ג׳ תשרי ה׳תשפ״ז | September 14, 2026
Chassidus Was Never Meant to Leave the Person Behind
“The nimshal of all of Chassidus was never the sefiros. The Rebbe said this in the first maamar he ever delivered and repeated it for forty years. The purpose of everything, of the entire Seder Hishtalshelus, is a dirah for Hashem in the lowest world, the world of which there is none lower.”
A response to “Chassidus Misapplied: The Dangerous Reinvention of Chassidus“
By Golan Ben-Oni
Rabbi Kesselman has written a serious essay, and it deserves a serious answer. He is worried about something real. He is also, I believe, wrong about the most important thing, and wrong in a way that will cost us people we cannot afford to lose. Let me try to give him the credit he has earned before I explain where the argument fails.
The reaction to the article in the days since it appeared, is itself a data point: many Chassidim read it and heard that their door into Chassidus had been declared illegitimate. Let me try to give the author the credit he has earned before I explain where the argument fails.
The author is right that Chassidus is yedias Elokus. It is Divrei Elokim Chaim, and its subject is Hashem, not us. He is right that a mashal exists for the sake of its nimshal, and that a teacher who leaves his students holding the analogy has failed them. He is right that psychology cannot be permitted to redefine Torah, that “bittul” cannot be emptied and refilled with whatever a culture currently finds comfortable, and that a spirituality whose center of gravity is the self is the inverse of what the Rebbeim taught. Anyone who has sat through a shiur in which “kabbalas ol” turned out to mean self-acceptance knows exactly what he is describing, and he is right to be alarmed by it.
He is also right that the old maskilim and ovdim argued inside a shared vocabulary, and that something changes when the vocabulary itself is contested. None of that should be conceded grudgingly. It is true.
The problem is the map he draws around these truths.
Strip the essay to its core and it says: there’s Avodas Hashem, which is the real thing, and there’s the human being, whose emotional health is “supportive infrastructure” around the real thing. Wellbeing concerns the functioning of the person; avodah concerns what the person does with himself for Hashem. Fix the person over there, with the professionals, and then bring the repaired person back here to serve.
Chassidus was given to erase precisely that border.
Tanya does not open with Seder Hishtalshelus. It does not open with Atik and Arich or with the three levels of Or Ein Sof before the tzimtzum. It opens with a human being: the tzaddik, the rasha, and above all the beinoni, the person whose inner life is a battlefield and who will never in this lifetime stop fighting. For twelve chapters the Alter Rebbe maps the architecture of a Jew’s mind before he asks that Jew to contemplate anything above. When the author prescribes a seder in which we first understand the concept “l’maalah” and only later, as a concession, notice that it speaks to a person’s struggle, he is prescribing the reverse of the seder the Alter Rebbe himself chose for the sefer that founded our derech.
In the second chapter, the Alter Rebbe tells us that the neshamah is chelek Elokah mima’al mamash. Not a metaphor for the Divine. A portion of it, literally. The human being can no longer be filed under “mashal.” The nefesh is not an analogy that helps us understand Elokus; it is the place in this world where Elokus is actually found. מבשרי אחזה אלוקה is not just a teaching tool; it’s a statement about where to look.
The author writes that what was once the nimshal has become the mashal. One of the commenters gave the correct answer, and I will sharpen it:
The nimshal of all of Chassidus was never the sefiros. The Rebbe said this in the first maamar he ever delivered and repeated it for forty years. The purpose of everything, of the entire Seder Hishtalshelus, is a dirah for Hashem in the lowest world, the world of which there is none lower. The olamos are the roadmap. The destination is a human being in a body, in a marriage, in a business, in a mood, becoming a place where Hashem lives. If you insist on the mashal and nimshal language, then Atik and Arich are the mashal, and the frightened, resentful, grieving Jew learning about them is the nimshal. That’s not New Age; that’s Basi L’Gani.
The author’s own text contains the refutation of its central distinction, two paragraphs apart.
In the first paragraph he tells us what the haskalah of Chassidus must produce: ahavah v’yirah, bittul, kabbalas ol, simchah, ahavas Yisrael, middos tovos, avodas hatefillah. In the very next paragraph he tells us that “never in the history of Chassidus” did ועבדהו בלב שלם mean translating Chassidus into “psychology, self-help, or human development and growth.”
Now translate the first list into plain English. Love. Reverence. Humility. Discipline and commitment. Joy. Kindness toward other people. Good character. Prayer that comes from somewhere real. Describe a man who has more of each of these than he had last year, and you have described a human being who has developed and grown. There is no other honest way to say it. The author affirms in one paragraph exactly what he forbids in the next, and the only thing that changed between them was the alphabet.
The same is true of his list of foreign ideals. Self-worth is chelek Elokah mima’al spoken by someone who did not grow up in Crown Heights. Presence is the Alter Rebbe’s demand in Perek 41 that a person stand before Hashem now, in this moment, and not in the abstract. Inner alignment, if it means anything, means that the mind, the heart, and the hands point in one direction, which is the entire project of Chabad: moach shalit al halev, daas giving birth to middos, middos issuing in action.
Inner peace is what the Alter Rebbe calls a lev sameach in Perek 26 and considers a precondition for the war. These are not rival values smuggled in. They are, in many cases, serviceable translations, and a movement that has spent seventy years translating for people who do not speak our language cannot now declare that translation is corruption.
And notice what the author does with the posuk itself. וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך says: know it, and bring it back to your heart. The author reads it and concludes that the purpose is “not to bring Chassidus down into the heart.” But the posuk says lev. The Gemara defines avodah itself as avodah shebalev, the service of the heart. The entire structure of Chabad Chassidus, the reason it is called Chabad, is that chochmah, binah, and daas are meant to descend into the heart and become ahavah and yirah there, and that a hisbonenus which does not produce an emotion has not finished. The lev is not a detour on the way to Hashem. It is where the meeting happens.
