Rabbi Green says today ”most chasidim are imitation chasidim, and “we” need to rescue the Baal Shem Tov from his current followers.” That remark is needlessly provocative and insulting. I believe the current chasidim are the closest successors to the Besht and the first two generations that followed than any other group in the Jewish world. If the Baal Shem returned, is it even conceivable that he would opt for Green’s utopian vision over the actual chasidim we have today. I urge those readers who are in doubt to read Rabbi Green’s latest book Radical Theology, and then judge.
Arthur Green would like to create a new type of American chasidus, without the xenophobia of traditional chasidim. Kol hakavod. But until he can show that his reading of chasidus has some staying power, and can amount to more than studies, lectures and retreats, it’s really not cricket to rain on everyone’s parade. Today, any one of the groups he dissed, Satmar, Bobov, Lubavitch, Belz and Ger are more substantive in so many different ways than the entire Jewish Renewal movement. There is no reason for a sophisticated Jewish Renewal theologian to copy those who would define themselves by what they are not.
I would add Rabbi Green has to prove that his neo-chasidus could grow into something substantive without the outfits, the birthrate, a rebbe however second rate at the helm, and some commitment to Orthodoxy. I would say all these conditions are necessary, and the burden is on Rabbi Green to show otherwise.
Arthur Green would like to create a new type of American chasidus, without the xenophobia of traditional chasidim. Kol hakavod. But until he can show that his reading of chasidus has some staying power, and can amount to more than studies, lectures and retreats, it’s really not cricket to rain on everyone’s parade. Today, any one of the groups he dissed, Satmar, Bobov, Lubavitch, Belz and Ger are more substantive in so many different ways than the entire Jewish Renewal movement. There is no reason for a sophisticated Jewish Renewal theologian to copy those who would define themselves by what they are not.
I would add Rabbi Green has to prove that his neo-chasidus could grow into something substantive without the outfits, the birthrate, a rebbe however second rate at the helm, and some commitment to Orthodoxy. I would say all these conditions are necessary, and the burden is on Rabbi Green to show otherwise.
I find this attitude strange. Of course the Jewish renewal movement is small, and the amount of people in it who are truly invested in any real form of Hassidut (whatever that even means) is even smaller. Maybe it's just Green, Zalman Shechter Shalomi and a a few nuts out in Colorado. But the Besht started out small too. Much of today's Hassidim is xenophobic in the extreme, and has strayed far from its original roots as a religion of joy for the common man (though Chabad, and maybe Breslov in Israel are the exceptions), so it would make sense for someone to try and rescue it. Kol Hakovod to Rabbi Green for trying.
Now, whose going to rescue Torah and Mitzvot from the Fundies?
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