David Wolpe: belief

Transcript context

…But if I defend Hasidic philosophy and I say there’s something wondrous about the world, a kind of immanence, which maybe other traditions have neglected, and it was a resurgence in Judaism, it was part of the Enlightenment. It happened at a time where Judaic philosophy and life was having a lot of problems. It was highly modern. If I think about a lot of 19th-century or even early 20th-century Jewish writings, that’s arguably the most dynamic tradition, again, at that turning point. And in terms of capturing the beauty of existence in a way that reflects how we moderns would call a subjective perspective on that. Isn’t that the most profound branch of Judaism, or no? OK. Well, you asked me to critique it. You didn’t ask me what was good about it. Now, you’re asking what was good about it. So what I would say, I don’t want to call it the most profound branch of Judaism. I don’t think that you could say, for example, that the Vilna Gaon, who represented the Mitnagdim — those who opposed Hasidism — certainly was not less profound than the Baal Shem Tov. What I would say is that Hasidism, which is a tradition that I deeply love — in some ways my greatest religious hero was a very offbeat, strange Hasidic rebbe called the Kotzker Rebbe — Hasidism, what it did was, at least from the Baal Shem Tov, is it sought, yes, to restore the sense of God’s immanence in the world, the sense of joy in connecting to God and to other people. It expanded the expressions of religious ecstasy in dance and song and also, very powerfully and importantly, in religious stories, Hasidic stories, especially the stories of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the most famous example but not the only example by far. Hasidic stories are an immeasurable contribution to the world treasury of spirit. So all those things absolutely are true. If we end up elevating immanence over transcendence, do we in some ways neglect Torah study and the special role of Israel too much?…

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