The “Double Movement” in Kabbalistic Thought
A tension exists within Kabbalistic/Hasidic thought between two outlooks on God, man and the world that are so different that it is hard to imagine that they co-exist within a single system of religious thought and practice. On the one hand we find in the Kabbalah, and especially amongst the Hasidim, what can only be described as the higher mystical charge to nullify the ego and all desire (bittul ha-Yesh), escape from the world, and find complete union with Ein-sof, or what the Hasidim refer to as devekut, or “cleaving” to God. On this view the world is an illusion, and the everyday, material and personal desires of the self a snare, that must be snuffed out, ignored, and transcended in favor of a cleaving with the ultimate reality, which, paradoxically, but sublimely, is itself understood to be complete Ayin, or nothingness. In this moment or trend with Hasidism, we find Jewish mysticism coinciding in nearly every respect with the higher mysticisms of the East, and in particular with Buddhism, which too holds the world of desire and suffering to be a snare and an illusion that must be transcended and annulled.
Yet there is also another moment in Hasidism, equally powerful, yet seemingly opposite in its intent and effect, which coincides with the general Jewish outlook of world-affirmation, an outlook which seeks not to escape the world and the individual self, but rather to spiritualize world and self in every aspect and detail, to celebrate life, and to count as precious every worldly moment and thing. The world, on this view, may well be a world of suffering, a veil of tears, but this should by no means result in our abandoning it, but, on the contrary, should only increase our resolve to participate in its restoration and repair.
According to Schneur Zalman, the first Lubavitcher rebbe:
There are two aspects to the service of the Lord. One is love in tongues of flame…and [the heart] seeks to leave its sheath of bodily material…The second is the aspect of fervor…of the drawing down of the divinity from above.[1]
For Schneur Zalman, the first divine service involves a “quietist” or “mystical” ascent from all desire, materiality and worldliness, a movement of man towards union with Ein-sof, while the second involves an “activist” effort to bring divinity into the world, to infuse earthly life with an element of what is holy and divine. If in the first “service” man abandons earth and self in favor of God, in the second man asks God to leave the heavens and fill the earth.
How are we to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory views of the religious life and way?
Rivka Schatz Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer has pointed to the tension and ultimate balance between activism and quietism within Hasidic thought. The activist tendency is rooted in the Lurianic concept of Tikkun Haolom and involves engagement in the corporeal world, precisely in order to “redeem the external world by its spiritualization.”[2] The quietist tendency, which is rooted in the ecstatic Kabbalah, seeks a union with the divine through a negation of this world and an annihilation of the self. According to Schatz Uffenheimer, the quietist “elevates his own will to the Divine ‘nothing,’ to the world of reconciliation of opposites in which ‘he and his opposite are one.’”[3]
Both activist and quietist tendencies are evident in the writings of the foremost theorist of Hasidism, Dov Baer (The Maggid) of Mezhirech. According to the Maggid the broken nature of the World of Action is a necessary even deliberate divine act, in order to provide an impetus to human activity:
It was therefore necessary that there should be a shevirah (Breaking of the Vessels), for by this means forgetfulness occurs in the Root, and each one can lift up his hand to perform an act…and they thereby elevate the sparks of the World of Action…”[4]
Yet the Maggid also holds that the happenings of this world are nothing in comparison to the treasures of the world to come. Accordingly human beings “must abandon themselves and forget their troubles, so that they may come to the world of thought where everything is equal.”[5]
It is not much of a leap to hold that part of the dialectical equalization that occurs within the godhead, is a reconciliation of activist and quietist modes of theory and worship on earth. Through a “quietist” renunciation of personal desire, one becomes better equipped for the active task of “raising the sparks” and spiritualizing one’s worldly encounters. Conversely through such active “spiritualization” one is brought into close contact with the holy Sefirot which constitute the world of thought on high.
While the relative prevalence transcendent and immanent solutions to the world’s broken state waxed and waned in the history of Jewish mysticism, the general tenor of the Kabbalah and Hasidism was to accept both, and to hold that in repairing this world one could transcend it, and in transcending this world one could restore it. It is the very acts prompted by the world’s antinomies that both constitute the activist “immanent solution,” and provide humanity with an intuition of the value archetypes or Sefirot, which comprise the higher worlds (the transcendent solution). Indeed, the Kabbalists held that in performing Tikkun ha-Olam, the individual could not only make emendations in this world, but in all the worlds on high as well. Those who suggest that there is a choice between his two solutions to the problems of the world’s absurdities and contradictions, have failed to be sufficiently dialectical in their theology.