The author defines Chassidus by its subject matter: the study of Hashem, Seder Hishtalshelus, Achdus Hashem. The Rebbe, in Kuntres Inyana Shel Toras HaChassidus, declined to define it that way. He defined it by what it is, not by what it talks about: the yechidah of Torah, an essence that is not one department alongside others but the pnimiyus that penetrates all of them and gives each of them life. The Rebbe’s demonstration in that kuntres is not a passage about Keser. It’s Modeh Ani, the first sentence a Jew says with his face still in the pillow, explained on every level of pardes and then illuminated by Chassidus. He chose the most human moment of the day on purpose.
If Chassidus is what the Rebbe said it is, then the question “is this teaching about Elokus or about the person?” is malformed. Chassidus is the thing that reveals that there was never a border between them. A shiur that makes a man capable of hearing his wife, and does so by showing him that his defensiveness is yeshus and his yeshus is the concealment of Elokus in his own nefesh, has not used a pen as a bookmark. It has done exactly what the yechidah of Torah is for.
There is a deeper problem with the author’s frame, and it is the one that should trouble him most.
His argument depends on the claim that emotional and psychological need is an exception. Some individuals, wounded by trauma, may require a different formulation; the klal does not. But that is not how the Rebbeim explained why Chassidus was revealed in the first place. Every Chossid learns the founding meshalim.
The prince who fell deathly ill, for whom the only cure was to grind the most precious jewel from the king’s own crown and pour it into his mouth, in the hope that a drop would enter. The Jew who has fainted, whose soul has slipped away from his body, and who is revived not by medicine but by whispering his own name into his ear, because the name is the pnimiyus haTorah and the faint is the condition of Klal Yisrael in the darkness of golus.
These are not stories about individuals with special needs. They are the Rebbeim’s diagnosis of all of us. Chassidus was revealed because the Jewish people were sick, because the connection between the neshamah and the body it lives in had gone slack, because a people can be perfectly frum and still be in histalfus. Gilui haChassidus is medicine for a choli of the klal, whatever one wants to call its root: the dissonance introduced at the eitz hadaas, the long anesthesia of golus, or the particular numbness of a generation that has everything and feels nothing.
So the author has the seder backwards. He treats the need as the exception and the pure study as the rule. The Rebbeim treated the need as the reason. Chassidus does not tolerate the wounded Jew as a special case. It was given for him, and the “him” is everyone. Once that is understood, the author’s worry about sampling error dissolves. The teachers in the field did not overgeneralize from the wounded. The Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe already made the generalization for them.
The author’s focal point is Tanya Perek 26. He notes, correctly, that the Alter Rebbe introduces the discussion of sadness because sadness paralyzes the war against the yetzer hara. He concludes that the Alter Rebbe is “interested in avodas Hashem. Period!” and that psychological healing is a side effect.
Read the next five chapters. In Perek 27, the Alter Rebbe tells the person tormented by unwanted thoughts that his distress comes from a mistaken belief about what he is supposed to be, and he calls that belief foolishness. In Perek 28, he gives a technique for handling intrusive thoughts during davening. In Perek 29, he diagnoses timtum halev and identifies its root in the arrogance of the animal soul, and he prescribes a controlled, deliberate confrontation with one’s own yetzer. In Perek 31, he takes the residue of sadness and converts it into joy by redirecting a person’s attention from the failures of his body to the reality of his soul.
This is a sustained, technical, sequenced treatment of the inner life, with diagnosis, etiology, and intervention. The Alter Rebbe is not a psychologist in the modern professional sense, and no one serious claims he is. But the claim that the psychological content of Tanya is incidental to its avodah does not survive reading Tanya. The psychological content is the avodah. It is how a beinoni serves Hashem: by learning the mechanics of his own heart well enough to redirect it.
The pen and the bookmark, then, is the wrong analogy. A pen used to hold a page is unchanged by the use, and the book is unchanged by the pen. A Jew who works through his anxiety with Perek 26 and emerges able to daven with zerizus is not a pen doing an odd job. He is a kli. And the Alter Rebbe told us in that same chapter that making him a kli was the entire point.
The author frames the current moment as an unprecedented importation of foreign language into Chassidus. The history does not support the framing.
The Baal Shem Tov’s revolution was to take the Kabbalah of the Arizal, which had been the property of a few, and make it the inner life of the simplest Jew. The Alter Rebbe was denounced to the Czar’s government partly on the charge that he had founded a new sect with new practices and new language, and the Tanya’s translation of sefiros into the faculties of the nefesh was exactly what his opponents found dangerous. The Mitteler Rebbe wrote Kuntres HaHispaalus, an entire treatise on the phenomenology of emotion in davening, distinguishing authentic excitement from self-generated imitation. The Rebbe Rashab wrote Kuntres HaAvodah and Kuntres Umaayan, works about ta’avah, middos, and the structure of desire. The Frierdiker Rebbe taught, and it is quoted in Hayom Yom, that a life of Torah, mitzvos, and Chassidus is the happiest life a person can live, in the most literal sense.
And the Rebbe. The Rebbe used radio, electricity, satellites, and the discoveries of physics as meshalim for Elokus, in a language no earlier Rebbe had used. He answered letters about depression, anxiety, obsessive thinking, and marital collapse, and his answers were Chassidus, applied to exactly those things, in exactly the terms the person had used. He built a movement on the principle that the shliach must speak the language of the place he is sent to, and he sent us to a generation whose native language is, for better and for worse, the language of the inner life.
Every one of these moves looked to someone at the time like new language superimposed on Chassidus. Every one of them turned out to be Chassidus doing what Chassidus does.
I want to dwell on one sentence, because I think it reveals more than the author intended. He lists the “new values and ideals” being imposed on Chassidus: self-worth, self-esteem, presence, mindfulness, trauma, abuse, inner peace.
