In the battle that lasted from the end of the 18th century through the early 20th century, the Chasidim beat the Misnagdim.
Need proof of the victory? Just look at the fact that non-Chasidim are identified, to this day, as Misnagdim [meaning “the opposition”] rather than the mainstream. Chasidim were the ones who broke away from the mainstream, but Misnagdim were equally identified as a sect.
Chasidim won that war because our society prefers its heroes to be populist, and sees Chasidim as populists. We want our role models to be down-to-earth, reachable, and definitely not elitist, and the narrative popularized by early Chasidim was that the Misnagdim were coldly intellectual elitists, committed to a communal structure that honored scholarship over simple piety, and snobbish in the extreme toward the ignorant peasant class.
This comes to mind tonight because I am preparing a source sheet for a shiur and I am using a citation from the arch-Misnaged, one of the men at the heart of the late-18th century battle between Chasidim and Misnagdim, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. That citation makes it clear that the classic depiction of the Misnaged as aloof intellectual elitist is simply treif.
Rav Chaim Volozhiner, as he was also called, was certainly an intellectual. A halachic genius and a mystic, founder of the famed Volozhin yeshiva, he was the chief student of the Gaon of Vilna. He was certainly a misnaged; one of the goals of his book Nefesh haChaim was to demolish the philosophical arguments of the Chasidim, and he minced no words in pursuit of this goal.
But don’t let the revisionists fool you; Misnagdim were decidedly not the aloof, elitist, enemies-of-the-masses that were described by their foes. Here is the testimony of Rav Yitzchak of Volozhin regarding his father, Rav Chaim:
והיה רגיל להוכיח אותי על שראה שאינני משתתף בצערא דאחרינא. וכה היה דברו אלי תמיד שזה כל האדם. לא לעצמו נברא רק להועיל לאחריני ככל אשר ימצא בכחו לעשות.
He regularly rebuked me, because he saw that I did not participate in the pain of others. And these were his constant words to me: This is the entire person. One is not created for himself, but to benefit others with the full extent of his powers.Is this the ‘constant’ message of a cold intellectual elitist? I think not.
Certainly true on an idividual basis - but who are a commuinity's heroes tells a lot. IMHO More people can see themselves (or their children) as developing a high level emotional attachment to hkb"h than to becoming geniuses.
ReplyDeleteKT
Joel Rich
Certainly true on an idividual basis - but who are a commuinity's heroes tells a lot. IMHO More people can see themselves (or their children) as developing a high level emotional attachment to hkb"h than to becoming geniuses.
ReplyDeleteKT
Joel Rich
Did Chasidim really win as such? It appears to me that since the times of the Bal Shem Tov Chasidism has come closer to the Misnagdim than the other way around. While once upon a time Chasidim apparently were not that big into Yeshiva education most of the Yeshivot in Boro Park are Chassidic. With certain exceptions Chasidim and Misnagdim have more in common than they have not in common.
ReplyDeleteBefore we can say that one side won a contest we have to define what the contest is about. Basically, what were they fighting over? In this case, what did the Misnagdim object to, and do Chasidim still do those things to the extent they did back then?
I don't think R. Chaim Volozhiner should be characterized as an "arch" Misnaged. It is true that he was most definitely a misnaged by virtue of the fact that not only did he not himself become a chassid, but he also formulated an alternative to chassidism, as you said. While this may have been only tactically different from the more head on confrontation of other misnagedim, I think the "leave them be and let's compete" attitude should mean that he wasn't "arch," certainly not in view of who his master was.
ReplyDeleteMarc, the chassidim "won" insofar as not only are they not rejected as a heretical sect, they're even considered by many non-chassidim to be exactly what they call themselves: chassidim.
By the way, the misnagedim and maskilim did not call chassidim "chassidim." They called them "mischassedim."
http://www.rayimahuvim.org/pages/spring_audio/spring_lect10.htm
ReplyDeleteFor a series of lectures on chassidim
KT
Joel Rich
S:
ReplyDeleteMy point is that what we call Chassidus today is derived from, but isn't identical to, the Chassidus that was first fought back in the day. If the Misnagdim managed through their fights to move Chassidus to something acceptable then even if they failed to eradicate Chassidus the misnagdim still won.
The question in my mind is who changed the most?
