Hasidism Encounters Reform and Produces Anarchism

The chief hypocrite of Russia who sold his soul and his ideas to the Hasidim for the price of 2,000 shekels wrote the following: “If any man says, I am a Jew in accordance with the law of Moses (Mendelssohn) and Israel (Ba‘al Shem Tov), then he is a completely righteous man.” And by flattering both of these sects, he sought to bring “peace unto Israel.”¹ Indeed, if he could rise today from his grave and see his followers, then he would rebury himself out of great contempt and disdain—for these “tsadikim” are known today as apostates or anarchists and are the product of Hasidism and Reform, in accordance with the laws of Berlin and Medzhibizh.² And the great author Mordechai Aaron Gintsburg³ spoke well when he said: “Either the shield of faith or the sword of philosophy”—and worse than either of them is that forged from both.

Just as we can look calmly upon a man who walks innocently, even though he has neither faith nor religion, so too we can tolerate the vanity of a fool who believes everything—as long as he is upright and believes his own words. But it is most difficult for a person, even if he is solid as a rock, to look at a hypocrite and swindler who speaks in the Lord’s name but demonstrates through his actions, for all eyes to see, that God is entirely absent in his machinations. I recall how all of my tendons and veins twisted every time I heard the Chabad “Jesuits” saying “the doctrines of Hasidism are the true philosophy, and Hasidism is the wiser, more-modern enlightenment, the aspiration of all scholars of the world in our time.” Indeed, these “Jesuits” succeed in blinding the many God-fearers throughout the provinces of White Russia. And likewise, those listening to a Reform preacher speaking in the name of God are revolted. In the name of the Lord, he preaches in favor of the son of Mary. In God’s name he commands his followers to fill their mouths with jest against all the holy things of the House of Israel.⁴

In the name of the Lord, he will declare that anything that enters one’s mouth is pure [even unkosher food]. In the name of the Lord, he will join Christians to his community even though they are not circumcised. In the name of the Lord he will defy the armies of Israel who did not merit to be born in the land of Stoecker [i.e., Germany].⁵ In the name of the Lord, he will have all the members of his congregation lunch with him in a Christian home on Yom Kippur. And do these swindlers and hypocrites no longer feel ashamed to pretend to be a “religious sect,” and in their goodness do they forget to tell us in which religion they believe and to whom they adhere? We, the entire House of Israel, are a nation, and if they consider themselves a distinct religious sect, then they have clearly expressed that they are no longer with us—like all sects born on the knees of Judah, they will be as a felled oak (Isaiah 7:13), like the Karaites and the Samaritans. This being the case, they have no right to declare themselves Jews. And how can they claim to be a part of the House of Israel whom they have abandoned? [ . . . ]

And in Warsaw I heard a Hasid who bragged, “now the government has realized that the Hasidic system is true and legitimate, and instead of persecuting the [supposedly revolutionary] Jewish university students and maskilim with a vengeance, the tsar now wishes that all of God’s people be Hasidim.” [ . . . ]

When the young Russian exiles arrived in this new country, they found not only a new world but also a “new Judaism.” On the one side, they see the Hasidim whom they knew from their homeland—Hasidim who venerated their tsadikim as deities—eating now the flesh of pigs and rats and denying the existence of God above. The Hasidim who once feared denying stories told by old vulgar women, now curse God and king [see 1 Kings 21:10]. Hasidim who once trembled to leave the Sabbath boundaries, to leave their small towns, now take carriages to Reform temples on holidays and the Sabbath. Hasidim who trembled before the books of the Haskalah as if they were the terrifying King (Job 18:14), and who considered the tongue of a foreign people equal to the [biblical] impurity of menstruation, now speak in the language of the land and are embarrassed of their mother-tongue. Hasidim, who considered a theater idolatrous, now allow lowly maidservants to sing in synagogues and to pray for mercy for Israel from their God in English. Hasidim who would not allow their wives and daughters to uncover their hair, now marry gentile women and are not ashamed. Hasidim who once had long sidelocks and feared to even touch the hairs of their beards, Hasidim who trembled lest their hats fall off when they got into bed, these once devout Hasidim, have chopped off their sidelocks, sheared off their beards, and sit with uncovered heads in the House of the Lord—even if they’re only there once a year. And since these Hasidim are the dignitaries of the land, is it any wonder that when seeing these Christian-Jews, who are neither truly Jewish nor Christian, everyone says, as [Heinrich] Heine said, “the rabbi and the Pope both stink.”⁶ And one of them put it well and said to me “the foolish Jews of Germany, strove with all their might and soul for a hundred years to gain the right to ultimately become complete Christians. And why bother with this trouble? We said: let us be like all the nations, the House of Israel, once and for all, with no added cost or effort.” Indeed, in this they were more correct than the Jews of Germany. [ . . . ] Among all the nations of the world one can rarely find a single traitor who sells his people for money. Everyone points their fingers at him and says, “Behold, this person betrayed his nation, this traitor shall bear this sin.” In contrast, we are a wretched nation with many traitors, a large camp calling themselves Jewish—traitors who in their newspapers, written in the state language, every day express their abhorrence of Jews, and whose leaders still call themselves “rabbis.” And those nations unfamiliar with Jews, are they not right to believe the words of these “dear, chosen” sons of Zion who accuse the entire nation of the Lord of terrible sins—for who knows Israel better than them? The nations do not realize that anarchism is the son of a perverse rebellious woman,⁷ that it was born upon the knees of the Reform movement in this country [America].