Five Hasidic Dynasties in America and the Search for Leadership

In non-elective structures where the criteria for leadership rely on non-rational qualities, the quest for a leader requests very complex choices. Typical for the European Askenazi Jews, lineage and ancestral merit are important in the choice of Hasidic leaders. What you do when there are conflicting personalities and the criteria of the 'zar hodesh' (literally, 'holy seed') does not stand some minimal chances of spiritual survival? When unhappy brothers rebel against each other for getting the power they assume they equally deserve? 

Who Will Lead Us? by Samiel C. Heilman covers the story of five Hasidic dynasties - some famous as Satmar, Bobov and Chabad, some less like Kopyczynitz - from the perspective of the approach to leadership. Leadership means charisma - according to the classical description of Max Weber - but also the capacity to manage properties, succeed to increase the number of followers, fundraise, even maintain a certain relatioship with the non-Jewish authorities. Following the 'theology of genealogical sanctity' metioned by Heilman: 'One succeeded not only to the position of rebbe but also to family leadership, and often inherited family property and control over precious objects like manuscripts or Judaica freighted with the iconic power of leadership'.

Who Will Lead Us? was built on an impressive amount of information. Inside information, historical information, any kind of information. You are took witness of the highs and lows of one of the most powerful Hasidic courts, with their conflicts, alliances for power and deceits. Some information are unique even for people familiar with some of these dynasties. 

However, I had more than once the feeling of getting mostly sherayim (the morsels of food distributed to Hasidim from the rebbe's tisch/table). Academic research often involves gathering tons of information out of which you use only a small percentage for your main work. The rest you maybe will use on another occasion, maybe not. I had more than once the feeling while reading this book that there is way too much anectodic, that even the selection of the dynasties is not necessarily relevant but all those data was just there and had to be used. 

What I was expecting from such a book was maybe a serious academic analysis of this typical case of leadership, which is the religious leadership, specifically the Haredi one. Overwhelmed by too much information, this is what the book missed to provide.

Book Review: David Assaf - Untold Tales of the Hasidim

'(...) academics, may they bite the dust'. This harsh statement - especially if you are an academic and this matters for you - is included in the rabbinic ban issued by Rabbi Yisrael Eliyahu Weintraub agaist the works on zoology and science of Rabbi Nosson/Nathan Slifkin. This depreciation of anything that has to do with academic research and knowledge in general is not new and unfortunatelly applies even to the most 'progressive' - for the naives ears and eyes - Hasidic groups as the Chabad which constantly discourge their followers to follow an academic career.

The extensive research of a couple of Hasidic characters done by David Assaf in Untold Tales of the Hasidim is an interesting evaluation in this respect. The tales in question refer to a couple of representatives of various Hasidic dynasties - Ruzhin, Chabad, Satmar among others - with unique life stories that sometimes leaded them against their group and even against their Jewish upbringing. They are the OTD - Off the Derek, term used for the ex-Hasidic men and women that left the fold - of the old times, without the advantage of nowadays widespread online media and the support of organisations like Footsteps helping them have a normal life as part of the general society they are living in.

But even then, complex mechanisms of internal and external censorship operated apparently successfully enough to obliterate from the collective memories those individuals that did not conform to the set of values assumed by the respective religious group. Memory is used not in order to find the truth but to reshape the collective identity. 'The mechanisms shaping and preserving historical memory among groups with a religious, ideological, political or educational agenda (including Hasidim) do not always take an interest in history as it was but rather in a form that can be called history as it should have been. Memory is a prime educational tool, and any unauthorized interpretation can shake the foundations of an ideological world in need of nurture and protection from its enemies'. 

The tales re-told by Assaf, a specialist in Hasidic dynasties and histories in general, recollect a diverse range of situations and personalities: from the conversion to Christianism to Moshe, the son of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady (Chabad), to the curious 'defenestration' of the Seer of Lublin, or the fierce opposition to the Bratslav Hasidim or the curious personality - for his Hasidic background - of Rabbi Menahem Nahum Friedman of Itscan the last scion of the Shtefaneshti dynasty. 

Each story is told from different angles, finely outlining the historical evaluation and interpretation at different moments. 

The book is precious not only for the complex methodology and the fine attentio to detail, but also for taking out of Hasidic historical forgetfulness - for very clear ideological reasons - extraordinary histories. Most of those characters were, in fact, sending a message of a crisis following the dramatic meeting between modernity and tradition. Many of the contemporary untold tales of the Hasidim are in the making.