Tsippi Kauffman- the Hasidic Story- A Call for Narrative Religiosity- JJTP (Eng)

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi ��.��63/�477�85X-��34��53

Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy �� (�0�4) �0�-��6

brill.com/jjtp

The Hasidic Story: A Call for Narrative Religiosity

Tsippi KauffmanDepartment of Jewish Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University

[email protected]

Abstract

The paper examines the dominance of narrative in Hasidic religious life through the discourse of narrative ethics and its implications for theology, specifically feminist the-ology, and for religion in general. I claim that the centrality of storytelling in Hasidism reflects and constructs an essential attitude toward religious life. This attitude directs one to narrative and contextual thinking, which both focus on the specific person, cir-cumstances, and emotions, as opposed to law, norms, and abstract determination. This centrality of storytelling is connected to a deep Hasidic awareness of the restrictive nature of normative religious life, a finite facet of the infinite paths to God.

Keywords

Hasidism – storytelling – narrative ethics – feminist theology – Martin Buber

Various opinions have been expressed about the purpose, function, and char-acteristics of the Hasidic story, both by Hasidim themselves and by scholars. Some limit themselves to one type of story or another, while others attempt to make a general claim. The present paper discusses the significance, unique to Hasidic culture, of story-centeredness itself in life and in literature, regard-less of the specific content of the story. I will examine the dominance of nar-rative in Hasidic religious life through the discourse of narrative ethics and its implications for theology, specifically feminist theology, and for religion in general.

102 Kauffman

Journal of Jewish Thought & Philosophy 22 (2014) 101-126

Storytelling: Hasidic and Scholarly Reasoning

Various explanations have been provided for the significance of the Hasidic story. Before we turn to several theses advanced by contemporary scholars, it should be noted that Hasidic thinkers themselves explained the central role of storytelling within their religious life as a sacred practice, and that there are many Hasidic teachings and stories about storytelling.1 The tsaddiqim asked and answered questions such as the following: What is the place of storytell-ing among spiritual practices? Why do stories captivate and charm us? How should they be listened to and told? What effects do they have? That the tsad-diqim reflected on storytelling in this way undoubtedly reveals the value they placed on storytelling and their awareness of the extraordinary role of narra-tive in their religious life, as compared to previous eras.

The Besht, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1700–1760), the founder of Hasidism, was also the founder of Hasidic storytelling. Storytelling was one of the ways through which he and other tsaddiqim attracted people to the new movement.2 In Hasidic teaching, storytelling is a holy activity equal to Torah study or prayer. According to a saying attributed to the Besht, telling stories is equivalent to studying the secrets of the Maʿaseh Merkavah, the mystic study of the Divine Chariot.3 Various Hasidic stories assert the value of religious storytelling vis-à-vis the more established practices of Torah study and prayer.4

1 For surveys of the Hasidic story from the point of view of the Hasidim, see Gedalyah Nigal, The Hasidic Tale, trans. Edward Levin (Oxford: Littman, 2008), 50–76; Chana Hendler, “The Hasidic Story: Literary Designs and Metaphysical Stances: A Study of Menahem Mendel Bodek’s Writings” [Hebrew] (PhD dissertation, Bar-Ilan University, 2003), 50–60.

2 See, e.g., Yeshayahu Wolf Tsukernik, Sippurei Ḥasidut Chernobyl, ed. Gedalyah Nigal (Jeru-salem: Carmel, 1994), 44–46; Sippurei Michael Levy Rudkinson, ed. Gedalyah Nigal (Jerusalem: Institute for the Study of Hasidic Literature, 1989), 67.

3 In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov [Shivḥei ha-Besht]: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism, trans. and ed. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 199.

4 For example, Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin esteemed storytelling so highly that, according to a Hasidic story, he once began telling stories of the tsaddiqim with such enthusiasm that he lost track of time, going on for so long that the time for prayer passed. He suddenly stopped in the middle and said: “The time for prayer has already passed and I didn’t pray. But, essentially, what is the difference between telling stories about tsaddiqim and praying? Prayer is of the aspect of ‘praise the Lord!’ [Ps. 113:1], while telling stories is of the aspect of ‘praise the ser-vants of the Lord!’ [ibid.].” Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin interprets “praise (the) servants of the Lord” as a command to praise the “servants,” in contrast with the accepted reading of the phrase, which holds that the “servants” are being commanded to praise God, i.e., “Praise, O servants, the Lord!” On Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin, see David Assaf, The Regal Way: The Life and Times of

103The Hasidic Story: A Call for Narrative Religiosity


One explanation for the high value attributed to storytelling is that Hasidic masters used this practice as a theurgical tool; it was said of the Besht that he was able to “unify yiḥudim [i.e., to unify the Sefirotic world] and repair the broken supernal pipes by telling stories.”5 Moshe Idel indicates two different understandings of the connection between storytelling and Maʿaseh Merkavah: one emphasizes the magical implications, whether general or more specific, regarding, for example, the telling of a story about a miracle as a reiteration that causes the repetition of the primordial miracle; the second sees storytelling as an instrument for returning the tsaddiq’s soul from intense states of ecstasy, bringing the shekhinah, the Divine Presence, down with him.6

According to Joseph Dan,7 the Hasidic story is built upon the Lurianic myths as follows: The Hasidic tsaddiq is seen as a hero able to descend into the kelipot, the lower parts of reality, and elevate from within them sacred sparks (nitsotsot). By means of that deed, there is a partial repair (tiqqun) of the lower and the upper worlds, joining other deeds of repair in the process toward redemption. Storytelling by the tsaddiq is such an act. Every mundane story, even a story of evil, has within it a core narrative that is a variation on the Lurianic myth of creation. Only the Hasidic master can recognize the sacred myth beneath the clothing of the secular story, and, by telling the story in his own words with the right intention, he is able to redeem the story and raise the sparks hidden within. There is, in addition, another type of story—those that are told by Hasidim about the tsaddiq. They cannot perform the holy and mysterious work of the tsaddiq, but they can tell stories about him. Hasidic hagiography, then, portrays the tsaddiq as a mythological hero.

Dan elaborates an important principle, already seen in the Hasidic reflec-tions on storytelling, that is fundamental to our discussion: the concept of the sacred story. Storytelling (and listening) is a religious act, a ritualistic deed that receives a significant place within the center of Hasidic religious life, unlike its peripheral status earlier in history.

One might question Dan’s division of Hasidic tales into two groups accord-ing to whether the narrator is a tsaddiq or a Hasid, but our focus here is on the

R. Israel of Ruzhin [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1997); for his attitude to storytelling, see 145–150.

5 See Rabbi Nathan in Rabbi Naḥman of Breslav, Sippurei maʿasiyot (New York: Horizon, 1947), 6, “Haqdamah rishonah.” See also Moshe Idel’s discussion in Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 185–188.

6 Idel, Hasidism, 185–188.7 See Joseph Dan, The Hasidic Story: Its History and Development [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Keter,

1975), 46–58.

104 Kauffman


content of these two collections: on the one hand we have stories about tsad-diqim (told by tsaddiqim or Hasidim), and on the other hand, stories that are first told by tsaddiqim (and may be retold by either tsaddiqim or Hasidim), but clearly do not deal with tsaddiqim.8 Indeed, the stories told by tsaddiqim usu-ally do not unfold in a Jewish context, but feature Gentiles, queens and kings, soldiers, artists, robbers, beggars, animals, and so on. Rivka Dvir-Goldberg focuses on stories told by tsaddiqim, while Zeev Gries and Yoav Elstein deal especially with those told about them.

