Questions of Love and Truth: New Perspectives on the Controversy between R. Avraham of Kalisk and R. Shneur Zalman of Liady

From 1777 and onward, the Hasidic communities in the Diaspora and the Holy Land were bound together in an economic and spiritual circle of mutual reliance. A survey of the epistolary literature exchanged between these communities reveals that the terms of this circular relationship were respectively understood by R. Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, R. Avraham of Kalisk, and R. Shneur Zalman of Liady in some ways very similarly, and in other ways very differently. They all shared a socio-mystical conception of the constitution of Hasidic spirituality. Nevertheless, the latter figures each developed the doctrines of the former in very different directions. It emerges that they disagreed not only about the practical techniques that would achieve the socio-mystical ideal, but also about if and how personal integrity could correspond to the divine measure of truth. Building on a theoretical critique of the standard bifurcation of the mystical and the social, and through close readings of relevant texts, this paper revises the conclusions drawn by Joseph Weiss regarding R. Avraham's “concept of communion with God and Men” (Part I), parses the doctrinal similarities and differences between these three Hasidic leaders (Part II), and finally uncovers an implicit polemic that can be discerned when R. Shneur Zalman's Tanya is reread in its historical and ideological context (Part III).