A New Year for Chassidut

A post that will run somewhat longer due to the complexity of the subject. Chassidut is a wondrous thing. Rav Kook held the great masters of Chassidut in the highest esteem and saw in them immense spiritual creators, ones for whom goodness, wisdom and faith were not an idea or an aspiration but a living reality. He therefore understood deeply the power of cleaving to the righteous. Psychologically this is a profound human mechanism: a person who does not yet know how to build wholeness from within himself clings to one who already lives it, learns from his ways, imitates his conduct, and through the outward act the heart too is drawn along. This is a mighty force that brings many closer to the good without demanding of them an original spiritual creativity that is not yet within their power.

But precisely because of the greatness of this power comes the warning. A great person can carry flaws within himself without their overwhelming him, because his strength counterbalances them. One who cleaves to him may adopt those very small cracks as well, without having the strength to contain them, and then what was marginal in the source becomes essential and distorted in him. Thus is born a cleaving that replaces life with imitation, depth with proportions, and truth with caricature. The conception Rav Kook sought to instill is cleaving to the nation. Not to a person, but to the living whole of Knesset Yisrael and the Torah. There, in this collective with all its shades, dwells pure truth.

*