Hasidism and Nature: Between Negation and Affirmation

To ask such a question is, of course, anachronistic. Not only is "environmentalism" as a political-philosophical system alien to 18^th and 19^th Century Hasidic modes of thought, even the concept of preservation was unknown in Eastern Europe at the time, where industry and human growth had not progressed to the point at which asking "preservation questions" even makes sense. One might as well ask what today's rabbis' views are on preserving the planet Neptune.

And yet, to pose this anachronistic question is a useful entry point for exploring more general Hasidic attitudes towards the status not only of the "natural" world as we conceive it today, but the created cosmos as such. I want to suggest here that the practical application of Hasidic ideas towards the created universe would be quite complex, and that in fact we ultimately can discern four distinct models of the relationship between the hasid and nature, broadly defined: devotionalism that does not regard the specificity of the starting-place, devotionalism that depends on the specificity of the starting-place; and two parallel contemplative approaches.

Rather than beginning with a schema and seeing how ideas fall into it, I think it is more productive to trace the internal narrative of the ideas themselves. Beginning with the equation of hateva, the order of nature as understood in Aristotelian terms, with elohim, a name of God, we can discern a certain valuation of that order of nature – after all, it is given a divine name/property -- and subsequently might expect that a Hasidic master would be concerned with any human interference with that order. Yet at the same time, this hateva/elohim actually conceals the ultimate reality of the universe, which is not material but spiritual; what is important is not so much the mask but penetrating behind the mask. But, then again, elohim is a mask, not just a veil, and masks reveal, even as they conceal. And so we find Hasidic texts supporting the idea of using material objects as starting-points for contemplation, and implying that there is something about those starting-points that affects the quality of the contemplation.

But, turning this idea on its head once again, Platonic contemplation ultimately moves beyond the material to the spiritual. Even if it does not negate the initial phenomenon (though it may do so), certainly the contemplative spirit does not value the phenomenon as such. The beautiful woman of R. Isaac of Acre and R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye is valuable as a means to an end, but to think that she herself is an ends in herself – even an object in herself – is a dangerous mistake. And yet, even this point is not clear, because R. Jacob Joseph does suggest that it is something about the woman's beauty that makes her body an ideal object for contemplation. It seems as though an ugly woman, or a table, or a chair, would not work as well, not only because its form is less inspiring, but because it less reflects the supernal harmony. So, even if the world-as-revealed to us is ayin v'efes mamash, as it is for R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, its forms still have some meaning, because they may point to higher worlds.

Further, to the extent that we take seriously the Hasidic "leveling" of formerly-valued objects/activities (e.g. Torah and Torah study) and formerly-mundane ones (e.g. shoemaking), we would also have to question the continued priority of traditional avenues to spirituality over other ones. That is to say, certain Hasidic texts undermine the claim that nature is nice, but Torah is more important. Nature (and this term includes the beautiful woman), like the Torah, reveals the cosmic design, and may in fact be a better object for contemplation than something of human origin. As such, nature qua nature may have some religious value.

This specificity of nature leads to my final case: Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav. Rabbi Nachman envisions the struggle of the hasid (or tzaddik) with the material to be of paramount importance – and without a specific material "obstacle," the struggle realize the emptiness of the obstacle has no content. Conversely, Rabbi Nachman's sporadic comments on the beauty of nature suggest that the specific positive valence of natural objects, as well as their potentiality as obstacles, mattered in his mystical activities. Perhaps ironically, Rabbi Nachman's engagement with the material world as obstacle to be emptied of meaning may go hand in hand with his readiness to attune the hasid's sensitivity to the "song of the grass." For his devotionalistic model, the specificity of nature counts.

Let us return, though, to the initial starting point of the investigation: the Baal Shem Tov confronted with the destruction of the rainforests. Is what is going on there a good thing, or a bad thing? Or does it not matter at all?

First, I want to set aside non-Hasidic responses to this question, e.g., halachot like bal tachshit, the wide range of religious-aesthetic appreciation of nature in Psalms and elsewhere, ambivalent statements about admiring trees in Pirkei Avot, and the like. These may be important in practice for "what the Besht would say," and given the thin treatment in specifically Hasidic texts, I think they would be dispositive. But they are of no interest here, because we are interested here in Hasidism qua Hasidism.

