Hasidic Psychology

Making Space for Others

Mordechai Rotenberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138524699
• eBook ISBN: 9781351310468
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Interest in the impact of ethical systems and social or religious ideologies on socio-behavioral patterns is a longstanding theme in social science research. While interest may have begun with Max Weber and his thesis of the relationship between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, it extends far beyond this. Surprisingly, few studies have delved into the socio-behavioral patterns emanating from Jewish ethics. This book, with a new introduction by the author, fills that gap.As Hasidic Psychology makes clear, Jewish ethics are unique in many ways, especially in that they are essentially other-centered. Man's ability to affect his own future and interpersonal relations are explained according to the theory of contraction, popularized in Hasidic thought: God, by contracting Himself to evacuate space for the human world, bestowed upon man the power and responsibility to determine his own future, and even affect God's disposition.In the first part of the book, the sociological-structural concept of mono versus multiple ideal labeling is introduced. This concept refers to a social system in which diverse material and spiritual actualization patterns are structurally introduced as equal social ideals. In the second part, basic tenets of classic interaction and socialization are compared to the interpersonal perspective, and the contraction theory is explained as a process of "mutual emulation," whereby father and son affect each other. In the third part, a functional approach to deviance is developed through the Hasidic process known as "ascend via descend."

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Salvation, Monism, and Social Contraction

As a prospective contribution to the sociology and psychology of religion, this book presents a monistic social-scientific theory that demonstrates how an alter-centered paradigm, as derived from the Hasidic-cabalistic ethic, affects the phenomena of deviance, social change, personal growth, and patterns of social interaction which differ from conventional ego-centered socio-behavioral models anchored in a dualistic theosophy. Thus, the social implications of two essentially theological concepts must first be discussed: (1) the soteriological concept of salvation and its impact on actualizing-motivational patterns, and (2) the concept of contraction as a specific theodicy with its unique effect on the human world.

Salvation and Social Behavior Systems

The extent to which religious ethics or needs shape patterns of cultural behavior and social processes has always generated fascinating and energetic theoretical discussions—by those attempting to document such influences, as well as those endeavoring to deny such effects. In that case, it should be clear from the outset that the present study in the sociology and psychology of religion, which attempts to trace specific behavioral and social patterns to the Judeo-Hasidic salvation paradigm, is hopelessly biased in its guiding premise that specific cultural modes of behavior and social change are primarily grounded in and motivated by underlying religious orientations.

It is a matter of common observation that rational, conforming behavior and personal or social change, paradoxical as it may seem, are largely motivated by the inherent irrational discrepancies, uncertainties, and unexpected ills that life throws one’s way. It is inconceivable, for example, that people would engage in tedious physical exercise if they could be certain of the state of physical fitness and health they would enjoy in the future regardless of how much they exercised. Similarly, wealthy people would seldom worry about the meaning of their existence if their lives were solely conditioned by material or behavioral here-and-now reinforcements, as learning psychologists implicitly suggest.

Likewise, it would seem impossible to explain the unceasing search for mystical, “meaningful” experiences and the willingness of “rational” Western well-to-do people to obey blindly charismatic “false messiahs” to a dangerous or even homicidal (e.g., Manson’s cult) or suicidal (e.g., Jones’ cult) degree without recognizing the tremendous motivating power inherent in man’s need for salvation.

In his introduction to Max Weber’s essay on the institutionalization of charismatic symbols, Eisenstadt (1968: xxvi) stressed that “the search for meaning, consistency and order is not always something extraordinary, something which exists only in extreme disruptive situations or among pathological personalities, but also in all stable situations.” Accordingly, Eisenstadt (1968) contends that while charismatic symbols tend to be especially articulated during periods of crisis and transition, studies show not only how religious-charismatic qualities permeate routine types of common social activities but also how they are the main carriers and vehicles of social creativity and social change that constantly shape and remold major political and economic institutions of various societies.