Dvir-Goldberg9 has devoted a study to Hasidic stories that, significantly, cannot be defined as hagiography. Their heroes are not Hasidic masters, but various figures who are typically taken from popular literature. Furthermore, the stories are usually based on a familiar plot and infused with an idea, mes-sage, or meaning by the Hasidic narrator.10 Although Dvir-Goldberg assigns considerable importance to the lesson of the story and its content, and affords secondary significance to the genre, she also recognizes that narrative itself is usually necessary for the expression of the story’s content. What distinguishes a story from a derashah, a lesson taught by tsaddiqim at Sabbath meals, is its indirect message. While the derashah contains a clear statement of the mes-sage that the tsaddiq aims to communicate to his listeners, says Dvir-Goldberg, the story invites the Hasid who hears it to participate in developing its spiritual message in a way that suits his personality and existential state.11 In other cases, the purpose of clothing the message within a story, suggests Dvir-Goldberg, is to disguise problematic content, such as criticism of an individual or the com-munity, that would be uncomfortable or even dangerous if uttered directly.

Returning to the main category of Hasidic stories, hagiography, we find that scholars have proposed many explanations of its significance. Gries asserts that hagiography is extremely important for Hasidic research because of its

8 We may also question Dan’s assertion that every Hasidic story has a connection to Lurianic myth. Perhaps a more moderate way to put it is by saying that the tzaddiq (and everyone else involved in storytelling) is obliged to find in every story an expression of one of God’s emanations, the Sefirot. By focusing on the Sefirotic element within the story, the heav-enly sparks are elevated. For an example of such an analysis of a Hasidic story, see Tsippi Kauffman, “Two Tsadikim, Two Women in Labor, and One Salvation: Reading Gender in a Hasidic Story,” Jewish Quarterly Review 101 (2011): 420–438.

9 Rivka Dvir-Goldberg, The Zaddik and the Palace of Leviathan: A Study of Hassidic Tales Told by Zaddikim [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameʾuḥad, 2003).

10 In this category, she discusses stories told by Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin, Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, and Rabbi Levi Isaac of Berditchev, and mentions Rabbi Naḥman of Breslav’s stories.

11 Dvir-Goldberg, Zaddik, 12–13.



significance for Hasidim as an important tool for educating, fashioning a psy-chological reality, shaping the Hasidic lifestyle, and constructing a Hasidic collective memory.12 Other scholars focus on different features of storytelling. Many of these overlap with the explanations given by Hasidim themselves: the stories function on educational, spiritual, theurgical, and other levels. Most of those explanations concentrate on the tsaddiq as the main character of the story. According to Yoav Elstein, this is only one part of the picture. Elstein stresses that the Hasidic story is fundamentally “ecstatic,” namely, that it has an amoral tendency when compared to “awe-inspiring stories” (sippurei yereʾim), which tend to organize the society according to prevailing norms. While the second type of narrative, having an “ethical” orientation, portrays an exalted hero and a plot that expresses and strengthens normative values, the first, with an “ecstatic” orientation, depicts another kind of hero, who may be an ordinary person, performing a spontaneous deed that is surprising and usually exceeds normative borders.

Elstein does not neglect the presence of the tsaddiq in most of the stories, but speaks of double heroes, one of superior social status and the other of inferior status, each empowering the other. The visionary tsaddiq, penetrating through veils of vulgar behavior, ignorance, and anonymity, identifies the infe-rior hero, whether the young boy playing the flute during Yom Kippur prayers (whose playing opens the gates of Heaven),13 the shepherd jumping over the pit (who is chosen to join the Besht in defeating the Frankists),14 or the sinner bookbinder carefully collecting the white margins of holy books (which tip the scale in his favor at the heavenly court).15 The tsaddiq’s greatness is his access to the real essence of things/people. Thus, the inferior hero provides an opportunity for the tsaddiq’s powers to become manifest, when the superior hero reveals the uniqueness of the plain character. Within this frame, Elstein focuses on the inferior hero, emphasizing his surprising way of pleasing God, which usually does not follow religious norms and often even violates them.

12 See Zeev Gries, “Is the Best of the Study Its Lie? The Place of Hagiographic Literature in the History of Hasidism” [Hebrew], Daʿat 44 (2000): 85–94, esp. 86–87. See also Zeev Gries, “Between Literature and History: Prolegomenon for Discussion and Analysis of Examples from ‘In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov’ ” [Hebrew], Tura 3 (1994): 153–181; idem, The Book in Early Hasidism: Genres, Authors, Scribes, Managing Editors, and Its Review by Their Contemporaries and Scholars [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1992), 35–40.

13 See Yaakov Margaliot, Gedolim maʿaseh tsaddiqim, ed. Gedalyah Nigal (Jerusalem: Ins-titute for the Study of Hasidic Literature, 1992), section 19.

14 See Dov Ber Arman, Devarim ʿarevim (Munkatch, 1903–1905), 7.15 See Mordechai Ben-Yehezkel, Sefer ha-maʿasiyot, vol. 5 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1968), 355–361.

106 Kauffman


Several interpretive possibilities thus exist. One focuses on the tsaddiq as the main character, and thereby stresses the function of the story as organizing society according to Hasidic normative values, that is, strengthening the social order; Dan16 and Nigal17 write in this vein. The second, presented by Elstein, focuses on the simple person as the main figure, and so claims that the Hasidic story functions by breaching the social order. A third option sees the Hasidic story as a dynamic movement between two poles, with the tension that this entails. In the corpus of Hasidic tales as a whole, some narratives are closer to the first or second pattern, but the majority of them fall into the third category, where there is an equilibrium between norm and transgression; indeed, in the corpus as a whole there is a kind of equilibrium between the poles of norm and breaching the norm.

Narrative Ethics as a Framework for Observing Storytelling

Returning to our initial distinction between stories about tsaddiqim and sto-ries told by them, we may ask whether there is an encompassing explanation that might embrace both. Another series of questions should be raised as to the place of the story in the wider context of Hasidic culture: To what extent did storytelling become important in Hasidism? Do Hasidic stories advance towards the center but still somehow preserve their peripheral standing, or do they really enter the canon? And if so, how does bringing the Hasidic story into the religious center affect other components of Hasidic religiosity? In order to answer these questions I shall turn to another category that is becoming more and more widespread in recent philosophical, psychological, and theological discourse: narrative perspective, as opposed to normative, formal, universal, or abstract perspectives. Narrative is often defined and discussed in terms of its literary features, but a vast body of discourse posits narrative as a way of think-ing, as a methodological tool, and as a holistic perspective on various issues; it supplies an alternative way of thinking that reveals the obvious, (sometimes) transparent, abstract, universal, general, or reductive way of thinking. Adopting this approach to narrative, I would like to argue, before delving into internal differentiations and dissimilarities, that the centrality of narrative in Hasidism is a declaration in itself. To provide a broader context for our discussion, I will

16 Joseph Dan, The Hasidic Novel [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1966), 13–14; idem, The Hasidic Story, 17–24.

17 See Elstein’s criticism of Dan and Nigal: Yoav Elstein, The Ecstatic Story in Hasidic Lite r-ature [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1998), 22–31.



now elaborate on some of the main directions in which narrative discourse has assumed a greater standing.

PhilosophyKant is the most important and fluent spokesman of the theoretical-juridical model of ethics, to use Margaret U. Walker’s terminology.18 His main aspiration was to formulate an ethics that is indifferent to the concrete agent.19 Kant’s approach became one of the foundations of the primary Western model of ethics, which strives for rationalism, universalism, generality, objectivity, and abstraction while rejecting emotions, context, concrete circumstances, specific time and place, and so forth, as elements in moral decision-making. Within the theoretical-juridical framework, stories seem completely irrelevant to the philosophical discourse.