Second, I want to set aside a large range of possible Kabbalistic, Hasidic and other ideological responses to the deforestation in order to focus the question here on ontology. For example, the deforestation could be very good indeed if the wood were being used to build yeshivot: this would be an example of elevating gashmiut to ruchaniut, and certainly fulfills the Divine plan if the Earth is created for mankind's sake. Even clearing the forests for cropland could be a good thing to do, because the crops might feed Torah scholars; vegetative matter is being used for spiritual ends. Sparks are being elevated. Once again, these are all interesting questions, but they are somewhat beside the main point. My main question is how the Besht (as a metaphor for trends in early Hasidism, not as R. Israel Baal Shem Tov) would view what is going on as an intrinsic, ontological matter, whether what goes on in the material/natural world ultimately matters at all.

We can begin to answer this question if we ask why something would matter at all. For the Hasidism, something matters if it is connected with God, if it helps (or hinders) the Hasid to come closer to God, if it is related to ultimate questions about humanity, salvation, the community, and so on. A loaf of bread matters because it enables the hasid to live, and come closer to God, and perhaps because it has sparks of holiness within it, and perhaps because (even) it might serve as an object for either contemplation (of the beautiful woman variety) or devotion (as in the story of the shoemaker, retold by the Besht). Really, in light of the "shoemaker" story, which as retold by the Besht and recorded by R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, everything can "matter" in this way. As the story records, Enoch himself was a shoemaker who "united the Holy one, blessed be He and his Shechinah, by each and every [act of] sewing." Regardless of the "deed" in question, uniting deed and thought effects a supernal union. And since any deed work, any deed, any object, can be of supreme importance.

Initially, this view seems to be highly world-affirming, and highly radical. On the one hand, the "shoemaker" view, as I will now label it, makes every act important. I am reminded of the Hasidic story of the hasid who went to the Maggid of Mezrich not to learn some esoteric aspect of Kabbalah or learned insight into the Torah, but to see "how he tied his shoes." This story has been used by Buber and others to suggest that the Hasidim were not interested in supernal realms and abstract mysteries but in the existential realms of the day-to-and here-and-now.

And yet, at the same time, the shoemaker view is world-negating at the same time. True, shoes (or shoelaces) can be an avenue from devotion, but so could anything else. Buber is incorrect in assuming that a preference for shoelaces over esoteric mysteries is an ontological preference for the "present" world over a hidden, spiritual one. The Hasidim, at least as represented in the shoemaker story, are still interested in the hidden and the spiritual. It is just that shoes are as valid an entry-point to this supernal realm as the more traditional topoi of mystical Judaism.

Buber has mistaken radicalism for world-affirmation. It is true that, taken out of context, the shoemaker view is quite radical: alone, it suggests that a non-Jew can have the same devotion to God as a Jew, and implies that the observance of the commandments is not really so important, because making shoes can effect the greatest changes on the supernal realm and even in the individual soul. Indeed, as Paul noted better than anyone, so does any metaphysics that prefers the spirit over the "letter" of the law and the spirit over the material of the world. If it is really devotion that matters (circumcision of the heart), then mitzvot (circumcision of the flesh) cannot be so important.

As an aside, I would suggest that all Jewish heirs to this form of Greek, Platonic dualism face the same dilemma: if the spirit is what matters, then what use are the commandments, the majority of which are performed in the material realm? Maimonides constructed innovative pedagogical arguments (the commandments wean us from idolatry to monotheism, and inculcate proper ideas about the divinity) to justify the need for physical religious action. The theosophical Kabbalists – in my view, responding to the philosophical challenge not by importing philosophical doctrines into their metaphysics but by suddenly answering just this sort of "philosophical" question – made commandments matter by linking in a mythical-theurgical way the performance of ritual acts and operations on the cosmic order. And the Hasidim, too, eventually constructed hedges against the anomianism inherent in Pauline "spiritualism" – revisioning adherence to mitzvot in pietistic terms, falling back on Kabbalistic notions of tikkun, and so on. Quietism, that form of mystically-inspired inaction which is utterly alien to halachic conceptions of Judaism, is ever a threat to those who see the "inner" nature of the commandment as essential, but is ever battled.

