American Academy of Religion

The Meaning of Hasidut: Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem Author(s): Michael Oppenheim Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Sep., 1981), pp. 409-423 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1462381 . Accessed: 26/03/2013 10:29
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TheJournal of Religion,XLIX/3 Academy of theAmerican

The Meaningof Hasidut: MartinBuberand Gershom Scholem

Michael Oppenheim
he effort to maintainor to reestablishcontinuitywith the
religious life and values of the Jewish past has permeated the writings of modern Jewish thinkers. Many modern Jews have understood that the dramaticchanges and challenges that were ushered in during the period of the Emancipationresulted in a radical gap between the past and present. Two of the most influential Jewish thinkers, Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem, held that the barrier between past and present demanded a radicalreexaminationof Jewish history. They held that continuity could be established only by looking at those areas of the Jewish past that were dismissed or rejected by earlier scholars. They ultimately concluded that Jewish mysticism embodies the most creative elements of Jewish religious experience and is the most accessible of all past expressions of Jewish life. Yet, despite these common conclusions, Buber's and Scholem's understandingsof the nature and meaning of Jewish mysticism are quite divergent. These acute when their views of Hasidut, the latest differencesare particularly Jewish are examined. In light of the central role of mysticism, phase Jewish to mysticism by both these scholars, their conflicting given of Hasidut have portraits great significancefor understandingthe efforts their past. of modern Jewish thinkersto understandand to appropriate In the following pages it will be demonstrated that one way of interpretingthe disagreementabout Hasidut is to focus on Buber's and Scholem's conflictingviews about the concept of God that activatedthat movement./1/ Buberholds that the power of Hasidiclife emerged from the relationshipbetween man and the God who is both Creatorof the universe and partner in dialogue. Hasidut revealed the redemptive at Santa Barbara) MichaelOppenheim is (Ph.D., Universityof California in Judaic anddirector of the graduate in the Studies associate professor program Montreal. His articleshave of Religionat Concordia University, Department inReligion. in Judaism andStudies appeared

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qualitygiven to human life once it is touched by the I and Thou of God and man, and Buber sees this as the treasured heritage that Hasidut offers to the modern Jew as well as to mankindin general. In contrast, Scholem affirmsthat it is preciselyHasidut's pantheisticor acosmic view of God that permits it to speak to the Jewish-and the broader human-situation in the modern world. I In exploringthe conflictingportraitsof Hasidutpresented by Buber and Scholem, the question of the influence of Kabbalah(the "tradition" of Jewish mysticism that traces its origins to the thirteenth century in Provence and Spain) on Hasidut is of major importance.For Buber, Hasidut is a "protest against Kabbalah," which "pursues Kabbalah" only "peripherally" (1960:178). However, Scholem accentuates the continuity between Kabbalahand this latest phase of Jewish mysticism. He writes that "the mystical ideology of the movement [Hasidut] is derived from the Kabbalistic heritage, but its ideas are popularized,with an inevitable tendency towardsterminologicalinexactitude" (1941:344). Even the hotly debated problem of which literarysources provide the most accurate picture of Hasidut can be reduced to the more general question of the relationshipbetween Kabbalahand Hasidut.Both Buber and Scholem seem to agree that the "theoretical writings" of the movement, i.e., sermons, commentarieson biblicalliterature,and tracts on particularareas of religious life, share significant terminological similarities with Kabbalisticwritings (Buber, 1960:173-74; Scholem, 1971:233-35). Yet Buber claims that one can penetrateto the inner life of Hasidut only by way of its extensive collections of legends about its zaddikimor "masters" (1947a:v-vii). In workinghis way through these legends Buberfound that they do not speak with the voice of Kabbalah. Buber's attitude toward Kabbalah,which pervades his later writings,/2/ is shaped by his recognitionof its gnostic character.He believes that Kabbalah,which is describedas an "anti-dualistic" gnosis, destroys the lived dialogue of I and Thou between man and God. Accordingto and gnosticismin general,stresses Buber,the gnosticnatureof Kabbalah, man's "knowingrelationshipto the divine" ratherthan the relationship of call and response between God and man. Consequently, God is no longer regardedas an actor in the human world. God becomes a mere object, the "object of an ecstatic contemplationand action" (1967:734). The "Kabbalistic-gnostic schemata"and "gnostictheologema,"which are essential expressions of Kabbalah, reinforce the importance that Kabbalahattaches both to speculationsabout the interior mysteries of God and to the efforts of practitioners to travel up throughthese spheres to the highest levels of the divine (1960:173-81, 253)./3/

