Did They Really All Miss The Point?

A response to “Since When Was Chassidus Meant to Be Self-Serving?” 

By Yitzchok Schmukler

As I understood them, the three articles referenced in Rabbi Cohen’s piece (Chassidus Misapplied: The Dangerous Reinvention of Chassidus; Chassidus Was Never Meant to Leave the Person Behind; Authentic Chassidus or Relatable Chassidus? Why Not Both) were debating whether certain ways Chassidus is being presented are Chassidus at all. The first argued they are not, the second that they are, and the third suggested authenticity and relatability can go together.

Rabbi Cohen steps back and says they all share one error: asking what Chassidus does, instead of what it is. He therefore concludes that all three “missed the most basic point.”

Every article misses many points; on a topic like pnimiyus HaTorah, אילו פינו מלא שירה כים would still not suffice. But to say all three missed the point is a strong charge. In this case, the very source he brings, קונטרס עניינה של תורת החסידות, shows otherwise.

An עצם doesn’t negate

Rabbi Cohen’s central point is that Chassidus is a נקודה עצמית. Its many מעלות, including understanding Elokus, Avodah, and transforming the person, are only הסתעפויות, extensions of that essence, and do not define it. By focusing on the הסתעפויות, he says, the other articles missed the point.

But the argument turns on itself:

Precisely because Chassidus is a נקודה עצמית, it can be accessed in many ways. The Baal Shem Tov is famously quoted as saying that עצם, כשאתה תופס במקצתו אתה תופס בכולו; that is the nature of an essence, found whole in each of its parts. Arguing otherwise inverts his teaching, as if to say עצם, כשאתה תופס במקצתו, אינך תופס בכולו.

In other words, to say that one who speaks of a part has missed the whole uses the language of עצם while bypassing what עצם means.

The Rebbe says this explicitly in the same Kuntres (ois 17): a גילוי, being a פרט, negates whatever is not itself; an עצם does not negate, because it is the essence of every פרט. Hence, the Rebbe writes, מההדגשות העיקריות שבחסידות הוא – איחוד הפרטים עם העצם. Defining the עצם against its manifestations treats it as a גילוי, exactly what it is not.

What the Kuntres actually says

The passage Rabbi Cohen quotes to support his argument is the Rebbe’s response to descriptions of Chassidus given by the Rabbeim themselves, each emphasizing a different מעלה. Is the Rebbe saying the Rabbeim missed the point? Hardly. He explains why they were right (there, ois 18):

“אף שמעלות אלו הן רק מסתעפות ממהות החסידות, מ”מ, על ידן דוקא מתבטאת (עצמות) מהותה…וע”פ הכלל שנעוץ תחלתן בסופן דוקא, הרי כל מה שהחסידות נמשכת בבחי’ תחתונה יותר, עד להפיכת טבע נפש הבהמית… מתבטא אז ביותר עצם מהותה.”

In other words, the הסתעפויות are not a distraction from the עצם. They are where עצם is expressed, and the lower Chassidus reaches, the more fully it is expressed. That is why, the Rebbe continues, the Frierdiker Rebbe insisted that everything learned in Chassidus be brought into practice: ע”י העבודה בפועל דוקא תופסים במהות החסידות.

His comparison to Gemara runs into a similar problem. He argues that no one asks what Gemara is for, and that learning Chassidus in order to produce avodah is a subtle שלא לשמה. But Chazal asked which is greater, learning Torah or action, and concluded that learning is greater because it leads to action: תלמוד גדול, שהתלמוד מביא לידי מעשה (Kiddushin 40b).

The Mishnah in Avos (4:5) goes further still, praising not only learning that leads to action, but learning undertaken with that explicit intention: הלומד על מנת לעשות, מספיקין בידו ללמוד וללמד לשמור ולעשות. So even the Torah we learn “because it is Torah” seems to be measured by where it leads.

A validation of the previous articles

In light of the Kuntres, if Rabbi Cohen is right that the previous articles each champion a הסתעפות of Chassidus, then they did not miss the point. By the Kuntres’s reasoning, they may be even closer to the point than they realized themselves.

Whether any given approach is true to Chassidus (and whether it can be called a “הסתעפות”) is a fair question, and one worth debating. But it cannot be settled by declaring every הסתעפות beside the point.

With this added context, Rabbi Cohen’s introduction of עצם to the discussion does not weaken the earlier three opinions. It complements them. His point reminds us that the פרטים flow from the נקודה; the Rebbe in the Kuntres goes even further, teaching us that the נקודה is found precisely in its farthest reach. Indeed, this is explicit in the mission statement of Chassidus, the Baal Shem Tov’s famous Igeres: Moshiach comes precisely when the wellsprings reach the חוצה.

When Torah confirms our bias

One last thought. When Torah seems to confirm what we already believed, it deserves a second and third look. We may well have been מכוון אל האמת, but if we are honest, that is the least likely outcome.

Therapy has become a polarizing subject, and rare is the person whose view of it began with Torah. Most of us met it through the culture, formed an opinion through lenses we already had, and only later looked for sources.

This partiality can apply in either direction. One person, comfortable with the language of therapy, finds it everywhere in Tanya. Another, suspicious of it, finds that Chassidus negates it entirely. And both may be reading their prior views into the Torah rather than out of it (see footnote for an illustration).^[1] Sometimes, a healthy and well-meaning bias can even end up undermining the very thing it set out to protect.^[2]

So when something appears so obviously right, or so obviously wrong, that we hardly need Torah to tell us—that is exactly when we should let Torah challenge us to reexamine our assumptions. Here, for example, the very Kuntres cited to settle the question turns out to support the views it was cited against.

Indeed, since Torah is אין סוף, there will always be another point we missed.

***

^[1]To take two examples from opposite sides of the political spectrum:

Someone who begins from the conviction that all immigration is legitimate and just, remembering, for example, the Jews turned away during the Holocaust—will cite the mitzvah to love the Ger, and may overlook pikuach nefesh and the danger of admitting people who pose a real threat.

Or someone whose view of abortion was formed by conservative politics will reach for the Torah sources on the gravity of ending a fetus’s life as proof, but may not know that halacha prioritizes the life (and, according to some Poskim, the mental wellbeing) of the mother, in some cases even deeming the fetus a רודף, a position many conservatives would reject.

^[2] For an example of a well-meaning bias ultimately undermining what it set out to protect, one need look no further than the treatment of Chassidus itself by its opponents. Some were driven by a real fear of another Shabsai Tzvi, yet ended up spreading and believing slander, even informing on the Alter Rebbe to the government, all in order to “save” Yiddishkeit.

Perhaps an even starker example is the common attitude towards Moshiach (which has changed for the better in recent years). Awaiting Moshiach is one of the Rambam’s עיקרי האמונה, which some affirm daily in the words אחכה לו בכל יום שיבוא. Yet somehow, after centuries of Jews defending themselves against a religion built on a “messiah,” through disputations, forced conversions and persecution, many of those same Jews came to associate the very idea of Moshiach with, להבדיל, Christianity. The instinct might be understandable, but it still misses the point entirely and practically deletes a core principle of our faith.

A reaction against a distortion can end up discarding the very truth that was distorted.