Introduction
Mitnagdim, or opponents of the Chasidic movement founded by the Baal
Shem Tov in the early eighteenth century, have generally emerged relatively unscathed
by accusations of exaggerated veneration of their Mitnagdic rabbinic
leaders.[1] This
article, based extensively on the research by Professor Alan Nadler[2]
explores the notion of a Mitnagdic counterpart to the Chasidic model of
veneration of their rebbes.
‘Decline of the generations’ (Yeridat hadorot) - the Mitnagdic argument against Chasidism
Nadler
(2009:137) describes one of the reasons why the Mitnagdim opposed the
Chasidim:
“The extravagant claims which Hasidism makes with regard to the
supremacy of its leaders loom large among the many grievances of the
Mitnaggedim. The unprecedented wisdom, supernatural powers and meta-rabbinic
functions attributed to all the hasidic masters, beginning with Israel Ba’al
Shem Tov, far exceeded any claims made for Jewish religious leaders since the
dawn of the rabbinic era in the first century.”
This means that
for almost two thousand years, no one Jewish religious group had created an
exaggerated culture of venerating their leaders as much as the Chasidim.
Chasidic rebbes had almost brought biblical prophecy, thought to be long
since gone, back to life again. This also means that Chasidim had violated the
basic rabbinic principle known as yeridat hadorot, or decline of the
generations, where each successive generation is said to be in a state of
spiritual decline since the advent of the Sinai experience. Now suddenly
Chasidic rebbes were able to challenge that notion.
The Mitnagdim
appear to be acutely aware that they were living in an ‘orphaned generation’ when
compared to their belief that previous generations had been on much higher
spiritual levels. This may have brought about a somewhat pessimistic attitude amongst
the Mitnagdim which the more joyous Chasidim were quick to accuse their
opponents of possessing.
Nadler
(2009:138) shows, for example, how an early leader of the Mitnagdim, the
Vilna Gaon’s son, R. Abraham b. Elijah, bemoans the decline of rabbinical
knowledge in his generation, due to earlier texts being lost over history.[3]
Nadler also
shows that a student of the Vilna Gaon, R. Shmuel b. Abraham Maltsan of Slutsk
wrote that the decline of humanity, or yeridat hadorot, over the years
has brought about a severe limitation to G-d’s providence and hence miracles
are no longer as evident as they used to be.[4] In
this case, the yeridat hadorot, was said to have affected not just the
standard of Torah learning at that time but even placed limitations, as it
were, on G-d Himself.
With the advent
of the Mussar or Ethical movement that later emerged within the
Mitnagdic camp in nineteenth century Lithuania, the yeridat
hadorot concept was similarly used to discredit the Haskalah or
Enlightenment movement that was emerging predominantly amongst the secular Jews.
Notably, one Mussar master, R. Yehoshua Heller[5], used
the yeridat hadorot premise to discredit both the Chasidim for their joy
(- how could they be so happy in the midst of the downward spiral of
generational decline?) and the Maskilim or members of the Enlightenment
(- how could they be so optimistic as to embrace the European belief in
historical progress and advancement through the sciences other academic
disciplines?). According to R. Heller, the world was on a downward spiral and
yet Chasidim and Masklim were claiming some form of rejuvenation (Nadler
2009:139).
Yet, in the
face of all this Mitnagdic emphasis on yeridat hadorot,
ironically their extremely venerated view of their founder, Eliyahu ben Shlomo
Zalman known as the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) seemed to violate that very
principle that the world was in decline. While they criticised the Chasidim for
what they felt was an exaggerated adoration and elevation of their rebbes,
they too, as we shall see, displayed a similar attitude of adulation and
glorification towards the Vilna Gaon that also seemed to belie the notion of yeridat
hadorot.
Unprecedented
veneration of the Vilna Gaon
As part of the
doctrine of yeridat hadorot is the idea that both the generation as well
as its rabbinic leadership undergo an ever-increasing downward spiral with the
passing of each successive generation since Sinai. Thus, a rabbi in a more
recent generation is not of the same spiritual calibre as a rabbi in a previous
generation. Contemporary generations are called ‘orphaned generations’ in
comparison to older generations.
But the Vilna Gaon was considered an exception. R. Menashe of Ilia claimed that the Vilna Gaon paved the way for the advent of the Messiah.[6] He was regarded by his followers as a reincarnated soul from earlier generations. There are different accounts as to which earlier generation he was said to have been taken from.