Many critics of Kant and his various successors attack the epistemological or psychological adequacy of those theories.20 Most of the suggested alterna-tives to the dominant model of ethics include narratives as sources for their discussions, or they develop a narrative discourse that shares features such as imparting meaning and importance to the concrete situation, relationships, and emotions.21 Narrative ethics is, then, an ethics that rejects the assump-tion that morality is socially modular—i.e., that there is a universal core of

18 See Margaret U. Walker, Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1998), 7–9, 36–39, and passim.

19 Kant’s categorical imperative demands the following: “Act as if your maxims should serve at the same time as the universal law (of all rational beings).” Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 438–439.

20 Walker, Moral Understandings, 19–27.21 Many return to Aristotle’s virtue ethics instead of Plato as a source for inspiration. See

Adia Mendelson-Maoz, “Ethics and Literature: Introduction,” Philosophia 35 (2007): 111–116. Aristotle’s virtue ethics opened the door to developing strong ties between ethics and literature in the works of Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, Alasdair MacIntyre, Bernard Williams, and others. To place this issue in a broader context, one can turn to Jerome Bruner’s claim that a paradigm shift took place in the humanities—in literary theory, historiography, psychology, anthropology, and so on—when narrative began to be con-sidered not only as a form that represents reality, but also one that constitutes it. Bruner asserts the existence of two ways of constructing reality: categories—i.e., logical prin-ciples and other tools used naturally in mathematics and empirical sciences—and narra-tives. Actually, he argues, we organize our experience and our memory of human events mainly in the form of narrative, although all sciences have tried to imitate natural sci-ence patterns of representing and constructing reality. See Jerome Bruner, “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1991): 1–21.

108 Kauffman


moral knowledge, and that different situations are merely different occasions for applying the sole moral point of view for the sole moral agent.22 Instead of abstract rules, narrative ethics privileges telling stories, developing a literary imagination, and looking deeply at a particular event in its context.23

TheologyIn framing her new theology, Daphne Hampson, an outstanding feminist theologian, relies on philosophers and scholars such as Iris Murdoch, Martha Nussbaum, Carol Gilligan, and others who criticized the universal/formal/abstract form of moral discourse. Hampson resists the Christian theology that rotates around a main image of God: that of father, king, ruler, and therefore lawgiver.24 She tries to articulate a new religious path. Her work goes beyond the discourse of narrative ethics, virtue ethics, and feminist ethics25 when she claims that those instructions for moral life are actually the path to spiritual and religious life.26 Presence in the concrete situation and openness to the relation-ships involved, says Hampson, opens one to the spiritual dimension of reality.27

22 Walker, Moral Understandings, 9, 17–18.23 See, e.g., Carol Gilligan’s well-known discussion of the scale for moral development pre-

sented by Lawrence Kohlberg, and her suggestion of an alternative perspective on eth-ics. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Gilligan argues for two different moral orientations: justice and care. The orientation of care, as opposed to the dominant ori-entation of justice, uses narrative as its main tool and treats every moral dilemma as a singular net of relationships anchored in time and place, a sole “story” requesting an end.

24 Hampson claims: “Monotheism leads in a straight line to the concept of ethics as a deca-logue, handed down from on high. The resultant ethos is one of uniformity and confor-mity. . . . It would seem unlikely that women would have conceived of the relationship to God in terms of law and covenant.” Daphne Hampson, After Christianity (1996; repr., London: SCM Press, 2002), 136.

25 Hampson elaborates on the notion of feminist ethics at length in chapter 3 of After Christianity. There, she emphasizes the psychoanalytical aspects (Chodorow), the social psychology perspective (Gilligan), and others, in order to suggest the radically differ-ent feminist understanding of the self-in-relation, compared to that which is built into Western thought.

26 She elaborates particularly on the notion of attention, which is fundamental in the writ-ings of philosophers of narrative ethics. One of the main features of attention is its focus on the here and now, being present to the particular circumstances, and responding according to the concrete context. See Hampson, After Christianity, 260–261.

27 Hampson writes: “If there is a training involved in openness to that which is God, it must surely consist in the first place in being present to others on a mundane level.” After Christianity, 264–265.



Her religiosity is thus based solely on the private, the particular, and the here and now, and she objects absolutely to the general religious law.

In contrast to Hampson’s total negation of obedience to general law and to established religion in general, other feminist theologians try to negotiate between the poles of the abstract/general/noncontextual perspective and the concrete/private/contextual one. For example, Judith Plaskow, in her book Standing Again at Sinai, ponders the central place of law and halakhah in Judaism, asking: “Is law a female form?”28 Is law especially congenial to women? Would women have expressed themselves through law, given other options?29 Plaskow describes various problems in a religious system based upon hal-akhah. She concludes that the deep question of the compatibility of feminism and law must be left open and that there is no need for a single answer.

Another Jewish feminist thinker, Rachel Adler, is more willing to accept the centrality of law in religious life, but she searches for ways to renew halakhah through working with narratives. Adler bases her discussion on Robert Cover’s “Nomos and Narrative.”30 She follows his argument that law is generated by “a universe of meanings, values, and rules, embedded in stories.”31 Following Cover, Adler asserts that law is inherently vulnerable to revision and reinter-pretation because it depends on narratives.

Another discussion of halakhah and alternative religious structures, articu-lated by William Cutter,32 stems from narrative ethics, especially in the context of bioethics, and has no explicit linkage to feminist thinking, though many elements of his discussion echo those we have just reviewed. Cutter’s declared aim is to promote halakhic thinking that will be influenced by a narrative

28 Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), 65.

29 Plaskow refers to Gilligan’s research regarding differences in boys’ and girls’ games (i.e., boys’ fascination with the legal elaboration of rules as opposed to girls’ being “more will-ing to make exceptions”), linking it to the central value of open structure when femi-nist contemporary spirituality expresses itself in ritual. Gilligan, Different Voice, 10; see Plaskow, Standing, 65–77.

30 Robert Cover, “The Supreme Court, 1982 Term—Foreword: Nomos and Narrative,” Har- vard Law Review 97, no. 4 (1983): 4–68.

31 Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1998), 34. For her presentation of a variety of philosophical, ethical, and religious criticisms of and objections to the law, focusing on feminist perspec-tives, see 34–59.

32 William Cutter, “Do the Qualities of Story Influence the Quality of Life? Some Perspectives on the Limitations and Enhancements of Narrative Ethics,” in Quality of Life in Jewish Bioethics, ed. Noam Zohar (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), 55–66.

