Apostasy, Grief, and Literary Practice in Habad Hasidism

In the year 1820, Rabbi Menahem Mendl Schneerson's youngest son Moshe converted to Christianity. Seven years later, Moshe's older brother Dov Ber (who had by now become leader of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement) devoted the last public discourse of his life to the apostasy of Jewish boys conscripted by the Russian army. Clearly, this essay was offered as a response to the deep sense of crisis that had settled upon Russian Jewry due to the recent passage of the infamous "cantonization" decree, which imposed harsh quotas for the conscription of Jewish boys at very young ages, and supplemented their twenty-five years of mandatory military service with additional years of training under harsh conditions and heavy conversionary pressure. Yet I believe it can be shown that the essay "Lekiḥat 'anshe ḥayil" (On the Conscription of Jewish Soldiers) was also written in response to the apostasy by R. Dov Ber's own brother. He sought to explain in Hasidic terms not just how the unthinkable act of conversion came about but also how the mechanics of redemption could render even this catastrophe somehow meaning ful. In cultural poetic terms, R. Dov Ber's essay calls attention to the close relationship between mystical and everyday responses to social suffering, and to the complex interplay of literary concerns and ritual efficacy in Jewish mystical writing. My analysis calls for a broader and more culturally attuned understanding of what properly constitutes "Jewish literature," and for a renewed engagement with the question of how different kinds of literature can act upon or within the social world.