11 - Apostasy and Apostates

Summary

THE HASIDIC STORYTELLING genre hardly touches upon the subject of non-Jews converting to Judaism, but is replete with tales of apostasy: that is, conversion from Judaism to another religion, usually Christianity. Since apostasy is considered in hasidism (as in Judaism generally) to be the very nadir of moral degeneration, it is frequently portrayed in the broader context of crime: the apostate is variously an adulterer and a murderer, a member of a criminal band, or, at the very least, a deserting husband. One of the stories that will be described in this chapter tells of a ritual slaughterer who, having been dismissed from his position because he murdered a poor man in the city, later became an apostate; another focuses on two adulterers who renounced Judaism for another religion. For women, too, adultery is linked to apostasy: the Ba'al Shem Tov once rescued a young adulteress who was about to convert.

In the hasidic story apostasy is also linked with the Sitra Ahra gaining the upper hand, and the struggle against one is intertwined with the battle against the other. The willing apostate (as opposed to children who were taken captive by non-Jews and did not know of their Jewish origins) is a person who is under Satan's rule, and who is submerged in impurity and crime. The Devil's agents take a particular interest in ‘holy souls’, such as scholars and tsadikim, who will likely hinder the activity of the Sitra Ahra in this world. One such apostate became a bishop before finally returning to Judaism: ‘I was initially a Jew, and then I fell into the depths of the kelipot, for I was a great scholar and I possessed a holy soul.’ One of the Ba'al Shem Tov's disciples who sinned, and thereby provoked accusations against himself in heaven, was given over to Satan, who sought to entice him to convert. In the end this erring disciple was miraculously saved by the merit of his teacher, the Ba'al Shem Tov. An important role was played in the seduction of Jews away from their religion by the Christian priest, who in these stories embodies Satan and the forces of evil. The efforts of tsadikim (above all, the Ba'al Shem Tov) to return the errant