110 Kauffman


perspective.33 He expresses his attitude through a careful reading of talmudic aggadah (narrative), showing how to use the Sages’ narratives not as illustra-tions or as a marginal subversive voice, but as a way of thinking when deal-ing with states of conflict. Cutter distinguishes between the common use of aggadic narrative as a modification of the general halakhic discussion—in other words, the narrative is assigned a secondary function—and a different evaluation of aggadic narrative as a primary technique for moral or halakhic discourse. There are two options, Cutter stresses: to look at narrative from an ethical point of view, or to look at ethics from a narrative perspective. This distinction, according to Cutter, is analogous to Arthur Frank’s differentiation between “thinking about stories” and “thinking with stories.”34 In the former case, narratives provide platforms for ethical discourse from which ethical principles can be deduced. Thus, “thinking about” the concrete story is but a stimulus for identifying the abstract moral rule. In contrast, “thinking with” stories refers to the use of narratives not in order to articulate rigid conclu-sions, but, on the contrary, to subvert the definite, without the aim of searching for new rules. The narrative’s subversion of the stable state does not purport to create an alternative stable state. Narrative thinking thus arouses many poten-tial conclusions, preserving and presenting the relevance of specific relation-ships, time, and place, demanding contextual awareness.35 Cutter asks frankly:

Can it be that systematic ethics and halakhic formalism seek to free agents from the pain of the tragic, incomplete nature of decision mak-ing? In other words, might it be that narrative thinking removes the pro-tection supplied by classic halakhic formalism along with the consistency of philosophical logic?36

33 It should be noted that whereas Plaskow uses the term “halakhah” as an equivalent for general law, for Cutter this term refers to a wider religious way in which to walk (as the literal meaning of halakhah comes from halikhah, i.e., walking), a way that can—at least potentially—include narrative/feminist/alternative structures of religiosity.

34 See Arthur Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 23–24.

35 Narrative is always rooted in time, while a theoretical norm is (or pretends to be) timeless. On the relationship between time and narrative, see Elliot R. Wolfson, Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 1–54.

36 Cutter, “Qualities,” 63.



Narrative Ethics and Hasidism

Returning, then, to the Hasidic context, I will argue that the centrality of story - telling in Hasidism is first and foremost an expression of an implicit and explicit attitude towards religious life. This attitude opens the door to narra-tive and contextual thinking, which centers on the specific person, the existen-tial condition, relationships, and emotions, rather than on the norm, the law, the always-true abstract maxim. The place of narrative in Hasidic religious life should be seen in the light of arguments made by Walker, Gilligan, Hampson, Plaskow, Adler, Cutter, and others. The standing of narrative in Hasidic reli-gious life presents another polyphonic religious focus, equal in value to the Hasidic derashot, on the one hand, and the halakhah, on the other, both of which represent the normative and general perspective.

One might ask why derashot are located at the normative pole as opposed to Hasidic stories, for at first glance, the former are more aggadic than hal-akhic. Let me sharpen here the distinction between narrative and norm, which is definitely not parallel to that between aggadah and halakhah. The accepted definitions of the latter pair can already be seen in talmudic research at the end of the nineteenth century.37 Though many changes, variations, and refinements have been made regarding the terms halakhah and aggadah, the old distinction is still accurate in general: halakhah is the discourse regarding Jewish practice—commandments, laws, and customs—while aggadah is all

37 See, for example, Yom Tov Lipman (Leopold) Zunz, The Sermons of the Jews [Hebrew], ed. Hanoch Albeck (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974), a translation of Zunz’s Die Gottesdiesntlichen Vortrage der Juden: Historisch Entwickelt (1832); Ephraim E. Urbach, The Sages [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975); Yonah Frenkel, Midrash and Agadah [Hebrew], 3 vols. (Tel Aviv: Open University Press, 1996); Louis Ginzberg, On Jewish Law and Lore (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1955); Zipora Kagan, Halacha and Aggada as a Code of Literature [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1988); Yair Lorberbaum, Image of God [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Schocken, 2004), 105–126; Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 1–30; Shmuel Safrai, “The Attitude of the Aggada to the Halacha,” in Dor Le-Dor: From the End of Biblical Times up to the Redaction of the Talmud, Studies in Honor of Joshua Efron [Hebrew], ed. Aryeh Kasher and Aharon Oppenheimer (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1995), 215–234; Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative, Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); idem, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010); Jacob Neusner, The Halakhah and the Aggadah: Theological Perspectives (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001); Barry S. Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

112 Kauffman


the rest—parables, sayings, opinions, ideas, values, proverbs, and also stories.38 For example, according to this categorization, sayings of the Sages such as “conquering is a male way of being”39 or “women’s mind is light”40 are aggadic, because they do not (at least not explicitly) instruct a person how to behave, but describe normal or common behavior.

I prefer to make a different distinction, in which the boundary is drawn not between commandments and everything else, but between general/abstract/theoretical norms and particular/contextual narratives. Reading Talmud in light of this distinction between normative discourse and narrative discourse expresses different sensibilities and produces different readings. “Aggadic” say-ings like “conquering is a male way of being” or “women’s mind is light” are in fact normative discourse, because they articulate a general, noncontextual claim about males and females. Furthermore, one can argue that these sayings can easily be interpreted as norms regulating behavior, as a commandment for men or an obligation for women.41

Although the derashot are not halakhic, they belong to the normative dis-course within Hasidism, which is general, theoretical, and noncontextual, and not to the narrative discourse, which refers to stories—that is, to texts that occur in a particular time and place and feature specific characters and unique occurrences.42 Derashot sometimes contain direct instructions like the fol-lowing: “the rule [is that] the tsaddiq has to do all his deeds for the sake of Heaven.”43 This instruction and many others apply to everyone at all times. But

38 This is the categorization according to Zunz, Urbach, and others; see Frenkel’s summary: Midrash and Agadah, 1:20–22.

.b. Yev. 65b ,איש דרכו לכבוש 39.b. Shab. 33b ,נשים דעתן קלה 4041 For a close reading of b. Yevamot regarding the sugyot (discursive units) on fertility,

using the categorization of narrative and normative discourse, see Itamar Brener and Tsippi Kauffman, “Normative Discourse and Narrative Discourse in Fertility Sugyot” (forthcoming).

42 This distinction should, however, be qualified. Although the derashot literature and the Hasidic stories constitute distinct corpora, the separation is not total. Sometimes a derashah includes a tale, while on occasion a story ends with a moral or a generalization. On this, see Tsippi Kauffman, In All Your Ways Know Him: The Concept of God and Avodah be-Gashmiyut in the Early Stages of Hasidism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2009), 17–18. Nevertheless, this qualification does not subvert the main argument.

43 See Rabbi Dov Baer of Meziriech, Maggid devarav le-Yaʿaqov, ed. Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1990), “Liquṭim ḥadashim,” 389. Compare the Baal Shem Tov’s say-ing: “If someone has to speak with his fellow, or to hear from him inconsequential talk,



there are, of course, many expressions that are not instructions but are still of a general nature, for example: “According to one’s thought, so are the worlds above him that are related to him.”44

Hasidic hermeneutics is highly creative, often producing a variety of view-points that are sometimes played against each other. This state of affairs might suggest that derashot emerge from a singular encounter between the tsaddiq and the text, an encounter that depends on a particular state of mind in a par-ticular set of circumstances. Nevertheless, the product is usually articulated in a general form.45

It should be stressed, however, that a narrative, even when it seems to pres-ent an obvious moral, is always particular and can always be read in a way that opposes the normative reading. For example, the stories that celebrate a poor or ignorant character whose unique deed is perceived as superior to a lifetime of righteousness46 do not suggest a universal rule, a categorical imperative. These tales suggest another possible religious path, without rejecting the con-sistent path of religiosity. Although there is a point at the end of the story, the tale actually expresses a conflict and puts a question mark above every deed of the listener/reader: Is this the act that is going to save the world?

Other examples of the elusive nature of narrative discourse are stories that express criticism of a Hasidic trait or behavior: the criticism by the wife

he can elevate him/it also by thinking that hearing is through the soul, which is part of God above, and he should direct his thought to connecting it [back to God].” Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Tzofnat Paneaḥ, ed. Gedalyah Nigal (Jerusalem: Institute for the Study of Hasidic Literature, 1989), 260. And see also Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl’s saying: “Everyone should cleave to the Torah [. . .] to its inwardness.” Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, Meʾor ʿeinayim (Jerusalem: Meʾor ʿEinayim, 1989), 284, and many others.