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While it is difficultto present an exact accountingof Buber's view of the Kabbalistic conceptionof God, the matteris centralto our overall concern. Buberdoes not explicitlystate that the Kabbalah repudiatesthe concept of the personalGod which he found so powerfullyportrayedin the Bible. Yet he certainly realized that Kabbalahhad tendencies to replace the biblicalconception of God with a more acosmic one. In his later work there are passagesthat suggest that Kabbalismremainedtrue to the concept of the personal God. Buber writes, for example, that, despite the prima facie similaritiesbetween Kabbalismand other traditions of mysticism that dissolve the "Person" of God into a "superpersonal, inactive Godhead" (1960:194), Kabbalahretains the "limitless, the absolute Person," that is, the "Godhead" or "Being" which "speaksthe 'I' of revelation" (1960:196).However, Buber's affirmation is not very convincing. One has the feeling that Buber refuses to acknowledge something that he all but concludes on many other is not concernedwith occasions, that is, that on the whole the Kabbalah the God who turns toward man with the "I" of revelation./4/ In this vein Buber writes that gnosticism-and in this context it appearsthat Kabbalahrepresents gnosticism for him-offers an ultimate portraitof the self in which nothing is allowed to remain over againstit, including the "I" of God: "The gnostic redemptioncomes from the liberationof the world-soulin the self. In the manifold variantsis hidden the same primalmotif of the knowing majesty of the self in the all. It also has a love: which pretendsto sleep with the universe" (1960:244).Thus, as a result of Buber's recognitionof the gnostic dimension of Kabbalah,he sees in it the danger that, at the very least, the "Person" of God is swallowed up into a universal, impersonal principlethat is immanent both in the self and the world. In turning to Buber's presentationof Hasidut, we will see that Hasidut's greatness lies in its ability to with its attendantdanger. overcome the gnosis of Kabbalah The Hasidic "protest against," "break" with, or "transformation" of Kabbalismoccurs preciselyat the place where Kabbalismis inclined to lose the "I" of God within the "knowingmajestyof the self." Stated in another way, Buber regardedthe protest of Hasidut as the protest of "devotio" against "gnosis." He writes: "In Hasidism devotio has absorbed and overcome gnosis. This must happenever again if the bridge over the chasm of being is not to fall in" (1960:254). Hasidut guards against the tendency to break down the distinction between the living God and his human partner by praising the simple man rather than enshrining the "knower."The simple man lives fully in the world and dialogues with God in the lived everyday. This individual recognizes that at every moment he is called by God to help him in the task of redeeming the world. Thus, for Buber there is a great distance between Kabbalahand Hasidut, because only the latter leaves in all of its purity

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"the greatest of all values: the reciprocal relationship between the human and the divine, the realityof the I and the You which does not cease at the rim of eternity" (1947a:3). In contrast to Buber, Scholem does not hesitate to describe the concept of God that is peculiar to Kabbalah.He agrees with Buber's description of the gnostic character of Kabbalah,/5/ but goes on to affirmthat its conceptionof the hidden God, the En-Sof, has a definite "impersonal"stamp. Scholem writes, "It is clear that with this postulate
of an impersonal basic reality in God.
.