Indeed, the Weberian school of sociology (e.g., Weber 1967; Bellah 1970b; Eisenstadt 1977) has shown that man’s “universal need for salvation” from the uncertainties, fears, and ills of life may lead either to revolutionary social change and economic modernization in terms of “inner-worldly” ascetic activism, or to world-rejecting behavior resulting in a relatively slow social development or even economic and social stagnation. The psychological literature is similarly permeated with existential and therapeutic perspectives (e.g., Rogers 1965; Frankl 1965) that attempt to explain and teach how one can endow one’s life with meaning in order to find unity and peace with oneself, one’s fellow man, or the cosmos. Seeman (1959), for example, designates meaninglessness as one of the major referents of alienation. Salvation in this sense would signify dealienating behavior. Thus the study of personal and social behavior motivation is essentially intertwined with the study of salvation patterns. Leading social scientists such as Max Weber and Carl Jung have overtly predicated their theories about man and society on the assumption that motivation is explainable primarily on the basis of specific cultural-religious modes of salvation. Similarly, Shills, for example, maintained that each society is governed by the realm of its values and beliefs which he termed the “central zone,” and hence “in this sense, every society has an ‘official religion,’ even when that society or its exponents . . . conceive of it . . . as a secular, pluralistic, and tolerant society” (cited by Eisenstadt 1968: xxx). It follows that whether we admit or deny the impact of religion on secularized behavior, most of our institutionalized normative behavior and organizational structures are shaped by charismatic religious components. Other behavioral scientists have, however, largely ignored the impact of “religious orientations” on behavior, although the language they use to define such “secular” terms as self-actualization, self-liberation, or psychotherapy are closely akin to definitions of salvation and redemption.

I have used the terms “redemption” and “salvation” with no differentiation. Weber (1967: 148) noted, “It is difficult to completely separate conceptions of salvations from such promises of redemption from oppression and suffering.” While it seems that redemption connotes the passive aspect of freedom from (e.g., from oppression or suffering), and salvation seems to denote the active aspect of freedom to (i.e., to feel secure or to actualize oneself), in the literature these terms are used interchangeably. They seem also to be used as synonymous terms for therapy, liberation, enlightenment, self-realization, and so on.

Scholem, the well-known expert on Jewish mysticism, has suggested that the quest for redemption always refers to one’s “wish ... to be liberated from an existence that by its very nature seems to be connected with suffering, with passion and fear, with ignorance and limitation” (1970: 9). In a comparative study entitled Liberation, Salvation, Self-Actualization (1973: 28), Klostermaier claimed that “we can consider all philosophies, religions and also sciences as a way to freedom—not excluding the modem ideologies which claim to ‘liberate’ mankind, be it from Monarchs, from the Bourgeoisie, from Capitalism, from the establishment in any form . . . [and hence] the core of the salvation myths is the description of the drama of freedom.”

The term “salvation” is apparently used to refer to a wide spectrum of behaviors and social processes. Indeed, Tucker (1967: 24), in referring to the most famous movement for secular self-actualization, maintains that “deeply embedded in Marxism is a theme that corresponds to the master-theme of salvation of the soul.” Accordingly, man’s self-realization means a change from a condition of “enslavement” and self-alienation in the capitalist state to a new condition of “freedom” and liberation of man’s creative powers in the egalitarian communist state. Similarly, in discussing Freud’s psychoanalytic system, which is probably the most influential secular psychotherapeutic method, Rieff (1961: 361) contends that it “is only one of the most successful and certainly the most subtle, of contemporary ideologies of self-salvation.”

As we shall see, various religions have institutionalized infinite modes and roads to salvation, ranging from this-world-oriented, rational-active modes, to other-world-oriented, irrational and inactive methods, or from personal, inner procedures, to collective, externalizing processes. The required signs of grace or redemption may likewise range from inner feelings of assurance-health, inner peace, or meaningfulness, to external signs of intellectual achievement, material success, or political liberation.

To be sure, not all rational religions have produced salvation ethics, and not all religions of salvation have produced ethical systems. Confucianism, for example, produced a rational religious ethical system, but no prescription for salvation. On the other hand, Buddhism is a religion of salvation, but it has no god and it entails no rational system of ethics. Thus it is of little consequence whether our analysis remains within the realm of religious or secular behavior. What seems significant, however, is that we recognize and identify the tremendous impact religious salvation doctrines had on a wide spectrum of behavior—be it suffering, fear, wickedness, sinning, failure, or the like. The unique salvation pattern prescribed by specific religions may thus explain a variety of both secular and religious behavioral systems that emerged in a particular culture.

