Reassessing Research on Nineteenth-Century Chabad

In 1866 Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn of Lubavitch—known as the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek—passed away, after more than three decades as the leader of Chabad and one of the most visible and influential rabbinic leaders in the Russian Empire.Footnote ¹ His passing left both a vacuum and a surplus of leadership: a vacuum in that there was no longer a single figure to whom all Chabad adherents deferred, and a surplus in that his six surviving sons had all been raised to be leaders, and in varying degrees had already been acting as proxies for their father, attracting admirers and disciples while he yet lived. This surplus soon resulted in the fragmentation of Chabad into several distinct streams independently centered in different towns.Footnote ²

Contemporary observers were quick to conclude that his death marked the onset of Chabad's twilight, which no doubt would be followed by utter darkness. An 1875 article by Pesaḥ Ruderman, a maskil of Chabad background, described the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek as “the last of the Chabad ẓaddikim.” Ruderman emphasized that “I did not forget his sons who will yet live and increase ignobility. But their lives and deeds have no equity or comparison to the life and deeds of their father. … To innovate further is not within their capacity. They do not have the vitality to vitalize others. They are honored only because they are their father's sons.”Footnote ³

Ilia Lurie has already noted that this conclusion was premature and erroneous. Yet little has been done, whether by Lurie or by others, to critically reassess developments within Chabad in this period, thus exemplifying the continuing imprint of the maskilic perspective in the academic study of Hasidism. Scholars now tend to espouse a more critical attitude to the maskilic characterization of the nineteenth century as a period of decline and ossification for Hasidism, following its initial emergence as a dynamic new religious movement.Footnote ⁴ Nevertheless, the maskilic paradigm continues to mark current research in three general ways: (1) Research continues to focus primarily on the origins of Hasidism in the eighteenth century, and while there is now increasing interest in aspects of twentieth-century Hasidism, scholars are only just beginning to mine the wealth of materials available for the nineteenth century.Footnote ⁵ (2) Research of nineteenth-century Hasidism tends to focus much more on social and historical questions, including questions about the relationship between the Haskalah and Hasidism, and far less on internal intellectual and literary developments within the hasidic movement itself.Footnote ⁶ (3) Even where the task of researching nineteenth-century Hasidism is taken up, academic historiography nevertheless struggles to escape its own roots in the so-called “Science of Judaism” project, which was fundamentally sympathetic to maskilic ideologies, and which tends to romanticize early Hasidism and dismiss nineteenth-century Hasidism as degenerate.Footnote ⁷

As an example, Benjamin Brown has recently argued that nineteenth-century Hasidism retreated from mysticism.Footnote ⁸ “To avoid judgmental overtones,” he writes, “I refer to it … as ‘the Heteronomous Turn,’” according to which religious ideals formulated in this period “acted … as ‘substitutes for mysticism.’”Footnote ⁹ Despite Brown's protestations to the contrary, this is a renewal of the old academic paradigm, inherited from maskilic sources, according to which, in Brown's words: “The big fire of early Hasidism, the fire of the mystical experience, could not keep burning.”Footnote ¹⁰ Turning to the case of Chabad specifically, Brown attempts to chart a schism between the movement's founder, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady (“Rashaz”), and his nineteenth-century successors: “Joseph Weiss counted Chabad as ‘faith-centered hasidism,’ which he contrasted to ‘mystical hasidism,’ while Lea Orent recently demonstrated that R. Shneur Zalman also embraced the mystical ideal, especially as part of prayer. This ideal, however, did not pass on to the later Habad.”Footnote ¹¹ First, we should note Brown's heavy reliance on secondary literature, the substance of which he does not always replicate correctly. Joseph Weiss indeed identified two general hasidic typologies, one of “contemplative mysticism,” and one of “faith.” Contrary to Brown, however, Weiss did not count Chabad as “faith-centered hasidism,” but, on the contrary, as “an extreme case” of “mystical contemplative Hasidism.”Footnote ¹²

In noting the connection between mysticism and Chabad prayer, Brown refers to the work of Leah Orent, but does not provide any citation. In a footnote, an article by Naftali Loewenthal is cited instead.Footnote ¹³ The bulk of Loewenthal's discussion is devoted to the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, focusing on the respective approaches of Rabbi Aharon ha-Levi Horowitz of Staroselye and Rabbi DovBer Shneuri of Lubavitch, but then turns to the fifth rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneerson of Lubavitch (“Rashab,” 1860–1920), who distributed a work titled Tract on Prayer in 1899.Footnote ¹⁴ While paying close attention to the differences between these figures, Loewenthal shows that “later leaders of Habad continued the attempt to introduce deep and lengthy contemplation to the members of the fraternity,” and notes that “this phenomenon seems to defy the principle of yeridat hadorot (decline through the generations) that is assumed by scholars and—perhaps to an even greater extent—by hasidim themselves.”Footnote ¹⁵ Neither the substance of Loewenthal's paper nor its conclusions are echoed by Brown, who writes that “the contemplative prayer of the first generations declined … and gave way to the ordinary mode of prayer.”Footnote ¹⁶ Making no mention of Tract on Prayer, he argues that its author replaced prayer with study, and makes do with a single quote to conclusively settle the case:

The quote discussed here is actually quite similar to the only other Chabad text quoted by Brown, from Rashaz's Tanya: “One who is wise and understanding of the greatness of the blessed ‘eyn sof, will not—unless he binds his knowledge and fixes his thought with firmness and perseverance—produce in his soul true love and fear [of God], but only vain fancies.”Footnote ¹⁸ It is hard to see how an abandonment of the mystical ideal of devekut can be adduced from a comparison of these two passages. On the contrary, in the passage by Rashaz no conjugate of the word devekut appears, whereas Rabbi Shalom DovBer (“Rashab”) explicitly writes that the purpose of study is to “attract the soul … to cleaving unto Him,” in Hebrew: le-davkah bo. Moreover, Brown's assertion that “it is all about learning,” as opposed to contemplative prayer, is directly contradicted by this very text, in which the author clearly stipulates that “study” (limud, characterized as “being sentient of the concept”) is merely a preparatory step to “contemplation” (hitbonanut, characterized as “being sentient of the divine”), and explicitly refers to his Tract on Prayer for greater elaboration of the relationship between study and contemplative prayer. Rashab's point is not that study is a “substitute” for devekut, as Brown claims, but rather that study is a preliminary accessory to devekut.Footnote ¹⁹

Finally, while Brown cites this text as evidence for what he calls “a general model for the theological development of Hasidism in the nineteenth century,” it actually dates from the second decade of the twentieth century. The following passage, from a text written in 1877 by the fourth leader of Chabad-Lubavitch—Rabbi Shmuel Schneersohn (“Maharash”)—would have been a more appropriate choice, though the point is much the same: “The whole purpose of intellection and lengthy contemplation is only … that through this preparation one shall attain the bond of intimate knowing [hitkashrut ha-daʿat], which is the main thing, as it is written, ‘and you who cleave to God,’ etc. [Deut 4:4] and it is written, ‘and to Him shall you cleave’ [Deut 13:5].”Footnote ²⁰ Maharash cites two biblical conjugates of devekut to emphasize that the highest ideal is neither study nor intellection, but rather mystical union with God.

