Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, was the disciple and successor of the holy Ba’al Shem Tov. During his leadership, most of the great leaders of the next generation joined the Chasidic movement. Though unlike his teacher, the Maggid was a distinct "tent dweller" and did not travel extensively, he sent his disciples to many places in Poland and Lithuania, and even to distant Germany to spread the teachings and ways of Chasidut. Chasidism flourished, and naturally, opposition to it deepened. It is said that the Maggid passed away because of the intense controversy, when some of his disciples responded with fierce counterattacks, which took a toll on his health and ultimately his life. In 5532 (1772), a plague broke out in Mezritch. Rebbe Zusha brought the Maggid to Anipoli, where he lived for about seven months until his passing on the 19th of Kislev, 5533 (1772). After his passing, his disciples dispersed throughout Europe, spreading Chasidut in their locations, laying the foundations of the Chasidic movement as it is today.
Before the Maggid of Mezritch became a disciple of the Ba’al Shem Tov, he had a yeshivah for students (or according to other versions, a Talmud Torah for children). When a student wanted to be accepted to his yeshivah, he would test him in a special way: He would speak with him about the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai and try to awaken a memory of it in him. If, through speaking with him, the student remembered receiving the Torah or even something specific that happened there, he would accept him. If not, he would reject him as a student.
This is certainly an interesting and unique test for accepting students. While regular tests examine a student’s intellectual abilities or refined character traits, the Maggid is testing something entirely different here. He is looking for the soul connection of the student to the Torah, a connection that completely transcends the intellect. But how does he do this? Naturally, it is hard to imagine that an ordinary person would remember what his soul experienced many generations ago! We do not know for certain, but it is possible that an encounter with a tzaddik, who is entirely permeated with the experience of cleaving to the Giver of the Torah, makes the moment of the Giving of the Torah tangible and alive in the soul and the memory of the event suddenly awakens from its slumber.
Apart from this unique practice, the connection revealed here between the Maggid and his future teacher, the holy Ba’al Shem Tov, is particularly interesting. Chabad tradition relates that the Ba’al Shem Tov would approach each new follower with the question: “Vos gedenkst du?” meaning “What do you remember?” The purpose of the question was to awaken the person's earliest memory, thus connecting him to the root of his soul. It seems that, inspired by this custom, the Ba’al Shem Tov’s great-grandson, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, told the story of the Blind Beggar in his lengthy story titled “Seven Beggars.” The blind beggar in the story describes a group of people competing for who has the earliest recollections. The blind beggar wins the contest by recounting the earliest possible memory: “I remember the nothingness.”
Although the special relationship to memories connects the Ba’al Shem Tov to his disciple the Maggid, there is a significant difference between them. The essence of the memory they seek to awaken is very different. While the Ba’al Shem Tov (and similarly his great-grandson Rebbe Nachman) is interested in revealing the earliest memory of the Jew, the Maggid seeks to awaken the memory of the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai specifically. This difference in focus is reminiscent of the dispute in the midrash about who came first: the Torah or the souls of the Jewish people. Chasidut follows the Tanna DeBei Eliyahu, which states that “the thought of Israel precedes everything.”[1] But the Maggid, before drawing close to the Ba’al Shem Tov, believed that the Torah preceded Israel and that the Jewish people connect to God only through the Torah.
From Nothingness
In essence, one could say that this is the central shift the Maggid experienced when he became a disciple of the Ba’al Shem Tov. He came to understand that the thought of Israel preceded even the primordial Torah. In Kabbalistic terms, the Maggid then ascended from the sefirah of wisdom to the sefirah of crown. The Zohar states that, “Torah emerges from wisdom.”[2] From the perspective of wisdom, the Torah is indeed superior to Israel. The Torah is God’s wisdom and His will that guides Israel in cleaving to Him. Without it, they might have strayed very far from Him, Heaven forbid. Despite this, the Ba’al Shem Tov identifies that the root of Israel is higher. This root is the supernal crown, in which no conception or thought is possible, only faith alone.
This is the secret of the holy Name כָּכָה, which literally means “so! [and no different],” but whose letters, the Ba’al Shem Tov revealed stand for the phrase “the crown of all crowns” (כֶּתֶר כָּל הַכְּתָרִים).[3] This holy Name expresses the earnest and dimensionless faith of Israel that they are truly the real purpose of the Torah. According to this view, the entire Torah was designed for the sake of the people of Israel. It is all instructions, addresses, and guidance specifically for them, and they themselves are connected to the Holy Blessed One with an unchanging essential connection that lies beyond reason, rationale, or logic. Thus, it is written that the Creator consulted with the souls of Israel before creating the world, and they are “the first of His produce,”[4] whose thought preceded everything.
The place where there is nothing but the Holy Blessed One and Israel, “Israel and the King alone,” is the secret of the Ba’al Shem Tov’s rereading[5] of the classic rabbinic statement “Israel has no mazal”[6] (meaning that the Jewish people are not dependent on luck or foreign influences) as “ayin is the mazal of Israel.” The mazal-root of Israel is from the ayin, the nothingness of the supernal crown, the crown of the Good Name that rises above the crown of Torah, priesthood, and royalty.[7] Therefore, the most primal memory according to Rebbe Nachman is precisely the memory of ayin (nothingness).
Israel, Torah, and the Temple
If the memory of the Sinai revelation is a distinct memory related to the sefirah of wisdom, and the memory of the nothingness (the ayin), the root of the Jewish soul, is from the crown, it follows that we should continue and awaken a memory corresponding to the next sefirah in line, understanding (binah). What could this memory be?
