The Hasidic Parable

A Holy Man's Dependence upon His Followers

A Holy Man's Dependence upon His Followers ~ bird is perched at the very top of a tall tree beyond anyone's reach. However, if one person stands on the shoulders of another, and that person stands also on the shoulders of another, then the one standing on the very top is able to reach that bird. (Degel mabane E/rayimp In another of his homilies found in the same volume,2 Efrayim of Sedilikov wrote, "It is good that the people of Israel always be united in one fellowship, for then even those situated on a lower spiritual level assist their fellows to attain a greater level of holiness than would otherwise be possible.... The person on a higher level has need for the person lower than himself, and the person on a lower level has need for one higher than himself ..." (italics added, AW). Without the support of otherseven those on a lower spiritual level-one is incapable of the spiritual level one might otherwise attain. In accentuating the holy man's dependence upon his community of followers, the above parable testifies to the contrast between eighteenthcentury Hasidism and earlier stages of Jewish mysticism in which the mystic remained an isolated individual, not serving as a leader or center of any kind of human community. Gershom Scholem3 defines the innovation of eighteenth-century Hasidism whereby the mystic-who is intrinsically turned inward and away from society-becomes at the same time the center of a community. The illumined-the person with the most profound inner life-is paradoxically the leader of a community. It is possible that the development in this direction began even prior to the 148 A Holy Man's Dependence upon His FolloW"ers bird is perched at the very top of a tall tree beyond anyone's reach. However, if one person stands on the shoulders of another, and that person stands also on the shoulders of another, then the one standing on the very top is able to reach that bird. (Degel mabane E/rayim)l In another of his homilies found in the same volume,2 Efrayim of Sedilikov wrote, "It is good that the people of Israel always be united in one fellowship, for then even those situated on a lower spiritual level assist their fellows to attain a greater level of holiness than would otherwise be possible.... The person on a higher level has need for the person lower than himself, and the person on a lower level has need for one higher than himself ..." (italics added, AW). Without the support of otherseven those on a lower spiritual level-one is incapable of the spiritual level one might otherwise attain. In accentuating the holy man's dependence upon his community of followers, the above parable testifies to the contrast between eighteenthcentury Hasidism and earlier stages of Jewish mysticism in which the mystic remained an isolated individual, not serving as a leader or center of any kind of human community. Gershom Scholem3 defines the innovation of eighteenth-century Hasidism whereby the mystic-who is intrinsically turned inward and away from society-becomes at the same time the center of a community. The illumined-the person with the most profound inner life-is paradoxically the leader of a community. It is possible that the development in this direction began even prior to the 148 The Polemics of an Hour of History 149 Baal Shem Tov and was found to a degree in the earlier years of the eighteenth century in the thinking and social patterns of various pietistic cells in Eastern European Jewry from which Hasidism emerged.4 It is only the holy man, not the others, who is able to reach for the bird perched at the top of the tree. In the implicit analogy, the clear distinction between holy man and follower remains and is in no way blurred. But importance, even crucial importance, is nonetheless assigned to the follower. The comment of Efrayim of Sedilikov relates to a verse from the Torah in which Abraham "stood over them" (Gen. 18:8)-over the men (later understood to be angels) walking through the hot and inhospitable desert when Abraham ran to invite them to rest and to join him in a repast beneath a tree by his tent. The homilist understood Abraham's standing over his guests as his dependence upon them for the sake of his fulfilling his role, just as, in the parable, the man is able to...