Brown's discussion is invoked here to demonstrate that even recent attempts to look anew at nineteenth-century Hasidism have not always been successful in escaping old biases. Such studies rely too heavily on existing assumptions, insufficiently undertake thorough reading and new research of relevant sources, and overlook or misconstrue the findings of other scholars that have already gone some way to undermining the reigning paradigm.

Below I will engage, and move beyond, recent contributions from Ilia Lurie, Samuel Heilman, Naftali Loewenthal, and Dov Schwartz to sketch a portrait of Maharash. Notably, Maharash was the only one of the seven leaders of the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty whose entire life-span lay within the confines of the nineteenth century. Born in 1834, he was the youngest son of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek, and filled his father's seat in Lubavitch from 1866 until his own passing in 1882. He was also the father of the aforementioned Rashab.

Context and Controversy

In 1843 the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek was one of two leading rabbis called to St. Petersburg by the czar's minister of national enlightenment for deliberations related to the so-called Jewish question.Footnote ²¹ Accompanying him on that trip was his second son, R. Yehudah Leib (1808–1866, known by the acronym “Maharil”), who would henceforth become an increasingly visible proxy for his father in matters both communal and spiritual.Footnote ²²

By 1845 Maharil was joined in his communal duties by his brothers Rabbi Ḥayim Shneur Zalman (1814–1880) and Rabbi Yisraʾel Noaḥ (1815–1883).Footnote ²³ When a fourth brother, Rabbi Yosef Yiẓḥak (1822–1876), took up the contested rabbinic post of Ovruch in 1859, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek urged him to return to Lubavitch and “alleviate my burden of people who seek advice.”Footnote ²⁴ In the later decades of his life, in other words, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek increasingly delegated the traditional duties of a hasidic rebbe to his sons. This trend intensified with the passing of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's wife, circa 1860. In the words of the authoritative Chabad chronicler, Ḥayim Meir Heilman:

The Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's method of communication, as described here, is reflected in the fragmented nature of his will, in its ambiguities, and in the controversy that marked its reception. Moreover, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's illness and his seclusion between 1860 and 1866 already opened up a leadership vacuum during his lifetime. Though he continued to deliver hasidic discourses each Shabbat, his voice was too weak to be audible to all who came to listen and he would read from a written text that had been distributed before Shabbat.Footnote ²⁶ Pinḥas Dov (Pinye Ber) Goldstein visited Lubavitch in the autumn of 1865, and described the ways in which the sons of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek were already then acting as proxies for their father:

The Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek, in other words, was only seen in public once a week, and the court in Lubavitch functioned not so much as a single court with a single rebbe, but more as a constellation of satellite courts that coalesced around the five sons who lived in Lubavitch. The sons were likewise dispatched to visit other Chabad communities as their father's representatives, and various sources attest that he empowered all of them to accept notes of supplication (known as pidyon or kvitl) and bestow blessings in his stead.Footnote ²⁸

By 1865, it seems, the five sons shared jointly in the leadership. Yet some differences are discernable: While R. Shalom Barukh was the oldest, Goldstein testifies that Maharil always delivered the final repetition of the previous week's homily at the onset of the following Shabbat, accentuating his status as his father's foremost proxy. According to a late Lubavitch account, by contrast, “R. Barukh Shalom did not generally repeat, but only discussed the homily with the young men who would come to him.”Footnote ²⁹

The same source includes conflicting accounts about the youngest son, Maharash. In one instance, Goldstein's testimony that he held court alongside his brothers is corroborated.Footnote ³⁰ Elsewhere it is stated that he conducted himself differently and did not repeat hasidic teachings.Footnote ³¹ The manuscript record attests that Maharash did begin writing and delivering original hasidic homilies around the time of Goldstein's visit to Lubavitch, and that during the winter prior to his father's passing he developed a discourse arguing against an acosmic interpretation of Chabad doctrine.Footnote ³² As will be argued below, there is good reason to believe that this discourse played a role in the controversy surrounding the question of succession. Intellectual and doctrinal questions aside, the very fact that several of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's sons were serving as leadership proxies for their father would have been sufficient to create the fault lines along which the movement would soon split.

Controversy was further exacerbated by the fact that, as Yehoshua Mondshine has already pointed out, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek never issued a single and complete “will” in the conventional sense. Rather, he declared his will via a fragmented series of notes (tsetlekh), along the lines described by Ḥayim Meir Heilman.Footnote ³³ Two such fragments survive in the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's own hand. Others survive in various manuscript copies. Some fragments appear to be components of a formal legal will, while others seem to respond to specific questions and developments. I consulted the following manuscript and text sources in the course of my research: (1) The Kfar ḥabad manuscript,Footnote ³⁴ (2) the Maharash fragments,Footnote ³⁵ (3) the Migdal ʿoz manuscript,Footnote ³⁶ (4) the Petersburg manuscript,Footnote ³⁷ (5) the Moscow manuscript,Footnote ³⁸ (6) the New York manuscript,Footnote ³⁹ and (7) the Jerusalem manuscript.Footnote ⁴⁰

Ilia Lurie has examined and discussed the Petersburg manuscript, which includes a curated collection of tsetlekh. He concluded that towards the end of his life the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek was aware that the question of succession was cause for controversy, and wrote these short missives to clarify his vision for the future and make his will known to particular individuals and to the community at large.Footnote ⁴¹ One of the most notable of these fragments, not least because it survives in the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's own hand, reads: “To my beloved and excellent son Shmuel. … My wish is that you should take it upon yourself to hear from people each day about their concerns, to deliberate these matters properly with them, to give them advice, and you should also review with them the hasidic teachings that are delivered. This is my true will, which you should fulfill as said above without change.”Footnote ⁴² According to Lurie, this suggests that Maharash may have expressed reluctance to serve as a proxy alongside his brothers, and that the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek insisted that he nevertheless accept and continue to fulfill these duties “without change.” This conclusion is supported by several extant ẓetlekh that express the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's request to his Hasidim that “all my sons shall be equal in every way” and that “all my sons shall be equal before you in all things.”Footnote ⁴³

We should note, however, that the manuscript discussed by Lurie is clearly of Lubavitch provenance, and his account relies heavily on this document, which he not only considers to be authentic but also treats more or less uncritically. One way to consider it with more critical perspective is to compare it with the Moscow manuscript, brought to my attention by Elly Moseson. This manuscript includes versions of many tselekh contained in the Petersburg manuscript, but distinguishes itself by its omissions: The first tsetl in the Petersburg manuscript, which censures Maharil, is missing. Likewise missing are the tsetlekh that similarly censure the latter's son, R. Shlomo Zalman, with the implication that he encouraged Hasidim to rally around his father, rather than see equal reverence extended to Maharash. The sharp censure of Maharil and R. Shlomo Zalman may have been omitted by copyists in order to protect them, or it may have been fabricated by copyists who wished to undermine them.Footnote ⁴⁴

