MARGINALIA: LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

Overcoming the Body through the Body

Elliot R. Wolfson on Hasidism: A New History

Hasidism: A New History. David Biale, et al. Princeton University

Press, 2017.

Hasidism: A New History is the result of a massive undertaking that will undoubtedly stand for
many years as the most comprehensive survey of a phenomenon that fundamentally altered the
social and religious history of the Jews from the eighteenth century to the present. With such a
colossal enterprise, inevitably there will be lacunae and legitimate critical engagement will
evaluate the merits of what has commanded more attention and what has been attenuated or even
ignored. As scholars have previously noted, it is reasonable to proffer the following
generalization: the two salient vantagepoints from which Hasidism must be examined are the
socio-historical and the hermeneutical-phenomenological. On balance, it seems that the
ideational scaffolding of this volume tacitly accepts the dichotomization of these two poles, a
tendency that is not uncommon in Jewish studies. In my judgment, this is a fallacious binary.
Phenomenology need not be cast as metaphysical and anti-historical, as my own methodology
has recently been mischaracterized. This is not to deny that on occasion such a view has been
expressed. Thus, for example, Henry Corbin, the scholar of Islamic esoteric philosophy,
unabashedly confessed that the “concern for truth” required of him to explain that “history as
such” did not interest him. “Delineating what a spiritual greatness manifested in the past means
for us ‘in the present’ is doing something other than history.” Despite my great admiration for
Corbin and the ready acknowledgement that he has critically influenced my thinking, I would
contend that his dismissal of history as pertinent to phenomenology is imprudent. A more
compelling phenomenological orientation should be rooted in an historical enframing that
epistemologically problematizes the commonplace belief that we can be certain that the future
does not flow into the past through the present or that the past is not as much occasioned by the
future as the future is by the past. In contrast to the more conventional standpoint that views time
as a sequence of now-points and thus privileges the presence of the present, the temporal
presupposition buttressing the hermeneutical phenomenology that has informed my thinking
entails the prospect of a reversible timeline—what I have called the timeswerve of linear
circularity—such that the present may be considered the cause of the past as the past is
considered the cause of the present; the past persists in the present as the trace that is
reconfigured anew each moment through the agency of anamnesis. From that perspective,
memory is not simply the repetition and reliving of past events; it is directed forward and
therefore may be considered progressive as opposed to regressive. Building on the insights of
Walter Benjamin and Martin Heidegger, the scholarly reconstruction of history should be
construed as a futural remembering, or a remembering expectation, an act of recollecting that has
the capacity to redeem the past, not by describing how the past really was but by imputing to it
meaning that it never had except as the potential to become what it is not. The radical possibility
of time as future implies that the past itself is only past insofar as it is the reiteration of what is
yet to come, the recurrence of the similar that is entirely dissimilar.

Adopting this understanding of temporality, we would argue that the phenomenological approach
to Hasidism does not need to presume the existence of timeless archetypes; on the contrary,
phenomenology should be grounded noetically in the culturally specific and historically
contingent. To clarify the point, let me mention that in the recently published book on
Hasidism—the second volume of The Roots of Jewish Consciousness—the Jungian analyst Erich
Neumann opines on the absoluteness of the present moment and its relation to the ideal of an
actualized messianism:

When a human being is put to the test, it always concerns his specific situation. For this reason,
each person is always contained in the unconditionality and newness of the present moment. This
is a radical reversal of the doctrine of the helpful merits of the fathers. Not even one’s own
merits from yesterday are helpful, for the new situation demands an absolute, not a historical,
commitment. This antihistorical concept represents a revolution against the merits of the fathers,
against tradition, and against relying on the past for security. Taken together with what we have
called actualized messianism, it constitutes a basic teaching of Hasidism. Neither the past nor the
future has priority over the present, which is fulfilled by the secret, divine light. Actualization
places the individual at the center of destiny, for the world and also for God. All that matters is
this individual and his existence in the here and now. The Christian doctrine of redemption,
according to which the Messiah has already come, and the doctrine of the pre-Hasidic Judaism,
according to which he has yet to come, are both abolished here. Individual life actualizes
messianism, and the messianic stage of the individual actualizes the world to be fulfilled.