Trauma is not a value. Abuse is not an ideal. They are things that happened to people. A child who was hurt by an adult with authority over him did not adopt a foreign ideology when he grew up unable to hear the word “submission” without his body going cold. He was injured. To list his injury alongside “holistic wellbeing” as an imported fashion is not a philosophical error. It is a failure of ahavas Yisrael of the kind Perek 32 was written to correct, and I say that with respect for an author who clearly does not intend it.
Chassidus has always had a robust vocabulary for what the culture calls self-worth. Chelek Elokah mima’al. Yisrael af al pi shechata Yisrael hu. The Rebbe’s insistence, against every evidence a person could bring against himself, that there is Someone who loves him. The Alter Rebbe’s teaching in Perek 31 that a Jew’s sadness should be reserved for his body and never touch the joy of his soul. We do not need to borrow self-esteem from the therapists. We need to stop pretending we never had it, and stop treating people who reach for it as though they had wandered off the derech.
In the section titled “How We Got Here,” the author grants that for a person whose sense of self has been broken, traditional formulations of bittul and kabbalas ol may be unproductive and even harmful, and that for such a person it may be right to teach bittul in terms that first restore dignity and stability. He calls this an exception.
Once that is granted, the entire argument becomes empirical rather than principled. The question is no longer whether Chassidus may be taught through the door of the person’s actual condition. The author has agreed that it may. The question is how many people are standing at that door. He asserts, without evidence, that it is a small number and that “thousands” of Yidden are perfectly able to learn Chassidus as their grandparents did.
Perhaps. But he then accuses the teachers in the field of a sampling error: they see the wounded, so they think everyone is wounded. That knife has two edges. A rosh yeshiva sees the bochurim who stayed. He does not see the ones who left, and he does not hear the ones who sit in his shiur and tell no one what they carry. The author is entitled to his estimate. He is not entitled to present it as the default that the other side must overcome.
And one of his commenters put the consequence plainly: when a young Jew reads that his pain sits outside Avodas Hashem, the conclusion he draws is not “I must learn Chassidus more purely.” It is “the rabbis do not value healing, so I will find my answers elsewhere.”
The author’s implicit criterion is vocabulary: if the words are the Rebbeim’s, it is Chassidus; if the words are the culture’s, it is something else. I propose a criterion he himself uses elsewhere in the essay and then abandons. The test is vector, not vocabulary. Does the teaching move a person toward Hashem, toward Torah and mitzvos, toward other Jews, and toward a self that is less clenched and more available for all three? Or does it terminate in the self and call that arrival?
By that test, a “bittul” that means “I accept myself as I am and demand nothing further” fails, and the author is right to say so. A “dirah b’tachtonim” that means indulgence fails. A Geulah defined as a regulated nervous system fails. These are real distortions and they should be named as such.
But the same test must be applied in the other direction. Fidelity to vocabulary is not fidelity to Chassidus. Chazal did not call tefillah avodah shebapeh; they called it avodah shebalev, and a person can recite the Rebbeim’s words with perfect accuracy the way a man can daven three times a day with his lips and never once with his heart. A Chossid who has learned Chassidus for decades and walks through 770 with contempt on his face, who cannot sit at a Shabbos table without correcting someone, whose limud has produced a great deal of knowledge and no visible change in his middos, has also failed the test. The Frierdiker Rebbe said a life of Chassidus is the happiest life.
If a man’s Chassidus has made him bitter, then whatever he is doing is also not what the Rebbeim meant, and it does not become authentic because it is dry, and it does not become authentic because it is in Hebrew. The author’s essay reserves all its suspicion for one failure mode. Chassidus requires us to fear both. And it is worth asking, gently, why an interpretation of a familiar term in personal language provokes such alarm. When a word one has said for forty years is suddenly shown to mean something about oneself, the discomfort is not always a sign that the interpreter has erred.
The author writes that bittul is now “about (fill in the blank)” and kabbalas ol is now “(fill in the blank).” He names no teacher, no sefer, no podcast, no shiur, and quotes no sentence anyone has actually said. The maskilim and ovdim of Lubavitch argued with each other by name and by text.
A critique that leaves the blanks empty is not a critique; it is an atmosphere, and it lands on everyone who has ever taught Tanya in a way that made a listener cry. If there is a specific teaching in which a Chassidic term has been emptied of its meaning, bring the sentence, and let it be examined the way Chassidim have always examined each other. Some of it will not survive. Some of it, I suspect, will turn out to be Perek 26 in a different accent.
The commenter who challenged the author to produce the alternative was not being flippant. If there exists a way to teach Atik and Arich “as they truly are” that makes a thirty-year-old with two kids and a mortgage more of an oved Hashem by Tuesday, then produce it, and it will win. The author’s gracious reply that he is open to such a project is the most hopeful line in the entire exchange. I hope he does it. Nobody on the other side of this argument would be anything but glad.
We are between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in the days the Alter Rebbe devoted Iggeres HaTeshuvah to. Teshuvah, he taught, is not primarily about sin. It is תשוב ה’, the return of the soul to its source. It is entirely about the person: his history, his distance, his condition, the exact place he is standing when he turns. And it is entirely about Hashem, because the only direction that counts as return is toward Him. There is no border in it between the self and the service. The self, returning, is the service.
That is the model. Not a Chassidus that stays pure by keeping the human being at arm’s length, and not a Chassidus that dissolves into the human being and forgets where it was going. A Chassidus that goes all the way down into the tachton, into the wound and the fear and the marriage and the ego, because that is where the dirah is supposed to be built, and then all the way back up, because a dirah is for Someone.
Rabbi Kesselman is defending the second half of that sentence. I am grateful to him for it. I am asking him not to give up the first.
COMMENTS
יפה מאוד!
This issue is (somewhere between and along both articles):
Chasidus is not the tool to address issues that need mental healthcare.