The Jerusalem manuscript contains three items of relevance to the succession crisis, though none of them are presented as direct fragments from the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's will.Footnote ⁴⁵ Crucially, while other sources are mainly of Lubavitch provenance, this manuscript provides us with an alternate Kopust viewpoint. The most substantive item is a copy of a letter apparently written by Maharil in the midst of the controversy that ensued upon the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's passing. It has previously received a single cursory reference in scholarly literature, and has otherwise been entirely overlooked.Footnote ⁴⁶

While this letter cannot be reproduced in full here, several salient points should be mentioned. First, Maharil describes the “great pain” he suffers each day since returning to Lubavitch, where the “proprietors of the hostels hold the ẓetlekh to show them to all the guests who are coming, and also [tell them] far more than is written in the ẓetlekh.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Second, he notes that “after much pleading and effort they agreed to show me the original manuscript from which they are copying … and it is a fallacy and a brazen forgery,” adding that “now that they have acted and sent forged wills … it is requisite that I make known the truth of the matter.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Third, he writes, “I know well the true intention of my father … that is to the contrary, as he said to me many times face to face … and I also have many ẓetlekh that he sent to me about this, some of them in his own handwriting.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Finally, he emphasizes that in Kremenchug, upon receiving the news of his father's passing, “when they asked me to accept [the leadership] upon myself, I responded to all of them that I do not want any change of title or any new departure at all from how it was before. Rather, I shall conduct myself as it was when he was still alive, [continuing] to repeat hasidic teachings, etc.”Footnote ⁵⁰

Without reference to its polemical contents, Maharil's letter is independently attested in Heilman's Beit rabi, providing sufficient grounds to accept it as authentic.Footnote ⁵¹ Considering the inherently polemical nature of much of the material related to the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's will, the introduction of this Kopust source puts us on much firmer historiographical ground. It does not uphold the Lubavitch narrative, but rather, sharply contests it. Yet Lubavitch and Kopust sources mutually corroborate three important points about the circumstances under which their respective perspectives were constructed:

1. (1) If we accept the authenticity of Maharil's letter we must also accept that ẓetlekh of the type found in the Petersburg and Moscow manuscripts were already being circulated in the immediate aftermath of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's passing. This forecloses the conclusion that they were only fabricated later. Accordingly, most of the documents relating to the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's will should not be dismissed out of hand as historiographically irrelevant, or as mere polemics, but should rather be seen as the products of a sociopolitical episode that was far more complicated than the impression captured in any single one of them.

2. (2) In disputing the authenticity of the aforementioned ẓetlekh, Maharil also made it known that he had authentic ẓetlekh of his own that would uphold “the truth.” Nowhere is there a clear statement of what precisely is meant by this, but the implication is that Maharil himself has the right to assume his father's seat, as the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's sole or foremost successor. Yet, in expressing the desire that there should be no “new departure at all from how it was before,” Maharil echoes the will of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek as represented in the Petersburg and Moscow manuscripts, to the effect that all the brothers should continue to lead the community and disseminate hasidic teachings as they did in the period before his passing.

3. (3) Maharil's letter does not name any one of his brothers specifically, but two accompanying items do single out Maharash for special mention.Footnote ⁵² Some ẓetlekh of Lubavitch provenance conversely single out Maharil. Similarly, Maharash attested that “afterward one of the two aforementioned brothers went to another town, and by default the study-hall was left for the second.”Footnote ⁵³ This clearly references Maharil's departure from Lubavitch to Kopust in the summer of 1866, cementing the impression that the key locus of tension lay between Maharil and Maharash specifically—respectively the second oldest and the youngest of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's six surviving sons.

While the competing narratives of Lubavitch and Kopust were constructed in opposition to one another, they nevertheless provide corroboratory testimony to a complicated set of events experienced and interpreted from multiple perspectives. In order to interpret these documents properly we must recognize that they were preserved and curated, and in some cases probably fabricated, in order to buttress and express partisan narratives that are themselves part and parcel of the succession crisis and its fallout. By looking at all of the material together, paying close attention to similarities and differences, it may be possible to recover a more complete and textured historiographical account.

With this approach, the following scenario can be proposed: It seems likely that early on, before his younger sons came of age, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek did indeed consider Maharil his sole natural successor. But in the last years of his life a model of shared leadership emerged, and the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek consequently hoped that this model would continue after his passing. Maharash expressly attested that the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek “left it written in his will that his study-hall belonged to two of his sons equally,” and that “none of his children or grandchildren should dwell in his home,” adding that “the intention was that the one should not dominate the other.”Footnote ⁵⁴ Moreover, the suggestion that the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek had a change of heart is explicated in a tsetl found in the Petersburg manuscript: “As to what I wrote regarding my son R. Yehudah Leib, I hereby withdraw from this entirely, for he acted toward me with trickery and cunning, promising me assuredly that he would act for the best interests of my son R. Shmuel, and afterwards I understood all his trickery. I therefore withdraw from this entirely and my request from ʾanash [“men of our peace,” a term for the hasidic community] is that all my sons shall be equal.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Ada Rapoport-Albert has shown that the centralist dynastic institution of the hasidic court, with a single ẓaddik serving exclusively as its head, was not the leadership model with which Hasidism first emerged. Rather, it was only one out of several other solutions to the new problem of overcoming the passing of a charismatic leader, and it gradually became common as Hasidism became increasingly institutionalized at the onset of the nineteenth century. In the predynastic period, “the Besht, the Maggid of Mezeritch and his disciples who became leaders of Hasidic circles all exercised, independently of each other, strong personal charisma to which their followers responded by treating them as their leaders.”Footnote ⁵⁶ The Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek was old enough to have recalled this more horizontal model of leadership, and was apparently not committed to the normative solution.

A further possibility alluded to in these ẓetlekh is that towards the end of his life, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek came to see his youngest son, Maharash, as his primary successor and not merely the equal of his other sons. This is suggested by a tsetl that addresses Maharash alone, ordaining him with “great authority” and invoking the transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua and from David to Solomon. Encouraging Maharash to increase his “fortitude in Torah and worship,” it even implies that the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek will speak through him: “Open your mouth and my words shall shine forth.”Footnote ⁵⁷ This ẓtetl also suggests that Maharash was under attack for his innovative elaborations of hasidic doctrine, and needed encouragement. Below, this suggestion will be corroborated through an examination of Maharash's contemporaneous teachings, which survive in his own hand and have been published.

