Contemplative Mysticism and “Faith” in Hasidic Piety

Summary

The general structure of Hasidism is usually seen by the student of Jewish mysticism as a uniform pattern. Nothing mars the uniformity of the picture of this last religious revival in eighteenth-century Judaism in Eastern Europe; at the most, only slight differences within the same movement are distinguished, differences that may be described as “various paths in the same worship,” which diverge from the central unity without breaking the unity and the uniformity of the movement itself. Almost all research presupposes the theory of the unity and uniformity of Hasidism—the theory that the whole Hasidic religious outlook is dominated by an essential unity, which cannot be called in question.

It seems to me that this general view of Hasidism is open to serious doubt.

A certain degree of uniformity can be seen in the realm of folklore and in some forms of religious life. A common frame is to be found in the ecstatic prayers or in other customs shared by all the trends of Hasidism. But it is obvious that such matters are not sufficient to argue a unity of ideas. Both from the theological point of view and as far as religious values are concerned, this standardization of the Hasidic schools and their doctrines must be rejected. The postulated artificial unity and uniformity disappear when we look for their verification in the theoretical literature of Hasidic authors.

I shall attempt here to describe two trends of the Hasidic movement, which have assumed a clear and distinctive outline. The two trends are diametrically opposed to each other. Even in the controversies of the “Ṣaddikim” (the Hasidic spiritual leaders), which seem to have a personal basis, the theoretical motifs can be often clearly discerned.

The aim of this study is to trace the two different types of piety that are to be found in Hasidism—the mystical, contemplative piety and the piety offaith. On the distinction between these two general types of piety is based some of the finest of the German Religionswissenschaft, such as Heiler's book Das Gebet. These two types of piety not only differ from each other, but are opposed to each other; they form two distinct categories of religious phenomena and as such are of great value for the understanding of Hasidism.