We must
remember, as Nader (2009:144) points out, that in Torah scholarship and particularly authority, it is more
important to be ‘behind one’s time’ than to be regarded as innovative
with the ability to think ‘ahead one’s time’.
According to
the founder of the modern Chareidi movement of the post-war
Lithuanian-Mitnagdic community, R. Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, known as the
Chazon Ish (1878-1953):
“We relate the Gaon to the following line: Moses, Ezra the
Scribe, our holy Rabbi (Judah ha-Nasi), Rav Ashi, Maimonides and then the Gaon,
through whom the Torah was revealed as through a Holy man designated for this
purpose. He uncovered much that had been covered with darkness until he came
along. He is thus considered to be one of the rishonim … one informed directly
by the Holy Spirit, whose profound knowledge of the entire Torah cannot be
accounted for rationally.”[7]
Nadler
(2009:145) emphasis that this statement violates rabbinic principles of “we
pay no heed to heavenly voices,” “the Torah is not in heaven,” and “the
sage is greater than the prophet” that disallow supernatural revelation to
have any bearing on matters of Jewish law.
Some
hagiographical accounts by his students claim he was equal to, and by extension
just as authoritative as, a rabbi from the rabbinic period of the Rishonim
(1038-1500).
Other accounts
place him as being from the earlier period of Gaonim (c.650-1038), hence
his title “Gaon”. This would place him on par with rabbis like Rav
Saadia and Rav Hai Gaon.
Still other
accounts claim he was equal to stature of a rabbi from the even earlier period
of Savoraim (c.500-c.650). R. Aryeh Leib Zunz of Polotsk writes:
“There had not arisen anyone like him since the days of the
ancient rabbis, the Savora’im, may they rest in Eden, such that the entire
Torah, both exoteric and esoteric, is spread like a set table before him.”[8]
There are even
suggestions, like that by R. Pinchas of Potolsk who was one of the Vilna Gaon’s
closest disciples and who delivered his eulogy, that:
“there had not been anyone like him in the world since the days
of the Tanna’im [10–220 CE]”[9]
This means that
there was the belief that no other rabbi had the spiritual stature of the Vilna
Gaon during the almost two thousand years that preceded him!
This is how R.
Tzvi Hirsch Farber describes the explanation he received from the Kabbalist and
nephew of R. Yisrael Salanter, R. Aryeh Lipkin on why the Vilna Gaon was so
revered:
“Know, my son, that in every generation there are great
scholars, each a master of his field of expertise but not of any other … But to
rise to the level of being the greatest of the generation in all disciplines,
to be supreme in rabbinics, supreme in Kabbalah, supreme in piety, in holiness
and purity, supreme in the most sublime ethical attributes, and supreme in each
and every field of knowledge, including both the humanities and the sciences –
astronomy, grammar, architecture and more and more; such remarkable excellence
could not be achieved even by the greatest men of earlier generations. Only our
great rabbi [the Gaon] has merited this.”
According to
this understanding, the Vilna Gaon was not just a great rabbinical scholar but
he was a great master at everything. This made him unique and thus worthy of
such extreme veneration.
R. Chaim of
Volozhyn (1749-1821), one of the most prominent students of the Vilna Gaon
writes:
“For even as we sit in the darkness of this last and most lowly of generations, God has enlightened us by sending us a holy angel from heaven, that rabbi who is the emissary of the Lord of Hosts…”[10]
This seems to place the Vilna Gaon within a category of unearthly spiritual beings, nevermind of Rishonim, Gaonim, Saoraim or Tanaim.
The license to
change, emend and reject classical texts
By framing the
Vilna Gaon as being equal in rabbinic authority to a rabbi somewhere between a Tanna
and a Rishon, it becomes understandable how he was able to change, emend
and even reject classical rabbinic texts. This editorial work, or more precisely, emendation, was something the Vilna Gaon became famous for:
Nadler
(2009:141) makes the point that:
“Clarification of difficult classical rabbinic sources, most
notably the Talmud and the Shulhan Arukh, by means of textual emendations based
on critical analysis and deduction, and without resort to manuscript variants, was
something that no
rabbinical authority had dared to do for many centuries. When practiced
by modern scholars today, such textual criticism is often condemned by the
Gaon’s spiritual heirs in the Lithuanian yeshivot as little short of heresy.