. Kabbalism abandons the

basis of the Biblicalconceptionof God" (1941:12). personalistic of the basic conAgainst the backdropof Scholem's understanding tinuity between Kabbalahand Hasidut, one is not surprisedto see that with Buber concerningHasidut'sconception of God. he breaks radically in JewishMysticism he writes that, since Hasidut simply In Major Trends doctrines, it reaffirmed"the old idea popularizedthe earlier Kabbalistic of the immanence of God in all that exists" (336) and "ideas of a mystical life with God and in God" (339). Accordingto Scholem, the boldness and enthusiasm that accompany the "pantheistic, or rather of the universe," which is especiallydistinctive acosmistic,interpretation of one of the schools of Hasidut, Habad, is also common to the movement as a whole (341). He writes of Habadthat "the secrets of the divine realm are presented in the guise of mystical psychology," and that "it is by descending into the depths of his own self that man ... discoversthat God is 'all in all' and there is 'nothing but Him"' (341). The foregoingdiscussion of Buber's and Scholem's presentationsof Hasidut disclosed their radicaldisagreementabout the concept of God the movement. This disagreement,in turn, reflects a that characterized wider dispute, one that goes beyond the question of the nature of Hasidut. The differing portraits of this mystical movement parallel divergent philosophicalapproachesto the dynamics of man's religious consciousness. Buber's life-long interest in Hasidut did not confine itself to the effort to reconstructthe movement historically.In fact, he has written that he had "not aimed at presentinga historicallyor hermeneutically comprehensivepresentationof Hasidism" (1967:731). From the beginning of Buber's fascinationwith Hasidut his studies were tightly intertwined with his attempt to formulate a more general philosophy of religion. Stated more precisely,his philosophyof religion, which underwent considerable change at first, acted as a "filter" through which Hasidut was made to pass./6/ By the time he had developed his basic insights about the relationshipbetween man and God-insights which were unfolded in his famous work I and Thou-he had come to see Hasidut as the greatest example of this philosophy.In this light, Buber wrote that Hasidutwas "solely concerned with the happeningsbetween

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man and God" (1960:62). Hasidutconfirmedhis belief that the deepest dimensions of the religious life are opened to man when he allows himself to be addressed by, and in turn responds to, the "I" of the revealing God. Further, in I and Thou Buber found it imperative to point out the error of any mystic vision of God that culminates in a pantheistic or other type of theory of divine immanence (131-43). In turn, he wrote that Hasidut "had nothing to do with pantheism which destroys or stunts the greatest of all values: the reciprocalrelationship between the human and the divine" (1947a:3). Scholem's study of Hasidut is deeply motivated by the hope of reconstructinga historicallyaccuratepicture of the theology and life of the movement. Yet it is wrong to suppose that Scholem's concerns are fully satisfiedwith this goal. His interest in Hasidutis tied to his work in all areas of Jewish mysticism and to his quest to understand the phenomenon of mysticism in general. While it would be rash, and probablyerroneous as well, to suggest that his own conceptions of the nature of religious life act as a filter for his study of Hasidut, there certainly are parallels between his conclusions about the characterof Hasidic teachings and his views about the essential features of mystical thought in general. In Major Trends in JewishMysticism Scholem elucidates a theory of "the conditions and circumstancesunder which mysticism arises in the historical development of religion and particularly in that of the great monotheistic systems" (6). The historical development of religion is sketched by way of a three-stage dialectic of "the religious consciousness" (7). At the first stage, the "mythicalepoch," the world is pictured as "being full of gods whom man encounters at every step and whose presence can be experienced without recourse to ecstatic meditation" (7). As religiousconsciousness passes beyond "childhood"to its "classical form," monotheistic religions emerge which are founded on the realization that there is a gulf between man and God. Here "religion signifies the creation of a vast abyss, conceived as absolute, between God, the infinite and transcendentalBeing, and Man, the finite creature" (7). At the third, mystic stage, a way is found beyond the earlier gulf. Scholem writes: "Mysticismdoes not deny or overlook the abyss; on the contrary, it begins by realizing its existence, but from there it proceeds to a quest for the secret that will close it in, the hidden path that will span it. .... Thus the soul becomes its scene and the soul's path through the abysmalmultiplicityof things to the experience of the Divine Reality, now conceived as the primordialunity of all things, becomes its main preoccupation" (8). The movement of religious consciousness in Scholem's philosophic sketch is depicted as both progressiveand dialectical./7/The final stage brings together all of the elements of the earlier, superseded periods