It seems likely that if not for Maharash's ascendance, Maharil would have retained his status as the first among equals, and a model with scarce likeness in the history of Hasidism may have emerged. While Gadi Sagiv has noted that split succession was the norm in Chernobyl Hasidism and in other groups as well, the success of that model largely depended on the ability of each ẓaddik to find a community and a locality in which an independent court could be established and maintained.Footnote ⁵⁸ What is unusual here is the hope that a constellation of courts could be maintained with a single geographic center, with the brothers leading their respective subconstituencies harmoniously despite the passing of their father, the uber-ẓaddik to whom they all deferred. The only comparable case is the brief period of shared leadership between the sons of Rabbi Yisraʾel of Ruzhin; each led his own court while the oldest son ascended his father's throne unopposed, and for a while they all lived alongside one another in Potik.Footnote ⁵⁹

In the Chabad case, the situation was ultimately reversed: Maharil left Lubavitch and established his court in Kopust, leaving Maharash, the youngest son, to fill his father's seat. Three other brothers also remained in Lubavitch, at least for a few years, but conducted themselves independently, much as they had in their father's lifetime. The oldest son, R. Barukh Shalom, passed away there in 1869. In the same year R. Ḥayim Shneur Zalman established a court in Liady, and soon R. Yisraʾel Noaḥ likewise established a court in Nezhin. Maharil passed away in Kopust within a few months of settling there, in 1866, and was succeeded by his son, R. Shlomo Zalman.Footnote ⁶⁰

Charisma and Personality

Samuel Heilman, in his recent study of leadership and succession in Hasidism, has given some attention to Maharash and his ascent to leadership. But he does not consider any of the available manuscript material, and overlooks primary sources available in print. He does not discuss methodological issues, and for the most part homogenizes various later accounts and secondary sources through a distinctly maskilic prism. One example demonstrates the pitfalls of such an approach, and brings us beyond the succession controversy and into the period of Maharash's leadership. Heilman writes: “As a reflection of his charismatic limitations, Shmuel established the role of mashpi'a, or spiritual guide, as an appointed official in his Hasidic court, separate from the role of the rebbe. The task of the mashpi'a was to offer Hasidic discourses, mentor individual Hasidim, and, it seems, to conduct Hasidic gatherings, complete with stories and melodies. This new position freed the rebbe to do other things, while getting help in matters spiritual. Shmuel effectively outsourced some of the essential characteristics expected of a rebbe.”Footnote ⁶¹ Heilman asserts that Maharash simply did not have the charisma or spiritual resources to fill the essential roles of a Chabad rebbe, all but abdicating the position to an in-house mashpiʿa. As his source for this claim he points to a YIVO Encyclopedia article by Naftali Loewenthal. Indeed, several sentences there closely parallel Heilman's account, but the discrepancies are not inconsequential: “Shemu'el established the role of mashpi‘a, or spiritual guide, as a paid official in the community, parallel to the role of the rabbi. The task of the mashpi‘a was to teach Hasidic discourses and, it seems, to conduct Hasidic gatherings, complete with stories and melodies. Maharash himself taught Hasidic nigunim (wordless melodies) and was credited with the ability to read music.”Footnote ⁶² In Heilman's reproduction of Loewenthal's account he misconstrues “the community” as “the Hasidic court” and “the rabbi” as “the rebbe.” All Jewish communities have a rabbi, but a hasidic court is an extraordinary kind of institution. Its central figure is the hasidic rebbe, and both court and rebbe operate with a large degree of independence from normative communal and rabbinic authorities.Footnote ⁶³

Loewenthal is in fact referring to Maharash's 1868 appointment of R. Shmuel DovBer Lipkin (“Rashdam”) as mashpiʿa in the town of Borisov, near Minsk. Loewenthal's source is a published letter addressed by Maharash from the spa town of Marienbad to the leading members of Borisov's Chabad community, in which he exhorts them that hasidic householders need a local teacher “to repeat Hasidic discourses and to explain them to the public and to individuals, to fire up the hearts … that they shall serve their creator with fear and love, each one according to their measure,” and accordingly charges them to ensure that community funds and private donations be allocated to cover his salary, as well as that of the local rabbi.Footnote ⁶⁴ Properly construed, this testifies not to the “charismatic limitations” of Maharash, as Heilman concludes, but to his vision for the perpetuation of the Chabad way of life and worship, and to the confidence with which he asserted his authority, even beyond the immediate locale of his own court in Lubavitch.

Given that Maharash's main rival as heir to his father's legacy was his older brother, Maharil, it is useful to compare how they are each portrayed across the various available sources:

Kopust and Lubavitch sources agree that Maharil was renowned for his passionate prayer and piety. As Ḥayim Meir Heilman, an adherent of the Kopust branch of Chabad, wrote: “The form of his worship was very awe-inspiring, and from this-worldly affairs he was entirely removed, such that everyone who saw him said, ‘this one is beyond human.’ He would repeat hasidic teachings with a flaming face and with great clarity.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Similarly, the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe (R. Menachem M. Schneerson, 1902–1994), recorded the remark of his predecessor that “when Maharil would pray the welcoming prayer of the Shabbat, and he was wearing slippers, the slippers would fly till the ceiling.”Footnote ⁶⁶

Maharash, on the other hand, is never described in such terms, and is instead noted for his humor, worldliness, and wealth. For example, Ẓvi Har-Shefer, who grew up in Lubavitch during the period of Maharash's leadership, noted his reputation as a great prankster in childhood and a wit in adulthood.Footnote ⁶⁷ Another memoirist, whose grandfather had served as the nonhasidic rabbi of a town with a substantial Chabad community, likewise wrote of Maharash that he “was wise and witty, sharp in worldly affairs, and also something of a prankster.”Footnote ⁶⁸ One source explicitly juxtaposes the apparently pedestrian character of his prayer with Maharil's overt ecstasy.Footnote ⁶⁹

Har-Shefer reports that Maharash maintained an interest in modern medicine and current events, subscribing to newspapers in various languages and to a journal issued by Ẓvi Rabinowitz, a pioneer of modern scientific writing in Hebrew.Footnote ⁷⁰ Government reports cited by Ilia Lurie, along with Lubavitch sources, indicate that Maharash became wealthy by investing in stock exchanges and other businesses, and that he kept a wine cellar.Footnote ⁷¹ With the advent of trans-European rail he traveled as far as Paris, and he was the first Chabad rebbe to wear clothing cut in the European style with a collar and lapels.Footnote ⁷²

As has been noted, Maharil had been his father's foremost proxy since 1843. At that time Maharash was not yet ten years old, and he would not take any public role until the very end of his father's life. According to an anecdote recorded by the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, Maharash's ambivalence to the expectations of his father's Hasidim was sometimes manifest as a form of self-deprecating parody: before privately repeating his father's discourses to the Hasid R. Shmuel Beẓalel Sheftil he would line up his collection of tobacco pipes, as though they were an audience of listeners, and jokingly assign each of them the diminutive name of a renowned Hasid (Izel, Yosske, and so forth).Footnote ⁷³

Another anecdote is especially noteworthy for its prominence in Chabad's internal discourse. It originates with the aforementioned R. Shmuel DovBer Lipkin of Borisov (“Rashdam”): Struggling with a discrepancy between a discourse of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek and a passage in the Lurianic work ʾEẓ ḥayim, Rashdam did not initially think to consult with the youngest and most reticent of the Rebbe's sons. Unsatisfied with the solutions offered by others, and noticing the light burning in Maharash's house at an unusually late hour, his curiosity was aroused. “Maharash's house was built like those of the wealthy, with high windows … so I grabbed the ledge, found a foothold, hoisted myself up, and saw that Maharash was studying ʾEẓ ḥayim.” Rashdam knocked on the door, but Maharash did not open it until he had hidden the ʾEẓ ḥayim volume and spread his table with French and German newspapers. Rashdam informed Maharash that moments earlier he had looked through the window and seen exactly what he was studying, and threatened to make Maharash's hidden ways known to “all of Lubavitch” unless he agreed to consider Rashdam's question. Hearing this, Maharash dropped his jocular guard. Rashdam concluded his anecdote with the report that: “We sat together all night, and at dawn I left his home filled with excitement and deeply impressed.”Footnote ⁷⁴