I agree with S. about R' Chaim. Consider, for example, that R' Shneur Zalman of Liadi writes in one of his letters (Igros Kodesh, no. 61) that R' Chaim spoke in a pretty conciliatory vein about one of the "novelties" of Chassidus, performing shechitah with honed knives, even though this was one of the major issues mentioned in the misnagdic bans on Chassidus beginning in the 1770s. In another letter of R' Shneur Zalman's (no. 74), he mentions having written a letter of recommendation to R' Chaim for some individual who was collecting tzedakah. Would an "arch" misnaged accept a recommendation from one of the leaders of the chassidim?
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think Marc is correct that both sides have met somewhere in the middle. Perhaps the best summary of this is in a description of the visit by the Tzemach Tzedek of Lubavitch to several misnagdic strongholds (in the 1830s). I can't recall the source nor the exact expression, but it went something like this: "for the first time, the misnagdim discovered that the chassidim know how to learn Torah; and the chassidim discovered that the misnagdim know how to daven properly." And indeed that modus vivendi (mostly) held for the next century, until it broke down for reasons that we needn't get into here.
>My point is that what we call Chassidus today is derived from, but isn't identical to, the Chassidus that was first fought back in the day. If the Misnagdim managed through their fights to move Chassidus to something acceptable then even if they failed to eradicate Chassidus the misnagdim still won.
ReplyDeleteThe fact (?) that it isn't identical doesn't necessarily imply that what it is today is close to acceptable to the misnagedim. I'm not necessarily arguing that it's not, but it shouldn't just be assumed.
That said, you are right. It's not necessarily a binary where one school of thought "won" and therefore the other lost.
This is a very interesting topic, and I plan to give it more thought and some research.
Joel-
ReplyDeleteWhy assume that R' Chaim didn't have a high emotional attachment to HKBH?
Marc-
I define "winning" based on the original battle, which I believe was the battle for recognition as legitimate avodas HaShem. Certainly, both sides have changed since then, and in substantive ways.
S, Alex-
I'm not sure why his lack of overt struggle removes the "arch" from the description. As I understand it, "Arch" refers to a preeminent member of a group, which Rav Chaim certainly was.
If the victor is defined based on the original battle then shouldn't we look at who changed how far before the misnagdim decided to accept chasidim?
ReplyDeleteIf a political party loses an election, changes it platform, and then joins a coalition they don't suddenly become victors because they aren't the same party they were at the previous election.
If the chassidus that was originally objected to is significantly different from the chassidus that was accepted then the original battle was lost by the chassidim, and a future contest was won by a group calling themselves chassidum but practicing a way derived from but not identical to the chassidus originally objected to. The original chassidus was rejected as legitimate avodas Hashem. The subsequent chassidus was accepted as legitimate avodas Hashem. It seems to me based on the criteria given that the misnagdim won the first battle.
Joel-
ReplyDeleteWhy assume that R' Chaim didn't have a high emotional attachment to HKBH?
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I don't - but what is the first thing that comes to mind when the average yid thinks of him and/or his school
KT
Joel Rich
Marc:
ReplyDeleteIn your analogy of a political party: if indeed the original party was rejected by the voting public and discredited, no one would bother reusing the name because of its associations. (Consider the Federalist Party in the United States, for example.)
Here, though, your putative "neo-chassidim," who were accepted by the misnagdim, continued using the same name as before. This alone demonstrates a certain continuity and self-identification with the previous generations of chassidim rather than a rejection of their ideas in order to be accepted.
More concretely, anyway, look at the chassidic practices condemned in the bans of 1772, 1781, and so forth. Virtually all of these continued to be practiced by chassidim of all stripes throughout the generations, and indeed some of these (most notably, the use of honed knives) were adopted by the whilom "misnagdim" too.
Granted, neither side is exactly as it was 250 years ago. But I don't think there's much basis for your idea of a division between rejected paleo- and accepted neo-chassidism.
I disagree. I beleive that the Soviet Communists and the Nazis caused this battle to end, and the survivors realized that their were much more important things to be fighting over.
ReplyDeleteMuch of this fighting was in Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, and modern day Belarus and Western Russia, Most of the Jewish population was killed. And the Holocaust put things into perspective for everyone else.
Ira:
ReplyDeleteDvinsk's Orthodox Jewish population pre-WWII (which means before the Soviets took over) was just about evenly divided between the Misnagdim and Chassidim. They and their leaders, the Or Same'ach and the Rogatchover, got along pretty well. If anything the Haskalah movement helped the put things into perspective.