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and unites these in a higher synthesis. Thus, with the last stage, the "world of mythology and that of revelation meet in the soul of man" (8). Since mystic consciousness supplants the classical understanding, Scholem is proposing that the particularview of God embodied in mysticism is the fulfillment,as it were, of the more primitiveconcept of the absolute distinctionbetween God God that has as its presupposition and man. Consequently, with the rise of Jewish mysticism the idea of the hidden God, or En-Sof, replacesthe earlierview that God is an "I" who stands apart from man and yet who addresses man. Mystic consciousness, which recognizes that the soul of man can experience "the primordial unity of all things," therefore representsa higher grasp of ultimate reality than the classical monotheistic belief in a personal God. Finally, as we have seen, Hasidut gives full expression to this mysticalconceptionof God. The status of the concept of a personal God has been traced in three areas of the dispute between Buber and Scholem. First, the question of the acceptanceor rejection by Hasidut of the Kabbalistic view of God was the core of their disagreement about the extent of Kabbalisticinfluence on Hasidut. Second, these two scholars' reconstructionsof the nature of Hasidicteachings focused on the understandthis movement. For Buber, Hasidut gives ing of God that characterized pure expression to the belief that God is both an "I" who is distinct from man and a "Thou" who is man's partnerin dialogue. On the other hand, after studying the theoreticalwritingsof the early Hasidicleaders, Scholem confidently affirmed that the pantheistic or acosmic view of God that developed in Kabbalah found an enthusiastic reception in Hasidut. Third, the question of the nature of God was also at the forefront of these thinkers' conflicting philosophicaljudgments about the development of man's religiousconsciousness. Buberasserted that it is erroneous to believe that one can go "beyond" an understandingof God as Person. In fundamentalcontrast to this, Scholem has presented a diagram of the three-stage development of religious consciousness. Within the diagram,the way of life which is built upon the belief in the personalGod is not the ultimate expression of the religious life of man. With the third, mystic stage, the earlier separationof God and man is overcome and incorporated into the experience of "the primordial unity of all things."
II

The disagreement between Buber and Scholem extended to their views about the appropriate or relevant forms that Jewish faith will take in the future. They both held that Jewish mysticism was one of the highest expressions of Jewish religiouslife and that it still contains some