Teaching that ideas of Chasidus (as with any self-help pop psych teachings) can repair mental health is false.
At farbrengens, when the Rebbe shouted at people, “האסט מרה שחורה?”
The Rebbe’s answer wasn’t, learn more Chasidus.
The Rebbe’s answer was, “נעם פילן!”
Please share the source for this farbrengen!!
this commenter brought up a very important sicha on the topic of mental health vs chassidus, and due to its importance, the relevant section will be quoted here in full. STRONGLY suggested that anyone else commenting and writing articles on this topic should learn this sicha in depth and really think about it before writing.
the commenter is wrong when he says that “The Rebbe’s answer wasn’t, learn more Chasidus.” actually it was, or as in this sicha, the Rebbe says טראכט גוט, and we mean it. when that doesnt work then you go to a doctor. meaning that professionals seem to be a last resort, not the lechatchila. (though i say this with caution, as I’m not well versed in this sugya hence I’m presenting לשון הרב, so everyone can be meayein themselves.)
השלמות (וועד הנחות התמימים) ש”פ תולדות (כינוס השלוחים) תשמ”ח סעיף ג
נאר אמאל מצד געוואוינהייט איז מען דערצו ניט משים לב כדבעי.
אנשטאט טראכטן וועגן טאן די עבודה וואס מ’האט אים געגעבן — איז ער פארנומען טראכטן וואס עס טוט זיך ביי א צווייטן, במילא ווערט נתעורר קנאה, קנאת “סוחרים” וכו’; אדער ער איז פארנומען מיט טראכטן וועגן זיין עסק און זיין שאפן געלט, אין גשמיות און חומריות — און ערשט לאחרי כל זה, ווען מ’זאגט אים אז ער דארף זיך מתבונן זיין אין “מה גדלו מעשיך ה'”, “מה רבו מעשיך ה'” — זעצט ער זיך טראכטן, אבער וויבאלד אז ער איז א גאנצן טאג געווען פארנומען מיט טראכטן וועגן זיינע עקביים געלט, וואס “ממונו של אדם מעמידו על רגליו” (ווי די גמרא זאגט — ער האט נאך א ראי’ לזה פון גמרא…) ווערט ער גלייך אנטשלאפן אין מיטן דעם לערנען!
און דערנאך אז עס קומט דער יום שלאח”ז, ווען ער קען רעדן אויפן טעלעפאן, איז דער ערשטער זאך אין טאג איז ער פאנומען מיט הערן וואס טוט זיך דא און דארטן.
איז דאך דערנאך קיין פלא ניט פארוואס ער איז אזוי פאר’דאגה’ט, און האט ניט קיין צייט און כח אויף מקבל זיין די ברכות פון נשיא דורנו. ווארום בשעת ער שטייט אין מרה-שחורה און אין דאגות איז דאך דאגה גוררת דאגה (אזוי ווי מצוה גוררת מצוה).
און וויבאלד אז ער ווערט רגיל בזה (דאגה אחר דאגה) איז הרגל נעשה טבע, און ס’איז שווער פאר אים צו בייטן זיין הנהגה. און דאס שטערט בפועל צו לערנען חת”ת כדבעי, און ניט סתם יוצא זיין מיט לערנען תושב”כ באופן פון לא ידע מאי קאמר וואס ע”פ דין טענה’ט ער אז מען דערמיט יוצא. ווער רעדט נאך וועגן לערנען רמב”ם, ובאופן אז אנשטאט דאגה אחר דאגה, איז ביי אים לימוד הרמב”ם גורר נאך א לימוד אין רמב”ם ווייל לאחרי ווי ער פארשטייט כדבעי דעם ענין אין רמב”ם וואס ער האט געלערנט, וויל ער גלייך וויסן וואס עס שטייט אין רמב”ם שלאחריו אדער אין רמב”ם שלפניו וכו’.
אויף דעם האט ער אבער ניט קיין צייט, ווייל ער איז פאר דאגה’ט פון ענינים גשמיים און געלט. וכאמור איין דאגה ברענגט גלייך א צווייטע דאגה.
אויף דעם האט מען די הוראה פון רבותינו נשיאנו: בשעת דו וועסט טראכטן גוט, ניט נאר אז ער זאגט אז ער טראכט גוט אדער ער שרייבט אז ער טראכט גוט, נאר ער טראכט טאקע גוט — וועט זיין גוט.
טענה’ט ער אז דאס איז ניט זיין טבע. אויב דאס איז ניט דיין טבע — גיי צו א דאקטאר און נעם פון אים פילן בכדי דיר בארואיקן. פונקט ווי אויב פון דיר רינט פון נאז דריי טעג נאכאנאנד (מער פון חזקה), בא דיר איז א “נאסטארק” (ווי מ’זאגט אויף רוסיש) — וועסטו ניט בלייבן זיצן אויף אן ארט, נאר דו וועסט לויפן צו א דאקטאר ער זאל דיר אויסהיילן, אזוי אויך אין דעם פאל — גיי צו א דאקטאר און הייל זיך אויס!
בשעת ער בלייבט אבער בא זיין טבע פון דאגה’ן מצד הרגל נעשה טבע ברענגט עס אז וויפל ברכות ער זאל באקומען דאגה’ט ער ווייטער.
ובדידי הוה עובדא: איינער האט מיר געשריבן, און מ’האט אים געענטפערט און באווארנט דער ענין וועגן וואס ער שרייבט. דערנאך אויף מארגן באקום איך נאך א בריוו — און ס’איז צו מיר אנגעקומען באופן ישר בדרך נס וואו ער שרייבט ווייטער — אז דאס איז א דבר ברור אז ס’איז דא א גזירה, אבער ער ווייסט אז מ’האט בכח צו מבטל זיין די גזירה, במילא בעט ער א ברכה אז מ’זאל אויף אים מעורר זיין און אוועקנעמען די “גזירה”!…
ס’איז ניטא קיין גזירה און קיינע ענינים, ואדרבה — מ’האט אלע ברכות פון נשיא דורנו. מ’דארף דערצו אבער מאכן א כלי מתאים — ניט דורך דאגה’ן, נאר דורך טראכטן גוט, וועט זיין גוט.