There is affinity between Neumann’s speculation and my own position on Hasidic messianism,
which similarly accentuates the significance of the present as the moment that is, paradoxically,
outside time but within time, indeed, within time as that which is outside time, the moment
wherein the eternal is temporalized and the temporal eternalized through a transformed state of
mindfulness. I concur with Neumann’s contention that from Hasidic texts we can elicit a
denunciation of viewing time as an amorphous continuum as opposed to an endless series of
now-points, each one a distinctive contraction of the infinite light, a reiteration of that which is
continually different because continually the same and continually the same because continually
different. Nonetheless, I would resist the characterization of this experience of time as
antihistorical. To be in the moment—the most concrete abstraction of the abstract concretization
of human temporality—is to be deeply enrooted in historical context. Pitting history against
phenomenology is a false polarity. What is required to assess the spiritual comportment of
Hasidism is a variant construal of historicity, one that is not beholden to a linear historicism,
which is predicated, in turn, on a chronoscopic conception of time made up of discrete points
such that the present at hand, as it were, is positioned between a present that is no longer and a
present that is not yet.

In my judgment, the study of Hasidism would benefit from a hermeneutic based on the geometric
confabulation of time that is circular in its linearity and linear in its circularity. There is ample
evidence that this is precisely the understanding of time affirmed by many Hasidic masters. One
might protest that the academic study of Hasidim should distance itself from the notion of time
embraced by the Hasidic masters. Up to a point I agree with this stipulation; I am not convinced,
however, that such a rigorous distinction is beneficial in the critical study of this phenomenon.
At the very least, the phenomenological explains the historical, not the other way around, in spite
of the overwhelming bias of the academy, including the volume under consideration. The
assumed criticism that this theorization of time lacks practical significance is not the final arbiter
of its truthfulness.

What I am calling the phenomenological corresponds to part 3 of Hasidism: A New History,

“Beliefs and Practices,” which consists of three chapters, ethos, rituals, and institutions. For the
purposes of this brief review, I want to focus on what has arguably been posited as a critical idea
that informed the piety promulgated in the name Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, worship
through corporeality (avodah be-gashmiyyut), discussed under the taxonomy of ethos. The latter
term—from the Greek word for character—is defined more specifically as “a range of values and
practices broader than theology. … Theology was mustered into the service of the world of
human beings. Put differently, the concept of ethos suggests that Hasidic practices are grounded
in a certain set of ethical and spiritual values that, in turn, reflect a theological background, and
that these elements influence each other.” The authors are quick to point out that since Hasidism
was never a monolithic movement, there is no single set of ideas or practices to which the
plethora of dynasties adhered. Moreover, from its inception the ethos of Hasidism is not only
inconsistent but may even be contradictory.

Turning specifically to avodah be-gashmiyyut, the authors follow the standard view that this
locution demarcates the celebration of the material world as a locus of divinity, an ostensibly
unique idea that distinguished Beshtian Hasidism from earlier forms of Jewish pietism. The
authors observe that the debate between Buber and Scholem revolved around this very idea.
Buber was of the opinion that the Hasidic ideal entailed revealing the spirit of God in the
material world and thus the demand is to worship through the corporeal. By contrast, Scholem
focused on the shedding of corporeality (hitpashsheṭut ha-gashmiyyut) as the means to achieve
a state of union and the annihilation of self (biṭṭul ha-yesh). It is rightly noted that one can find
in the sources support for both perspectives. Some texts proffer a more positive view of the
physical and thus the mandate is to hallow the body, whereas other texts proffer a more negative
view and thus the mandate is to restrain, if not to abrogate, the body. We are also told that
commensurate to the spread and institutionalization of Hasidism in the nineteenth century there
is a decline in the emphasis on the worship through corporeality. Running the risk of libertinism,
the idea became more elitist and was restricted to the religious leadership.