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of the most powerful forces of Jewish spirituality. However, their divergent portraitsof the nature of modern Jewish belief mirror their of the concept of God that animatedHasidut. opposingunderstandings Buber often displayshis annoyancewith those who seek to criticize his portrait of Hasidut by referring to texts that he seems to have significantlytransformedor entirely ignored. As stated previously, Buber readilyadmits that a full historicalreconstructionof the movement is not his intent. His annoyance stems from his limited interest in the historicalquestion, in contrast to his overwhelmingpreoccupationwith the present obstacles to, and future possibilities of, Jewish life. From the beginning of his studies of Hasidut, he recognized that the movement had a profoundgrasp of the perennialcore of Jewish faith. In an essay of 1918, "My Way to Hasidism," Buber wrote that with his first contact with the teachingsof the founder of Hasidut, Rabbi Israel BaalShem, he "experiencedthe Hasidicsoul," which he identifiedwith "the primally Jewish" (1958:59). Although Buber's understanding of this "primallyJewish" essence in Hasidut underwentsome changes early in his studies, his latest formulation, which we have alreadydetailed, was reaffirmedby him over many decades. Buberdeclaredthat Hasidutgave fundamentalexpression to the life of dialogue between God and man. The individualwho lives in this manner finds fulfillmentnot throughan escape from the world and a merging with the impersonal One, but through responding to the personal God who is encountered in the world. For Buber this is also the basic teaching of Judaism itself: "The great deed of Israel is not that it taught the one real God, who is the origin and goal of all being, but that it pointed out that this God can be addressedby man in reality, that man can say Thou to Him, that he can stand face to face with Him, that he can have intercourse with Him" (1960:91). Many of Buber's writingson Hasidut reflect his belief that Hasidut is a key to the possibilityof a renewal of Judaism.He asserted that "no renewal of Judaismis possible that does not bear in itself the elements of Hasidism" (1955:xiii). Three considerations brought Buber to this conclusion. First, as we have seen, he identified Hasidut with the essence of Jewish faith. Second, he believed that it was a dynamicvoice of the Jewish spirit in the past. Buber wrote in this connection that Hasidutwas "the last great floweringof the Jewish will to serve God in this world and to consecrate everyday life to him" (1947a:11). Third, although the movement lost its energy after the first decades of its explosive vision, Buber held that its spirit and message are still accessible to the Jew of today. These aspects of Hasidut are summarizedin the following statement: "In fact, nowhere in the last centuries has the soulforce of Judaismso manifested itself as in Hasidism.The old power lives in it .... Still bound to the medieval in its outward appearance,

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Hasidic Judaismis alreadyopen to regenerationin its inner truth, and the degenerationof this great religiousmovement can only halt but not stop entirely the process in the history of the spirit that began with it" (1958:48-49). There are hints in the above quotationthat Buber believed that the significance of Hasidut extended beyond its relationshipto Judaism's future renaissance.Although there are many dimensions to Hasidut's connection with mankind'sspiritualhistory accordingto Buber, he most often accentuates its teaching of the "hallowing of the everyday" (1958:27). He means by this that the Hasidim, the followers of Hasidut, were able to bringa fervorand a religiousintensity to all of their actions. They felt no absolute barrierbetween the sacredand the profaneact, for they knew that at every moment the individualhas the potentialityof liberating"the sparksof God that glimmer in all beings and all things" (1947a:3). Buber explains Hasidut's message of man's power to in God's redemptionof the world as follows: "If you direct participate the undiminished power of your fervor to God's world-destiny,if you do what you must do at this moment-no matterwhat it may be! -with your whole strengthand with kavvanah,with holy intent, you will bring about the union between God and Shekhinah ["the Divine Presence which resides in this world"],eternity and time" (1947a:4). Buberhas diagnosedthe spiritualmalaise of Western man as stemming from the mistaken belief that there is a "radical separation between the sacred and the profane," coupled with the fact that "the sacredhas become in many cases a concept empty of reality" (1958:39). Modern man limited the sphere of the sacredto a very small partof his life and then he spiritualizedthe sacred until it became synonymous with "the spiritual,"that is, with the possession of lofty ideas. In the end, "one no longer knows the holy face to face" (1958:39). However, Buber believes that the crisis of modern life can begin to be remedied by reintroducingthe inner message of Hasidut to the world. Hasidut a way of life in which the individualhad full "intercoursewith portrayed God in the lived everyday, [through] the accepting and dedicating of what is happeninghere and now" (1967:736). While Scholem's theological reflections are not as well known as those of Buber, they represent an equally important dimension of modern Jewish thought. Scholem does not specificallytreat Hasidut's relationship to the central features of Jewish spirituality. Although stating that "there is no single positive element of Jewish religion which is altogether lacking in Hasidism" (1941:329-30), Scholem's understandingof it is apparentonly in the wider context of his interest in the history of Kabbalah. Scholem's study of Kabbalah(again, Hasidutis a stage of Kabbalah for him) first sprangout of his concern to understandwhat had "kept