וכאמור לעיל, אז נשיא דורנו גיט אלע נויטיקע ברכות. מ’דארף דערצו נאר זיין א כלי מתאים — לכל לראש דורך ניט פאלן אין מרה שחורה, וואס די מרה-שחורה לאזט אין אים ניט אריין קיין ענין פון “מרה לבנה”. אויב מ’וואלט אבער ארויסגענומען פון זיך די אלע דברים המעכבים כו’, וואלט מען דעמולט געזען נאכמער ברכות און בעל-שם’סקע מעשיות פון נשיא דורנו ווי מ’האט געזען ביז איצטער!
און טאמער מ’רעדט זיך איין אז מ’האט ניט אלע ברכות — דארף מען זיך באטראכטן צי דאס וואס אים מיינט אז אים פעלט, דארף ער טאקע האבן. ניט זיין פאטער האט עס געהאט און ניט זיין זיידע האט עס געהאט — איז צוליב וואס דארף ער דאס האבן.
די אלע ענינים פון טלויזי’ וכו’ ברענגען נאר אריין נאך דאגות און בזבוז זמן, נוסף לזה וואס מ’באווייזט דארטן כל מיני ווילדע זאכן, און בשעת די קינדער זעען דאס, קומען זיי און ווילן וויסן וואס איז די צאצקע, און וואס איז יענע צאצקע, און מ’דארף זיך פארנעמען מיט זיי מסביר זיין.
אלה וואס דען, היות אז ס’איז דא א “מצות עשה להתפלל כו’ שואל צרכיו שהוא צריך להם” מאכט ער זיך אן צרכים, ער רעדט זיך אליין איין אז ער דארף האבן די און די זאך וואס ער דארף בכלל ניט האבן!…
און טאמער מ’דארף נאך הילף אין דעם דארף ער גיין צו זיין רב. ער איז אבער ניט שייך צו נעמען אן עצה ביי א צווייטן. ער האלט זיך פאר א גרויסער חכם ווענ באמת איז ער בכלל ניט קיין חכם. אבער אויב מ’וועט דאס אים זאגן וועט זיין שבירת הכלים. זאגט מען אז ער איז א חכם, אבער אעפ”כ דארף זיין “עשה לך רב”: ניט נאר אז ער באשטימט זיך א רב, און אפילו אז ער פרעגט ביי אים אמאל אן עצה — טוט ער ווי ביי אים קומט אויס, נאר “עשה לך רב”, באופן של כפי’, כמדובר כמ”פ.
The sicha quoted is not related to mental health.
The Rebbe told us clearly in what we consider the צוואה to us on ש”פ תצוה מט to consult רופא ידיד – not as a last result as you claim.
Hope all of us continue to do the Rebbe’s holy work through continuing to follow his holy instructions to consult your רב, ידידים ורופאים.
The Rebbe referred to doctors for MEDICAL issues. Not every person who is anxious is a medical condition.
Most people need a healthy dose of Chassidus and a productive life. Treating them as a sick person is making them sick!
Do you have a source?
I will probably get stoned for saying this, but it’s noteworthy that the Rebbe recommended pills, not psychotherapy. Pills taken responsibly can calm anxiety, but psychotherapy messes with your mind and can make you self absorbed for years to come.
I have seen many letters where the Rebbe recommended therapy
If you consider how many letters the Rebbe wrote and how many times he recommended therapy of any kind, it’s a very minuscule number for serious cases. Unless everyone became very sick since then, the Rebbe’s position is that for the vast majority of people (even those struggling with emotional turmoil etc), the best way forward is productivity and connection.
BH. talk about “out of context!” the Rebbe spoke about simcha and moro schoira tens of thousands of times. I listen to the rebbe constantly, and learn the rebbes torah quite a lot BH NEVER have I heared this quote that you mention as if that is the rebbe’s message that he contantly announced at farbrengens (even if he once mentioned it by a farbrengen, that you probably misquoated.) my assumtion is that 70 to 80 % of igros are talking about or touch-on emotional and mental health. Please be my guest and go open a igros yourself and tell me yourself the Rebbe’s approach. why play guessing games. we boruch hashem have indexes on many of the rebbe’s torah. check toras menachem too. Moshiach now!
Power! Power! Power!!
Yasser koach for this beautiful essay!!
May everyone find chassidus deep in their hearts their fears their relationships and make them closer to Hashem and to serving him properly!
BH
This response is excellent.
It echoes the voice of so many of us.
It’s very simple,
Rabbi Kesselman brought up a genuine issue, but he took it way too far (-misapplied).
Genuine Issue: Are there those who teach Goyishe pop psychology in a class and call it a “Tanya Class”?!
Unfortunately YES. granted!
Took it way too far: To push that further and say Tanya is a book about Hashem – not here to address the Yid? and not here to deal with “inner emotional struggles”, “real life problems”?! Incorrect.
You don’t have to go too far in Tanya, it’s right in the very first Perek:
“One soul is of the kelipah and the sitra achra…
From this soul emerges ALL BAD HUMAN TRAITS.
They arise from the four bad elements of which this soul is composed:
Anger and arrogance arise from the element of fire, just as fire lifts itself upward.
The lust for pleasure arises from the element of water, just as it is water that allows all forms of delight to sprout and grow.
Frivolity, mockery, boasting, and chattering arise from the element of air.
Laziness and depression arise from the element of earth”.
ALARMING: What in the world is depression, temptations and anger doing in a saintly Tanya book here blatantly to teach us about Hashem himself?!?!
Tanya talks about:
Your inner emotional struggles (א).
