My Story 16

In my experience, non-Hassidic Ashkenazi Judaism fails to answer the great longings of the soul. In the aftermath of the Shabbatean debacle, a sterilized, unemotional Judaism came to be. It centered around depth of study in texts; not connected with everyday life, and certainly not bringing one to a sense of transcendence and connection to G-d. (This is my experience, and everyone is free to disagree). The exalted poetry of the Kabbalah, which had for centuries been the direction of most scholars, was traded in for immersion in the details of legal text. Spirituality had proven too dangerous. Even the study of halachah, which had always been the purpose of going into the depths of Talmud, became the province of the few. Rather, books that explained and justified the understanding of Jewish law as expressed in customs of the East European communities largely took the place of the traditional methods of comparing Talmudic and Medieval sources and coming up with conclusions. Conformity in ideology and practice, it was thought, would prevent another popular revolution similar to Shabbateanism. When Hasidism arose in the mid and late eighteenth century, It was seen as a threat. Even stringencies introduced by Hasidism, such as much sharper knives used for Shechitah (kosher slaughter) were condemned as being deviations from tradition. Some rabbis even declared meat from such shechitah to be non-kosher. The ecstatic prayer of the Hasidim seemed particularly threatening. A hundred years of strife were to ensue, with undercurrents of that strife continuing to this very day. As you have probably gathered by now, I am definitely in the camp of the Hasidim when it comes to ideology. A great exception to all this was Hungary. Although there had been attempts to establish a Jewish presence in Hungary for many centuries, this only came about in the mid-seventeenth century, when Jews from Ukraine and Poland sought refuge from the Cossack massacres going on in those countries. The Hungarian community was fairly isolated for about a century and a half. When ideas of the "Enlightenment" began to come in from Germany, the rabbis made a united front against this threat to Torah Judaism. In fact, Hungarian Reform was not nearly as radical as in other countries, and looked more like what we would call "Modern Orthodox" today. Nevertheless, it represented deviation. Hasidism arrived in Hungary about the same time as the "Enlightenment" did. The new "enlightened" ideas were a common threat to both traditional and Hasidic Orthodoxy. As a result, the huge gulf between "Hasidim" and "Mitnagdim" (opponents of Hasidism) that divided East European Jewry, simply did not occur in Hungary. Differences between the non-Hasidic and Hasidic centered around style rather than substance. The Shabbatean movement  had much less influence in Hungary than in other countries. As a result, there was much less overreaction to spiritual expression, or the free study of halachah, The Hungarian Yeshivot, of which Nitra was one, would study the Talmud in the classical way, usually associated today only with Sepharadim; understanding the text, following each concept through centuries of halachic opinion, and coming up with a conclusion. Many prominent rabbis also did double duty as Hasidic rebbes. But there was a difference. Unlike the adoration of Hasidic rebbes in other places, the Hungarian rebbes were seen more as the embodiment of the community and its spiritual longings, their hopes and dreams. Their rabbis studied halachic opinions of traditional Orthodox rabbis, even delving into the writings of Sepharadi greats. Hungarian Jews didn't get into battles over minutia. As far as they were concerned, there were only two types of Judaism; "Heimish" (old 'homey" ways) and "Modern" (with the emphasis on the second syllable). The "Modern" meant assimilationist views, challenging the classical understanding of Torah. The "Heimish", be they Hungarian, German, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Moroccan, Iraqi or Yemenite were all on the same side, and were part of the conversation. A remarkable sense of humor, as well as a tremendous feeling of the imminence of G-d, permeated Hungarian Jewry. I wish that Hungary, not Lithuania, would have become the paradigm of Orthodoxy in the modern world. In the years that I lived in Northern Westchester, I got to know and admire the Hungarian approach. I became close to one of their Dayyanim (rabbinic judges), Rabbi Hillel Weinberger, who became a major influence on my thinking. That will be the next part of my story.