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Reassessing Research on Nineteenth-Century Chabad
In 1866 Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn of Lubavitch—known as the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek—passed away, after more than three decades as the leader of Chabad and one of the most visible and influential rabbinic leaders in the Russian Empire.1 His passing left both a vacuum and a surplus of leadership: a vacuum in that there was no longer a single figure to whom all Chabad adherents deferred, and a surplus in that his six surviving sons had all been raised to be leaders, and in varying degrees had already been acting as proxies for their father, attracting admirers and disciples while he yet lived. This surplus soon resulted in the fragmentation of Chabad into several distinct streams independently centered in different towns.2
Contemporary observers were quick to conclude that his death marked the onset of Chabad's twilight, which no doubt would be followed by utter darkness. An 1875 article by Pesaḥ Ruderman, a maskil of Chabad background, described the Ẓemaḥ Ẓedek as “the last of the Chabad ẓaddikim.” Ruderman emphasized that “I did not forget his sons who will yet live and increase ignobility. But their lives and deeds have no equity or comparison to the life and deeds of their father. … To innovate further is not within their capacity. They do not have the vitality to vitalize others. They are honored only because they are their father's sons.”3
Ilia Lurie has already noted that this conclusion was premature and erroneous. Yet little has been done, whether by Lurie or by others, to critically reassess developments within Chabad in this period, thus exemplifying the continuing imprint of the maskilic perspective in the academic study of Hasidism. Scholars now tend to espouse a more critical attitude to the maskilic characterization of the nineteenth century as a period of decline and ossification for Hasidism, following its initial emergence as a dynamic new religious movement.4 Nevertheless, the maskilic paradigm continues to mark current research in three general ways: (1) Research continues to focus primarily on the origins of Hasidism in the eighteenth century, and while there is now increasing interest in aspects of twentieth-century Hasidism, scholars are only just beginning to mine the wealth of materials available for the...