44 “According to one’s thought, so are the worlds above him that are related to him. If his thinking is in holiness and spirituality, so are the worlds above him, and if his thinking is in impurity, so are the worlds.” Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, Ben Porat Yosef (Brooklyn, 1995), 275–276, and many others.

45 For example, Rabbi Zev Wolf of Zhitomir cites his master, “the Great Maggid,” regarding the proper attitude towards earthliness, in two contradictory manners: one warns against being involved voluntarily in mundane affairs (Rabbi Zev Wolf of Zhitomir, ʾOr ha-Meir [Jerusalem: Even Israel, 2000], 1:148), while the other encourages pleasing God through corporeal worship (ibid., 1:241). Both derashot offer general and noncontextual directives such as “a person is not allowed to/required to . . .”

46 Yoav Elstein, “Morphology and Symbolism in Hasidic Tales Based on the Theme ‘A Single Act Can Save One’s Soul’ ” [Hebrew], Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 11–12 (1990), 18–45. See also above, nn. 13, 14, 15.

114 Kauffman


of Rabbi Abraham “the Angel” regarding his sexual abstinence,47 the criti-cism by Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa of the way Rabbi Uri of Strelisk, his colleague, conducts his Hasidic court,48 and so on. Again, the dominant voice of each tale criticizes a particular behavior, but between the lines we discern a plurality of responses: there are multiple ways of dealing with sexuality on a spectrum between abstinence and marital relations (after all, the story is also part of Rabbi Abraham’s hagiography), as well as multiple ways of leadership (Rabbi Uri, too, is a Hasidic master). As stressed by Mikhail Bakhtin, polyphony is one of the constituent features of narrative: although there is an authorial voice and a dominant perspective, the narrative includes a diversity of view-points and voices—sometimes overt, and sometimes covert.49

We may extend this observation to a broad category of Hasidic stories whose message seems clear and unequivocal: miracles and wondrous deeds performed by the tsaddiq. In this group of tales there is usually no criticism or conflict, just an acknowledgment of the glory of the tsaddiq. Yet even this alleg-edly monochromatic type of story (which includes hundreds if not thousands of variations) relates precisely to a special moment, to a certain set of circum-stances that led the tsaddiq to a certain response. Apart from strengthening the tsaddiq’s superior position, tales about the Besht healing the ill,50 saving a community from a blood libel,51 and so on weaken the regular confidence in natural laws, in knowledge about human nature; they weaken the certainty of norm and routine, opening the way for all kinds of surprises—both for the characters in the story as well as for the audience of the tale.

Another group of stories praises the extraordinary way in which the tsad-diq fulfills a commandment: the Besht’s total dedication for giving charity, in a way that his wife could not bear;52 Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov’s unique tiqqun

47 Shivḥei ha-Besht, 94–99.48 Israel Berger, Simḥat Yiśra eʾl (Piotrkow, 1910), “Maʾamrei Simḥah,” 52. See the discussion of

Dvir-Goldberg, The Zaddik, 88–90.49 Bakhtin dealt especially with Dostoevsky’s poetics; see M. M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dos-

toevsky’s Poetics, trans. R. W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973). His concept of polyphony (and other aspects of his theory, as well) has been implemented over the last decades more broadly, in many literary realms. For an example of reading stories of the Sages through the prism of Bakhtin’s theory, see, e.g., Inbar Raveh, Fragments of Being: Stories of the Sages: Literary Structures and World-View [Hebrew] (Beersheva: Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan Dvir, and Heksherim Institute, Ben-Gurion University, 2008), 57–77.

50 E.g., Shivḥei ha-Besht, 76–78, 129–131, 160, 252.51 E.g., Shivḥei ha-Besht, 161–163, 241–242.52 See Shivḥei ha-Besht, 179.



ḥatsot (kabbalistic ritual of prayer and mourning at midnight), with his sneak-ing at night to a poor woman’s house;53 Rabbi Jacob Isaac (the Holy ‘Jew’s)enthusiastic prayer from which he could not recover without the help of his family.54 On a superficial level, these stories seem to be vehicles for strengthen-ing the norm, but a deeper look reveals that this performance of one selected commandment in a way that exceeds the norm seems to be a singular self-expression that takes the normative behavior to an extreme, in a manner that almost subverts the norm, and surely cannot represent a standard directive.

Hasidic leaders and thinkers do not breach the bounds of the normative in halakhic and ideological discourse. As shown recently regarding the idea of ʿaverah li-shmah, a sin for God’s sake,55 and as other studies claim with respect to the history of Hasidism, this movement does not cross the lines,56 although the mitnaggedim, the opponents of Hasidim, castigated them as sinners. Taking the Hasidic stories into consideration, we may have to refine the picture drawn by Hasidic research up till now. Perhaps the mitnaggedim—though one cannot suspect them of being neutral judges—did capture the atmosphere generated by Hasidic storytelling, unlike the derashot and the hanhagot (conduct litera-ture), and that atmosphere paved the way for their accusations.57

The narratives do, however, proclaim a message that is subversive, if not necessarily transgressive—although there are enough illustrations of trans-gression, too, for example, playing the flute on Yom Kippur. Generally speak-ing, the narratives exceed the normative borders, sometimes including gender borders and other hierarchical structures; they question priorities and rigid

53 See Menahem Mendel Bodek, Sefer maʿasei tsaddiqim (Lemberg, 1864), 40–41. On this story see Niham Ross, “Tiqqun Hasot of the Rabbi of Sasev: Symbolic Ritual and its Literary Reception” [Hebrew], Kabbalah 26 (2012): 289–319.

54 See Yoetz Kim Kadish Rakatz, Niflaʾot ha-Yehudi (Piotrkow, 1908), 53. 55 See Kauffman, In All Your Ways, 523–571.56 Except for the times of prayer, which is the only border shifted by Hasidim, on the basis

of the enormous significance of being spiritually prepared for prayer. See Mordecai Wilensky, Hasidim and Mitnaggedim: A Study of Controversy between Them in the Years 1772–1815 [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1970), 1:17–18. For Hasidism and halakhah, see also Ze’ev Gries, Conduct Literature (Regimen Vitae): Its History and Place in the Life of Beshtian Hasidism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1990), 140–147.

57 In this article I approach narratives mostly as products of a culture, as texts that reflect and construct Hasidic thinking and practice. Nevertheless, I do not neglect the historical perspective, namely, the possibility of analyzing stories as testimonies to real transgres-sions and sins, or at least as testimonies to Hasidic society’s tolerance of telling stories that raise such a possibility.

116 Kauffman


value systems, suggesting instead a spontaneous religious impulse that leads to unique, sometimes startling, deeds fitting each person in each situation.58

Living in a world in which a central religious practice involves listening to stories—tales whose heroes are tsaddiqim and anonymous poor or ignorant people, kings and slaves, women and men, adults and children, Gentiles and Jews, the living and the dead, each tale having its own irregularity or abnor-mality—deeply affects religious life. The models in this culture are not only exalted authority figures but potentially Everyman. It is also not always clear what kind of model is given, what it is that should be imitated. Living in a world of storytelling establishes a society with a worldview and a practice of “thinking with stories.”59

The uniqueness of the narrative is a model for a unique way of life, for being in the present, for hearing someone’s voice among the polyphony of reality, for not trying to reduce multidimensional experience into one plane of meaning, that is, the perspective of abstract law. In Hasidic literature, and in Hasidic culture, religious life seems to rotate around two poles: the general, normative pole, reflected through halakhic life, the derashot, and the hanhagot literature,60 on the one hand, and on the other the private, narrative pole, reflected through the sacred activity of storytelling and listening to stories.

