NaḤman of Bratslav
NAḤMAN OF BRATSLAV (1772–1810), Hasidic master and founder of the Bratslav sect, born in Medzhibozh, Ukraine. A great-grandson of Yisraʾel ben Eliʿezer (1700–1760), the BeSHT, the first central figure of Hasidism, Naḥman proclaimed a path that stood in direct opposition to that of his esteemed forebear. Naḥman's complex and tortuous struggle for faith stood in sharp contrast to the BeSHT's ideal of simplicity and wholeness: theologically, Hasidism's earlier enthusiastic proclamation of the all-pervasive presence of God is replaced in Bratslav Hasidism by a painful awareness of his absence. The relative "neutralization" of messianic energies, characteristic especially of the Mezhirich school, is also reversed in Bratslav, where Naḥman, whom Bratslavers consider the only true tsaddiq ("righteous man"), is clearly depicted at least as a proto-messianic figure.
Given the family into which he was born, it was probably expected of Naḥman that he lead a Hasidic following in a movement that was becoming firmly entrenched in a pattern of dynastic succession. In his early years he refused this role, feeling himself inadequate to it and perhaps disdaining Hasidism as it was popularly practiced in his surroundings.
In 1798 Naḥman undertook a pilgrimage from the Ukraine to the Holy Land. Arriving in the Galilee right in the midst of Napoleon's battle with the Turks, he suffered numerous hardships and was at times close to death. He saw this journey as a private rite of passage, and later in life often looked back on it as a source of inspiration. Only on his return from the Land of Israel was he ready to assume the mantle of leadership, and this he did in a highly selective manner. Gathering around himself an elite cadre of disciples dedicated to a revitalization of the Hasidic movement, Naḥman issued an open challenge to such popular figures as Aryeh Leib of Shpola and his own uncle, Baruch of Medzhibozh. He saw Hasidism as having grown self-satisfied, compromised by the shallow assurances of blessing such self-proclaimed tsaddiqim would offer in exchange for the rather considerable gifts they were receiving. In Naḥman's community poverty was the ideal, miracles were disdained, and the master was not to be bothered with such small matters as material blessings. The disciples were to devote themselves to an intense regimen of private devotion and penitence. In the early years of his leadership, Naḥman insisted that each new disciple confess all of his sins to him. Sin was taken quite seriously in Bratslav, where earlier Hasidic warnings against excessive guilt were set aside.
The essential practice that Naḥman demanded of his disciples was hitbodedut, which in Bratslav meant a daily "conversation" that each Hasid was to have with God. Hitbodedut had to be practiced for an hour each day, spoken aloud in one's native tongue, and performed by each Ḥasid in private, preferably outdoors. During this hour the disciple was instructed to "break his heart" and confess before God his most secret thoughts. While the Bratslav sect remained fully within Jewish orthodoxy, including full observance of the law and recital of daily liturgy, it was this new practice of hitbodedut that was the true focus of its spiritual attention.
Naḥman was filled with ambivalence about his role as leader. Some of his statements exude an exaggerated sense of self-importance, a claim that he is the only true tsaddiq of his generation, and an air of megalomania. Others reflect just the opposite: an acute sense of unworthiness, a feeling of personal emptiness, and a regret at having allowed himself to accept a mantle of which he was unworthy. These alternating attitudes fit in with Naḥman's well-documented alternating states of elation and melancholy, a pattern that would today probably be diagnosed as manic-depression. It was in the course of his recurrent bouts with depression and guilt that Naḥman came to articulate his distinctive theological position.
The absence of God from human life is a reality that must be treated seriously. The religious person must come to terms with the fact that he lives in a world from which God has absented himself. Moments of doubt, inevitable in such a situation, must be treated as recording a valid aspect of human experience, and the notion of faith must be so expanded as to dialectically encompass doubt and denial within it. The seeker must struggle constantly with the eternal questions; one who does so will ascend through a constant spiral of doubt, denial, longing, faith, renewed challenge, doubt and denial, a higher rung of faith, and so forth. The great danger to such a quest is complacency; its highest ideal, that of constant growth. The nature of faith becomes ever more complex as it seeks to contain within itself ever more serious questions and conflicts.
Faith, a term more prevalent in Bratslav than in any other premodern Jewish ideology, is defined as a constant longing for God, an outcry of the broken heart aware of his distance. Such faith can only be cultivated, Naḥman taught, in a world where God's absence is real and where no easy answers are available to fill the painful void. Thus the absence of God is paradoxically God's greatest gift, allowing people the psychological room in which to build up the reservoir of faith that is the most important human asset. The awareness that this self-absenting (tsimtsum, as the older qabbalistic term is read in Bratslav) is itself a divine gift allows one to suffer life in the void, but does not alter its reality.
The sharp inner tensions that drove Naḥman to seek a path of redemption for himself, his disciples, and the Hasidic movement as a whole culminated in a brief messianic attempt in the year 1806. Once that attempt had failed (Naḥman saw the death of his infant son as a sure sign from heaven), a new and more subtle way to deliver the message of redemption was sought. This led Naḥman to the telling of his tales, now collected, symbolic fantasies that give fresh and vital expression to the mythic themes of qabbalistic thought. Redemption is the central underlying motif in most of these tales, the purpose of which seems to have been the preparing of his hearers' minds for the great events to come. Published in 1815, the tales take their place alongside Naḥman's collected teachings, Liqquṭei Moharan (1809, 1811), as unique classics in the Hasidic corpus.
Naḥman died tragically of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-eight, leaving no male heir. His faithful disciple, Natan of Nemirov, led the community after him but always acted as the master's surrogate rather than his successor. Bratslav is unique in surviving as a Hasidic community that has no living master; in later times, when they were much persecuted within the Hasidic world, they were referred to by others as the "dead Ḥasidim." The small but hardy band of Bratslavers treated this as a badge of honor, however, as they remained true to the memory of the one master who had been theirs and who, according to some Bratslav sources, was yet to come again.
Bibliography
Naḥman's Tales exist in several English translations, the most useful that by Arnold J. Band (New York, 1978), which also contains introductions and notes to each tale. Arthur Green's Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (University, Ala., 1979) is the first full-length critical biography. Hebrew readers will also want to consult Joseph G. Weiss's Meḥqarim ba-Ḥasidut Bratslav (Jerusalem, 1974) and Mendel Piekarz's Ḥasidut Bratslav (Jerusalem, 1972).
New Sources
Cohen, Laurent. Le maître des frontières incertaines: Rabbi Nahman de Bratslav. Paris, 1994.
Danieli, Natascia. "La 'restaurazione universale' ('tiqqun ha-kelali') nell'insegnamento de Nahman di Bratslav." Henoch 23 (2001): 97–112.
Magid, Shaul, ed. God's Voice from the Void: Old and New Studies in Bratslav Hasidism. Albany, N.Y., 2002.
Niborski, Itzhok (Isidoro). "Mysticisme et modernité dans la littérature Yiddish: Rabbi Nahman de Braslev et Aaron Zeitlin." Yod 31–32 (1992): 159–170.
Verman, Mark. "Aliyah and Yeridah: The Journeys of the Besht and R. Nachman to Israel." AJMT 3 (1988): 159–171.
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