Holds your hand and guides you through the battle (ט, יב).
Tools to deal with your Anxiety and depression (כו – כט).
Tools to a guy who cannot love his brother, because when he was younger someone hurt him (סוף יב).
Of course Tanya isn’t ONLY about your inner emotional struggles, and of Course Tanya isn’t ONLY about Hashem.
Rather it’s completely about the link between them.
The link between Hashem and the Yid, removing (transforming) anything and everything getting in the way between them.
כי קרוב אליך הדבר. מאוד. בפיך. ובלבבך. לעשותו. לבאר היטב. איך הוא קרוב. מאוד.
(*periods to emphasize a pause for ponder).
To say it’s about Hashem – not the Yid; It’s about the Yid – not Hashem – are equally a distortion.
Thank you for this, from those of us who felt total self doubt from the first essay, wondering how to land our seeking healing in a Chassidishe way. Thank you. This encourages my learning more Chassidus, being a better Oved Hashem, doing more mitzvos, and bringing all of me there in that pursuit. May you be blessed and may everyone find their place in this big, loving, healing Torah of ours.
Who can set up a genuine conversation (possibly a number of conversations) w Rabbi Kesselman and someone else (perhaps the above author), and that will be more productive than back-and-forth articles. Where people can eventually talk from their hearts and not just from their heads. #hechaltzuapplied
I wish someone would address how to deal with the consequences of the kind of parental abuse and inconsistency that makes someone hate the very concept of fatherhood and even motherhood. It has taken decades of muddling through to slowly achieve a working minimum of emotional relationship with G-d.
This is so well written, thorough, nuanced, and employs the kind of differentiation that kunteres heichaltzu discusses in the fullest sense.
If only it would be applied even more… yes, in marriages and at Shabbos tables. I have friends who want to be much more externally aligned with their true connection to yiddishkeit, Chassidus, and the Rebbe. If only they see the internal pnimius HaTorah- as it influences our inner world- practiced externally by those who preach the word “Chassidus”.
On a practical note, can we please turn attention away from the externalities of ‘being Chassidish’ and torwards the Avoda of Chassidus as is discussed in the above article? Specifically in marriages and Shabbos tables. I have friends who literally don’t want to get married or join Shabbos tables because all they see is shteching and contempt as a way of life rather than a life vitalized by pnimius haTorah.
“Someone who is suffering from sadness, anxiety, or emotional pain can absolutely take the Alter Rebbe’s teachings and find profound help in them. But the ideal form of healing comes when those teachings are embraced for what they truly are: a path to bittul, living achdus Hashem and genuine Avodas Hashem. By becoming less self-focused and more deeply devoted to Hashem, a person naturally becomes less consumed by anger, anxiety, resentment, and other forms of self-preoccupation. The emotional healing that follows is not incidental; it is a natural result of genuine avodah.”
“Chassidus can provide extraordinary insight into the human being. Its teachings can be applied to questions of personal growth, emotional development, relationships, healing, self-understanding, and many other areas of human life.
“But that does not mean that Chassidus is a system of human healing, development, or self-discovery.
“It is something much greater. It is Divrei Elokim Chaim. It is about knowing Hashem. It is about making Elokus real in our lives. It is about realizing אין עוד מלבדו. And yes, it is about real bittul.”
behashgocha protis, between these two articles, a real practical option was put up on anash.org
do something for your limmud hachassidus. join the hundreds in kolel daach today, and the entire discussion will be superfluous
https://anash.org/chassidus-kollel-to-tackle-bitachos-and-hishtadlus/
can someone please explain if there is a difference between a healthy human and chossid? is becoming a better person the goal of chassidus or maybe someone more connected to hashem or maybe they go together but what’s the goal? does one need to understand chassidus or just take it practically?
on simchas torah 5795 there is a sicha, a little free translation from “ois yud”: even the doing good of good character traits and ahavas yisrael one does not need the work of chassidus) in the next paragraph he explains free translation: everything must be brought down practically even the deepest concepts must be brought down but for good character traits one does not need chassidus) I suggest everyone who is interested in this topic should check the source it is “muga” “likuite diburim” volume one
People are wondering who the author of this article is.
It’s probably rabbi kesselman himself. Maybe 🙂
Needed to write the first article so he can have a reason to put the second article in.
Bottom line that I got from all of this.
Chassidus is very powerful. It has to change you. If it hasn’t, keep learning , get assistance and directions from mashpia. At the same time, when you need a doctor for whatever the issue might be, sadness , trauma etc, go to one. His value should hopefully be in line with yours. Keep learning chassidus to strengthen you. Those chapters 26-32 should always give a boost.
Bsuros tovos
Gmar vchasima tova
Mashiach now
I think this whole conversation calls for some common sense.
Can we all agree to the following:
Anyone that is in the space of primarily helping people with emotional and mental health should openly declare that that is their goal. And they should absolutely use Chassidus to that end.
This is a great thing.
Anyone interested in learning, teaching or experiencing genuine Chassidus as it’s was taught by the rebeim in its purity, should do that.
But let’s not confuse the 2.
Yes it’s good for the therapists to incorporate Chassidus into their therapy but it is not good for people teaching Chassidus to turn it into psychology. Keep it G-dly. It should inspire and elevate. It should be an experience you walk away from feeling like you’re in the clouds.
Both are true at the same time.
Love it!
Make psychology Chassidus, but don’t make Chassidus psychology.
How eloquent! How simple!
This guy is brilliant but missed the point the bottom line that bothers Rabbi Kesselman
This has ai slop written all over it.
The author is either Gemini, Claude or ChatGPT.
That would explain why beneath the beautiful writing there is actually very little substance.
Don’t be fooled by the poetry. Think critically.
This article actually says nothing.
Thank you to whoever wrote this (if you are human).
Perhaps a more lengthy response will be warranted some time in the future (let’s see how the discussion continues to evolve).
