Download Syllabus - Hebrew College

Hasidic Texts on Leadership and Blessing
Nehemiah Polen
RB-JTHT-606
Fall 2015-2016
Personal Spiritual Growth, Communal Leadership, and Blessing in Hasidism
Hasidism provides diverse approaches to personal growth and cultivating an open,
compassionate heart. Our class will introduce major hasidic thinkers and texts with a focus on
leadership, personal and communal transformation, and blessing. We will study models of
personal growth, master-disciple relationships, charismatic figures, and peer-to-peer influence.
We will examine the idea that hasidic leaders aim to reconfigure their knowledge at ever-deeper
levels of mastery and ever-wider horizons of comprehension. throughout the course a central
focus will be careful reading and analysis of the original texts.
Each piece will be read with careful attention to (1) the source materials in scripture, rabbinic
literature and the kabbalah; (2) the exegetical problem(s) motivating the piece; (3) technical
terms and concepts; (4) the homiletic message and spiritual implications; (5) the overall
trajectory and architectonic; (6) the new exegetical light cast on the sources by reading with
hasidic eyes.
You will be asked to demonstrate understanding of each level of the text, to read and translate
with fluency. Each student will summarize at least one reading for class discussion, and write a
final paper/essay on a major theological/spiritual theme.
Partial listing of topics:
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The Baal Shem Tov on spiritual growth: “The end of knowledge is not knowing”
The Baal Shem Tov on teachers and students
The living cosmos: A hasidic theology of divine omnipresence
Hasidic tales: creative wisdom and inner epiphany
Sacred Time: Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev on why the New Year begins in the fall
Sacred Space: Constructing the Tabernacle in every generation
Coming into one’s own self: A hasidic personalist theology
The transformative power of music: niggun as spiritual practice
Prayer and the quest for unification
Seeing the world with eyes of blessing
Varieties of hasidic meditative and contemplative practice
Theology of Dual Intensification.
Enoch Consciousness
Dibbuk Haverim: the centrality of fellowship and friendship.
Hasidic hermeneutics and approaches to Torah interpretation.
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Devekut, especially the technique of cleaving to the letters.
The role of music, dance, and stories -- a theology of hasidic storytelling. How telling a tale
creates a sacred geography, a narrative extraterritorial domain of safety and exploration.
Charisma and miracles.
Embodiment--sonic and breath theology, fervor, enthusiasm, trembling and dance
The holiness of everday life. Mitzvot to be found in every aspect of existence.
Defamiliarization: avoiding habituation
Why, on the path of sacred service, one must fall from one’s spiritual level.
The zaddik; each individual’s role as local zaddik to mend the world.
God invested in physicality, in our corporeal limbs.
The meaning of “Messiah” and how to prepare oneself for the messianic advent.
“Know Him in all your ways”:
the role of laughter on the spiritual path;
how to make tough ethical choices;
the hasidic view of evil and good;
how the sefirot are realized in human beings;
why one must pray for one’s enemies;
why the greatest teachers have just one thing to teach;
how to turn everyday activities into sacred acts
Spiritualization that caps but does not replace the physical; that crowns but does not push
aside the concrete.
a tunneling through boundaries which bridges distinctions without collapsing the
distinctions…spiritualization and universalization without displacement or
supersessionism.
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PRIMARY TEXTS (partial listing)
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Keter Shem Tov Hashalem (Brooklyn, NY: Kehot, 2004)
#70 Va-yar Hashem ki sar lirot: integrating the parts of the self; Moshe puzzled by his
own name.
#90 Enoch the shoemaker—Ecclesiastes 9:10.
The letter of the Baal Shem Tov: Keter Shem Tov Hashalem, pp. 4-5.
R. Shlomo of Lutsk, Introduction to Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezhirech, Maggid
Devarav Le-Ya’akov. Edited by Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer (Jerusalem: Magnes Press of
Hebrew University, 1976), pp. 1-4.
Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, as presented by Rabbi Nathan of Nemerov: Azamra—finding
grace notes in oneself and others.
Sefat Emet, Ve-Avraham Zaken Ba Ba-Yamim: Savoring and recalling all one’s days
Suggested secondary readings (partial listing)
Immanuel Etkes, The Besht: Magician, Mystic, and Leader. Brandeis University Press, 2005.
[Hanover and London: University Press of New England.]
Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Baal Shem Tov. University of
California Press, 1996.j
Ada Rapoport-Albert, “Hasidism after 1772: Structural Continuity and Change.” In Ada
Rapoport-Albert, ed. Hasidism Reappraised. Littman Library, 1996.
Gershom Scholem, “Tsaddik: The Righteous One.” In On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead
(New York: Schocken, 1991), pp. 88-139.
Gershom Scholem, “Devekut, or Communion with God”; “The Neutralization of the Messianic
Element in Early Hasidism”; “Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism” in The Messianic Idea
in Judaism (New York: Schocken, 1978).
Moshe Idel, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic. Albany: SUNY, 1995; “On Prophecy and
Early Hasidism.”
Joseph Weiss, “Torah Study in Early Hasidism”; “The Great Maggid’s Theory of Contemplative
Magic”; “Via Passiva in Early Hasidism”; “R. Abraham Kalisker’s Concept of Communion with
God and Men”; “The Saddik—Altering the Divine Will”; in Studies in Eastern European Jewish
Mysticism , ed. David Goldstein, Oxford, 1985.
Daniel Matt,"Ayin: The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism", in Robert K. C. Forman,
ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness (New York: Oxford, 1990), pp. 121-159.
Seth Brody, “Open to Me the Gates of Righteousness: The Pursuit of Holiness and Non-Duality
in Early Hasidic Teachings.” Jewish Quarterly Review 89:1-2 (1998), pp. 3-44.
Ada Rapoport-Albert, “God and the Zaddik as the Two Focal Points of Hasidic Worship”
Rachel Elior, “Between Yesh and Ayin: the Doctrine of the Zaddik in the Works of Jacob Isaac,
the Seer of Lublin.”
Arthur Green, “Typologies of Leadership and the Hasidic Zaddik”; “The Zaddiq as Axis Mundi
in Later Judaism”; “Hasidism: Discovery and Retreat”
Ron Margolin, “New Models of the Sacred Leader at the Beginning of Hasidism,” in Saints and
Role Models in Judaism and Christianity, edited by Marcel Poorthuis and Joshua Schwartz
(Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 377-391.