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Judaismalive" in the past (1976:20)./8/ While doubtingwhether "traditional Jewish forms" would survive as they had come from the past (1976:22), he believed that Kabbalahhad a "living center" which could give expression to new forms in the future (1976:46-47). Scholem recognizedthat there might be other avenues of Jewish survival, but he continued to believe that Kabbalah presentedat least partof the answer. claim upon Judaism'sfuture by pointScholemjustified Kabbalah's ing to three aspects of its relationshipto the core of Jewish life in the past. First, as we have seen, Kabbalahrepresentsthe third stage in the development of Jewish religious consciousness. It is the dialectical culmination of the earlier mythic and classicalexpressions in Judaism. disclosed the full implicationsof spiritualinsights Second, the Kabbalah that were only partiallyrevealed in biblicaland rabbinicliterature.In an essay that examined the Jewish concepts of revelation and tradition, Scholem wrote the following:"The Kabbalistswere in no sense of the word heretics. Rather they strove to penetrate, more deeply than their predecessors,into the meaning of Jewish concepts .... The Kabbalists sought to unlock the innermost core of the Torah, to decode the text, so to speak .... In a way, they have merely drawn the final consequence from the assumption of the Talmudists concerning revelation and tradition as religious categories" (1971:292-93). Third, Kabbalah sought to satisfy some of the fundamentalneeds of man's spirituallife which had been ignored by the other streams of Judaism. Scholem praised Kabbalah for reintroducing into Judaism the mythical and pantheisticdimensions of the life of the spirit (1941:8,22,38). Further, Scholem states that, unlike Jewish philosophy, the mystical tradition "did not turn its back upon the primitiveside of life, that all-important region where mortalsare afraidof life and in fear of death" (1941:35). is able to stand up to the transforAccordingto Scholem, Kabbalah mation from medieval to modern times in virtue of its unique grasp of the world. Kabbalahpresented a world that is a "corpussymbolicum" (1941:28). It was able to indicatethrough symbols that there is a divine depth that lies in the midst of the everyday.Scholem suggests that "the kabbalistswere symbolists" who "had a fundamentalfeeling that there is a mystery-a secret-in the world" (1976:48). Their attempt to refer to the sanctity and mystery of life can still be appropriated today as a foundationfrom which future Jewish expressions may emerge. Scholem writes:
The particular forms of symbolicalthought in which the fundamental attitudeof the Kabbalah found its expression,may mean little or nothing to us (thougheven todaywe cannot escape, at times, from their powerful appeal).But the attemptto discoverthe hidden life beneath the external shapes of reality and to make visible that abyss in which the symbolic natureof all that exists reveals itself: this attemptis as importantfor us

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today as it was for those ancient mystics. For as long as natureand man conditionof are conceivedas His creations,and that is the indispensable highly developed religious life, the quest for the hidden life of the element in such creationwill alwaysform one of the most transcendent of the humanmind. (1941:38-39) important preoccupations

Scholem's conceptionof Kabbalah,both its natureand its role in the past and future of Judaism, has importantimplicationsfor the conception of God that was and is to be the basis of Jewish life. In declaring that Kabbalahis central to the problem of Judaism'scontinuitywith its past, he has found that the idea of a personalGod is nothing less than archaic.Just as the latest expressions of Jewish mysticism do not refer to this understandingof God, so the modern Jew need not. Scholem wrote, for example, that the modern Jew can no longer believe in the biblicalconceptionof a God who creates the world, directs history, and speaks with man (1976:281). This is not meant to suggest that Judaism should espouse some type of crass atheism, but that the God-concept should be treated as a symbol that points to, among other things, the sanctity of life and the importanceof man's moral strivings. Scholem finds that any attempt to go beyond this symbolic understandingof God, that is, the attempt to invest "God with human attributes,"leads to a sterile paradox(1976:281). as one of Finally, in additionto the judgment that depicts "kabbalah the possibilitiesfor Jewish survival in history" (1976:47), Scholem sees the prospectthat Kabbalahmight play an importantrole in modern life as a whole. Kabbalah has a message for modern man, even if its forms are not fully accessible today. The Kabbalists'attitude particular toward the world can be viewed as a corrective to modern man's fragmentary life of private symbols, on the one hand, and public rationalismand shallow technology, on the other hand. In contrast to the desperateattempt to find meaning through private,incommunicable symbols, the Kabbalists"displayeda symbolic dimension to the whole world" (1976:48), and thus broughtman to experiencesomething other than his own lonely, subjective world. Further, while technology seems to eradicateany spiritualdepth from man or the universe, the Kabbalists proclaimthat there is "mystery-a secret-in the world" (1976:48) and thus that there is a sacreddimension to all that exists. III The line of argument of this inquiry has illuminated the serious ramificationsof the controversy between Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem that takes its point of departure from the question of the Kabbalisticinfluence on Hasidut and quickly leads to their conflicting of God that underliesthis Jewish mystical portraitsof the understanding