There is a further dialectic that is present in the symbols of the Lurianic Kabbalah. According to the Lurianists, just as the higher worlds resolve the contradictions and absurdities that exist in our own world, our world was actually created to resolve the antinomies of heaven and God. The reason for this is that it is only in a material world of chaos, toil, and trouble, that the values, which are mere abstractions in the heavens, can become fully real. The vessels must break, spirit must become enmeshed in matter, if the Sefirot (and God Himself) are to become what they truly are. As put by Vital:
If the worlds had not been created, along with all that is in them, the true manifestation of His blessed, eternal existence—past, present, and future—could not have been seen, for He would not have been called by the Name, HVYH.[6]
The Kabbalah, like Plotinus and the philosophers of the east, posits a transcendence of this material world as a means for relieving the puzzles, contradictions and sufferings of our own. The Kabbalah however, implies a transcendence in the other direction as well. In creating the material world, Ein-sof, as it were, transcends and thereby completes itself, by actualizing and fulfilling the values that lie at its core. It is in this sense that Zohar can assert that humankind creates and completes God.[7] Our world is the answer to the problems of the heavens just as the heavens are a solution to the antinomies on earth. On earth we have imperfect, chaotic and obscured actions that seek pure values to give them meaning. In heaven God has pure, abstract values, that must be instantiated in a chaotic, dangerous realm to make them real. As Findlay puts it:
The other world is, in fact, not so much another world as another half of one world, which two halves only make full rounded sense when seen in their mutual relevance and interconnection.[8]
The dual trends in which man yearns to transcend finitude and God seeks to become actual and real, constitute Ein-sof, in the fullest sense of this term. It is only as a result of the differentiation, deconstruction and later restoration and reunification of these two complementary realities (God and man) that the purpose of creation is ultimately realized and fulfilled.
Jacob Joseph Polonnoye, quotes the Baal Shem Tov as cautioning against a spiritualistic nullification of self and world:
I have heard from my teacher that the soul, having been hewn from its holy quarry, ought ever after to long for its place of origin; and lest its reality be extinguished as a result of its yearning, it has been surrounded with matter, so that it may also perform material acts as eating, drinking, conduct of business and the like, in order that it [the soul] may not be perpetually inflamed by the worship of the Holy One blessed be He, through the principle of the perfection (tikkun) and maintenance of body and soul. (Toldot Ya’aqov Yosef, trans. By Schatz-Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, p. 52).
The Baaal Shem Tov held that by means of active participation in the material world one raised the sparks imprisoned in matter and thereby promoted the perfection of the world, i.e. Tikkun ha-Olam. According to him, one was even permitted to cease prayer if approached by an individual who needs one assistance, or who simply desires conversation, on the grounds that God is present in even such mundane affairs (54). The world itself longs to be perfected and returned to God, and man must attend to this longing. He cannot forsake the world but must assist in restoring and redeeming it.
The Hasidic attitude toward the pain and suffering of this world bears an interesting comparison to the Buddhist point of view. For the Buddhist there is no denying that this world is one of abject suffering for which there is no material remedy. The Hasidim, following the Lurianic Kabbalah, went nearly as far, in holding that this world is one which, by virtue of its mixture in the “other side,” is almost completely filled with evil, with only the smallest admixture of good. Yet the Hasidim made “joy” central to their vision of life; sadness and regret becoming is Hasidism, one of the greatest of sins. Ultimately one should neither be fazed by the happenings of the world nor even by one’s own failings and transgressions, but simply strive to serve the Lord with happiness. While one will and should naturally be pained by misfortunes and one’s own sins, ultimately: “I do not worry about myself, whether I will be in Gehinnom; as there is now before me some thing by which I may do the will of my Creator, I will do it with joy and righteousness, and give pleasure to the Creator of all worlds.” (R. Dov Baer of Lubavitch)
The Maggid of Mezirich recognized that Tikkun ha-Olam extended beyond the mitzvot (commandments) prescribed by the Torah:
The mitzvot themselves are six hundred thirteen [in number], but when a person fulfills [the verse], “Know Him in all your ways” [Prov. 36], he can fulfill many times more than six hundred thirteen, without limit, for all his deeds are for the sake of heaven.”
[1] Schneur Zalman, Torah Or, p. 49., Translated and quoted in Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, p. 134.
[2]Rivka Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, p. 121.
[3]Ibid., p. 69.
[4]Dov Baer of Mezhirech, Maggid Devarev le-Ya’aqov, par. 73, pp. 126-7. Quoted in Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as Mysticism, p. 121.
[5]Dov Baer of Mezhirech, Maggid Devarev le-Ya’aqov, par. 110, p. 186. Quoted in Schatz Uffenheimer, Hasidism as mysticism, pp. 81-2.
[6] Sefer Etz Chayyim 1:1; Menzi and Padeh, The Tree of Life, p. 4. The term HVYH represents a reaarangement of the letters in God’s holiest name, the tetragrammaton, and has the meaning “existence.” Vital implies that God’s existence is dependent upon creation.
[7] Zohar III, 113a. Sperling and Simon, The Zohar, Vol. 5, p. 153; cf. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, p. 187.
[8] Findlay, The Transcendence of the Cave, p. 121.