Stories such as these were transmitted by Lubavitch loyalists and it is impossible to independently verify their authenticity. Yet, as we have already seen, independent testimonies do uphold the underlying claim that Maharash boldly embraced the economic and technological innovations of his time, engaged the world beyond Lubavitch, and carried his charisma and wit lightly. More conservatively inclined Hasidim likely saw these characteristics as a threat to the prestigious legacy of Chabad, and as an affront to the established authority of Maharil. Rashdam and other Lubavitch loyalists understood these aspects of Maharash's persona as a device that helped him conceal his piety and divert attention away from his impressive engagement with kabbalistic texts and Chabad thought, and also as a sign that he had the intellectual boldness and worldly acumen to ensure the future vitality of Chabad.Footnote ⁷⁵

Given the supporting attestations already noted, and given that examples of Maharash's intellectual work are extant, the Lubavitch perspective cannot be dismissed as mere hagiography without first assessing whether or not Maharash made any significant methodological or theological contributions to Chabad's intellectual legacy.

Methodological Interventions and Innovations in Genre

Few scholars have taken up Maharash's intellectual work as a topic of study in its own right. Dov Schwartz, in a 2010 book billed as a comprehensive study of Chabad thought “from beginning to end,” wrote, “The ʾadmor R. Shmuel … often excerpted the words of his predecessors … and for the most part did not aspire for innovation. … Therefore the central questions in the research of R. Shmuel's thought are not what he innovated and added, but why he selected the specific sections that he excerpted from the writings of the ʾadmorim who preceded him.”Footnote ⁷⁶ In a talk devoted to the “conceptual renaissance” undertaken by Maharash's son and successor, Rashab, Nochum Grunwald similarly played down the intellectual contributions of the former, arguing that none of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's sons emphasized the conceptual dimension of the Chabad literary tradition, and instead made do with exegetical hermeneutics (derush) that contributed little or nothing that is intellectually innovative.Footnote ⁷⁷

The prevailing consensus echoes in a brief comment in the recently published Hasidism: A New History, a collaborative work which is similarly billed as a “comprehensive” synthesis of the current state of research: “Chabad historiography tends to paper over the impression that Shmuel was the least prominent leader in terms of political and literary activity. For example, the fact that his teachings are less sophisticated than those of other Chabad leaders is explained as his way of reaching lay people.”Footnote ⁷⁸

This consensus overlooks a rather obvious innovation of Maharash: as Loewenthal has briefly noted, Maharash was the inventor of an entirely new genre of hasidic exposition, namely the hemshekh, the serialization of hasidic discourses over many weeks and even months.Footnote ⁷⁹ Below, it will also be shown that from the very outset Maharash trenchantly articulated a distinctive recalibration of Chabad thought. Loewenthal aside, historiographers of Hasidism have tended to justify the dearth of research on Maharash by falling back on the assumption that a hasidic master of the mid- to late nineteenth century is not likely to be innovative. Rather than making use of the primary sources that are available, the authors of Hasidism: A New History provide another example in which a secondary source is misread to uphold the reigning assumption. No direct citation is provided, but the above verdict appears to rely on a 1945 article in which Shmuel Zalmanov, a prominent Chabad-Lubavitch Hasid, took note of the recent publication of several volumes of Maharash's discourses, whose literary distinctiveness he characterized thus:

Should this be read as a hagiographic “papering over” of Maharash's lack of sophistication? Or might this be an accurate appraisal of his ability to deftly address a single discourse to two different audiences?

For answers, we now turn to the primary sources, reading Maharash's discourses in comparison with those of his predecessors and successors, and beginning with his best-known and most influential contribution, Hemshekh ve-kakhah ha-gadol (henceforth Ve-kakhah).Footnote ⁸¹

Ve-kakhah is a serialization of hasidic discourses whose initial installment was delivered in the spring of 1877, on the festival of Passover, and which came to a conclusion the following winter, totaling forty-six discourses in all. Broadly speaking, it is an exploration of the mystical journey that leads from the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt to the ultimate redemption to be achieved in the messianic future. At its core is a phenomenological reconceptualization of the kabbalistic sefirah of ḥokhmah, and of the path of Torah and mitzvot as the means by which all of existence is rendered transparent to the revelation of divinity embodied by ḥokhmah. Along the way, many other topics are explored—including the difference between Shabbat and festivals, the Torah as an antidote to unholy folly, the distinction between “existence” (meẓi'ut) and “being” (mahut), and various mitzvot associated with Passover and Sukkot. These topics are not discussed tangentially, but rather as part of a systematic project to weave the strands of Chabad's literary corpus into a synthesized philosophy of Judaism.Footnote ⁸²

The nature of Maharash's methodological and conceptual intervention can best be illustrated with the preface of a brief review of Rashaz's classical characterization of ḥokhmah, found in Tanya, chapter 18: “Ḥokhmah transcends understanding and comprehension and is their source.… It is that which is not grasped and understood, and not yet grasped in comprehension, and therefore the infinite light [ʾor ʾeyn sof barukh huʾ] is vested in it, which no thought can grasp at all.”Footnote ⁸³ Elsewhere, in a more phenomenological vein, he describes ḥokhmah as “nothing more than a drop and a point … a lightning flash in the mind, which has not yet developed graspable dimensions [by which] to understand and comprehend all its implications.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Ḥokhmah, as described here, is the medium through which divine infinitude enters and illuminates the finite realms of the cosmos, including the human mind.

A key discourse in Ve-kakhah appropriates and reshapes a passage by Rabbi DovBer Shneuri—the son of Rashaz, and the second rebbe in the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty—bringing to the fore a fundamental conceptual difficulty with ḥokhmah's classical characterization. A close comparative reading reveals the power of Maharash's intervention. As penned by Rabbi DovBer, the first sentence of this passage equates ḥokhmah with the “something” (yesh) that is found, or created from “nothing” (ʾayin). The second sentence somewhat revises that interpretation by casting ḥokhmah as an intermediate “point,” suspended between the nothingness “which is not existence at all,” on the one hand, and the fully developed expansiveness of binah, on the other hand. We are left with a simple hierarchy: from nothing (ʾayin) a point (ḥokhmah) emerges and is subsequently disseminated, acquiring dimension and form that may be comprehended and grasped (binah).Footnote ⁸⁵ Maharash's rewriting of this passage excises the initial association of ḥokhmah with the yesh, and deliberately problematizes the manner and function of ḥokhmah's emergence from the transcendent ʾayin. His embellishments to the text go even further, unambiguously equating ḥokhmah with the “nothing” from which it is found, and depicting it as a revelation that is no revelation, as a disclosure of the undisclosable.Footnote ⁸⁶ This intervention is especially significant given that ʾayin had long been the term used to mark keter's distinction from the more particularized instantiations of the divine in ḥokhmah and the other sefirot.Footnote ⁸⁷