Nevertheless, the Gaon’s stature invested him with the power to emend hundreds of classical texts,
replacing long-established
Talmudic passages with his own alternative readings, and this actually
earned him the effusive praise of his followers.”
This is how R. Menachem Mendel of Shklov describes his master’s emendation of one such text (Avot
de Rabbi Natan):
“I have decided to … publish these small tractates which have
been closed up, sealed and inaccessible since the days of the redaction of the
Talmud. No one can even begin to study them, as they have become corrupted,
filled with thorns and covered with thistles, so that we are unable to approach
them... Even the greatest
of the [medieval] commentators were forced to abandon their explication,
until there came along our great Rabbi, namely the one true Gaon … Only he was able to correct
these … and to remove from them the shadows cast by numerous errors;
indeed, he brought all of them from darkness to light.”[11]
We must bear in
mind that it is one thing to correct ancient texts based on extant textual
variants from an earlier time, but it is another matter to emend texts, more than a
thousand years later, without such material. Furthermore, the last time such
extensive emendation of old texts took place was during the period of the Gaonim
(Nadler 2009:142).
Excursions into
emendations of Kabbalistic texts
The Vilna
Gaon’s extensive emendation of old texts was not limited to Talmudic literature
but extended deeply within the mystical tradition, including the Zohar, as
well.
R. Chaim of
Volozhyn wrote an introduction to the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on Sifra
diTzniuta (an obscure mystical work incorporated into the Zohar) where he
describes not only his master’s unprecedented comprehension of Kabbalah, but
also his personal mystical experiences as well. He explains that the
Vilna Gaon corrected “faulty passages” of this foundational work. He likens the
importance of the Sifra diTzniuta to the relationship of the primary importance
of the Mishna to the Gemara in Talmudic literature, without which further study
of Talmud is impossible – so too the Sifra diTzniuta becomes the ‘mishna’
of Kabbalah, without which further mystical study is impossible. And the Vilna
Gaon offered his “often bold alternative readings” (Nadler 2009:146) to
this corpus of literature without resort to earlier alternative manuscripts.
Not only did
the Vilna Gaon emend Zoharic texts but he also ‘corrected’ the more recent
mystical writings of R. Yitzchak Luria, known as the Arizal (1534-1572). R.
Chaim of Volozhyn writes in his introduction to Sefer diTzniyuta:
“For the light of this book was almost entirely concealed since
the time when it was used by some of the greatest and most holy of the ancient rabbis
… This holy book has been like a hidden Torah, long concealed from Israel.
Besides, who could understand it, as so many mistakes have occurred in the
printed editions? The best we have are some interpretations scattered in the
writings of the ARI. Therefore, how marvelous is this day, now that we have
finally merited this buried treasure, thanks to this remarkable, wondrous and
awesome commentary … by that saint and holy man, our great rabbi Elijah, who
has managed to explain it thoroughly, in great depth and breadth, and who has
ordered the text in an excellent fashion, by correcting it and removing the
shadow of its numerous corrupt and confused earlier versions … And he [the
Gaon] himself testified that the ARI had left him much room for improvements.”
The reason why
the Gaon was able to defy yeridat hadorot
Nadler
(2009:149) poses a poignant question:
“How are we to understand the conjunction, in the same texts, of
claims to the effect that the Gaon towered not only over the many generations
that elapsed since the time of the rishonim but also over the thirteen
centuries since the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud, with dramatic
condemnations of his own generation for its degeneracy?”
The answer is
provided by the nephew of R. Chaim of Volozhyn, R. Avraham Simcha of Amchislov. Astoundingly, R.
Avraham Simcha ascribes the root cause of the spiritual degradation as being
the scholarly obsession with dialectics or intense argumentation, known as pilpul!
Pilpul was regarded by him as symptomatic of generational decline. And because
the Vilna Gaon was so opposed to the dialectical and pilpulic method of Torah
study, he merited to reach the heights he did and was able to understand texts
correctly and emend and change them accordingly. R. Avraham Simcha writes:
“Now, this degeneration has reached the point of Satan arriving
and confusing many students, so that since the time of that acute scholar,
Rabbi Jacob Falk, who lived in the sixteenth century, and who was proficient in
Torah and pilpul, the fundamental principles – the proper method and order of
Torah study – have been forgotten … Thus it was that for many days … indeed,
for more than two centuries, the world became entirely bereft of the proper and
straightforward methods of Torah study, with the exception of a few exceptional
scholars, of whom some had nevertheless become attached to this convoluted
method [of pilpul] ... Until all of a sudden, God shined a new light upon us –
that great and awesome Gaon and saint, the light of Israel and its holiness,
whose scholarship and sanctity have been proclaimed from one end of the world
to the other, our great master and teacher, Elijah of Vilna…
For we have already learned from our holy master, the ARI of
blessed memory, that this [decline] refers only to the generations in general,
so that it is still possible for a unique individual (yahid ba-dor), even in
the very lowest generation, to be endowed with a soul that is greatly elevated,
incomparably higher than any in previous generations. Such a person is sent to
correct his own generation as well as the generations of the future.”[12]
Conclusion
According to R.