In fact, this question of the 'inner nature' of the mitzvot is a useful transition to discussing the ontological relationship between the world we see all around us and the supernal realms that the shoemaker did not understand. If the shoemaker view were the end of the story, Hasidism would be fairly straightforward. Any action can be done with devotion, and so what matters is that devotion, not the status of the action. Phenomenal features of the natural world, be they forests or parking lots, are unimportant, because all are equally valid gateways to God.

But Hasidism is far more complex than that. There are two related issues to which I now want to turn: the use of "natural" objects as meditation tools, and the status of those objects in R. Schneur Zalman's ontological worldview. After that, I will turn to R. Nachman, who throws everything into disarray.

I suggested a moment ago that Plato is, in some sense, the source of the Problem. The moment Jews subscribe to dualism, they problematize their ritual practice. But Plato is also the source of the story, retold by R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, of the progress of the contemplative mind from sensibilia to intelligibilia to, in the Jewish versions, God. In the story, a humble man meditates with great emotional longing on the image of a beautiful woman and eventually separates himself from the corporeal aspects of this longing and unites with God.

While the "shoemaker view" implied that the appearance of the shoes (or anything else) was totally unimportant, here, the fact that the woman is beautiful seems quite relevant. First, the humble man might not be as inspired by an ugly woman or a random form. Second, we cannot discount the Platonic equation of the good with the beautiful; the fact that the woman is beautiful is central to her suitability for use as an object of contemplation. Third, we should take into account R. Zeev Wolf of Zhitomir's text Or HaMeir, wherein the beauty of R. Akiva's gentile (future) wife is said to

In R. Zeev Wolf's conception most of all, the beauty of the woman is entirely relevant, because it reflects the sefirotic harmony. If this is true, then, unlike the shoemaker view, the "beautiful woman" view regards the aesthetics of the "natural" object as critical. A tree and a parking lot are not the same, because the tree is beautiful, and thus reflects the extension of the supernal light better than does the parking lot.

It is important to temper this view, however. Surely R. Zeev Wolf does not suggest that the gentile woman is of any value – he regards what R. Akiva perceived as seeing "the extension of those colors in an impure place, in a defiled body, and the dust of the gentiles," hardly suggesting that the body of the woman is an exalted place of worship. At the very least, he too would support destroying the forest to build the yeshiva. More likely, since he later refers to the woman's body as among the "shells" (klipot), the surface of the body is for him actually evil. True, R. Zeev Wolf implicitly disapproves of the pre-Hasidic Maggid of Mezrich's response of vomiting when confronted by a beautiful, presumably tempting, form. But that does not mean he thinks there should be more women walking around "with a broad decoltee at the place of the breast."

Nonetheless, I think it is fair to say that the "beautiful woman" view does value the aesthetic qualities of the object of contemplation. Unlike the shoemaker's simple devotion, the hasid in the beautiful woman case is in some ways interested in the actual "structure" of the woman, at least insofar as it leads him to meditate on more sublime matters. This is hardly environmentalism, but it could be a start.

An even weaker view results from an analysis of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi's Tanya. The Tanya sets up a rather complicated ontological worldview, which essentially holds that everything we think of as yesh (something) is actually ayin (nothing) and that which is ayin is really the only true existent. But the world is not really that simple: the Tanya is not purely acosmic, in the sense that it does not deny the reality of the world. Rather, the material world of yesh is, in a slightly more subtle way than usually understood, the "body" and the world of ayin is the "soul." Rather than go through all of R. Schneur Zalman's syllogisms, we might summarize them in a chart:

In addition to the Tanya's statement that ultimately, both columns are One, what is critical to understand is that everything on the left covers what is on the right, but also in some way reveals it. First, there can be no existence without tzimtzum, according to the Tanya, so the left column is not merely the "bad stuff" from which the gnostic wants to get away – the left column is an integral, and real, element of the dialectic of existence. Second, and relatedly, the left column is not "unreal," although I thithere is considerable unclarity on this point, as I have written in an earlier paper, that leaves room for the possibility that R. Schneur Zalman believes the world is a "dream," like in the story quoted by R. Nachman and attributed to the Besht, which I will discuss below. I think we can say, though, that although the tzimtzum is only a condition of the Ultimate, and not the Ultimate itself, it is still a real condition. The world is in a state of tzimtzum. There is elohim, not just havaye. Even though the "rays of the sun," R. Schneur Zalman's metaphor for existent beings, are nothing (ayin v'efes mamash) in relation to the sun itself, the sun does not fill the entire universe at all times. Because of the tzimtzum, there is space for the "rays" to have independent reality, even if that reality is ultimately not true reality.

Quite obviously, equating elohim and hateva is not as simple in the Tanya as the naive environmental reading suggested at the start of this paper. R. Schneur Zalman is not deifying nature, or the natural world. As the reader has noted at some length, R. Schneur Zalman is actually drawing on a long history of this equation which goes back at least as far as the thirteenth century, which saw the relationship as linking the natural/physical order of the cosmos with God. The cosmic universe, which for R. Schneur Zalman conceals the mystical ayin, is itself an element of the deity.

But let us try to pin down the actual ontological status of objects within hateva. If we grant that the natural order is, if nothing else, something distinct from human creations, there is a nascent valuation of the natural world as well. The tree is better than the parking lot, not just because it is better for contemplation (the beautiful woman view) but because it is in some way related to the Divine process of tzimtzum, which allows the world to exist. And yet, even this claim must be attenuated, because the "natural order" exists, for Maimonides at least, not in the laws of ecology but the laws of physics – laws which are every bit as present in factories as in forests, if not more so. If it is R. Schneur Zalman in the rainforest, rather than the Besht, he would have to consider the advances of biological science, which show that ecology, as well as physics, reflects the structure of hateva in the Maimonidean sense. I suspect that he would then prefer the forest to a mall, but only on a quibble.

Moreover, unlike the beautiful woman view, R. Schneur Zalman's ontological dualism implies that any object is at once material and spiritual, tables and parking lots no less so than tigers and trees. Thus, not only does everything equally participate in the natural order, but everything is an equally valid object for uncovering its true, spiritual essence. R. Schneur Zalman is, in sum, much closer to the "shoemaker" view than the "beautiful woman" view. He does not share the shoemaker's devotionalistic emphasis. But he does share the view that access to God – here, via contemplation or reflection on the nature of reality – is available as much in the shoemaker's shop as in the forest. That one is uglier than another, or apparently closer to what we today would call "natural," does not matter. Shoes as much as trees are part of the material world, and can reveal its wondrous spiritual reality just as well.

Lastly, then, we turn to R. Nachman of Bratzlav. So far, we have seen three distinct Hasidic approaches to the "natural world," refracted in the prism of environmental questions: first, that any form can be used for devotion, a car as well as a cheetah; second, that beautiful forms may be better than non-beautiful ones for proper intellection; and third, that even proper intellection doesn't require beauty at all because everything participates equally in the divine effluence.

To paraphrase, we have seen two forms of via illuminativa, one with some relation to the natural world and one without, and one form of via passionis, which had no relation to the specificity of the natural world at all. Now, let us complete the picture, by examining a via passionis which does have a relationship with the natural world: Rabbi Nachman.

Although not covered in our studies, R. Nachman has a few isolated passages in which he rhapsodizes about the beauty of the natural world and the efficacy of using natural settings for meditation: blades of grass sing a song to God, meditation should be done in fields to partake in their beauty, et cetera. (See e.g. Sichot HaRan #98, #144, #227) That these statements are not tied to any larger philosophical scheme, or any real idea of the divinity, should not give us much pause. Nothing in R. Nachman is tied to a philosophical scheme per se; indeed, he was quite opposed to philosophy, which he saw as opposed to faith. (See e.g. id. #40) At the same time, R. Nachman does develop a fairly consistent system of religious life, and in that system, the above statements fit in quite well.

