Silence and Language in Hasidism: Martin Buber's View

16 SHOFAR SILENCE AND LANGUAGE IN HASIDISM: MARTIN BUBER'S VIEW1 S. Daniel Breslauer S. Daniel Breslauer is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas. The author of many studies on modern Jewish thought, he has written A New Jewish Ethics, Contemporary Jewish Ethics, and Modem Jewish Morality. Dr. Breslauer is Vice-President of the Midwest Jewish Studies Association. A popular theory, recently challenged by Joseph Dan, traces the evolution of hasidism as a rapid progression from early vitality to degeneration. According to this view, hasidism begins with the charismatic message of Israel Baal Shem Tov in the early eighteenth century and then deteriorates into a nearly idolatrous reverence for the hasidic masters, the zaddikim, by the end of the 19th century.2 While Martin Buber questions some tenets of this theory, he accepts the thesis of a general, arc-like trajectory in its development . Thus, for example, he hails Rabbi Mendel of Vorki for developing the art of silence, an art Buber considered appropriate for Rabbi Mendel's age of hasidism's decline. Early Hasidism had kept words alive, had vitalized religious language. In its stage of deterioration, however, hasidism lacked that power of invigoration. Words became barriers to the life proclaimed by hasidic leaders: "The time for words is past," Buber comments, "It has become late." 3 While Buber lauds Rabbi Mendel for understanding the needs of his age, he castigates other zaddikim who fail to recognize the demand for silence . Rabbi Israel of Rizhin, whom Buber admits baffles him, developed an aphoristic style, delighting in the power of words. Buber charged the rabbi 1This essay incorporates but extends the discussion found in my book Martin Buber: Theorist ofMyth (Garland, 1990). 2See Joseph Dan, "Hasidism: The Third Century," World Union ofJewish Studies Newsletter 29 (1989), pp. 29-42. 3Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters, translated by Olga Marx (New York: Schocken, 1947), p. 46. Volume 9, No.2 Winter 1991 17 with self-indulgence. While admitting that Rabbi Israel was "certainly a genius ," he commented on the arrogance preventing Rabbi Israel from serving as "the vessel and the voice of the religious spirit." 4 Even this self-indulgent leader, however, sometimes divines the truth. Struggling to understand Exodus 20:21-22, Rabbi Israel intuited an important lack in his own aphoristic style. Although renowned as a conversationalist whose use of language gained him followers and fame, Rabbi Israel recognized the limits of words. Exodus 20:21-22 distinguishes between a sacrificial altar made of earth and one made of stones. God prefers the former but will accept the latter if the stones are rough-hewn and not fashioned. Rabbi Israel, according to Buber, applied this verse to worship of God. God, he stated, preferred silence, but if words are used they should be unfashioned, spontaneous and unrefined.5 Despite his own affectation of "beautiful speaking," Rabbi Israel admitted that God has no love of such speech and desires unsophisticated, roughhewn words, if not the abandonment of speech altogether. Buber, like Rabbi Israel, considered silence greater than language. He felt, as Laurence Silberstein puts it, that language "displaces rather than reflects the reality being discussed." 6 Buber's approval of Rabbi Israel's silence and his rejection of Rabbi Israel's aphorisms reflects his view of language and its limitations even more than his evaluation of the development of hasidism and its historical phases. Buber himself tried to imitate the masters of silence and moved from speaking beautifully in the "easy word" of his early writings to speaking truthfully in a stammering language that acknowledges the limits of any spoken word.? Buber sought to reveal how language conceals truth. Gershom SchoIem, Abraham HescheI, and the Language of Hasidism Gershom Scholem, who in contrast to Buber focuses on hasidic theory more than hasidic story, offers a different evaluation of Rabbi Israel of Rizhin. Indeed, Scholem once challenged Buber on his lack of interest in that Rabbi. Scholem pointed to the "unfathomable" words of Rabbi Israel 4/bid., p. 16. 5Martin Buber, The Origin and Meaning of Ilasidism, edited and translated by Maurice Friedman (New York: Horizon Press, 1960), pp. 147-48. 6See Laurence J. Silberstein...