Although I refer here to Hasidic stories as a genre, as a practice of storytell-ing no matter what their content, whenever the content itself expresses this conflict regarding the narrative form more clearly, our argument is obviously strengthened. Namely, if one of the main features of the narrative is its refusal to extract from its context a general rule, its objection to abstraction, its eva-sion of the normative social order and order in general, then a narrative that exemplifies this function explicitly in its content intensifies the perspective. In this, Elstein’s above-mentioned thesis about the ecstatic, amoral nature of Hasidic tales strengthens my argument regarding Hasidic narratives in general, including those that are not covered by Elstein’s explanation.

58 For a gripping discussion of the limits of law and norm in Jewish mysticism, and of extending the law beyond its limits, see Wolfson’s development of the term “hyperno-mianism”: Elliot R. Wolfson, Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 232–285.

59 See Cutter, “Qualities.”60 Many Hasidic masters did not write halakhic books, while others did, for example Rabbi

Shlomo Zalman of Liadi’s ʿArukh ha-shulḥan, Rabbi Avraham Bornstein of Sochaczew’s She eʾlot u-teshuvot ʾavnei nezer, Rabbi Chaim Halberstam of Sanz’s Divrei ḥayyim, and more. Many of them wrote short papers called hanhagot that sum up the main norms important for each rabbi. For further details, see Gries, Conduct Literature.



Reflections on Buber’s Perspective on Storytelling

One might ask whether the preceding argument is simply a rearticulation of Martin Buber’s main thesis regarding Hasidism that uses a different vocabulary. Before answering, let me briefly present Buber’s conception of Hasidic tales and of Hasidism in general.

Buber was one of the first to celebrate the Hasidic tale, one of the first authors outside Hasidic circles to enthusiastically collect and publish Hasidic stories.61 He was the first to translate and publish those stories in foreign languages, and he became their principle interpreter, expounding their significance.

One of the profound and well-known controversies between Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem involves the question of the proper sources for studying Hasidism. Buber used the stories as his primary source for Hasidic research, while Scholem rejected his reliance on stories, accusing Buber of subjectivity.62 Scholem himself almost exclusively studied the derashot of Hasidic masters. The debate was developed and expressed in their writings,63 and many articles followed.64 Buber answered his critics, arguing that the stories are the real tes-timonies or reports that “recapture a sense of the power” of the real life of

61 See Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon, 1956) (first published in German in 1906); idem, The Legend of the BAAL-SHEM, trans. Maurice Friedman (New York: Harper, 1955) (first published in German in 1907). For a discussion of one Hasidic story elaborated and adapted by Buber, as an example of his work, see Ran HaCohen, “The Hay Wagon Moves to the West: On Martin Buber’s Adaptation of Hassidic Legends,” Modern Judaism 28, no. 1 (2008): 1–13. For a short review of Buber’s publications of and on Hasidism, see Niham Ross, A Beloved-Despised Tradition: Modern Jewish Identity and Neo-Hasidic Writing at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century [Hebrew] (Beersheva: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2010), 77–83.

62 See Gershom Scholem, “Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971), 228–250.

63 Scholem, “Martin Buber’s Interpretation of Hasidism.” See also Buber’s direct response to the criticism of Scholem and of Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer in Martin Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” Commentary 36 (1963): 218–225.

64 See, for example, Moshe Idel, “Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem on Hasidism: A Critical Appraisal,” in Hasidism Reappraised, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1997), 389–403; Jerome Gellman, “Buber’s Blunder: Buber’s Replies to Scholem and Schatz-Uffenheimer,” Modern Judaism 20, no. 1 (2000), 20–40; M. Oppenheim, “The Meaning of Hasidut: Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem,” The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 49 (1981): 409–423; Steven D. Kepnes, “A Hermeneutic Approach to the Buber-Scholem Controversary,” Journal of Jewish Studies 38 (1987): 81–98. See also Ron Margolin, The Human Temple: Religious Internalization and the Structuring of Inner Life in Early Hasidism [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 6–40.

118 Kauffman


Hasidim;65 moreover, they express the uniqueness of the movement in a way that is absent from the doctrines, which are derivative variations on Kabbalah that “offer no new spiritual elements.”66 Hasidism, says Buber, is a way of life; therefore one can accurately learn of it from the stories that describe this way of life. “In the history of human faith,” says Buber,

whenever there is a pressing need to transmit the factual character of the spoken teaching to the future generations and to save it from the danger of “objective” conceptualization, the tendency is to keep the teaching tied to the happening that bore it, to hand it down as part of the personal occurrence from which it is inseparable.67

What is the lesson delivered in Hasidic stories? Which teaching needs protec-tion from conceptualization? It is no surprise that (at least partly) the medium is the message: one of the stories quoted more than once in Buber’s writings tells of some disciples asking their rabbi what had been most important to his rabbi. The answer was: “Whatever he happened to be doing at the moment.” This was explained by Buber thus: “By accepting and dedicating whatever is happening here and now, intercourse with God is achieved in the experi-ence of daily life.”68 The spontaneity of the religious act, the importance of kavvanah (directing of thought), the importance of the here and now and of concrete circumstances as a platform for spirituality—these, in short, are the components of the stories’ content; moreover, they are derived from the genre of concrete stories instead of general doctrines.

Furthermore, Buber as a philosopher asserted the potential encounter with God through each I-Thou encounter in the world, the potential religious deed that is not obedience to the law. Israel Koren, who explored the connections between mysticism, Hasidism, and dialogic philosophy in Buber’s writings,69 claimed that Hasidism had a strong impact on Buber’s mystical and philosoph-ical writings:

65 Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” 218.66 Martin Buber, Hasidism (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), 1. See also Buber, “Inter-

preting Hasidism,” 221, for the claim that Hasidism produced no new mystical doctrine.67 Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” 220–221.68 Buber, “Interpreting Hasidism,” 223. See also Buber, Hasidism, 28–29; idem, Tales of the

Hasidim: The Early Masters (New York: Schocken, 1947), 4.69 Israel Koren, The Mystery of the Earth: Mysticism and Hasidism in the Thought of Martin

Buber (Leiden: Brill, 2010). See also Margolin, Human Temple, 6–21.



The fact that Hasidism does not deny the personal element or the indi-vidual beings found in the world was consistent with Buber’s under-standing of the uniqueness of modern thought, that characterizes the importance of individual and concrete things and their ontological status at the expense of general principles, and even longs for their real-ization and the strengthening of the details as a vehicle for expressing the multiplicity of God that is revealed thereby and that knows itself through them.70

Buber failed to incorporate his sensitive analysis of storytelling into the greater fabric of research on Hasidism. He ignored a huge corpus of derashot litera-ture, and he resisted the central dimension of halakhah and normativity. In their dispute, Scholem and Buber each focused on a different pole, rejecting the continual motion between norm and narrative, general ideas and particu-lar stories. Though his perception is so penetrating, by dismissing the derashot as not having any new elements and therefore as irrelevant, Buber missed the power of the story, precisely in a law/norm/generalization-oriented society. Thinking through the lens of narrative ethics enables us to understand the connection between narrative elements in Buber’s dialogical philosophy and the centrality of narratives and narrativity in his Hasidic research, a linkage that he himself did not state explicitly.71

Two Perspectives: In Competition or Complementary?

