical origin and character, could not be tampered with textually. But the communal prayers had to be reinterpreted in private contemplation in order to suit the mystic's stern spiritual requirements.

Israel Baalshem was not an extremist in this matter and his position of balanced compromise became the unchanging legacy of many a Hasidic master. His basic view was that unambiguously egotistic tendencies in prayer are to be avoided, and he made no differentiation between private and congregational prayer in this respect. Nevertheless, if it were possible to subsume the private necessity under a higher, more universal, and indeed Divine necessity and to see the private need sub specie Divinitatis, by tracing any need in oneself to its origin in a corresponding need in the Shekhinah, then prayer should concentrate on the Divine and not the personal aspect of this particular need.

With much reluctance, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye gives the following summary of Israel Baalshem's comments on a certain passage from the Zohar (vol. 3, f. 240a). The disciple is obviously hesitant to commit himself by a verbatim report of his teacher's words, possibly because of their strong leaning toward pantheism:

That the human soul must conduct itself in a mode of passive receptivity whilst God takes the active part is said to be one of the fundamental principles of mysticism. Indeed, it is claimed that this particular quality of consciousness is a permanent postulate of all mystical experience. One of the most prominent students of medieval mysticism wrote: “Mystiker wollen reines Passivum sein.”

This point, the mystic's craving for quietude and passivity, seems to be one of those rare instances where there is general agreement between the theologian of mysticism and the student of the history of religion. Just as speculative mysticism is nearly always associated with pantheistic leanings, so one is justified in considering practice and teaching as to the passivity of the soul to be another, hardly less characteristic mark of religious experience of the mystical type: the requirement of passiveness is as closely connected with mysticism at the practical level as is pantheism on the theoretical plane. Statements of passivity are made both in the works of formal theologians of mysticism and in the description of historians and phenomenologists.

One will find in the literature of the mystics ardent recommendations of complete passivity. All mystical writers use a common language in regard to the question of passiveness and appear, in this respect, to live in the same spiritual climate. Indeed, Miss Underhill echoed the great chorus of mystics, theologians, and historians of religion when she wrote (in her eloquent book Practical Mysticism) about passivity as follows:

This being so the basic texts of early Hasidism, and in particular the texts of the Great Maggid, will now be examined, in an endeavor to determine to what extent they conform to the pattern described above.

The claim is that passivity is conducive to ecstasy, and indeed instrumental in attaining it; and it is this that I shall attempt to trace in the literature of early Hasidism. If the mystical spirit is present in that literature, as I believe it to be in abundance, Hasidism will show affinities to all other mystical trends and the aspect of passivity will not be lacking.

The small book, Tract on Ecstasy, written by the Middle Rabbi, Dov Baer, son of Shneur Zalman, will certainly be of interest to students of religion in general and of mysticism in particular. Over eighty years ago, a Westerner, Aaron Marcus, who had arrived at Hasidism by unusual paths, attempted to translate this work into German, as he realized that it was worth a wider public than Hebrew readers and students of Hasidism alone. Marcus, who was then living in Cracow, began to translate the work into German and to publish it in German in his Krakauer Juedische Zeitung, 1898—99.

But only a few instalments of the translation were published, and the experiment, for some unknown reason, failed, perhaps due to the perverse nature of the translator, who was a highly interesting man, a sort of fantast who attempted many things beyond his capacity.

Now we have the first English translation of this small book, by Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs. He has also added a useful introduction summarizing the conceptual patterns of the work. It serves as an Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth of the cluttered sentences of the tract, for it is written in the style typical of Habad literature created by the Old Rabbi, the father of our author. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Ladi, the Old Rabbi, was the pupil of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mesritz, who was himself the pupil of Israel Baalshem Tov. R. Shneur Zalman was thus a third-generation Hasidic leader, and became the founder of a new school, called Habad, which flourished in Lithuania for many generations, and is today the strongest and most vital Hasidic school in the United States, where it was relocated during the war.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Ladi initiated a new Hebrew literary style, which his pupils and pupils’ pupils inherited. It is easy to recognize this style after reading only a few lines of any Ḥabadic text. It is marked by long sentences, extremely condensed in character, with the main and subordinate clauses often mixed up, and frequent anacoluthic constructions. As for the lexicographic elements, abstract nouns abound largely taken from medieval philosophical literature, translated from Arabic into Hebrew by the Tibbon family.

As far as I can see, little attention has been paid to the stylistic and lexicographic provenance of Rabbi Shneur Zalman's writings.

A problem much discussed in the field of the history of religion is whether the mystic must conflict with religious authority; the well-known thesis of Rufus Jones, that almost all mystics are anarchists, is in direct contradiction to the historical facts. Several years ago Gershom Scholem drew a balanced picture of the relationship between religious authority and mysticism. He demonstrated that the socioreligious possibilities of mystical attitudes could range from pronounced conservatism to extreme anarchism. From this standpoint, he attempted to define the position of Jewish mysticism on the general map of religious history. His researches confirmed that Jewish mystics, not unlike those of other religions, had a beneficial influence on conservative, traditional forces, and that the relationship in Judaism between recognized religious authorities and those who practiced mysticism was almost invariably serene.

