What Is the Teaching of Kabbalah and Hasidism If Not Expansion?

What is the teaching of kabbalah and Hasidism if not expansion (Torat ha-harḥavah)? The tangible world should expand, the given worlds should increase, and this Torah that is written and passed down should expand beyond its boundaries. God in heaven is so great, great and limitless, and is He to reign over a limited world and limited structures? No! One must expand His dominion over all entities and all the spheres (sefirot); being itself must expand! The power of the abstraction in these teachings is the dominion of God and His providence over new worlds and over limitless places—the subject has increased and expanded, and with it the objects: the tangibles, the theoretical, the composites (tserufim), and all the mysteries. And nevertheless—the limitless God remains bounded, very bounded. [Jewish theology does not allow him] to pour out His spirit and expand his dominion beyond the Jewish people. . . . All of the Infinite (eyn sof) and the expanses of the Infinite, all the thousands of conceptions and myriad ideations and deeds are not done or woven except for the sake of Israel, for the sake of the Jewish people, the people of Judah, and remnant of Judah (Haggai 2:2). A non-Jew who observes the Sabbath is subject to the death penalty! A priest of their religion who abstains from women, thereby casts aspersions on the seed of Jacob.¹ But God is great, lofty, and exalted and has no limit. And He has no measure, and His works and His creatures have no measure, and yet at the same time He shrivels up and constricts Himself and His will to the orbit of the Jewish people. He has no desire that the other nations should serve Him, and He does not receive obeisance from them. What do they have to do with Him? He has chosen His servant Israel, His chosen one.

Thus arose a redeemer for this nation, a redeemer, who was even taught Torah by Ahijah the Shilonite from antiquity,² to whom Elijah the Prophet revealed himself, God’s writings were given to him, which had been transmitted only to Abraham and Joshua ben Nun—and he was not a redeemer at all . . . and he is chained by the awful constriction, which has eaten up all of the good and the pure in the religion of Israel, etcetera, etcetera. . . .

We wanted to say, “Behold, here is complete religious freedom before us!” We said, “The light of God will shine over all, and all the children of humanity will recognize and know Him, and they will join together to serve Him!” But lo, here is a religious faith that is oppressed and bound by the chains of a people. And so we close the Praises [of the Ba‘al Shem Tov], which we had said should light the way for us, with a feeling of humiliation and depression of the soul.

Many scriptural texts deserve to be burned, yet they are the essentials of Torah. Many, many they said, we should file away; and we have acknowledged, dutifully acknowledged, the many shadows within Judaism. This story, about the pure priest who was egged on to sin and to temptation of the flesh by a pure man—one holy to us, to whom we gave our heart—is the greatest stain on Hasidic Judaism! How can we call him a redeemer?! Only one who will arise and dispel that same stain and truly purify our hearts, he will be the redeemer, our redeemer of righteousness. God is the King of the universe—not only the guardian of a single tribe, even if it is our own tribe. . . .