Pillar of Prayer: A Review Essay

The printed versions of early Hasidic teachings are a marbled composite of several inexorably entangled layers of translation. The homilies or personal statements of advice were delivered in Yiddish, the vernacular of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, yet the vast majority was committed to writing only in Hebrew. Anything preserved for us in these books is thus a second-generation translation, and the contemporary scholar has great difficulty in recapturing the original language of the teaching. The situation is further complicated by the fact that early Hasidic leaders rarely wrote their own books. With a few notable exceptions like Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liady’s Likkutei Amarim—Tanya (1796) or the first part of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev’s Kedushat Levi (1798), a rebbe’s words were generally transcribed by his students, and in many cases these were not collected and printed until after his death. Even then Hasidic teachings were sometimes attributed to more than one master, in part the result of the late emergence of printed Hasidic books. Finally, Hasidism began as a primarily oral religious movement that privileged the spoken word over its written counterpart, a hierarchy that reflects key Hasidic values. Prayer and study were primarily sonic rather than visual activities, and the physically intoned sounds of religious service were imbued with deep mystical significance. The early masters sensed the limited ability of written language to convey subtle spiritual truths, and it seems that they distrusted a form of communication that divorced ideas from the experience of hearing them from a living teacher.

Given the complicated textual fabric of this genre, judiciously rendering Hasidic texts from their nonnative Hebrew into another language is a delicate undertaking that must be performed with cognizance and caution. Yet this task is by no means impossible, and Menachem Kallus’ excellent new translation entitled Pillar of Prayer is a significant contribution to the academic study of Hasidism as well as a service to the spiritual seeker of any faith. Kallus has done a fine job of making this collection of short Hasidic teachings on the art of prayer accessible to the intelligent English reader. His style is lucid and articulate, and his footnotes are a helpful guide both for someone approaching these texts with a less substantial background in Jewish mystical thought and the seasoned reader of Hasidic texts. The more advanced student will also benefit from examining the newly typeset Hebrew versions of these texts included in this volume. Introductory and concluding essays by other contributing authors help to frame Kallus’ translations, contextualizing the ideas found in Pillar of Prayer within the spectrum of Jewish mysticism as well as exploring the affinities between Hasidic thought and other religious traditions.

Hasidism is a pietistic mystical revival movement that emerged from the teachings of Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer (d. 1760), known by his popular appellation “Ba’al Shem Tov” (Master of the Good Name). This new approach to religious life swept across Eastern Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, and it is difficult to argue with the centrality of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s thought in the Jewish canon. However, in many ways he remains a mysterious figure, and much ink has been spilled in the scholarly quest to find the historical Ba’al Shem Tov and determine his authentic teachings.¹ Rabbi Yisrael wrote very little, and his ideas are preserved mainly in the works of his disciple Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polnoye (Pol. Połonne; d. c. 1783) and his grandson Rabbi Mosheh Hayyim Ephrayim of Sudilkov (Pol. Sudylków; d. c. 1800), in addition to quotations scattered throughout hundreds of books both early and late.

In the early twentieth century two Hasidim set out independently to collect these disparate traditions into a single book, hoping to promote the study of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s spiritual path and thereby usher in the messianic age...