Admiel Kosman
The core of the controversy that erupted between Gershom Scholem and his disciples and Martin Buber about Hasidism can, in my opinion, be positioned rather simply on the axis between externality and internality.[1]
Scholem and his disciples saw—more or less—the God of the Hasidim as external, and they understood every expression in hasidic writings that includes reference to the service of God as submission to a God “residing” outside the human world (even though sparks of His holiness are scattered within this world), Who demands that humans bow before Him. The Scholem school sees this service as the central concern of the Hasid—who must henceforth view all worldly events as distracting and leading him away from this concentration on divine service.
Meanwhile, it was clear to Buber that the Ba’al Shem Tov refreshed the frozen Judaism of his time through deep processes of internalization,[2] based on the understanding that God is revealed to humans within their relationships with the human beings around them and with natural creatures, when human hearts are open to them in empathetic dialogue; only then does God dwell between them. Buber believed that at the foundation of the hasidic religious view lies the understanding that egocentrism is the central barrier to God’s revelation to humans in the present moment.[3]
I believe that the following example I have collected from hasidic literature, which includes a passage formulating a hasidic interpretive tradition on the well-known commandment (Leviticus 19:18) of loving one’s fellow, can demonstrate how right Buber was in his religious intuition regarding hasidic literature—and not only regarding hasidic stories, but also concerning hasidic teachings.[4]
This example will present a conception of egocentrism, narcissism, and selfishness as the central obstacles to approaching God, though it is expressed to us (as usual in hasidic literature) only by a short hint. However, deciphering this difficult passage will teach us that the main obstacle in the study of Hasidism is the barrier of a language foreign to us.
The hasidic mode of expression is difficult to understand, for, on the one hand, it appears shrouded in mystery, but, on the other hand, it sometimes appears to modern, dismissive eyes, as too simple, even “native” or “primitive.” Nevertheless, reading the passage I have chosen here will prove that we are dealing with extraordinarily deep insights, which Hasidism presents seemingly in passing, without bothering to explain them to the unskilled reader. For this purpose, I will offer explanations that “translate” what is said in this passage into our modern language; these will be integrated within square brackets:
“Ve-ahavta le-rei’akha kamokha” [“And you shall love your fellow as yourself”] (Leviticus 19:18) — the holy Rabbi, our master and teacher, R. Menahem Mendel of blessed memory [R. Mordekhai Menahem Mendel Kalish (1819-1868) was the son of the first Rebbe of Warka,[5] R. Israel Yitzhak Kalish. R. Menahem Mendel was also known by the nickname “the Silent One,” as he rarely spoke or gave Torah teachings except in extreme brevity.] asked in these words: “[ve-ahavta le-rei’akha] ‘Kamokha’ with a question mark?” and he answered: “‘Kamokha’ with a period” [end of quote from the Rebbe of Warka]. The question and the answer were difficult to understand [no one understood what the Rebbe of Warka meant by this, so the following interpretation of his brief words was proposed, as follows]:
The holy Rabbi, our master and teacher, R. Dov Berish of Biala of blessed memory [R. Dov Berish Landa of Biala, Poland (1820-1876), who led the Warka hasidic dynasty after the passing of R. Menahem Mendel of Warka] explained it thus: “It is difficult [to understand what is written in the Scripture, where the commandment states “And you shall love your fellow”] ‘Kamokha’ [‘as yourself’]. [What is the meaning of the word ‘as yourself’ in Scripture here], for [indeed] a person does not love himself — so how is ‘as yourself’ relevant? [Indeed, a person generally does not love himself at all, and, as will be explained later, a person often even ‘hates’ himself, so how can someone who hates himself transfer self-love to love of his fellow—when self-love does not exist at all?!]” He answered, [and therefore the Rebbe of Warka answered this question about what is stated in Scripture, according to Rabbi Biala’s explanation, as follows:] “‘As yourself’ — just as a person hates himself with the utmost hatred [the self hates the ego that controls him and pretends to be his ‘I’] — so too should he love his fellow with the utmost love. And the words of the wise are gracious” [Ecclesiastes 10:12].[6]
Let me now propose an explanation for this difficult hasidic passage – adapted to our contemporary mode of expression:
When a person is immersed in self-centeredness, we cannot truly say that he loves himself, since he is enslaved to the needs of his ego. We can compare this to a person addicted to hard drugs; he claims to enjoy the drugs when they are supplied to him, but, deep in his heart, in a concealed place, he knows that he is miserable, since his enslavement to the drugs does not allow him freedom. This dependence on something that destroys his freedom causes him to feel guilt, even if it is repressed (and actually even more so if it is repressed) and consequently also to ‘hate’ himself, with the accompanying despair also not allowing him to gather the psychological energy that could extract him from the deep pit in which he finds himself.