Most psychological and sociological theories of secular salvation behavior have concentrated mainly on Eastern-Buddhist and Westem-Christian ethics, while the behavioral and social implications traceable, for example, to Jewish ethics have largely been minimized. Classic writers such as Weber, whose interest focused mainly on economic behavior, and Jung, who was primarily interested in therapeutic perspectives, admitted that while the road to salvation prescribed by the Westem-Christian culture differed markedly from that prescribed in the Eastern-Buddhist culture, the focus on reaching salvation did not differ. Weber (1967: 171) concluded that the Christian pattern requires inner-world action and the Eastern pattern requires other-world inaction, and Jung (see Campbell 1977: 492) determined that therapy in the extroverted West depends exclusively on external redemption, while therapy in the East is an active, introverted, self-liberating process. But both admit that “salvation” in the East or in the West is, by and large, a self-indulging ego-centric matter.

It is therefore of interest to explore the psychological and sociological implications emanating from a theosophy with an “alter-centric,” or othercentric, salvation system. The specific behavioral system that I have in mind is rooted in what I shall term here the Judeo-Hasidic ethical heritage. The term “Judeo-Hasidic ethics” is used to stress that while Hasidic ethics do not represent Jewish ethics at large, Jewish ethics (which are, as such, essentially embedded in a monistic conception or man) are diametrically opposed to the nebulous yet popular notion of the Judeo-Christian ethic, since Christianity is basically dualistic in its social orientation. Thus, according to Judeo-Hasidic monistic ethics, unlike dualistic systems, salvation is accomplished through the “other,” that is, through one’s unconditional reciprocity with lower, deviant human elements found either within oneself or outside oneself. Although more will be said about the social implications emanating from a monistic conception of man, I shall say here that by monistic, reciprocal salvation I mean very roughly that in contrast to a dualistic dichotomy between good and evil people (e.g., a Calvinist dichotomy) or good and evil elements within people, a monistic conception of man assumes that evil or deviance is not only an integral part of but possibly even a necessary phase toward salvation, conformity, or goodness. Thus, a monistic conception of man as found in Judeo-Hasidic ethics encourages an optimistic outlook on human motivation and possible corrective behavioral changes.

Accordingly, alter-centered salvation would hypothetically be accomplished via a nonutilitarian or unconditional reciprocal relationship on the interpersonal level, between people using different actualization systems, or on the intrapersonal level between various weaker and stronger human elements. This means that alter-centered relationships should encompass and explain sociological or social-psychological interaction processes as well as psychological intrapsychic processes. Our concern will be essentially with the diverse behavioral patterns, such as interpersonal exchange and personal-social change processes ranging from communal-welfare organizations and messianic-socialistic trends to therapeutic perspectives, that may be traceable to the functional alter-centric salvation system in Judeo-Hasidic ethics. By functional alter-centric salvation I mean mainly the functional harmony that would presumably pervade a social system in which the needs of group survival correspond to personal salvation patterns, in contrast to systems in which these needs conflict. Thus, alter-centered salvation is essentially featured by distraction from self but not destruction of self or rather by contraction of self rather than construction of self.

This brings us to an introductory discussion of “social contraction” as a major point of departure or as a “unique breakthrough” in the history of mankind, in Eisenstadt’s words (1977), which attributes cultural diversity in behavior motivation to the source of the universal need for salvation, namely, to the various theodicies explaining not only the roots of good and evil, but also man’s ability and motivation to choose between them.

Monistic Theodicy and Social Contraction

Having taken a generally Weberian approach, I have suggested so far that the universal need for salvation from the suffering and uncertainties that life in our imperfect world entails may explain differential motivational patterns, such as ego-centered and alter-centered actualization systems and other cultural variations in behavior patterns. The relationship between suffering and life’s predicaments in terms of the existence of evil and motivation in terms of the free will and ability to commit or omit evil obviously cannot be divorced from the age-old problems with which the theodicy deals. Thus salvation from evil in terms of the scope of motivation and will would probably be close to nil according to a theodicy that attributes every ill to the unlimited power of the devil. Hence, speculation about cultural diversity in deviation and salvation patterns has from ancient times to the modem era been intertwined with the specific doctrines and expositions people used to reconcile God’s immanent idealism with the world’s evils and its faltering realism. As may be well known, explanations about the apparent impossibility that God as the ultimate infinity, perfection, and goodness will himself create or entail finity, imperfection, and evil, were divided between the Gnostic-dualists and the Neoplatonist-monists. Thus, Gnostic dualism, which did not accept the notion that the good God would create evil, believed (as did the ancient Persian Zoroastrians) in the doctrine of two separate kingdoms: that of evil and that of divine goodness. Hence in the cosmogenic process, as well as in man’s life, the power of darkness or evil was explained accordingly as constituting a separate, independent entity that clashes with the power of light and goodness. The monistic Neoplatonists, who insisted on God’s immanence and unity, accepted the inherent conflict between good and evil, between the spiritual world of purity and the material world of profanity. But concomitant with their monistic conception of God, they reconciled the existence of evil, not as a new creation or a separate entity but as the absence of light and goodness. Accordingly, there is no contradiction or schism in God’s harmonic idealism, but evil may emerge where God’s light is dimmed or absent.