The following overlays R. DovBer's original text with Maharash's rewrite. Strikethroughs indicate deletions; additions are in bold:

Reading Maharash against the passage cited above from Tanya, we are forced to acknowledge the implicit paradox at the heart of the classical characterization: Ḥokhmah is said to be “the source of intellection and understanding” precisely because “therein is revealed [God's] infinite light, which no thought can grasp at all.” But if ḥokhmah is equated with the disclosure of ungraspable infinitude, Maharash asks, how can it meaningfully function as “the beginning of revelation” or as the “source” of comprehensible understanding? The hierarchical procession from ʾayin to the intermediate point of ḥokhmah, and on to the broad somethingness of binah, depends on a placid logic that Maharash boldly deconstructs. In its place a new characterization of ḥokhmah crystallizes that it is not primarily defined by its revelatory relationship with binah, but rather by its generally continuous relationship with the infinite divine nothingness that transcends revelation. To achieve this new conceptualization of ḥokhmah and disrupt more conventional modes of thinking, Maharash inserts a passage that appears in a discourse by Rashaz: “Ḥokhmah is found from nothing … that is, the infinite light reveals itself, which no thought can grasp, etc.; and permission is not granted to reap benefit from it for there is no grasp or comprehension.”Footnote ⁸⁹

Maharash goes on to explain that ḥokhmah is fundamentally constituted as the barest reflection that remains in the aftermath of the primal ẓimẓum, the utter removal of the infinite light of God, upon which the possibility of creation depends.Footnote ⁹⁰ Ḥokhmah, in other words, reveals the utter concealment of divine transcendence. As Maharash expresses it: “The yod of ḥokhmah comes only after the ẓimẓum of the principal of the essential light, as stated above, nevertheless some revelation remains from the essential light of the diadem [keter], only that it doesn't come within the category of apprehension and grasp. … But it rather comes by way of the concealment of ḥokhmah.… One grasps that the matter has not been grasped.”Footnote ⁹¹ It is noteworthy that while ẓimẓum is usually understood as utter removal, or total concealment, Maharash chose to appropriate language that limits the impact of ẓimẓum to “the principal of the essential light,” and which allows that “nevertheless some revelation remains from the essential light … by way of the concealment of ḥokhmah.”Footnote ⁹²

This illustrates Maharash's methodological engagement with the textual corpus he inherited from his predecessors. Schwartz was correct to note that Maharash makes heavy use of this corpus, and he was likewise correct to note the importance of asking “why he selected the specific sections that he excerpted from the writings of the ʾadmorim who preceded him.” Such questions, however, cannot be answered without undertaking a thorough comparative survey of the relevant corpus of texts. Moreover, Maharash does not simply reiterate received teachings, but substantially reconfigures them in three significant ways:

1. (1) Maharash reshapes and sculpts existing texts, sometimes simply by cutting a few words or sentences and by adding pithy embellishments and elaborations at key points, resulting in substantial shifts in emphasis and argument. This may be what Zalmanov was referring to when he wrote of the elite Hasidim who “would engage in lengthy debate over each omission and addition in the Rebbe Maharash's discourses.”Footnote ⁹³ In cases like this, a comparative reading can easily pinpoint where Maharash diverges from the received text, and discern the sharp pithiness that distinguishes his interventions.

2. (2) The comparative reading above demonstrates the way that Maharash lifts a substantial section out of a lengthy discourse by R. DovBer, and uses it to create an entirely new discourse. Not only is the original argument honed and transformed, as discussed above, but it is also set in a new literary context; in this case, a swift and sharply detailed hermeneutical commentary on the verse “You shall observe My Sabbaths and revere My Sanctuary; I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:30), according to which the Sabbath itself is identified with ḥokhmah.Footnote ⁹⁴ Maharash's conceptual intervention is applied to renew and deepen his audience's appreciation of the weekly observance of the Sabbath, one of the most central features of traditional Jewish life. This recalls Zalmanov's contention that Maharash's “quantitatively compact and qualitatively ample” discourses were designed to be accessible to hasidic “householders” as well as intellectuals.Footnote ⁹⁵ A comparison of Maharash's written discourse with a transcript that his son (Rashab) made on the basis of its oral delivery suggests that Maharash's speaking style was similarly concise, but also more free, focusing more on his own hermeneutical and conceptual contribution, and not hewing so closely to the teaching by R. DovBer that forms the textual basis of the discourse's written version.Footnote ⁹⁶

3. (3) Through the new genre of the hemshekh, these individual discourses, and the large matrix of earlier texts they draw on, are all incorporated within a wider and more systematic reinvestigation, in which old ideas are rescrutinized and recontextualized, discovering new momentum in the service of new arguments, and in the service of a broader and more systematic project. A greater degree of synthesis is thereby developed between an array of ostensibly different topics, together with a sustained and more complex exploration of a single central theme.

Extending this comparative analysis further, the hemshekh emerges as an innovative continuation of the intertextual approach pioneered by the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek. The latter was especially concerned to preserve the integrity and linguistic form of Rashaz's oral teachings, and his main intellectual contribution was via the addition of glosses (hagahot) that contextualize individual ideas and interpretations within the broader corpus of Rashaz's teachings and within the classical canons of Kabbalah and rabbinic literature. More subtly, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek also anthologized, curated, and published two influential compendia of Rashaz's discourses; Torah ʾor and Likutei torah. By both of these means, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek placed existing texts in dialogue with one another, creating a web of intertextual associations that enriches, problematizes, and illuminates.Footnote ⁹⁷

Our earlier case study of how Maharash sculpts existing texts to reconceptualize ḥokhmah provides a specific illustration of his further development of the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's intertextual method. More broadly, however, Ve-kakhah's intertextual arc is skeletally prefigured in a discourse by Rashaz as published and glossed in Likutei torah: In Ve-kakhah's second discourse the discussion of ḥokhmah is introduced via the appropriation of a passage from Likutei torah that juxtaposes the Sabbath's spiritual phenomenology with that of the festivals (yamim tovim); the former being associated with ḥokhmah and the latter with binah.Footnote ⁹⁸ Notably, Maharash diverges from the source text a couple of lines before it moves from a detailed discussion of binah into a contrasting discussion of ḥokhmah, and takes up Rashaz's association of binah with the satisfaction enjoyed by the soul in the world-to-come, segueing into an elaborate analysis of binah and its eschatological significance that extends over the course of several discourses.Footnote ⁹⁹ The subsequent contrast of binah with ḥokhmah is thus constructed within a larger conceptual frame and thrown into much sharper relief. Yet, even as he sets out on this more elaborate expansion of the theme, Maharash does not leave the source text in Likutei torah entirely behind. Indeed, as discussed above, he later used a passage from this very discourse to reshape R. DovBer Shneuri's discussion of ḥokhmah.

