Theology Today - Vol 30, No. 2 - July 1973 - ARTICLE

148 - Hasidism and Elie Wiesel

Hasidism and Elie Wiesel
By Philipp Fehl

Elie Wiesels "purpose is not to negate the old tales [of Hasidic rabbis] and their pious interpretations, but to show, without endorsing them, their loveliness and inner coherence, and to prove to us that Hasidism in a confrontation with the philosophy of despair can hold its own-not necessarily in truth (he delicately avoids this point) but in majestic picturesqueness.'

HASIDISM is a branch of Jewish orthodoxy in which the strictest observance of ritual and the law in its full rigor is blended with a sense of blessedness, mystic fervor, a childlike immediacy of faith (to the point of being confident that the rabbis have it in their power to work miracles). This combination raises the believer into a world of near sainthood where tears of repentance and contrition and a dancing joy in the proximity of God and the celebration of his goodness define lives spent in perpetual worship. The sect, or what eventually became a group of sects led by dynasties of "wonder-rabbis" not always at peace with each other, was founded in the thirties of the eighteenth century by the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. The movement soon became prominent among the Jews of certain parts of Russia, the Baltic countries, and above all Poland. It gave a singular distinction to Jewish life and religious practice in Eastern Europe, even though it was far from being generally accepted or even readily tolerated as a legitimate or respectable form of religious practice by perhaps a majority of Jews anywhere. The emphasis placed by the Hasidim upon the mystic life and their experiments in reasoning beyond the range of reason, the challenge of their ways to the established forms of studying and praying could not avoid arousing the suspicion, if not the hostility, of those who lived their lives according to the reasoning interpretation of the law that had shaped and preserved Judaism through the ages.

Philipp Fehl is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Illinois and is a native of Vienna. He is the author of an earlier article in THEOLOGY TODAY, "Mass Murder, or Humanity in Death," which was published in the April, 1971 issue.

149 - Hasidism and Elie Wiesel

They rightly resented the imputation that their piety, because it was practical and respected given forms, was therefore superficial and unenlightened. But Hasidism, like all intrinsically passionate appeals for radical reform, did readily succeed in making totally dedicated converts. Because it extolled the fervor of the simple faith at the expense of learning and cautious interpretation, it was particularly successful among those who like to follow leaders who are not in doubt-the trusting illiterate on the one band and the passionate student who, because his hopes are high, finds himself frustrated by what he condescends to call "mere reasoning." The strength of the appeal of the movement which has, however, undergone many transformations is demonstrated by the fact that after the destruction of almost all of Eastern Europe's Jewry it flourishes again, in an amazing renaissance, on the alien soil of America and in Israel. It attracts a new kind of converts from the ranks of young Jewish intellectuals who are disenchanted with the pompous shallowness of atheism and the bulk of the good causes, as well as all of the pastimes of modern liberal progressivism.

Hasidism has, of course, also had a considerable impact on Jews who are not or not altogether believers but who are touched by the dramatic value of its confidence in religious passion and the simple life which it extols. It is this poetical charm, I think, that led Martin Buber to engage in his studies of Hasidic lore, and the same, perhaps, may be said for the less musing, but scientifically tougher studies of Gershon Sholem in the history of mysticism. In the arts the sensitively painted flying rabbis of Marc Chagall considerably advanced the aesthetic standing of Hasidism among Jews and non-Jews alike, but I doubt that the Hasidim are grateful. These pictures, which to begin with may violate the second commandment, have yet to move any of their admirers to convert or to keep a kosher house. And on the level of -popular 'ethnic' appreciationism, we now have the "Fiddler on the Roof" who threatens at any moment to join Uncle Sam and Santa Claus in a musical trio proclaiming that we should go to the church of our choice (be it church, temple, or synagogue), "only go to church"--and once a week there will be "bring-your-lox-and-bagel day."

Elie Wiesel's Souls on Fire * is, at first glance, merely another introduction to religious lore, a sample reader, so to speak, of Hasidic legends, joined to an elementary-and correspondingly

* Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (New York: Random House, 1972), 269 pp., $7.95.

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superficial-guide to the history of the movement. But the book also offers very much more and is rewarding on an entirely different level of concern. I confess that I began reading it with misgivings. The "Fiddler," it seemed to me, was climbing higher on the roof, and I would much rather see a stork there and have the fiddler, if play he must, perform inside his house. The book's very title smacks of appreciationism, and some of the author's rhetorical devices suggest the melodrama of a popularized theatre-in-the round. But notwithstanding this "heavy" approach, which includes occasional dousings with existentialism, I was touched by Wiesel's basic and searching sincerity which is alive behind the "staging' of his text, and increasingly came to comprehend the higher purpose of his book. The inner "plot" of the work unfolds slowly and is made explicit only in an affecting postscript.

Wiesel grew up among Hasidim but he is not himself a believer; there are passages in the book that suggest he feels he cannot be one because he finds it impossible to reconcile the murder by the Nazis of so many pious and innocent Jews with the declared goodness of God. The hero of his book is a Hasidic rabbi, Dodye Feig of Wisznitz-the author's grandfather-whose tales of God and reports of the dicta and legends of the Hasidic masters filled his childhood with wonder and awe and love. This man, the author believes with good reasons, went to his death a quiet and prayerful martyr, accepting with love and humility the so dreadful verdict of God. Wiesel, while still a boy, was himself a captive of the Nazis and saw many other Hasidim bid farewell to life. With an astonishment that separates him from their conviction and accomplishment though it is still filled with loving respect and longing, he reports that some Hasidim celebrated a Jewish holiday-Simhat Thora, the Giving of the Law-in a death camp, such as they could, with singing and dancing, as if they had been at home in their synagogues. The book is a monument to these murdered men and their faith. It consists chiefly of stories that mattered to them in their lives and deaths, retold by the author, such as he remembers or reconstructs them, with the voice, the knowledge, and the wisdom of his grandfather alive in his memory. Wiesel does not wish to convert; far from it, he sometimes inserts himself into the account of a legend and deliberately asks it questions it is not prepared to answer. But he does want us to understand his love of the tales and above all, not to forget them, and to pass them on, as he does, with a sigh joined to a smile of gladness.