R. Nachman's religious life depended on an engagement with the specific obstacles that the material world threw in front of him. As discussed in passages in the Likutei Moharan, the goal was in each case to reveal that these obstacles are nothing, that they are in fact sent from God. But R. Nachman has a different solution to the Pauline dualist problem. He does not fall back on earlier Kabbalistic notions, and does not see the aspects of the material world and material mitzvot as simply pointing to something else. Rather, R. Nachman sees the materiality of the world as essential for creating struggle.

If the goal of the shoemaker story was to show that lev shalem is what is needed to attain the ultimate goal, let us remember that for R. Nachman, ein lev shalem k'lev shavur, there is no pure/complete heart like a broken heart. And for the heart to break, there must be action. There must be an actual giving of money, an actual trip to the rebbe, and above all, an actual cry.

The necessity of the world's materiality is no better expressed than in R. Nachman's use of the Besht's "illusory walls" story, which the reader has suggested can be traced all the way back to Hindu sources. For the Besht, the true tzaddik simply understands that the walls the king has set up are illusions, and he operates in accord with that understanding. For Rebbe Nachman, however, one must break one's inner walls to see that the external walls are really nothing. R. Nachman refers to the Tikkunei Zohar, appropriately enough, as a source for his "spiritualization" of the world, but changes the context both of the Zoharic idea and the Besht story to suggest that the recognition of the world's illusory nature is not automatic but is at once extremely difficult and, because of that difficulty, the essence of religious life.

Without the challenges of the outside world, this psychomachia could not take place. There must be something to push against, a challenge to fight against, or else there can be no challenge, and thus no religious value. For R. Nachman, unlike the shoemaker, there must be real difficulties in the actual making of the actual shoes.

Correspondingly, R. Nachman will be more willing to use "natural" objects to attain joyfulness. Since, for R. Nachman, what is "out there" is a valuable religious tool, it is a tool for happiness as well as for struggle. Hence, he finds himself closer to the beautiful woman approach than the shoemaker one, although I think he would much prefer to use the beautiful woman along the lines of R. David of Makov's criticism of Hasidism than R. Jacob Joseph's story; i.e., R. Nachman would probably be much more interested in "contemplating her and looking at her intensely and ... passing the test." Such is my speculation. What is clear, though, is that R. Nachman does not regard the outside world as irrelevant to his devotion. If it is a shoe, it is a shoe. If it is a beautiful field, it is a beautiful field.

At last, then, we seem to have arrived at a form of Hasidism which would value the natural world: emotive devotionalism that has a use for i. R. Nachman's statements about the song of the grass and the efficacy of meditating in natural surroundings are not random utterances based on his childhood walks in the forest. Rather, they fit in with his general engagement with the world, for better and for worse, but always for God.

It is somewhat ironic that R. Nachman, who is seen by some contemporary popularizers of Hasidism as being too world-negating, too far from God, is the only one of the figures just studied who seems to have a reason to want to preserve the natural world. More "fashionable" Hasidim, like the Maggid of Mezrich, do see God everywhere, including in the forests and rivers around us. But what today's popularizers miss is that "seeing God everywhere" does not offer a reason to preserve the trees and streams. Seeing God everywhere means that God is also in the parking lots and shopping malls.

To reiterate, I acknowledged at the beginning that this environmental experiment was more a way of mapping Hasidic ontologies than a way of really testing 200-year-old texts for currently attractive ideas. I cannot say what the Besht would really say when confronted with the destruction of the rainforests. Of course, I would like to extrapolate from his concern for his community, and his emphasis on joy, the guess that he would be horrified. But that is just a way of trying to rescue to Besht from something he does not need to be rescued from. The Besht is the Besht. What is more interesting is that it has been possible to identify a naturalistic contemplative path, a non-naturalistic contemplative path, a naturalistic devotional path, and a non-naturalistic devotional path – that within Hasidism, there can be unexpected divisions and unexpected convergences on an issue that the Hasidic masters themselves rarely, if ever, thought about directly.

tzimtzum	or (uncontracted light)
gevurah	hesed
elohim	havaye (tetragrammaton)
hateva	(transcendent)
olam/maalim (covering)	ne'elam (that which is covered)
what seems to be yesh	what seems to be ayin
ayin compared to God	actually Yesh