Wedding-Feasts, Exiled Princes, and Hasidic Parable-Traditions

From among the parables found in classical hasidic collections of homilies, some can be seen to belong to families or traditions of parables. In the first such tradition examined in this study, representative hasidic teachers, explicitly or implicitly, sought to explain the talmudic saying, "The world can be likened to a wedding-feast." An association with the biblical account of the Tabernacle is a key to tracing the roots of a connection between the Tabernacle with the wedding-motif, going backwards through Kabbalah, rabbinic midrashim, and ultimately to the association between Temple and sacred marriage in ancient Near Eastern pagan culture.

The second parable-tradition consists of a series of variations on the motifs of an exiled prince and the quest for a gem at the bottom of the sea, a parable-complex which also includes motifs such as a change of garments, forgetting, and a letter. The closest analogue to these parables is found in an ancient gnostic source known as the "Hymn of the Pearl." Employing what is obviously an inherited parable-story, hasidic teachers could freely mold that narrative-tradition to convey an array of meanings and themes central to hasidic teaching and the hasidic ethos.