III

The tales and sayings are presented in a roughly chronological order, clustered about the great rabbis with whom they originated

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or who are their principal characters. These almost legendary figures-they were so already in their lifetimes--are introduced to us by short historical sketches which place them in time and space. But, however different their lives and the circumstances in which they moved, they remain as elusive in their identity as the genies in the Arabian Nights, even as their names and tales become familiar to us. There is, in a way, only one historical figure in the book, the author's grandfather.

In the beginning of his work, Wiesel expresses a perhaps somewhat unjust disappointment with the available, professional historical studies of Hasidism. These are, be says, written from the outside and give us only the dross of the lives they study. His own work tries to overcome, by the use of poetical devices, the handicap of writing "from the outside," a handicap which is his own as much as that of the historians he criticizes. Believers do not write history but chronicles, tracts, and sermons-they mean to record and to convert, not to "study" or "appreciate." To make the "inside" visible Wiesel introduces the believers as dramatic figures; they appear on the stage of his narrative and act out their own lives as he conceives them. From time to time, as a kind of authentification of the presentation, and as a guide to the interpretation of the re-enactment, there are flash-backs to the author's childhood in which grandfather and grandchild discuss the meaning of a particular tale or, in the flickering light of such a tale, the premises of Jewish life altogether.

These are, perhaps, the best parts of the book. The conversations are clearly reported with a fidelity of sense. It seems, in fact, that the author remembers the tales so well because they were the material from which the structure of these blessed encounters was shaped. The grandfather's patient love and his wisdom are represented as aspects of the Hasidic piety the author sets out to celebrate. Some of the legends and a number of the actions of the famous rabbis which Wiesel faithfully reports are curiously at odds with what one would expect of true devotion, and suggest either vulgar superstition or imposture as their source. Even the child notices that and asks the rabbi: "How is one to know? How does one recognize purity in a man? And how can one be sure?" And the grandfather smiles and answers: "But one is never sure, nor should one be. Actually it all depends on the Hasid [i.e., the disciple]; it is he who, in the final analysis, must justify the Rebbe."

There is nothing in the traditional accounts that in such a view is not capable of a higher meaning. If the accounts seem to us to be unbelievable or to degrade the rabbis, then we only show that we

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do not understand them. Or, perhaps it means that we were never meant to understand them, that the events are signposts pointing beyond themselves towards a source of truth, which is even more incomprehensible but shows its infinite beneficence by its having established these very signposts.

Mr. Wiesel wants us to appreciate all this, but he also understands that we may reject, as he does, the premises of his grandfather's patience. On occasion, he joins the conversations of grandchild and grandfather, or reflects upon the résumé of a legend or an action he reports, as an adult narrator, the true master of the play-the Elie Wiesel who has survived the concentration camps and has lived in the cold world of modernity and read existentialist books-and asks provocative questions in his capacity of a self-styled modern man. His purpose is not to negate the old tales and their pious interpretations, but to show, without endorsing them, their loveliness and inner coherence, and to prove to us that Hasidism in a confrontation with the philosophy of despair can hold its own-not necessarily in truth (he delicately avoids this point) but in majestic picturesqueness.

This attempt, brave as it is, to make his account "relevant" and yet not to give up his modern skepticism is, perhaps, the weakest part of the book. The author, in a kind of desperation, reaches for the effects of the fireworks which I found so disconcerting when I began reading the book. But, given his position, it is perhaps inevitable that he should fail in an attempt at which not even Goethe, in his Faust, was successful beyond the production of poetry. Wiesel's stage is vastly smaller than Goethe's, but it has the same division into sub-stages from which inhabitants of the different worlds that matter here speak not so much to each other as next to each other. The author's poetical equipment is perhaps no better than that of a movie director, but his memory is true, and his dedication to his cause is wholehearted and has a singular and affecting ring of pathos. This aspect of his work is, I think, a noble failure but far better than a success on a lower level of purpose could have been. It also provides the background which, with the color of its own commitment, sets off the beautiful portrait of the author's revered chief informant and guide, and brings to life the legends he told and lived by with such wisdom.

The book is a translation, not always a happy one, from the original French which in turn was the depository of narratives alive in the author's memory in Yiddish and Hebrew. But the liveliness of the account, and our responding sense of wonder, never suffers once Mr. Wiesels plan has become clear to us. I have no better

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way of showing my gratitude for the existence of this extraordinary book and of recommending it here than to point out some of the sayings of the rabbis which touched me by their elusive suggestion of wistful knowledge:

Rabbi Nahman of Bretz1av said to his disciples:

"I tell you my dreams also (as well as my stories) because a dream is but the story of a dream; yet the story of a dream is more than a dream."

Rabbi Hune of Kolochitz said:

"Nothing and nobody down here frightens me; not even an angel, not even the angel of fear. But the moaning of a beggar makes me shudder."

Rabbi Israel of Rizhin once explained why he liked to marry people but refused to intercede in heaven for them to have children:

"I foresee that from the next century on people will have souls so ugly, so repulsive, that one will not be able to stand their sight. Well, we must accept what we are given-but pray to obtain it? No."