BOOK REVIEW

MYSTICISM AND MADNESS:

The Religious Thought of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav
By Zvi Mark (translated from the Hebrew by Yaacov David Schulman)
Continuum Books, London and New York, 2009
306 pages, no price listed
Reviewed by Zvi Leshem*

Thirty five years ago, as a college freshman in New York City, I

wandered one evening into a small room at a Jewish home on campus,
and discovered a small group of young people engaged in intense study of
Lekutei Mohoran, the major work of the Hasidic master, Rabbi Nachman
of Bratslav, whose 200th yartzeit will fall later this year. I was
immediately mesmerized by his dazzling spiritual ideas and exegetical
theories and over the years the influence of "Reb Nachman" on me and
countless others has only continued to grow.

Rabbi Nachman is, however, not only a significant spiritual inspiration

for his thousands of followers worldwide, he has also been, for many
decades, a figure of major interest to academic researchers dealing with
Jewish and Hasidic spirituality and mysticism. It is against this
background that the English version of Dr. Zvi Mark's first book on R.
Nachman, Mysticism and Madness, makes its welcome appearance.
Mark, Senior Lecturer at Bar Ilan University and Senior Fellow at The
Shalom Hartman Institute also made headlines when he recently
published for the first time, with the encouragement of the elders of the
Bratslav community, Megillat Setarim, R. Nachman's secret messianic
treatise, in a critical edition.

Mysticism and Madness, which analyzes several key issues in R.

Nachman's thinking, is largely a rejoinder to several scholarly works that
have, until now, been considered definitive in describing R. Nachman's
religious world. Mark, who is very at home in the vast corpus of both R.
Nachman's own writing, as well as that of subsequent generations of
Bratslav literature, presents a radically different understanding of R.
Nachman, one that moves him closer to the Kabalistic - Hassidic milieu
in which he was raised (he was the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov,
who was the first Hasidic leader), and returns him from the radical
existentialistic mode into which some of his earlier interpreters had thrust
him. The late scholar Joseph Weiss in his pioneering Hebrew studies of
R. Nachman, emphasized his personal life (of which we are blessed with
abundant material from internal Bratslav sources), and existentialist
crises, downplaying the mystical elements in his life and teachings.
Weiss was followed by Professor Arthur Green, who, in his classic work
Tormented Master, portrayed R. Nachman as a deeply conflicted
individual, who was blessed not only with a powerful self-awareness of
his status as a Tzaddik, but also with tremendous self-doubt and conflicts
regarding his own faith and religious tensions. Green presented this
existential portrait of R. Nachman as largely overriding the more mystical
aspirations of the more typical Hasidic Rebbe, which may be subsumed
under the general rubric of seeking a more intense personal and spiritual
experience of God.

Mark argues forcefully, that Weiss, Green and those that followed them
misinterpreted key passages in R. Nachman's writings, consistently
overlooking their obviously mystical meaning and reinterpreting them
through the prism of the existentialistic lens through which they wrote.
While not denying R. Nachman's existentialistic struggle, his theological
radicalism or his sometimes bizarre behavior, Mark uses close
philological analysis to convincingly demonstrate that despite his
uniqueness in the world of Hasidic thought, in the last analysis, R.
Nachman's major concern remains that of his other Hasidic colleagues,
finding a path to G-d for himself and for his followers.

Mark achieves his goals through analysis of issues such as R. Nachman's

approach to imagination, prophecy, faith, silence, music and the land of
Israel, to which he travelled at the beginning of the 19 th century. He also
discusses some of R. Nachman's mystical and devotional techniques, such
as the meditative practice of hitbodedut (conversing with God) and hand
clapping during prayer. He argues that the goal of these practices is to
lead the devotee to a state of bitul (self-annulment) and deveikut (cleaving
to God). Mark shows us to what extent R. Nachman was in fact
continuing trends, both in thought and in deed, found in earlier mystical
literature, although he often infused the earlier texts with a creatively new
meaning.

While the medium of the Hasidic tale is well known, R. Nachman was the
only Rebbe to teach via the medium of original stories, Sipurei Maasiot,
which read like fairy tales. Mark's last two chapters, on not knowing as
the ultimate purpose of knowledge and his analysis of R. Nachman's story
The Humble King form an important unit. Together they serve to cement
one of Mark's foremost theses, that R. Nachman, well aware of the
impending attack of the Haskalah movement upon traditional Jewish
belief, promoted a radical project of faith, buttressed by silence, music
and mystical experience, as the only viable alternative to a world in
which intellectual achievement and doubt would ultimately reign
supreme. The Humble King, according to Mark's persuasive reading,
addresses an issue that may trouble many thinking religious persons; how
can it be that our service of God, limited as it is by our very physicality,
can be of significance to Him. This question, addressed throughout the
ages by philosophers and mystics alike, receives its most startling
treatment in R. Nachman's hands. In his opinion, our service of God is
understood as a kind of comic theater of the absurd, in which we serve
the role of court jesters for the sake of entertaining the King! This radical
description of the life of the pious Jew dovetails, of course, with the
notion developed in the previous chapter, that we aren't really capable of
knowing anything about the Divine; our service consists largely in our
ability to accept this premise and continue to serve in a state of "not
knowing". While many will no doubt bristle at such an irrational
definition of religious service, for others it may in fact be very liberating.
In a certain sense it surprisingly seems to bear some resemblance to the
late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz's super – rationalistic doctrines
regarding Halachic observance, although this point certainly requires
further elucidation.

In the last analysis, although it could certainly be enhanced by a detailed

conclusion summing up all of its findings, Mark's book constitutes a very
significant contribution to our understanding of R. Nachman's world. It
not only goes a long way in balancing the rather one-sided picture painted
by earlier scholars, but also provides a very penetrating analysis of the
major foundations of R. Nachman's faith and practice.

*Rabbi Zvi Leshem is the Spiritual Leader of Congregation Shirat Shlomo in Efrat.
He holds a PhD in Jewish Philosophy and is the author of Redemptions:
Contemporary Chassidic Essays on the Parsha and the Festivals.