For now I will suffice with a very quick response, hopefully to the point:
In one line – the author (AI) missed the point entirely.
He thinks I’m saying it’s not about the human being.
Of course it is. My original article made that very clear.
That is not the question at all.
The question is – what does it want from the human being?
My point was to say – it wants to make the human being an oved Hashem.
That is the framework and the focal point.
Everything else fits inside and must center around that.
When you turn the framework and focal point into mental / emotional health, you miss the point entirely.
The question is not whether Chassidus talks to the human being or to atzilus.
We all agree it talks to the human beings and of course that’s the point.
The question is what it primarily sets out to do with the human being.
I want everyone to make a deep cheshbon hanefesh and think about the following question. Don’t rush to answer it. Really self examine and look deeply into yourself.
Then ask yourself: Do I see Torah, yidishkeit and Chassidus as a means towards making me a happier, healthier, calmer and better person. (The tachlis is my mental/ emotional health and I use Chassidus to get me there)
Or do I see my emotional and mental health as a means towards being a better oved Hashem. (The tachlis is for me to be an oved Hashem, and that includes, among many others, middos tovos, ahavas Yisrael, iskafya etc)
The difference is night and day.
Is Chassidus here to make me a healthier person (the goal being my health) or do I need to be healthy so that I can be a better chossid and better oved Hashem.
I think in this question lies the heart and soul of the issue.
Mental and emotional health is super important, but it’s only the means. The goal is איבערגעבענקייט to the eibershter.
אני לא נבראתי אלא לשמש את קוני!
Does it really make sense to place all the focus on the “means” and ignore the “end”.
Rabbi Kesselman’s response in the comments is built on a yesod that yiddishkait and your health are two different goals. a healthy yid IS a frum yid! when you do inner wrok and come a better person dont hak meir in kup that it is yeshus! yeshus is to stay separate from hashem by focusing on the parts of ourselves that feel separate and fowling their will- yetzer hara. when you are doing what you need, what you truly need for you it will also be what your neshamah needs they are on the same team. by default it will be according to torah and connecting you to hashem more, that’s what you nehsmah wnats and thats true health too
Hi Rabbi Kesselman,
Firstly (if I understand correctly that this is you, responding to the original article above), the author put his name there. That being the case, why would you say “(if you are human)” to another human being?
I imagine it is because you are able to sense or verify (through AI?) that his article was written with the help of AI (and you even refer to the “the author (AI)” to (not so subtly) make the point further).
I dont think I have ever met the author but I did a google search and he is clearly a living breathing Yid and Chossid.
So even if you are concerned that he used AI in writing his response to you, perhaps your response to him should still begin with the respect and dignity (and sensitivity) that the “Ein Mishpocho” for which the Alter Rebbe gave us Chassidus (see Hayom Yom 24 Teves), deserves.
Secondly, as to your response, I read your message and question a few times (though I cant say it qualified as a “deep cheshbon hanefesh”) and I am trying to understand what you are saying with this question you have asked us to reflect on.
If I understand you correctly, you’re asking what is our ultimate goal; to be happy? or to be serving the Aibeshter?
Yes? Is that the question?
And you think that all of the pioneers of the new vocabulary of Chassidus are focused on happiness insteady of bittul?
Inasmuch as I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt, I would like to suggest that (in the words of one of these great pioneers on this subject) של נעליך מעל רגליך כי המקום אשר אתה עומד עליו אדמת קדש הוא.
These people are literally spending their days and (late) nights carrying the waters of Chassidus to douse out the fire of Golus that is burning up a generation of Neshomos (and yes you can laugh and write another whole article that they are pouring kerosene…). Through gut wrenching Avoda both on themselves, and with the people they work with, they have managed to bring back so many people to a real and genuine realtionship with the Aibeshter with Torah, with the Rebbe, with Chassidus…. and yes, with themselves.
This recurring narrative that the brave guardians of the faith keep promoting on various platforms that these people are somehow “misapplying” Chassidus “to place all the focus on the “means” and ignore the “end” is not, in my opinion, this generation’s version of the debate between the maskilim and the ovdim.
No. It feels more like this generation’s version of the previous generation’s struggle, where the “old guard” would deride the Rebbe’s young soldiers who were translating Chassidus into English, both literally and figuratively, despite the mockery they endured.
A yungerman was once giving a Shiur Chassidus in English in the upstairs Zal in 770 and an older Yid walked by and mockingly asked “Zog mir – vi Zogt men Atzilus af Einglish?” – to which the Maggid Shiur sharply replied – “un vi Zogt men Atzilus af Yiddish?”
Perhaps direct your energies toward teaching and spreading Chassidus to anyone you can, and leave the criticism of those who are light-years ahead of you and me in this regard for the old Yidden in the upstairs Zal of 770 (or AI).
To the defense of Rabbi Kesselman, this article was originally posted without a name. The name was added later. I assume that Rabbi Kesselman wrote what he did before he saw a name, and was subtly criticizing the author not being able to stand behind his own words. I’m glad that a name was added
If I understand you correctly, you’re asking what is our ultimate goal; to be happy? or to be serving the Aibeshter?
That is not what I understood he was asking.
Hashem wants us to serve him with happiness so I don’t understand your framing of the question.
The way I understood it was- what is the focus on the path to serving Hashem with happiness? Is the focus our happiness or is the focus being happy in order to serve Hashem!
Meaning sometimes when you’re so focused on becoming happy, it gets lost in the vacuum that is human emotion and then everything becomes about me, myself, I , and my happiness. VS. being happy IN ORDER TO SERVE HASHEM…..
Just something to think about
Hope that makes it more clear.
I wish I had this problem, that “Torah, yidishkeit and Chassidus (were) making me a happier, healthier, calmer and better person”
Thank you.
Finally someone described what I felt to be wrong but couldn’t understand enough to articulate.
Chassidus is not new age self soothing.