In other words, a person enslaved to his egocentricity cannot truly love himself; and it is not for nothing that Hebrew uses the word “atzmi” (self). The “atzmi” (“atzmi” is related to atzma’aut, meaning freedom) is what expresses the selfhood of the free person—and this is now enslaved to the ego. We can therefore determine that a human being loves himself only when he is free from the egocentricity that misleads him in its sophisticated ways.
And in a Buberian spirit—in accordance with the world of the modern reader—we can also say that Western man has sharpened even more than his predecessors in history the practical perspective that turns everything he encounters — other human beings and natural creatures around him — into objects-for-use (“It” in the terminology of Buber), to such an extent that ultimately he has also turned himself into an object.
This last point, that the transformation of the self into an object of the ego causes a person to ultimately hate himself, was well emphasized in the teachings of psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (who, of course, the Rebbe of Warka did not know). Thus, writes Fromm, for example:
Selfishness and self-love, far from being identical, are actually opposites. The selfish person does not love himself too much but too little; in fact he hates himself. This lack of fondness and care for himself, which is only one expression of his lack of productiveness, leaves him empty and frustrated. He is necessarily unhappy and anxiously concerned to snatch from life the satisfactions which he blocks himself from attaining. He seems to care too much for himself, but actually he only makes an unsuccessful attempt to cover up and compensate for his failure to care for his real self. Freud holds that the selfish person is narcissistic, as if he had withdrawn his love from others and turned it toward his own person. It is true that selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.[7]
Here we have a modern formulation of that hasidic insight of the Rebbe of Warka, although the language in which Erich Fromm expresses himself is much more understandable to us than the extremely concise words of the hasidic Rebbe.
Later, after I had already written the previous observation,[8] I found that Buber himself expressed this unusual understanding (and I assume that he did not know the original words of the Rebbe of Warka – but rather understood it on his own).
As if in passing, while explaining the commandment to love your fellow as yourself, Buber says: “The neighbour [fellow] is to be loved ‘as one like myself’” – and then adds:
Not “as I love myself”; in the last reality one does not love oneself, but one should rather learn to love oneself through love of one’s neighbour.[9]
*
If indeed we have been successful, and the previous point presented to us is clear, we can now discuss the deep thought kernel concealed in the words of the Rebbe of Warka. The question troubling him is: what is the essential meaning of the biblical command “And you shall love your fellow as yourself?” According to the interpretation proposed here by the Rebbe of Biala, the Rebbe of Warka believed that the Torah is aware of the obstacle pointed out by Erich Fromm, and that this obstacle is precisely the reason for the biblical instruction to love the other. However, now, in light of this understanding, the Torah’s command to love the other “as yourself” will be interpreted in a completely different way than it is usually interpreted.
This love for the other “as yourself” will now mean: in light of the fact that a person in his current state generally does not love himself at all, then, precisely from the clear knowledge that a person subject to the enslavement of the ego cannot love the other at all (since as mentioned, he immediately turns him into an object-for-use upon encountering him), the Torah proposes to perform actions. This is therefore a kind of behaviorism, but spiritual in its direction (that is now sometimes called transpersonal), since it aims to correct the egocentric distortion.
“As yourself” will therefore be interpreted according to the Rebbe of Warka as an instruction to behave toward the other in a manner opposite to how a person would usually behave under the enslavement of the ego.
Here one finds a very profound claim: my correction cannot be expressed through direct reference to my ego, since a person cannot pull himself out of the pit (into which he has sunk) by pulling on his own hair. No one can free himself from his ego through direct action aimed at removing the activity of the ego that controls him. And why? Because the operator of the action is, at the end of the day, the ego itself (arising from the ego’s desire to achieve a new accomplishment, i.e., to be righteous!). In other words: the ego cannot free the self from the control of the ego!
Therefore, the Torah proposes (following to its depth the understanding of the Rebbe of Warka) the way of Jewish commandments of practical action as a way of life: hospitality, opening the door to the other.[10] In this action, which always starts from external action—but must be accompanied by internal awareness—is the intention that I am now acting contrary to my spontaneous egocentric desire at the moment. That means: when ‘the guest is knocking on my door’ (as a metaphor for any demand of the mitzvah), if I surrender to the ego, my seemingly-true desire at the moment is one and only (if I am really honest with myself): to lock the door and expel the guest from my home.