An alternate explanation of avodah be-gashmiyyut is warranted, one that pivots around an

understanding of corporeality that challenges the conjecture that there was an historical waning
of this ideal. The explanation I am proffering, moreover, can attenuate the tension between the
disquieting denial of the body, on the one hand, and the joyful embrace of the body, on the other
hand, a tension that is duly noted but left unresolved by the authors. In some respects, my
explanation is congruent with the position of Scholem, and thus I concur that, notwithstanding
the widespread conviction that the Besht altered the earlier kabbalistic conception of piety by
celebrating the mundane and rejecting a stringent abstention from the world of sensual pleasure,
the dicta reported in his name—and there is no reason to doubt their trustworthiness—indicate
that a kernel of the ascetic discipline persists. Indeed, the two most important disciples of the
Besht, Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye and Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech, taught that
contemplative ecstasy is consequent to the quietistic stripping away of materiality. In contrast to
Scholem, however, I maintain that transcending the corporal entails an alchemical transformation
into a more reified sense of embodiment, a process that is effectuated not by anomian forms of
meditation or magic but through compliance to ritual obligations—and this would include the
practice of unifications (yiḥudim)—mystically conceived as limbs and sinews of the divine body,
identified as the Tetragrammaton or the Torah. The transmutation, therefore, is a recalibration
rather than an obliteration of tangible bodiliness. Here it is worth recalling the use of the
expression “tantric approach” by Miles Krassen to describe the Besht’s idea of avodah be-
gashmiyyut adopted by the Maggid, that is, the viewing of activities involving corporeal pleasure
as an opportunity to release the pneumatic sparks entrapped in the shells of materiality. Even if
one is uncomfortable with the use of the term tantric, we can avow that, phenomenologically, the
Hasidic directive of discarding the material is itself an embellishment of the material in the same
fashion that, hermeneutically, every unveiling of the secret is another form of veiling.

According to the Maggid of Mezhirech, only the righteous, who constrict themselves in the act
of humility and are thereby divested of corporeality (mufshaṭim mi-gashmiyyut), are capable of
discerning the incarnational mystery of the Godhead constricting itself and dwelling in the world
by means of the Torah and the commandments. Just as the singularity of the infinite has to be
contracted in the guise of the innumerable particularities of the multiple worlds, so the human
being, in order to be unified with the divine, has to be divested of all corporeality and annihilated
completely from the existence of discriminate beings that are seemingly separate from the
indiscriminate godliness. One recalls, for instance, the discussion of Shneur Zalman of Liadi in
the nineteenth chapter of the first part of Tanya to the effect that the aspect of wisdom of the
divine soul of the Jew, which is a spark of the infinite light, must overcome its exile in the shell
of the animal soul—the mystical import of the traditional concept of the exile of the Shekhinah—
by withstanding the desires of this world. The anthropomorphic humanification of the divine
through the kenosis of ṣimṣum is thus homologous to the theomorphic divinization of the human
through the dissolution of self-renunciation. The divestiture, however, is concurrently an
investiture, a transfiguration as opposed to an eradication of the somatic.
This alternative notion of enfleshment holds the key to understanding the much discussed
Hasidic principle of worship through corporeality. What is intended by this tenet is not an
unqualified exaltation of the physical, let alone the potential for deliberately antinomian actions.
Nor am I convinced that the idea of corporeal worship is grounded in the dialectical relationship
between matter and form such that one passes through the material to reach the spiritual goal.
The explanatory model I am proposing is based rather on the transformation of the carnal body
into the linguistic body, the restoration of all things to their “first matter” (ḥomer ha-ri’shon),
identified more technically as the hylic matter of divine wisdom or the Torah whose mystical
essence is the divine name, YHWH, which contains all the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew
alphabet. One who is enlightened appreciates that every physical action, no matter how trivial,
can become a technique of serving God, for everything that one does—not simply everything
that one says—is through the agency of the letters, a point that necessarily follows from the
longstanding assumption that the letters are both the instruments of divine creativity and the
substance of all that is created. This is the import of Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye’s comment that
the verse “In all your ways know him” (Proverbs 3:6) imparts that through the ritual (miṣwah)
that is enacted somatically one that makes of the corporeal (gashmi) something spiritual (ruḥani).
According to the interpretation of this verse ascribed to the Beshṭ, an individual must “relegate
his mind to every corporeal thing [litten ha-da‘at be-khol davar gashmi] to elevate it and to bind
it, to unite the tent so that it will be one.” The theurgical dynamic of knowing God in all of one’s
ways in the world is predicated on the admittedly incomprehensible mystery of the metaphysical
being garbed in the physical. The releasing of the sparks of divinity through seemingly
pedestrian acts that involve the flesh is possible only because of the assumption regarding the
true nature of the corporeal—I do not pretend that the majority of Hasidim ever understood this
kabbalistic dogma but this does not mean that the masters, who promulgated the ideational
foundation for the movement, did not uphold this belief, much as today millions of people
benefit from digital technology without knowing a thing about computer science. The pietistic
ideal is based on perceiving the immanence of the divine in all things, but this perception, in
turn, rests on contemplating the spiritual luminosity clothed in the letters so that the base
physicality morphs into the semiotic body, the body whose limbs are the letters comprised in the
alef, the wisdom (ḥokhmah) or thought (maḥashavah) that is the root of all the alphabetic ciphers
and hence the ontic source of all being (alufo shel olam), the oneness of infinity (aḥdut ha-ein
sof). Based on an older orthographic decoding of the alef in kabbalistic sources as made up of a
yod on top, a waw in the middle, and a yod of the bottom, this letter can be demarcated as an
encoded reference to the Tetragrammaton—the numerical sum of yod, waw, and yod (10 + 6 +
10) is the same as YHWH (10 + 5 + 6 + 5). The alef is the name by which the nameless is
vocalized, the garment through which the nonapparent becomes apparent, the vestment in which
the infinite that transcends spatial locality is assigned the title “place” (maqom), the
materialization of the immaterial in the concatenation of worlds that are comprised in the
Hebrew letters.