The first fourteen discourses of Ve-kakhah center on precisely the same themes that are at the forefront of the Likutei torah discourse: the Exodus, Passover, and the mystical association of ḥokhmah with the commandment to eat matzah. The last section of the fourteenth discourse is an almost word-by-word replication of a passage in the Likutei torah discourse, at the end of which the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek inserted a gloss.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Maharash does not include the text of this hagahah in his excerption, but he was clearly attentive to its content. Here, the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek refers the reader to several other discourses in Likutei torah wherein ḥokhmah and binah are discussed within the contexts of various other thematic associations. His concluding references are to a discussion of the verse “a spring shall issue from the house of the Lord” (Joel 4:8)—where ḥokhmah is associated with the spring, and to a discussion of the verse “you shall draw water with joy” (Isaiah 12:3), rabbinically associated with the Temple-era embellishment of the usual wine libations with a water libation on the Sukkot festival—where ḥokhmah is associated with water and binah with wine. In Ve-kakhah, discourses 15 through 19 take up the verse “a spring shall issue from the house of the Lord.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Discourses 31 through 37 address the mystical and devotional significance of the festival of Sukkot, with particular attention given to precisely the associations indicated by the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek.Footnote ¹⁰²

It transpires that significant elements of this hemshekh's arc follow the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek's indications with a symmetry which cannot be merely incidental. Whether constructed consciously or unconsciously, the textual patterns of Maharash's work reveal the deep imprint of his father's influence. His ambitious and magisterial reconsideration of ḥokhmah's significance is built on the textual and methodological foundation laid by his father. At the same time, both textually and conceptually, the new edifice that emerges far surpasses the constrained indications of his father's hagahot.

Thus contextualized, Maharash's move from the hagahot to the hemshekh can be seen as a move from the micro to the macro. The Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek applied the intertextual method on a point-by-point basis, providing something akin to a running commentary that draws an intertextual web of enriching literary and conceptual associations. But, for the most part, he left it to the reader to look up the sources he cited and arrive at further inference independently. In the hemshekh, Maharash brings the method of intertextual editorial curation from the realm of succinct reference and inference into the realm of explicit argumentation and elaboration. Instead of a skeletal associative web, he constructs a new narrative that endows the individual texts utilized with the kind of conceptual momentum that can compellingly advance a new theoretical project.Footnote ¹⁰³ In the case of Ve-kakhah, the new project is a phenomenological reexploration of the central place of ḥokhmah in Judaism's spiritual and religious trajectory—as it is manifest in the broad history of the nation, and more specifically in the annual holiday cycle from Passover through Sukkot.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Theological Innovation and Recalibration

In addition to his innovative development of his father's intertextual approach, Maharash's discourses are notable for the bold brevity with which he reconstrues and reconceptualizes theological concepts. In a discussion of the Lurianic principle that “when daʿat is enumerated [among the ten sefirot] keter is not enumerated, and when keter is enumerated daʿat is not enumerated,” Maharash infers that “daʿat switches place with keter” (ha-daʿat makhlif makom ha-keter).Footnote ¹⁰⁵ This is a formulation that I have not found in any earlier text, whether within or beyond the Chabad corpus, and through it Maharash sharpens the correspondence between daʿat and keter to the point of synonymy. This intervention is all the more striking when we note that the inclusion of daʿat, rather than keter, among the ten sefirot is usually understood to signal the unique transcendence of keter.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ On Maharash's reading, by contrast, the unique transcendence of keter is immanently manifest as daʿat. We have already shown that he construed ḥokhmah as a point of continuity between the infinite and the finite, receiving and revealing the infinite nothingness (ʾayin) of keter within the realm of the sefirot. But here he argues that in ḥokhmah this nothingness remains an unintelligible apprehension, while in daʿat it can be cognitively grasped. This argument is delivered with a characteristic intertextual flourish; earlier associations of daʿat with intimacy and union are combined with a hyperliteral reading of an aphorism proclaiming that “the ultimate degree of knowledge [daʿat] is that nothing is known [she-loʾ nedaʿ]”:Footnote ¹⁰⁷

Ḥokhmah apprehends keter's transcendent nothingness, but is not itself an articulated instantiation of transcendence. The point of ḥokhmah traverses the boundary between transcendence and immanence, but does not erase it; for it makes immanently manifest only the ineffability of transcendence. Daʿat, by contrast, is the fulcrum of interchange and union through which the transcendent and the immanent entirely overcome their respective circumscriptions.

Here lies one of the keys to what may have been Maharash's central theological project: the excavation of a fundamental ontological continuity between infinitude and finitude, between transcendence and immanence, between divine reality and the physical reality of the created world. This project and its significance can already be discerned in an important discourse that he first composed in the last months of his father's life and returned to more than a dozen times during his own tenure.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Of all of Maharash's discourses it may well be the most studied in contemporary Chabad, and has been translated and published in English under the title True Existence.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Though Dov Schwartz has discussed a later version of this discourse, he seems oblivious both to the sociohistorical context in which it was first composed and to the theological recalibration that it heralds relative to earlier Chabad texts.Footnote ¹¹¹

As is usual in Chabad, this discourse is known by the first words of the biblical verse with which it begins—Mi ka-mokha—from the Song of the Sea, “Who is like You, God, among the mighty?” (Exodus 15:11). What seems to capture Maharash's attention here is the comparative “like,” which implies that there are other beings who might mistakenly be compared to God. This prompts him to argue that “we must perforce say that at the moment the world exists, [that it is] something and a literal being.”Footnote ¹¹²

To many this will probably not seem like a radical argument at all, but in the Chabad context it is certainly a bold claim. In the entire Chabad corpus up to 1865 I have only found four instances in which the existence of the physical world is expressly and unambiguously affirmed.Footnote ¹¹³ Indeed, scholars have fiercely debated whether earlier Chabad masters subscribed to acosmism.Footnote ¹¹⁴ This discourse by Maharash, however, is devoted entirely to a sustained argument against acosmism, and sharply forecloses the possibility of debating his view.Footnote ¹¹⁵

Signaling his awareness that this argument runs against the tendency of Chabad texts to empty the material realm of real significance, Maharash specifically cites a countertext from a discourse by Rashaz, according to which “the appearance of the world as something, and as an entity, is falsehood.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ Whether or not this should actually be read as an acosmic statement, Maharash uses this citation as a foil to highlight a pivotal recalibration of Chabad's theological emphasis. Henceforth the rhetoric of acosmism would be increasingly displaced by an ever-deeper theorization of the apotheosis of the physical.Footnote ¹¹⁷

Schwartz correctly notes that, for Maharash, “the potential nullification of physical entities are a fundamental condition of their creation.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ But in the continuation of his analysis he argues that Maharash is not really introducing anything new in this discourse, but simply emphasizing the “dialectical paradox” of creation: on the one hand, “the being [of creation] is, on its own terms, in the category of a concrete reality”; on the other hand, “when its divine source is disclosed that [created] being is in the category of utter nothingness.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ In pointing to the notion of “potential nullification” Schwartz fails to apprehend Maharash's broader argument that creation is not illusory but real, and is even stamped with the reality of divine being: (a) The nullification of creation is only a “potential nullification,” and (b) this “potential nullification” derives from the divine presence that is inherent to the very being of every created entity.