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movement. The disagreementabout Hasidut reflected the more fundamental differences about the development and expression of man's religious consciousness and about the role of belief in a personalGod in the future development of both Jewish faith and Western man's spirituallife. For Buber, the future of Judaism as well as the authenticity of modern man's life in the world depend upon the abilityof man to listen and to respond to the God who is both "the boundless and nameless as well as the father who teaches His children to address Him" (1960:9293). Buberbelieved that the highest development of man's religious life was embodied in the stance of the simple man who relates to God, with "biblicalimmediacy,""the purely personalbeing of the prayingman to the being of God, which is not purely personal but which stands personallyover against the prayingman" (1967:734).It was the "deed" of Israel to teach of this possibility, and, even though Kabbalahwas inclined to replacethe life of dialogue with meditationalexercises of the self looking into itself, Hasidut was once again to state Judaism's message in all of its power and purity. Scholem contested at every level these views of Buber. He held that Hasidut had not repudiatedthe Kabbalistic understandingof the impersonal God that dwells both beyond and within all that exists. Hasidut, in fact, espoused this acosmic conception of God with an intensity that went beyond earlier Kabbalistic formulations. In this way Hasidut revealed itself as a legitimate heir of Kabbalah.For Scholem, Kabbalah is both an original source within Judaism and the culmination of the more naive and classical expressions of the Jewish spirit, expressions found in the Bible and in rabbinicliterature.Finally, Scholem held that Kabbalah'steachings may contain the seeds of the next flowering of Jewish life. As the Jew entered the stream of modern life he had to leave much behind. The challenges of science, of historical criticism, and of modern philosophy have unalterably cut him off from the immediacyof biblicaland rabbinicfaith. Yet the Kabbalisticportraitof the world is still translatabletoday. Its message is that there is a depth dimension to human life in the world, a dimension that will forever elude all purely rationalattempts to know and control life. Thus, while Kabbalahhas the power to speak to the modern Jew and to modern opposed to the secularismthat knows only civilization,it stands radically rationalneeds and powers. Scholem stated that, if the Kabbalah'svision of the symbolic nature of existence were ever lost, man would be spirituallyat an end. However, he felt that mankindwould never totally abandonthe "mystery"that dwells in the midst of life (1976:47-48). As a final note to the present inquiry, in the essay "ReflectionsOn Jewish Theology" (1976:261-97) Scholem seems to recognize that there is at least a prima facie conflict between his understanding of the