While the Neoplatonist theodicy explains evil as a passive phenomenon (i.e., as a lack of goodness), a major “active” monistic theodicy explaining the possibility of human free will and earthly evil, which will be used here as the basis for our social paradigm, is the cabalistic notion of divine contraction. Accordingly, it is not God’s passive “absence” which facilitates evil, but God’s active purposeful self-contraction to evacuate space for the human world. It is God’s volitionary dimming of his own brightness which made the creation of the world and its apparent evils possible. Thus, according to the Jewish mystical cabalistic doctrine of tsimtsum (contraction), God’s self-shrinkage, condensation, or withdrawal into himself to evacuate primordial space for the human world is a dynamic ebb-and-flow process of regression and egression, of tsimtsum and hitpashtut (embracing or expansion), of dimming his own light but staying in the background to bestow light whenever necessary. Contraction is hence not a one-time act of total withdrawal but a continuous, dynamic process of the dimming or covering of¹ (see Ergas 1926) the brightness of the divine light, which is not “absent” but which leaves its “impression” (reshimu) where it shined so that it will not blind or bum the human world it created, but will be there, as the sixteenth-century Jewish cabalist Y. Luria (see Vital 1980: Vol. 1, p. 25) stated, “according to the measure needed to give them [the worlds] light or life.” This process involves, then, as Scholem states (1941: 261-63), a double-strain of “light which streams back into God and that which flows out from Him. . . . Just as the human organism exists through the double process of inhaling and exhaling and the one cannot be conceived without the other, so also the whole creation constitutes a gigantic process of divine inhalation and exhalation.” Here the first step of creation begins not by emanation but by the commonly conceived act of God’s (the En~Sof, or Infinite Being) self-contraction. Consequently this dynamic ebb-and-flow process, which as in most ethical systems serves as a model (imitatio Dei) that man is urged to emulate, constitutes the essence of the dynamic monistic² theory of evil and deviance as it assumes paradoxically that evil exists not as an inevitable absence of goodness or “godness” (because the idea of a godless vacuum is heretic)³ but, as the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov (“Master of the Good Name,” shortened to “Besht”), will subsequently phrase it in the eighteenth century (see Besht 1975a: 8), as the “throne of goodness.” Thus “evil” is nothing but “an instrument for the good goals of the good God,” as Tishby (1975: 12) indicated. The cabalistic doctrine of contraction hence entails the seeds of the philosophy o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Transaction Introduction
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• I The Sociological Perspective
• 1 Salvation, Monism, and Social Contraction
• 2 The Social Contract and Social Contraction
• 3 Contractional Alterism vs. Contractual Altruism
• 4 Structural Deviance and the Mono vs. Multiple Ideal-labeling System
• 5 Social Crisis and the Mono vs. Multiple Ideal-labeling System
• II The Social-Psychological Perspective
• 6 Alter-centered. Individualism and Interpersonal Contraction
• 7 The Prussian-Oedipal Father vs. the Maggid’s Contracting Father
• 8 Assertiveness Training for “I or Thou” Behavior
• 9 Alterism, Individual Freedom, and “Exclusion” Systems
• 10 Deviance and Interdependence Between Matter and Spirit
• 11 The Modeling Role of the Zaddik in the Inclusion Community
• 12 The Deciphering-Inclusion Process
• III The Psychological Perspective
• 13 Ascent Through Descent: The Functional Dynamics of Monistic Deviance
• 14 Functional Phases in the “Ascent Through Descent” Process
• Epilogue: The Philosophical Perspective
• 15 Toward a Phibsophical Sociology of Paradox
• Bibliography
• Index