By Yehuda Ringler

Every few years, a new modality comes along. It has its proponents and its detractors. The proponents say it’s needed. The detractors say we have something better — the Rebbe, Chassidus, a mashpia, a sefer — and we don’t need to look elsewhere.

And the wheel spins, and the pundits write, and the world is in turmoil.

Until it isn’t.

Then everything is quiet for a while, and the cycle repeats. We need it. We have Chassidus. Chassidus isn’t enough for everyone. It should be. It quickly gets tiresome.

One thing that strikes me as strange in these discussions are the assertions about what Chassidus can or can’t or should be able to do for a person.

Chassidus doesn’t get its value from what it does for a person.

The Alter Rebbe didn’t write Tanya as a self-help book, for mental wellness, or anything else. He writes about what it means to be a Jew, how to live like a Jew and die (ch”v) like a Jew, how to love Hashem and how to fear Him, how to stop doing aveiros, how to be more careful with mitzvos, how to love every Jew. If those aren’t priorities for someone, or if someone is learning for the wrong reasons — we are taught that hamaor shebah machaziro lemutav. But in the meantime, such a person has missed the point.

Chassidus doesn’t have to heal trauma or stress or whatever else to be valuable.

In the title page to Shaar HaYichud, the Mitteler Rebbe quotes Dovid HaMelech: “Kol levavos doresh Hashem” — all the hearts seek G-d. And if you search, you will find. That is the gift of Chassidus.

In Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, the Alter Rebbe explains at length how G-d is everything, tracing creation from G-d to His speech and to us. G-d is the only true existence, and our awareness of ourselves is itself a revelation of His power to conceal, which is one with Him. And as he writes in Tanya, this is something every Jew believes, something he inherits from the Avos.

In Ranat, the Rebbe Rashab takes you on a journey from the other direction. He explains at length how it is an obvious thing that the physical things we see are insignificant, and their true value is the Divine life force which vitalizes them.

A person naturally considers himself — his feelings, his experiences, his struggles — to be a massive deal. And of course these things are important, and people should be healthy. But when well-meaning people try to advertise Chassidus as an answer to people’s problems, they’re underselling it. The strength of Chassidus is to show us a world where we are not at the center. “The whole world was created for me”? The Alter Rebbe explains that as a call to action — that every person has to refine his portion in the world.

Chassidus teaches a person to have true bittul to Hashem. Chassidus is a Getliche Oyftu. We should all be sweating over a hemshech, a sefer, a maamar — not to find inner peace, or whatever the latest critically important thing is, but because we’re thirsty. “הוי כל צמא לכו למים” — all who thirst, go to water. It is a normal and healthy thing for a person to thirst and yearn for G-d. The Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya that a tzaddik doesn’t serve G-d just to quench his thirst; rather, like a son who serves his father, he treasures his father more than his own life. But if you’re not there yet, that’s okay.

As soon as someone demeans Chassidus to the point where it’s in a contest or contrast with whatever movement du jour — he already lost.

It’s like asking: if Chassidus has so much to offer — and it does — why do people play tennis?

Why are we taking the precious stone of the King’s crown and putting it in the ring with mundane things? G-d isn’t good enough — He also has to make me calm and deal with my childhood trauma to be worth my time?

Toil in Chassidus and avodah. G-d is worth our time.