Why Breslov? - Chassidus and Personal Value

This post is a new one in response to a recent e-mail. - Dovid Meisels


Last week I posted a comment on a friend’s blog refuting an assertion by another reader. Part of the refutation was the point that one’s choice of derech is a matter of personal value. For example, I have learned Chabad, sat in Chabad shiurim, and davened for a many years at various Chabad houses and institutions. What did I get from it? Nothing. For me, personally, Chabad is empty. I don’t get a hislahavus or even a “spark” from the derech of Lubavtich.

READ CAREFULLY, THOUGH : These are statements of personal, not universal, value. While Chabad chassidus doesn’t stimulate me, I still see its gadlus. When I was teaching high school, I encouraged several of the bochrim interested in chassidus to go seek out Chabad. I thought it as the best derech for these boys. Additionally, I am a big fan of the Tanya - it is one of, if not the, greatest works of chassidus ever produced and one of the finest ever pieces of Torah scholarship. Everyone should learn it!

Nevertheless, Chabad is still a mode of yiddishket with which I cannot connect.

These statements drew a lot of criticism. I got at least 10 or 15 e-mails saying that my words were divisive and that I had no right to call Chabad worthless. Obviously, this isn’t what I wrote. I never said Chabad was worthless. Rather, Chabad just doesn’t do anything for me. I acknowledge that, for many others, the Torah of Chabad is shoresh ha-neshoma. Another example of the lack of critical reading that goes on in the blogosphere. Oh well.

At least one reader, though, did review the post carefully and understood what I was writing. This woman e-mailed me a with a very poignant question:

I understand that Chabad is not the derech for you. But what was your positive reason for choosing Breslov? It would be interesting to know, just for contrast, just what the ‘personal value’ is that Breslov holds for you.

Now, that is a good question.

The answer is: I don’t know. I think I am a Breslover because something deep down resonates with the Rebbe’s Torah. The Breslov weltanschauung rests very comfortably with me. Though there are many things that I do not understand in the Rebbe’s teachings, I have enough faith in the Rebbe’s daas to accept that the chesaron is in my understanding alone. Yet, these words don’t really answer the question posed above.

Indeed, it always seems easier to describe a lack of meaning than it does to actually qualify something’s positive personal value. Rabbi Nachman z”l wrote in Sichos ha-Ran 1 that it is impossible to properly communicate that which inspires us from day to day and even moment to moment. This is because these perceptions of G-dliness come from a place that is beyond words, as Dovid ha-Melech wrote:

כי אני ידעתי כי־גדול י ואדנינו מכל־אלהים

For I, I know that HaShem is great, and our G-d is above all others.
(Tehillim 135:5)

The Rebbe explains that in the dual language אני ידעתי, I, I know... Dovid ha-Melech is emphasizing that this perception of the greatness of G-d is his and his alone. While Dovid knows this greatness, it cannot be detailed to others. Such, as the Rebbe explains, is the nature of religious inspiration.

So, I have to accept as fact that I cannot explain exactly what it is that inspires me about Breslov. Maybe, I can offer a theory as to why Rabbi Nachman’s Torah captures my heart, yet it is only a theory at best:

More than the Rebbe’s understanding of G-d, I am impressed by the Rebbe’s understanding of the nature of being human and being a Jew. Specifically, we all carry internal struggles within ourselves: the struggle against apathy, against sadness, the contradictions and paradoxes between emotions and intellect and love and hate, for example. While difficult by nature for us to open up discuss such matters, the Rebbe delves into them without equivocating. His direct and practical approach to the problems of being human while simultaneously being a servant of the Divine is stunning. While the Rebbe writes about these matters more explicitly in Sichos ha-Ran, I also see them underlying Likutey Moharan, but on a more sophisticated level.

Coming from an entirely Yekkishe/Oberlanderish background in learning, Likutey Moharan definitely was not my thing. I struggled a lot to understand it. Several Rosh Ha-Shanna’s ago, I had a late night epiphany which has, for the past several years, guided my learning of the sefer. As of now, I view Likutey Moharan as an attempt to resolve the trauma of living in a “world of separateness.” As we know, all things emanate from the essential unity of HaShem, as it says in Tehillim: ain od milvado - there is nothing other than Him. Our souls are ultimately rooted in HaShem as is all of creation. So, at it’s supernal source, all things are really one. Yet, we live in a world which appears in conflict, where barriers exist between all of its disparate elements. There is strife, there is difference. The essential unity is not visible.

From this dissonance, the conflict between the knowing of the supernal unity of all things in HaShem versus the experience of living in a world of separateness, there emanates a certain amount of common human trauma. Resolving this trauma, piercing the illusions of the “world of separateness” appears to be the goal of Likutey Moharan. In each lesson, the Rebbe begins with the disparate elements of this world. He finds common features which express some ancient archetype of creation. These elements, or bechinos become the factors through which the Rebbe gradually leads these disparate elements them back to their source. As one learns a teaching, the barriers between various concepts break down. Multiple ideas become unified as part of a grand, overarching supernal archetype. However, the Rebbe never goes back all the way. There is a boundary, a limit beyond which words fail. The biographies of the Rebbe record instances when, during a teaching, the Rebbe would grasp his beard, unable to say anything because there were no words for what came next. I have thought, yet may be wrong, that the Sippurey Ma’asios were intended to express what lies beyond the boundary of words in Likutey Moharan. The Rebbe himself introduced the Ma’asios by saying that, since his teachings were not making the Chassidim into tzadikim, that he needed to begin telling tales.

All in all, that is about as much as I have to say about why I am a Breslover.

Yet, if you ask me in a month you will probably get a different answer.

Gut Shabbos!

Avraham Chaim Bloomenstiel