Non­fic­tion

Wis­dom of the Heart: The Teach­ings of Rab­bi Ya’akov of Izbica-Radzyn

Ora Wiskind-Elper
  • Review
By – September 8, 2011

Clas­si­cal Hasidism exist­ed on sev­er­al planes. For the mass­es it pro­vid­ed a vehi­cle for reli­gious expres­sion, often with­out the trap­pings of schol­ar­ship. For many it offered a qua­si-mys­ti­cal the­ol­o­gy which com­bined var­i­ous strands of Jew­ish thought and often pro­duced orig­i­nal insights, hermeneu­tics, and exe­ge­sis. For the elite few, it pro­vid­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore new realms of Jew­ish thought and share them with those ini­ti­ates who had the capac­i­ty to grasp eso­teric concepts. 

Hasidism pro­duced saints, pietists, exegetes, great lead­ers, sto­ry­tellers, teach­ers, schol­ars, and a few mas­ters w ho com­bined sev­er­al of these traits and found­ed dynas­ties, some of which exist today. Rab­bi Ya’akov of Izbi­ca-Radzyn was a mas­ter, a schol­ar, and a deep thinker. His the­ol­o­gy and philo­soph­i­cal out­look is con­tained in his mas­sive four vol­ume work, Beit Ya’akov, com­piled by his sons and grand­son. His writ­ings are not gen­er­al­ly known because they are dif­fi­cult to ful­ly com­pre­hend with­out a deep ground­ing in Luri­an­ic mys­ti­cism, Kab­bal­ah in gen­er­al, and rab­binic texts. His style is often ellip­ti­cal and his allu­sions are some­times dif­fi­cult to follow. 

This study attempts to pierce Rab­bi Ya’akov’s her­met­ic world to let out some of the radi­ance rather than be a sys­tem­at­ic study of his writ­ings. Most of the teach­ings are for­mu­lat­ed as com­men­taries on the week­ly Torah read­ing and may have actu­al­ly been orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered as d’rashot. The Izbi­ca-Radzyn tra­di­tion empha­sized tra­di­tion­al modes of study with a new empha­sis on a recon­sid­er­a­tion of many accept­ed val­ues, e.g. a shift from the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the rebbe or zad­dik to the indi­vid­ual in search of spir­i­tu­al growth. There are strong cur­rents focus­ing on self­hood, indi­vid­u­a­tion, truth, sin, iden­ti­ty, fail­ure, despair, and tran­scen­dence. Rab­bi Ya’akov stressed per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty in attain­ing true spir­i­tu­al growth and self knowl­edge. There is much in com­mon here with the Mus­sar move­ment but it is expressed in a more arcane fash­ion. Choice, doubt, and com­pul­sion are oth­er themes that are explored through the Torah narratives. 

The author presents these teach­ings from the per­spec­tive of con­tem­po­rary lit­er­ary and philo­soph­i­cal crit­i­cism, while main­tain­ing the respect, integri­ty, and depth of the text. Ora Wiskind- Elper takes these texts seri­ous­ly, presents intel­li­gent and sen­si­tive read­ings of dif­fi­cult themes, and rig­or­ous­ly plumbs con­cepts and for­mu­la­tions that formed the basis of this approach with­in Hasidic thought. It is a well dis­ci­plined intro­duc­tion to the orig­i­nal think­ing of one of the great minds in the Hasidic pantheon.

Wal­lace Greene, Ph.D., has held sev­er­al uni­ver­si­ty appoint­ments, and cur­rent­ly writes and lec­tures on Jew­ish and his­tor­i­cal subjects.

Discussion Questions