My present exposition is concerned with the Ṣaddik Mordecai Joseph Leiner, the charismatic leader of a small Hasidic group in Izbica (Poland). He was a pupil of Simcha Bunam of Pzysha, and later of the well-known Kotzker Ṣaddik Menaḥem Mendel, that tragic figure on the fringes of Polish Hasidism, whom he openly opposed. Mordecai Joseph died in 1853 after acting for a mere thirteen years as leader of the small Hasidic group from which there came, admittedly generations later, certain developments—they could be called retrogressions—derived from his religious teachings.

Comparatively little is known about his life; his isolation within a confined personal circle may have been due more to his rebellion against his master than to his own radical lines of thought. Indeed, when his grandson, Gershon Chanoch Leiner, collected the sayings of Mordechai Joseph after the latter's death and published them in the form of a book entitled Mei ha-Shiloaḥ, the book had to be printed in far-off Vienna, where there was a press that also had facilities for printing Hebrew texts. It seems to me that the reason for this highly uncharacteristic action was that in Poland and Russia, where all Hasidic books had been published up to this point, there was no Jewish printer prepared to accept the work for publication. As was to be expected, the book was burned as heretical.

The most original and significant contribution of the Great Maggid in his Ṣaddikology is undoubtedly his stress on the magical aspect of the Ṣaddik's powers. This is the essential innovation of R. Dov Baer. These magical powers do not have the same meaning for him as for the “circle of Maggidim” contemporaries of the Baalshem. The latter's powers consisted of magical means of purifying the community, procedures that equip the preacher with new devices for saving his flock from spiritual peril by means of contemplative techniques for bringing them to repentance, and when need arises for forcing “remedies” upon them.

All these ideas of spiritual regeneration, i.e., redemption on a small scale, are far from the theories of the Maggid. His image of the figure of the Ṣaddik is not that of a leader who redeems or cleanses his followers in a spiritual sense. The Ṣaddik's magical powers, according to the Maggid, are related to the material world. The aim here is not the magical saving of souls, but a simpler, more primary magic, working in stark physical reality. This object is formulated in the dicta that sum up his Ṣaddikology, such as “the Ṣaddik rules through the fear of the Lord” or: “the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees—the Ṣaddik cancels the decree”: and last but by no means least, “the Ṣaddikim overthrow the Divine attribute of Judgment [Middath ha-Din] and replace it with the attribute of Mercy [Middath ha-Rakamim).“

What is the nature of these magical activities? Our object is to see whether it is possible to explain all the texts in nonmagical terms so as to show the Ṣaddik's intervention as merely an act of God or a prayer to God. If such an interpretation were possible, we could remove the Maggid's doctrine from its magical context. Such an exegesis is, however, impossible. The historian of religions is not the only one confronted by this problem for it evidently haunted the Maggid himself. There are passages in his writings that appear to apologize for his own theories and methods. The basic conflict of religion and magic has found explicit and implicit utterance in the Maggid's writings. How is it possible for the human to compel the Will of God? How can His Will be changed? Or, the same question in a more extreme form, how is it possible to annul His Will?

The theologian, be he Jewish or Christian, perhaps even the agnostic philosopher, will be strongly inclined to define the phenomenon of Judaism in the singular, so as to enter into conceptual abstractions; he may be professionally obliged to do so. But the historian will prefer using the plural and talk of the phenomena of Judaism, thus remaining within the domain of strictly descriptive scholarship.

In the last analysis, any attempt to define that elusive “essence of judaism” that Jews and Gentiles, philo-Semites and anti-Semites have tried long to establish is doomed to failure if it takes as its starting point anything other than the fullness of all available historical phenomena. The historian, as distinct from the theologian, has a powerful case against overhasty generalizations. He will claim not to know the full facts. The fullness of Judaism, he says, has not realized itself. His argument will be a double one: Against the Christian theologian he will argue that there occurred no noticeable end of judaism with the birth of Christianity. Jewry still remained a changing, developing entity whose totality had not been exhausted with the emergence of the daughter religion. And the historian will have to argue against the Jewish theologian that he (the historian) cannot easily assimilate into his empirical method the concept of a revelation as a supernatural act that embraced once and for all the totality of all correct Jewish views and practice, and from which every Jewish phenomenon will have to be derived in order to be justified. The historian will therefore find no sense in a definition of Judaism that arrogates that totality. He will instead insist on the obligation of the historian to assemble the facts without imposing on them any grandiose, monolithic scheme. His main concern will remain at the level of empirical phenomena—facts, views, happenings—which he will attempt to analyze in their ordinary operation of cause and effect. He will then readily confess his failure to discover a totality of Jewish phenomena, and will be glad to hand over the material he established to theologians and philosophers for free use by them. But he will be reluctant to attempt to do their job and define Judaism in toto.