Only in this action of ‘hospitality’ against my ego can I find the way to release myself from my ego—with God’s grace, of course, as we must never forget. This is the secret of the action of the commandments as a whole, of the ‘walking with God’ in the daily life moments when I meet the other.
The Hasidim conclude this explanation with the words “Divrei fi-hakham hein” [“The words of the wise are gracious”] (Ecclesiastes 10:12), for these matters are very profound.[11]
[1] For readers interested in a broader clarification of this controversy, see my article “Obedience to the Law versus Spontaneous Charismatic Action: Halakhah, Magic and Dialogue,” (Hebrew), Bar-Ilan Law Studies 18, 1-2, (2002): 219-247, at 220-221. This fundamental debate was described by Idel as “the most interesting intellectual debate in twentieth-century Jewish studies.” See Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (SUNY Press, 1995), 3.
[2] See Roee Horen, The Ba’al Shem Tov and the Lurianic Kabbalah (Hebrew) Bar Ilan University Press, 2020), esp. 245. According to Horen, following Erich Neumann, the difference between the “old morality” and the “new morality” (these are Neumann’s own terms) is that the former identifies negative qualities in the soul and projects them onto the other as a kind of “scapegoat,” while those inclined to the new morality choose not to project what exists within them onto others, since they are endowed with the ability to introspect and be fully aware of the unconscious psychological process underlying the old morality. That is why the new moralists are able to contain those ‘rebellious’ forces in them. According to Horen, the first to demand such introspection in Jewish sources was the Ba’al Shem Tov. Furthermore, according to Horen, in this point—which is considered a modern concept—the essence of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s revolution is expressed.
[3] Buber does not say this explicitly, to the best of my knowledge, anywhere, but, in his own way, he formulates it in many places in his writings. I made this clear in my article “Buber vs. Weber: Future Sociological Research According to Buber’s Proposal – The I-Thou Relationship in Scholarly Research,” in Michael Welker, John Witte, Stephen Pickard (Eds.), The Impact of Religion: On Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values in Late Modern Pluralistic Societies (Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2021), 103-122, at 106-116.
[4] I do not mean to say that there are no hasidic texts that support Scholem’s position. Tsippi Kauffman demonstrates at length that one can find both Buberian and Scholemian expressions within early hasidic literature. See Tsippi Kauffman, In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God & Avoda Be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism (Hebrew) (Bar Ilan University Press, 2007). Kauffman thus continues the work of other scholars who have already shown that the claims of Scholem and his disciples against Buber do not present a complete picture of the hasidic faith. My intention, by relying on these scholars who defended Buber’s position, is to present a particularly prominent text in which this position is emphasized with great force. (I thank Chesky Kopel for reminding me of the important book of Tsippi Kauffman of blessed memory).
[5] A town in East-Central Poland located on the left bank of the Pilica river.
[6] Moshe Menahem Walden, Ohel Yitzhak (Piotrkow 1914), 9, letter 13. (This book actually contains three books. The page number indicated here refers to the page number in the third book).
[7] Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (Harper Colophon Books, 1956), 60-61.
[8] A limited core of the idea expressed in this article was previously printed in Hebrew in the literary supplement of Makor Rishon (January 22, 2023). In this English version, expansions and later understandings were added. I thank Alla Mitelman for her help in translating this piece into English.
[9] Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor-Smith (Routledge, 2002), 60.
[10] The Jewish intuition of hospitality stood at the center of the phenomenological teaching of Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. As Hanoch Ben-Pazi explains in Emmanuel Levinas – Educational Contract: Alliance, Hope, and Responsibility (Hebrew) (Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2016) 77:
Hospitality is an ethical situation in which the host allows the other to come into his world and accepts responsibility for him. The moral demand is to open up to the Other – as Other. Levinas says that the guest is the one who brings the infinite into the home of the self – the host […] The dimension of hospitality takes on the meaning of an ethical imperative for Levinas, beyond the good deed of welcoming a stranger and helping him on his way. To welcome a guest means to break through the boundaries of the ego and demand from the self openness towards someone who is different from him; it is the duty of respect towards those who sometimes seem to owe you respect, towards those who do not come to be part of your world, your perspective, your totality. For Levinas, the entry of the other as a guest introduces into the finite boundaries of the self the dimensions that break finitude, namely the infinite. In this sense, the entry of the other in hospitality brings the divine dimension into the human, the infinite into the finite.
[11] I have already suggested in my words above that Levinas’s teaching, vast as an ocean, can be perceived as nothing more than an explanation and expansion of this brief Warka vort (teaching).
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