Avraham Simcha, the Vilna Gaon was able to reach the unprecedented heights he
attained because he rejected pilpul, the argumentative style that was
prevalent in the Jewish world of learning. And thus, the Mitnagdim were able to
create an effective counterpart to the Chasidic model of a rebbe, where the
Vilna Gaon similarly became extremely venerated and was regarded as being somewhere
between an angel of G-d, a Tanna, a Savora, a Gaon and a Rishon. This way, the
Mitnagdim did not view the veneration of the Vilna Gaon as violating the
rabbinic principle of yeridat hadorot, but instead he becomes the
exception that proves the rule (Nadler 2009:151).
According to
the Mitnagdim, the yeridat hadorot doctrine was, therefore, still in force
and it was just the Vilna Gaon (and perhaps his close disciples) who had risen
above it, “but it never affected subsequent generations of the Jewish masses”
(Nadler 2009:157). The masses were still locked in perpetual generational decline.
On the other hand, according to
the Chasidim, the advent of their founder, the Baal Shem Tov and the
subsequent leaders of the Chasidic movement had reversed the yeridat hadorot
doctrine not just as a personal exception, but for the masses, so that the world
was now on an upward path of spiritual and mystical progression towards the
future messianic era:
“Rabbi Israel [Baal Shem Tov]… opened the gates of wisdom,
discernment and knowledge. He began to investigate the whole of God’s Torah and
prepared himself to fathom and explicate the most profound secrets of its
wisdom in such a way as to enable the human intellect to grasp and understand
it…so that they would understand …that all the words of the Torah had been
given to the whole of Israel, with the intent of making each and every soul
from among the people of Israel intimately acquainted with them, for the Torah
was not given to the angelic hosts but rather to the seed of Jacob whom He
chose. Not a single aspect of Torah should be beyond the understanding of every
Israelite… Since then, the gates to the Garden
of God have remained open…”[13]
[1]
Although the notion of Da’as Torah, as understood today, is very much
the vogue in contemporary Judaism across all segments of the religious
population. See Kotzk
Blog: 048) Contemporary Daas Torah - Protecting Or Overstepping The Boundaries?
[2] Nadler, A., 2009,’The Gaon of Vilna and the Doctrine of Historical Decline’ in D. Assaf, Ada Rapaport-Albert, eds. Let the Old Make Way for the New: Festschrift for Immanuel Etkes, Merkaz Shazar, Jerusalem, 137-161.
[3] Sefer
Agadat Bereshit, 1802.
[4] Sefer
haEmunah vehaHashgahah (Koenigsburg, 1864).
[5] Sefer
Me’oz ha Dat, chapter 4, 44-50,
[6] Immanuel Etkes, The
Gaon of Vilna: The Man and his Image (Berkeley, 2002), 32–3.
[7]
Abraham Yeshaya Karelitz, Sefer Kovets Iggarot (Bnei Brak, 1989), part
I, letter 32, 71.
[8] She’elot
uTeshuvot Meshivat Nefesh (Warsaw, 1849), part one, §1.
[9] Pinchas
of Polotsk, Sefer Pe’ultai haShemini (New York, 2004), vol. 2, 487.
[10] Hayyim of Volozhin,
Introduction to Perush al Kammah Aggadot (Vilna, 1800), 3–4 of
un-paginated front material.
[11]
Introduction to Sefer Mirkevet Eliyahu (New Jersey, 1987 [re-issue of
the Shklov 1804 edition of Be’ur haGra al Massechet Avot, Avot deRabbi Natan,
uMassachtot Ketanot]), III–IV.
[12] Sefer Midrash Ruth
heChadash haNikra Midrash Ne’elam (Jerusalem, 1996), 8–10.
[13] Sefer
Beit Yakov (Warsaw, 1890), 8a–b.
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