For the first time in Chabad history a discourse is devoted entirely to an argument that the concreteness of physical reality cannot be dismissed as illusory—even drawing on the Mishnah's legal distinction between illusion and real magic (Sanhedrin 7:11) to prove the pointFootnote ¹²⁰—but Schwartz seems not to notice. In reductively characterizing Maharash's conception of the relationship between “being” and “nothingness” as a “dialectical paradox,” he erases the much more sophisticated concepts of “being” and “nothingness” that Maharash develops. As noted above, in Ve-kakhah Maharash probed and elaborated the notion that “nothing” can be “revealed.” Clearly, the meaning of “nothing” in that instance is not the reverse of “being.” The term “nothingness” is rather used to describe a particular manifestation of being; in the terms used earlier, the nothingness of ḥokhmah reveals that the true revelation of the divine is utterly concealed. In the 1865 discourse, we find something similar but different; Maharash erases the simple binary according to which things either exist or are nothing, and replaces it with a spectrum of being according to which the ultimate being of God is more robust, more true, than all other forms of being.

In both of these texts, Maharash's rethinking of the meanings of “being” and “nothingness” can be seen as part of his broader project to excavate an ontological continuity not only between divine being and created being, but also between the primordial infinitude of God and the finite circumscriptions of the created cosmos. In Ve-kakhah, ḥokhmah is not described as something entirely new, as the first of the ten sefirot and the beginning of revelation, but rather as the barest reflection that remains in the aftermath of the primal ẓimẓum. While the primal ẓimẓum is conventionally understood as a rupture, as an utter clearing away of the primal revelation of divine infinitude, here ḥokhmah is understood to withstand that rupture, preserving a finite testimony to the fundamental ineffability of primal infinitude. Maharash subsequently relates this concept of ḥokhmah to the reshimah, the “trace” of infinitude, which, according to some Lurianic commentators, remained in the void in the aftermath of the primal ẓimẓum.Footnote ¹²¹ In this context he boldly explicates the claim of a fundamental continuity between infinitude and finitude, irrespective of the discontinuous rupture of ẓimẓum:

The invocation of ʿAvodat ha-kodesh (by Rabbi Meir ibn Gabbai, 1480–1540) returns us to a foundational teaching of Rabbi Azriel of Gerona (1160–1238), the significance of which has been eloquently articulated by Sandra Valabregue-Perry: “In Azriel's thought, the emanation is the limit emanating from Eyn-sof; it is the infinite essence that expands in the limited. … God as Infinite represents a distinct alternative to the philosophical concept of the One, of a simple and separated ontology; Eyn-sof offers a concept of unity that permits a dynamic, integrative multiplicity.”Footnote ¹²⁴ In light of these comments, it is easy to understand why the formulation preserved in ʿAvodat ha-kodesh is so often invoked in Chabad literature, which is so deeply marked by the quest to attain a robust account of divine unity, monism, or singularity, without letting go of the integrative multiplicity described so extensively by the kabbalists.Footnote ¹²⁵ For Maharash, who explicitly rejects the acosmistic solution, Rabbi Azriel's principle (via ʿAvodat ha-kodesh) is especially crucial. In the above-cited passage, moreover, we find it enmeshed with the claim that the luminance of the reshimah is a form of divine manifestation that “was not impacted by ẓimẓum.” This formulation has no explicit antecedent in earlier Chabad literature, and it would be sharply contested following Maharash's passing by his nephew and chief rival, the aforementioned R. Shlomo Zalman of Kopust.Footnote ¹²⁶

As we have shown, the notion that the primordial nothingness of divine infinitude is “the root of the finitude that is below” is already heralded in the earliest iteration of Maharash's argument against acosmism, dating from 1865. This intimation becomes explicit in the 1869 iteration of Mi ka-mokha discussed by Schwartz, in which Azriel's teaching is similarly quoted and, sans elaboration, linked to the reshimah.Footnote ¹²⁷ As Elliot Wolfson has shown, for Maharash and his successors, “the point of the trace … intones the secret of the supreme paradox, the incarnation of the infinite essence in finite nature.”Footnote ¹²⁸

This indicates that the succession controversy of 1865 and 1866 did not simply relate to social questions of leadership, but also to the recalibration of Chabad thought that Maharash was already then beginning to advance. The aforementioned suggestion that Maharash was under attack for his innovative elaborations of hasidic doctrine, and that his father therefore felt the need to encourage his fortitude, is now cast in sharper relief. Thus, attentiveness to Maharash's intellectual work, utilizing appropriate philological and phenomenological lenses, enriches and clarifies our understanding of the historiographical picture.

Methodological Implications for Hasidic Historiography

This case study of Maharash and his context carries larger methodological implications; evaluations of Hasidism that consider sociological, anthropological, or historiographical factors alone will—at best—remain incomplete. Elliot Wolfson has written that in the case of Chabad, “the phenomenological explains the historical, not the other way round.”Footnote ¹²⁹ Indeed, conceptual and phenomenological concerns—albeit imbricated in broader tensions around questions of continuity and renewal—may actually have been the more decisive factors in Maharash's emergence as leader of Chabad-Lubavitch. Wolfson has additionally argued that the complexity of Chabad's own temporal conceptions—which have deep roots in “the rabbinic imaginaire”—requires scholars to adopt a more critical stance towards their own concepts of time and history.Footnote ¹³⁰

Thinking through the above analysis of Maharash's methodological and theological innovations in light of these two considerations, it is important to further unpack one of my central claims, namely that Maharash orchestrated a “recalibration” of Chabad thought according to which “the rhetoric of acosmism would be increasingly displaced by an ever-deeper theorization of the apotheosis of the physical.” The word “rhetoric” is important here because I do not mean to assert an absolute phenomenological or conceptual break with the past. Maharash was deeply engaged in the work of studying, apprehending, assimilating, and communicating the teachings of his predecessors. In this sense, his relationship with the past is such that his own teachings can actually be projected retroactively to illuminate the phenomenological constructs articulated by his father (the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek), grandfather (R. DovBer Shneuri), and great-grandfather (Rashaz). At the same time, Maharash's new articulations are unprecedented: he does not merely repeat, but rather grasps the essential originality of the received teaching and draws it anew into the open. As we have shown, Maharash developed a new genre through which to express his own distinct vantage point in his own distinct manner. Maharash's rhetorical recalibration is not straightforwardly subject to history, but is rather the medium via which he places a received phenomenological and literary tradition in dialogue with the historical moment, innovatively disclosing the Chabad teaching and further unfolding it.Footnote ¹³¹

While Maharash's tenure was marked by controversy and decentralization, the presumption that he was merely the unremarkable heir to the waning vitality of his predecessors cannot be upheld. This period should rather be viewed as a false twilight, in which a new foundation was laid for the perpetuation and expansion of Chabad-Lubavitch as both an intellectual and activist movement in the century that followed. Many of Maharash's innovations, both methodological and theological, would be further developed by his son and successor, Rashab.Footnote ¹³² Maharash and his legacy certainly demand further consideration, but his example also illustrates the broader necessity for scholars to research the social and intellectual history of nineteenth-century Hasidism with less filiality to the reigning maskilic paradigm and with a deeper integration between philology, phenomenology, and historiography.