Sunday, September 05, 2004
Is Judaism a Theocracy? | Chabad.org > Magazine >
Is Judaism a Theocracy? | Chabad.org > Magazine >: "The Holy Side of Tyranny
This dilemma is very beautifully illustrated by an anecdote told of the mashpia (Chassidic teacher and mentor) Rabbi Dovid Kieveman, also known as 'Reb Dovid Horodoker'. It is said that Reb Dovid wept when Czar Nicholas II was overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917. 'Why do you shed tears over the fall of a tyrant?' he was asked. 'I weep,' replied the Chassid, 'because a mashal (metaphor) in Chassidic teaching is gone.'
(The metaphor, or mashal, is an elementary tool of Chassidic teaching. The premise is that to truly understand something, one must experience it, or something like it, oneself. This is even more so the case true when one seeks to understand spiritual realities: to make palpable the ethereal to the human mind, one must first find the corresponding model in human experience. Chassidic teaching thus makes extensive use of metaphors in its endeavor to explain the nature of G-ds relationship with the created reality and the essence and purpose of creation.)
We have already mentioned the extensive use of the metaphor of 'kingship' in the Talmud and Midrash; this is further expanded on in Chassidic teaching. The Chassidic masters point out that the while the Torah employs a variety of models in speaking of our relationship with G-d--that of a child to his father, a beloved to her lover, a disciple to his master, a flock to its shepherd, among others--and that while these models each express another facet of the bond between man and G-d, there is a dimension to the relationship that can only be expressed by the model of a subjects relationship to his king.
So when the Czar was overthrown, a teacher of Chassidism wept. To live as a subject of the Czar was, in many ways, a great hindrance to living as a Jew. But Reb Dovid was thinking of the deeper, more basic implications of authoritarianism: not of the blatant ways that a tyrant's authority intruded upon one's life, but in the particular mindset and psychological make-up it cultivated in a person. How, agonized this mashpia, will a kingless generation possibly understand the utter surrender of self that the king-subject relationship epitomized? How will they comprehend the awe accorded one whose rule is absolute and incontestable? What model would they have for a "king"--a figure who transcends the personal to embody the soul of a nation? Never mind that most kings of history were unworthy metaphors of the Divine sovereignty; central to our relationship with G-d is something that only one who has been subject to a king can truly appreciate.
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This dilemma is very beautifully illustrated by an anecdote told of the mashpia (Chassidic teacher and mentor) Rabbi Dovid Kieveman, also known as 'Reb Dovid Horodoker'. It is said that Reb Dovid wept when Czar Nicholas II was overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917. 'Why do you shed tears over the fall of a tyrant?' he was asked. 'I weep,' replied the Chassid, 'because a mashal (metaphor) in Chassidic teaching is gone.'
(The metaphor, or mashal, is an elementary tool of Chassidic teaching. The premise is that to truly understand something, one must experience it, or something like it, oneself. This is even more so the case true when one seeks to understand spiritual realities: to make palpable the ethereal to the human mind, one must first find the corresponding model in human experience. Chassidic teaching thus makes extensive use of metaphors in its endeavor to explain the nature of G-ds relationship with the created reality and the essence and purpose of creation.)
We have already mentioned the extensive use of the metaphor of 'kingship' in the Talmud and Midrash; this is further expanded on in Chassidic teaching. The Chassidic masters point out that the while the Torah employs a variety of models in speaking of our relationship with G-d--that of a child to his father, a beloved to her lover, a disciple to his master, a flock to its shepherd, among others--and that while these models each express another facet of the bond between man and G-d, there is a dimension to the relationship that can only be expressed by the model of a subjects relationship to his king.
So when the Czar was overthrown, a teacher of Chassidism wept. To live as a subject of the Czar was, in many ways, a great hindrance to living as a Jew. But Reb Dovid was thinking of the deeper, more basic implications of authoritarianism: not of the blatant ways that a tyrant's authority intruded upon one's life, but in the particular mindset and psychological make-up it cultivated in a person. How, agonized this mashpia, will a kingless generation possibly understand the utter surrender of self that the king-subject relationship epitomized? How will they comprehend the awe accorded one whose rule is absolute and incontestable? What model would they have for a "king"--a figure who transcends the personal to embody the soul of a nation? Never mind that most kings of history were unworthy metaphors of the Divine sovereignty; central to our relationship with G-d is something that only one who has been subject to a king can truly appreciate.
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