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modern Jew's conception of God and the position taken by that "existentialist" stream of modern Jewish philosophy which includes such thinkers as Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Abraham Heschel. However, Scholem argues that this existentialist tradition has also repudiatedthe naive realism of the biblical concept of the God who speaks to man and who directs history. He observes, for example, that all of these thinkers have taken over mystical terminology in order to describe revelation. In appropriating mystical concepts they have, according to Scholem, tacitly acknowledgedthat the naive biblicalunderstanding of God could not withstand the onslaughts of scientific and historicalcriticism(1976:270-74). While Scholem's critique of modern Jewish theology is insightful, the conflict between himself and those who belong to the stream of Jewish existentialismis still a real one. Scholem is correct in suggesting that, by utilizing the mystical conception of revelation, many modern thinkers have escaped from having to affirmthat there are real acts of revelation in history. However, at least some of the existentialistshave continued to strugglewith the meaning of belief in a personalGod who acts in history. The best example of this is Emil Fackenheim's recent works. In such writings as God's Presencein History and The Jewish ReturnInto History,Fackenheim has endeavored to explore the events of the Holocaust and the establishmentof the modern state of Israel in terms of God's acting and revealinghimself in history./9/ Thus, despite Scholem's statements to the contrary, the debate continues over the significanceof the concept of a personalGod in modern Jewish thought and life.

NOTES
An analysis of the differences betweenBuber'sand Scholem'sunder/1/ and mysticism in between is presented of the relationship language standings viewsaboutthe concepDavidBiale:81-92. Bialedoes not exploreScholem's tion of God as personnor the controversy betweenBuberand Scholemfrom thispointof departure. /2/ Buber's attitude toward andmysticism in general,undergoes Kabbalah, an important changein the seconddecadeof the presentcentury.Scholem notes Buber's of Kabbalah olderand more positiveevaluation in his essayon
Idea in Judaism: Buberin TheMessianic 231-32.

A shortanalysis of Buber's /3/ and critique attitude toward Gnosticism is in Paul Arthur given by Hugo Bergman,"MartinBuberand Mysticism," andMaurice Schilpp Friedman, eds., pp.306-8.

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As stated above, it is difficult to present Buber's understandingof the /4/ Kabbalistic conceptionof God. The difficultyfor our study results from ambiguities in Buber's later work, rather than from the changes his writings undergo over the decades. It seems that when he discusses the relationshipbetween Kabbalah and Hasidut,he acknowledgesthe impersonalcharacterof the Kabbalistic conception of God. For him, Hasidut radically breaks with Kabbalah view preciselyat this point! However, when he turns to elucidatethe Kabbalistic of the Godheadwithout referenceto Hasidut,he is not willing to admit that the "I" of revelationis missing. It is as if Buberrefuses to state, even if he suspects it, that a phase of Judaism could abandon the life of dialogue. See Martin Buber, 1960:176-81, 190-99, 252-54. A discussion of Scholem's understandingof Gnosticism is presented in /5/ the chapter"Myth"in Biale: 129-47. /6/ Buber writes of himself as the "filter" in "Replies to My Critics," in Schilppand Friedman,eds.: 731. /7/ The influenceof Hegel's treatmentof the history of religious consciousness on Scholem's diagramis very clear. In both discussions there is a threestage dialectic: Hegel-religion of nature, religions of spiritual individuality, absolute religion; Scholem-mythological stage, classical (monotheistic) stage, mysticism.Of specialinterest is the correspondencebetween the last two stages in Hegel's and Scholem's schemes. The second stage presents a God who is separated from man by an abyss, while the culminating stage reveals the harmony, if not the full identity, between the spirit of man and the spirit of God. Scholem diverges from Hegel in setting out these stages as part of the inner development that occurs withinsome religious traditions.For Hegel, the stages bring all religions into a single hierarchical system. Scholem is thus part of a whole traditionof Jewish scholarsand philosopherswho were influencedby this German Idealist. The parallels between Hegel and Scholem were first broughtto my attentionby the work of Nathan Rotenstreich:69-70. /8/ An autobiographical account of Scholem's early studies in Kabbalahis given in Gershom Scholem, 1980. /9/ Fackenheim'sendeavor to understandthe Holocaust and the founding of the modern state of Israel in terms of God's action in history is briefly in analyzedin my review of his book TheJewishReturnInto History: Reflections the Age of Auschwitz and a NewJerusalem(1979).

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