Scholem’s criticism of Buber’s exclusive focus on narrative raises an essential question about the relationship between a narrative and a norm, a story and a derashah, and so on: Are these poles mutually exclusive or is there a way to combine them?

Every thinker who proposes an alternative to an established perspective must contend with a version of this question. For example, as to narrative

70 Koren, Mystery, 206.71 Needless to say, there are connections between Buber the philosopher and Buber the

researcher of Hasidism, and there are discussions regarding the overlap and differentia-tion of the realms. Buber himself was aware of the duality of being a researcher whose aim is to teach a living lore, to mediate between the past, the present, and the future. See Koren, Mystery, 167–234.

120 Kauffman


ethics, there are those—such as Martha Nussbaum in Poetic Justice72—who call for the refinement and qualification of the universal-abstract-formal way of thinking by reading narratives. Other thinkers object to any attempt to formulate general rules or imperative categories,73 claiming that every such attempt is a specific narrative of subjective hegemony disguised as objectivity.74

In the theological field, as mentioned above, Hampson unequivocally resolved to abandon the dominant religious discourse, including its tendency towards abstraction, formalism, and lawmaking, and to focus solely on her “Future Theism,” which seeks an immediate connection to God through every deed of attending to one’s fellow. Jewish feminists, on the other hand, mostly call for an adjustment of the balance between the components, instead of a total negation of the general-formal-legal-abstract dimension. William Cutter, though differently motivated, aims to promote halakhic thinking that will be influenced by a narrative perspective, as he seeks to evaluate narrative as a primary technique for moral or halakhic discourse.75

Within Hasidic literature there is no question as to the stable state of hal-akhah and the function of the derashah in expressing Hasidic values, ideas, and norms. Yet, one of the main innovations of Hasidism is the powerful, maybe parallel, place assigned to narrative. Looking at Hasidism through the lens of narrative discourse reveals its full meaning.

Hasidism as a religious phenomenon, including all its inner variance, imparted a sacred status to narrative that was unprecedented in Jewish culture.

72 Martha C. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon, 1995).

73 See, e.g., Peter Winch, “The Universalizability of Moral Judgments,” in Ethics and Action (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 151–170. For criticism of Winch, see Lilian Alweiss, “On Moral Dilemmas: Winch, Kant and Billy Budd,” Philosophy 78 (2003): 205–218.

74 See Walker, Moral Understandings; Macintyre, After Virtue. The same dilemma applies to Gilligan’s call to develop the discourse of care ethics. Gilligan herself in another paper argues that the poles of justice and care represent two optional and essential moral ori-entations that cannot be applied simultaneously. Every situation, says Gilligan, is ambigu-ous and can be decided according to either justice or care. Choosing the perspective is in itself a component in ethical determination. Carol Gilligan, “Moral Orientation and Moral Development,” in Women and Moral Theory, ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), 19–33. Other scholars, following Gilligan, sug-gest other solutions. See Joan C. Tronto, “Beyond Gender Difference to a Theory of Care,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 4 (1987): 644–663; Marilyn Friedman, “Feminism in Ethics: Conceptions of Autonomy,” in Feminism in Philosophy, ed. Miranda Fricker and Jennifer Hornsby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 205–224.

75 See Cutter, “Qualities.”



Whether the story is about the tsaddiq (generally also including other simple folk) or told by the tsaddiq, the power of the narrative is in its “once upon a time,” its unique combination of time, place, features, and occurences that lead to an unexpected point, an unpredicted end, not according to rules dic-tated a priori.

The power of the sacred story lies in its religious message, which calls upon every listener and reader to sanctify his personal stories, to see in each moment, in every anecdote, the opportunity to become a Hasidic tale—to inhabit a moment of sacred life. Living in a society that tells holy stories creates a reli-gious world in which religious decisions are not simply a matter of obedience or transgression but include a wide range of possibilities: multiple—and dif-ferent—correct responses to the same situation, multiple truths instead of a true-false dichotomy.

Nevertheless, it seems that a narrative almost always comprises in itself a particular instance of a figure wrestling, in specific circumstances, with the general law, with the norm, so that it inherently contains some measure of opposition to the norm. Therefore, one might argue that it is not really possi-ble to simply replace the general-abstract-formal discourse with the narrative. Jerome Bruner, while developing a list of ten features of narratives, including particularity and context sensitivity, mentions another feature of relevance here. He asserts that one of the common features of narratives is “canonicity and breach,” meaning that

a tale must be about how an implicit canonical script has been breached, violated, or deviated from in a manner to do violence to . . . the “legiti-macy” of the canonical script.76

Sometimes this wrestling is implicit. For example, when a character in the story does something unexpected, the (normative) expectation lies in the background. Sometimes this normative “background” is brought to the fore-front by the story in order to deviate from it.

This argument seems reasonable, because no one acts in a vacuum; the context of each concrete act includes, inter alia, the predictable normative behavior, the prevalent values, expectations, and so on. Actually, therefore, we are not dealing here with norm versus narrative, but with a complex relation-ship between norm and narrative, which are interrelated: every rule has an exception, every norm creates or enables narratives, and is also based upon

76 See Jerome Bruner, “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” Critical Inquiry 18 (1991): 1–21, esp. 11.

122 Kauffman


narratives,77 and every narrative has a norm as background and context.78 Nevertheless, the issue is what weight is given to each pole.

Below I shall present a detailed reading of a Hasidic narrative that exempli-fies the inner tension between narrative and norm and also ascribes the differ-ent perspectives to gender differences, although not explicitly.

The Story of Raizily

I have heard from my uncle the great Rabbi Avreimaly, may his memory protect us, . . . whose sister is the rabbanit marat [a title equivalent to “Mrs.”] Raizily, the wife of the holy Rabbi Moishely of Zelichov, . . . the daughter of my master, my father, our rabbi, may his memory protect us. It was her way to always give much charity to the poor, even without the permission of her husband, the holy rabbi, God rest his soul. Once her husband told her: “I have heard that you give charity beyond my means and without informing me. You should know that this is a mitsvah [com-mandment], accompanied by an ʿaverah [transgression], because it is likely to be a theft if you give without my permission.” And his wife, the rabbanit, did not listen to him and continued to behave in the same way until her husband, the holy rabbi, told it to his father-in-law, her father, my father, my master, our rabbi, may his memory protect us, from Parisow. His father-in-law answered him that she would surely come to him [= her father] at some time, and then he would tell her that she was not behav-ing according to the law. The time arrived, and the daughter, the rabbanit Raizily, may she rest in Paradise, came to her father in Parisow, may his memory protect us, and then her father said to her: “You should know, my daughter, that your husband is angry with you because you give more charity than he can afford, and you have no permission to distribute so much.” Then she answered her holy father, may his memory protect us: “My dear father, I have heard that there is a rule in the Shulḥan ʿ arukh that the husband must be responsible for his wife’s health without any limita-tion, and when a poor person comes to me, my mercy for him overcomes me and my heart is broken seeing him suffering so much that I become sick in all my limbs and my heart hurts because of my mercy. And there-fore, when I am sick I have permission to cure myself, and by giving him

77 See Adler, Engendering Judaism, 34. 78 Interestingly, Adler sees narratives mainly as the context of law and lawmaking, and not

the opposite.



charity, I become completely healthy, so I have permission according to the law.” And then her father told her that she was right, and every time he praised her words again, his/her memory would protect us.79

The granddaughter of the Holy Jew, Rabbi Jacob Isaac Rabinowicz, is the hero-ine of this story. She is a figure of resistance: she resists her husband (Rabbi Moshe Elyakim Goldberg of Zelichov, 1832–1902) and her father (Rabbi Joshua Asher Rabinowicz of Parisow, 1804–1862), and she resists the law. If in Hasidic derashot we usually hear one voice, that of the tsaddiq, the author of the derashah, in narrative there is almost always polyphony—a dialogue, a con-flict, and one or more solutions.