Nor is it a circus where we show our devotion through denying our humanity and becoming weird and pathetic misnagdim who put ourselves and others down using the language of Chassidus(?!). And who use a self referencing and meaningless cultural language and idiosyncrasies to signal that we are “in”.
It’s the person revealing his true beautiful and infinitely great, grand and perfect essence and revealing the essential goodness, beauty and wholness in the world around him.
The Rebbe wants every Jew to be an EXPERT in how the yetzer hara thinks. Just look at any rally (also in maybe sichos).
And the Chassidishe yetzer hara is the most difficult to discern. It makes you believe that you are preserving the authentic chassidus vechulu…
It’s actually a little scary in a sense.
To me, an article that tries to lift yidden up to the authentic chassidus and avodah, by having a tiny little bit of condescending attitude to many many who are trying so hard, maybe the yetzer intelligence has crept in. Maybe.
An article about authentic chassidus should be so uplifting that the Yid (who previously felt that Tanya was mostly psychological etc) wants to buy in totally, and not feel bad about his previous life long assumption. (And we don’t want him to need a psychologist after reading the article lol)
Despite the name attached, this article definitely has AI thumbprints. I read both articles carefully. Nowhere does Rabbi Kesselman assert that 1) one should not go to therapy or deal with personal issues (im in therapy myself) 2) that Chassidus is meant to be an intellectual study and not applied to your feelings and actions 3) that abuse and trauma are ideals 4) that his issue is merely with the way things are said, and not with substance. Thus, almost all of the citations, quotations, and refutations seem irrelevant. And of course, one can heal through the lens of Chassidus, just don’t distort into psychology in different or even the same oisiyos
> For twelve chapters the Alter Rebbe maps the architecture of a Jew’s mind before he asks that Jew to contemplate anything above.
Not true. The 3rd perek says – what are the kochos hanefesh of the nefesh haelokis? Understanding Hashem. Middos towards Hashem.
Then he writes about Torah and Mitzvos.
And then…
For 12 chapters, the Alter Rebbe writes about how to serve Hashem, not an “architecure of a jew’s mind”.
I’m not going to belabor the subject – learn Tanya.
> Not a metaphor for the Divine. A portion of it, literally.
Did you read the rest of the chapter?
Our nefashos are metaphorical toenails, not G-d.
The Alter Rebbe explains how it is not a contradiction to say 1: G-d is infinite and we are nothing and 2: We are a chelek of Hashem. How can a toenail be so great? Study chapter 2 of Tanya.
> it is the place in this world where Elokus is actually found
The Alter Rebbe writes explicitly in chapter 4 that Torah and Mitzvos (levushim of the sould) are “infinitely greater then the nefesh ruach and neshama themselves”. That’s where Elokus is actually found. Or, in chapter 54, the 4 cubits of halacha.
> The destination is a human being in a body, in a marriage, in a business, in a mood, becoming a place where Hashem lives.
See chapters 36 and 37. Or, what I referenced before (chapter 4) – Or, chapter 35: “Even a complete tadik, serving Hashem with fear and a love with delights, nonetheless isn’t bottul bemetzius… rather he is a thing with his own existence. This is not the case by Torah and Mitzvos”. Even the most perfect human has a degree of seperation. Torah and Mitzvos are the perfect union with Hashem.
> Now translate the first list into plain English.
This is a rhetorical trick. You call it a translation, and the “translations” are indeed similar to the thing, and conclude that the Rov is just using Hebrew words.
But it is not just a translation. The first is directed towards G-d, the “English” is substituting man for G-d. ahavas Hashem is love of Hashem, not “love”. kabbalas ol isn’t discipline and commitment – it is towards G-d. An atheist going to the gym every morning has discipline and commitment. Is that your translation of kabbalas ol?
> The same is true of his list of foreign ideals.
Same.
> not to bring Chassidus down into the heart.
Out of context. “The purpose is not to bring Chassidus “down” simply into the heart, into the realm of the human psyche. ” – author’s intent is that the heart should be full of G-d.
After reading that far in the essay, I still hadn’t seen anything of note, so I didn’t read further.
The author writes:
“The purpose of everything, of the entire Seder Hishtalshelus, is a dirah for Hashem in the lowest world, the world of which there is none lower. The olamos are the roadmap. The destination is a human being in a body, in a marriage, in a business, in a mood, becoming a place where Hashem lives”
Dirah batachtonim is within a person? That idea is very similar to another “make chassidus relatable” ideology, call of the shofer.
https://collive.com/confessions-of-a-shofar-staffer/:
“Every Lubavitcher that went to Shofar knows that the purpose of the world is to make a home for G-d in this world. But when we come out of Shofar what do we say? Or if we don’t say it, what do we think?
We think the purpose of this world is to “come home.” It sounds almost like Chassidus is more accessible in “cozy” language.
But it is not.
It is, in fact, a complete corruption of the belief system of chassidus. The distinction is quite simple. “Making a home” for G-d is about G-d. “Coming home” is about you and your own personal development. The subtle shift in language has turned Judaism on its head.
Maybe this is why men who come out of Shofar have commonly been reported to be overly preoccupied with their personal development. Maybe that’s why they reportedly put their “wellbeing” ahead of stringencies in their frumkeit…”
Publishing differing viewpoints is a good thing, but when someone is
1. Publishing an AI generated essay without disclosing that
2. Writing call of the shofer adjacent ideology
3. misquoting the essay that he’s responding to
Maybe it shouldn’t be published.
(He writes here “The author reads it and concludes that the purpose is “not to bring Chassidus down into the heart.””. The author had actually written there “The purpose is not to bring Chassidus “down” simply into the heart, into the realm of the human psyche…The objective is ועבדהו to serve Hashem (with a full heart). “.
To disagree on what “heart” means is legitimate. To pretend that the first author doesn’t mention heart at all in order to make your point seem stronger is dishonest.)