Understanding in Hebrew is cognate with contemplation (הִתְבּוֹנְנוּת). This is the closest Hebrew word to the original meaning of meditation (not in the Eastern sense, but in the contemplative sense). It is also related to the concept of structure (בִּנְיָן) and is described in the Zohar as the chamber or palace within which the seminal point of wisdom resides and where the seed of an idea sown by wisdom is expanded and developed through the intense contemplative faculties of understanding. Translating this into a memory, the sefirah of understanding is the source of our memory of the Holy Temple, where we experience coming to see and be seen[8] by the Almighty.
Expanding this thought a bit further: there are two aspects to understanding, known as either the supernal mother and the lower mother, or as understanding (binah) and contemplation (tevunah). These two aspects correspond to memories of the two Temples, the first and the second. The same holds true for wisdom and its memory. Wisdom too has two aspects known as the supernal father (Abba Ila’ah) and Israel the Elder (Yisrael Saba). They correspond to memories of the Giving of the Torah and the Sinai revelation.
If the Ba’al Shem Tov awakened the memory of the nothingness and the Maggid the memory of Torah, it follows that the memory of the Temple is the memory that the Alter Rebbe awakened in his disciples. The three fathers of the Chasidic movement correspond to the three Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham is the first believer and corresponds to the Ba’al Shem Tov’s simple faith in the true nothingness, referring to the true source of all being. Isaac corresponds to the sefirah of might and thus to the memory of the Giving of the Torah, which the sages describe as having been given “from the mouth of might (gevurah).” Additionally, the shofar heard at Sinai was made from Isaac’s ram. Jacob is inherently connected to the memory of the Temple since it is he who identified the location as “the House of God.”[9]
Natural Repentance
The Maggid of Mezritch, in his role as a preacher, had a parable he often related meant to awaken the public to teshuvah, to repent:
A certain country rebelled against its king. But after some time had passed, they all awakened to appease the king. They decided to send an emissary to appease the king on behalf of all the country’s inhabitants. But whom should they send?
First, they turned to the prime minister, but the prime minister refused. Since he was of highest rank, his sin was also the worst, and he was ashamed to approach the king. One after another, all the ministers and important people of that country said the same. Then they turned to simple people, and they too evaded the mission. And so, they went down and down until they reached the lowliest and most rejected beggar in the country. The beggar did not hesitate much, and when he heard what was required of him, he immediately went to the king, conveyed the country’s remorse for their rebellion, and appeased him.
How does one awaken to repentance? In the time of the Maggid of Mezritch, there were many preachers who tried to do exactly this. If it was a preacher with a harsh character, he would pour fire and brimstone upon the listeners and describe the punishments of hell awaiting them. If it was a man of softer and more compassionate heart, he would describe the Creator’s love and kindness, and His sorrow over the evil deeds of His beloved children.
But here, the Maggid of Mezritch does something entirely different. He illuminates in a vivid, even humorous way, the evasion and difficulty that usually accompany the work of repentance. The question he asks is the question of his listeners: How does one do teshuvah? He resolves this difficulty through the character of the beggar. He is, as it turns out, the only one capable of doing what everyone else fears—going to the king and begging for reconciliation. What does the beggar teach us and what answer does he have to this question?
In the Zohar, the sefirah of understanding is identified with teshuvah.[10] But understanding is also known as “the world of freedom.” The teshuvah that the beggar teaches us is a teshuvah of natural consciousness, where behaving properly is the simplest and most natural thing. Such teshuvah is free from all the inhibitions of the ministers, who by virtue of their roles feel the complexity and toil that reality demands.
Usually, we are far from a lifestyle of natural consciousness. This is a messianic, redemptive style of teshuvah, of a world whose nature draws it to behave according to God’s will. But the identification of natural teshuvah specifically with a beggar prompts us to an interesting thought: It is precisely the importance we attribute to ourselves and our actions that prevents us from changing them and ourselves. If I hold myself to be important, like a minister, I also attribute great importance to the sin I have committed. Consequently, I will fear admitting to having transgressed and will not be able to beg forgiveness for my actions. Paradoxically, I will continue to linger on and on in the severe and terrible sin. But if I see myself as a beggar, then I am no one and I have no reputation or history to protect; then, the transition from sin to teshuvah is simple and easy. Approaching repentance in this way can only come from true and deep lowliness and humility. From the perspective of a feeling of true lowliness, all our actions, whether bad, requiring teshuvah, or good and seemingly deserving of reward, can only be weighed by the Creator alone. When we sever ourselves from His will, our sins immediately become too heavy to carry, but in one moment of teshuvah, all their weight can be lifted and annulled.
[1]. Tanna DeBei Eliyahu ch. 14 and ch. 31. Bereishit Rabbah 1:4. See also Emek HaMelech 1:2 that it precedes even the primordial Torah.
[2]. Zohar 2:121a.
[3]. Keter Shem Tov (Kehot ed.) 163.
[4]. Jeremiah 2:3.
[5]. Ba’al Shem Tov Al HaTorah, Lech Lecha, 26.
[6]. Shabbat 156a.
[7]. Avot 4:13. In Kabbalistic terms, the three crowns of Torah, priesthood, and royalty correspond to the three upper sefirot of Arich where the sefirot of knowledge, loving-kindness, and might of Atik shine. The crown of the good name, however, corresponds to the much higher sefirah of the crown of Atik.
[8]. Chagigah 2a.
[9]. Genesis 28:17.
[10]. Zohar 1:79b, 3:122b (in Raya Mehemna).