Raizily resists the husband by ignoring him. She resists her father by finding a way to mollify him without surrendering to his ruling. Thinking through the terms of general ethics and narrative ethics, it is quite clear that the woman represents a totally different attitude: she cares for everyone without limita-tion, without thinking of the categorical imperative, the universal implication of what would happen if everyone were to behave the same. She cares, has mercy, and acts according to the here and now—the current situation and her current emotional response. She represents compassion, concern, care, responsibility, and feelings. Her father and her husband represent justice, law, and halakhah, which are all general and abstract, not stemming from the spe-cific case. In order to bridge these two attitudes, she finds a way to speak their language; she finds a law in order to articulate her endless generosity in terms that will grant her legitimacy. When she speaks of the Shulḥan ʿarukh, her father can calm down. Instead of confronting him and insisting on her right to express her religious feelings through the mitsvah of charity, she subordinates herself to their discourse. The formulation is very subtle: “I have heard that there is a rule.” She does not possess direct knowledge of the rule; almost by chance she heard something relevant.

The rabbanit Raizily has a low status: she has no control over money, the law, authority; she cannot even control her emotions in the face of misery. She turns this weakness into a strength; her weakness and the commitment to her health that it requires becomes her source of power. Thus, the story sets the personal narrative of the woman in the presence of poverty opposite the general rule: the obligatory measure of charity, the hierarchical relationships between wife and husband, and between father and daughter. The story moves between law and narrative. It also powerfully presents the feminine voice, on

79 Rabbi Jacob Isaac of Przysucha, Keter ha-Yehudi (Jerusalem, 1929), 50, para. 18; the transla-tion is mine.

124 Kauffman


both the literary and the psychological planes, if we accept Gilligan’s argu-ment regarding feminine tendencies to narrative-contextual thinking. The story includes self-criticism: usually, the storytellers are men, speaking to an audience of men, and the tsaddiqim are aware of the limitations of their own power, their norms and rules. They embrace the resistance to patriarchy, to the Law of the Father. I assume they can identify with this “Hasidic” voice, the voice of compassion that breaks boundaries, the antiestablishment voice, the voice of spontaneous emotion—even when it is expressed through femi-nine discourse turned against them. The tension between the finite and the infinite, between din (judgment) and ḥesed (compassion), between norm and narrative, seems to have a solution in this story, but the sophisticated (and ironic) solution is very local, suitable only for this narrative, and there-fore keeps the tension alive. It is also clear that the father’s voice and the hus-band’s voice, too, are heard, and they present optional truths (although they are rejected here).

Not every Hasidic story explicitly expresses the tension between narra-tive and normative ethics, between narrative and normative religiosity, but, as argued above, every Hasidic narrative promotes narrative thinking by the simple fact of its sacred narrativity—whatever its content may be.

Conclusion

Hasidism is an important branch of Jewish culture that suggests a complex religious life consistent with some feminist intuitions.80 I argued that the

80 This is not to say, however, that Hasidism is a feminist movement. For a detailed discus-sion of this question, see Ada Rapoport-Albert, “On Women in Hasidism: S. A. Horodecky and the Maid of Ludmir Tradition,” in Jewish History: Essays in Honour of C. Abramsky, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein (London: Halban, 1988), 495–525. See also Moshe Rosman, “Observations on Women and Hasidism,” in Let the Old Make Way for the New [Hebrew], ed. David Assaf and Ada Rapoport-Albert (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 2009), 1:151–164. The scholarly discussion regarding Hasidism and gender is not sufficiently developed, especially regarding its symbolic, theological, and theoreti-cal aspects (as opposed to its historical dimensions). It should be mentioned, however, that Hasidism is built on the foundations of Kabbalah, while Kabbalah’s gendered aspects—unlike Hasidism—have been the object of comprehensive and deep analysis, such as Wolfson’s extensive researches. See, e.g., Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); idem, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). See also above, n. 63. Wolfson



centrality of storytelling in Hasidism reflects and constructs an essential atti-tude toward life in general, and especially religious life. This attitude values narrative as well as contextual thinking, which focuses on specific persons and their circumstances, human situations, and emotions, as opposed to law, norm, and abstract determination. This dominance of storytelling presents, alongside the spiritual discourse of derashot, on the one hand, and the reli-gious discourse of the halakhah, on the other, another multivocal and poly-phonic epicenter.

The uniqueness of the story consists in its being a model for a unique life, one situated in the here and now. Through the lens of the present time, no figure or moment can slip through the field of view; therefore, by means of sto-ries, one can encounter marginal figures in the culture—such as women, who are much more present in stories than in derashot, hanhagot, or halakhah—as objects and as subjects. Women were also involved in transmitting narratives,81 and hence also in fashioning and, sometimes, creating them.

This religious option means that there is no longer a dichotomous choice between obeying an unequivocal instruction and transgressing. To the con-trary, there is a religious reality that includes many appropriate responses according to the exact context, each of them meeting the infinite divine will. Subversion of the normative structure is compatible with a deep yearning for infinity—for the primordial Torah written on God’s arm, according to one of the powerful myths of the Sages. This perspective enables close contact with the infinite, with that which is beyond structure, with the essence behind the veil, with the white fire on which the black and limited words are written. Thus, the centrality of storytelling in Hasidism is connected directly to a deep aware-ness of the restriction of normative religious life, which is a finite facet of the infinite opportunities for contact with God. This core of Hasidic thinking has, of course, many other expressions, such as the demand for ʿavodah be-gashmiyut

wrote also on Hasidism and gender especially in Ḥabad; see his discussion of gen-der transpositions in “Female Encircles Male,” chapter 5 in Elliot Wolfson, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

81 See, e.g., Shivḥei ha-Besht, 94, regarding the Maggid’s daughter-in-law as a link in a chain of storytellers. See Horodezky’s testimony regarding Hasidic stories that he heard from his grandmother: Samuel Abba Horodezky, Memoirs [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Dvir, 1957), 23. See also Justin Jaron Lewis, “The Great Holy Woman Malka of Belz: Women as Heroes and Storytellers in Hasidic Tales,” in Women in Storytelling: Proceedings of the University College of Cape Breton’s Third Annual Storytelling Symposium, ed. A. Kavanagh (Sydney: University College of Cape Breton Press, 2000), 102–112.

126 Kauffman


(worship through corporeality), that is, worshipping God through every plain and mundane deed, or the unruly creativity of Hasidic hermeneutics.

Adherence solely to the law and the norm may stem from the human psy-chological need for stability and certainty, from the will to reduce options and gain tranquility, as stressed by Cutter. Storytelling opens the door to religiosity measured in terms of narrative discourse in general, and narrative ethics in particular.82

82 The attempt to emphasize and glorify a concrete discourse through an abstract universal claim is inherently paradoxical. I am aware of this problem, but perhaps this is another piece of evidence that those two perspectives are intertwined in essence, and hence should be combined in practice.

Tsippi Kauffman- the Hasidic Story- A Call for Narrative Religiosity- JJTP (Eng)

Documents

Transcript of Tsippi Kauffman- the Hasidic Story- A Call for Narrative Religiosity- JJTP (Eng)