Reiterating a fundamental doctrine of Jewish esotericism, which he reportedly heard from the
Besht, Jacob Joseph writes that “just as there are twenty-two letters in the speech of Torah and
prayer, so in all the material and corporeal entities of the world there are also the twenty-two
letters through which the world and everything that is in it was created. … The letters are garbed
in the matter of the entities of the world in several coverings, garments, and shells, and within the
letters there dwells the spirituality of the blessed holy One, and thus his glory, blessed be he,
‘fills the whole earth’ (Isaiah 6:3) and all that is in it, ‘there is no place devoid of him’ as it is
explained in the Tiqqunim.” The Hasidic innovation is to juxtapose the doctrine of radical divine
immanence—expressed by the paraphrase of Isaiah 6:3 and the oft-cited passage from section
seventy of Tiqqunei Zohar—with the archaic belief that the substance of the physical universe is
composed of the Hebrew letters. Insofar as the spirituality of the divine is enclothed in the letters,
it follows that nature, the icon of the invisible, may be envisioned as the book in which the
ineffable is inscribed. To probe the depth of this teaching, we must bear in mind the dual
function of the garment as that which concomitantly reveals and conceals, indeed as that which
reveals in the manner that it conceals and conceals in the manner that it reveals. We can speak of
the world manifesting the divine presence only if we apprehend that this manifestation is an
occlusion—precisely by hiding the light of infinity does finite nature expose it.

To summarize this brief discussion of a topic that demands a more elaborate analysis, the
historical import of the Hasidic doctrine of the worship through corporeality is related to the
phenomenological ideal of the transmogrification of the fleshly into the textual body. The
efficacy of liberating sparks by means of corporeal worship extends democratically to all who
fulfill the commandments, and not only to those with the capacity to elevate wayward thoughts,
but the esoteric wisdom of this process is discerned by the men of knowledge, those who have
divested themselves of the gross materiality and assumed the contours of the transfigured
corporeality, the body as letter, through the state of expanded mindfulness. This
transubstantiation—which is portrayed in the hierarchical language of the submission of matter
to form or as the act of contrition and self-abnegation—can be attained in the present as a
prolepsis of what will be realized unreservedly in the messianic future.

Elliot R. Wolfson is the Marsha and Jay Glazer Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent publications include The Duplicity of
Philosophy’s Shadow: Heidegger, Nazism and the Jewish Other(2018) and Heidegger and
Kabbalah: Hidden Gnosis and the Path of Poiesis(2019).