Chapter 180 - The War of the Misnagdim and Maskilim Against Chassidus

00:01 The opponents of Chassidus continued their efforts in this matter, and then the following happened. For about a year, even the more moderate figures among the leading opponents had harbored resentment toward the chassidim in general, and toward the members of the community—the chassidim and their trusted associate Reb Moshe Meisels—in particular. Remember how we spoke about Reb Moshe Meisels? At first he belonged to the Vilna Gaon’s camp, which even sent him to Berlin, but later he became a chossid of the Alter Rebbe. This is what happened. One day, the scholarly chossid Reb Pinchas, known as Pinchas Reizes, son of the scholar Rabbi Yanach Shik [unclear], head of the rabbinical court of the Jewish community of Shklov, was sitting and studying a handwritten book very closely. Although his father resented his becoming a chossid, he respected him greatly and enjoyed discussing new Torah insights with him. Reb Pinchas had been a close student of the scholar Rabbi Yosef Kolbo [unclear], whose approach to study was logical. After Reb Pinchas joined the chassidim and spent his first years in Liozna, he studied with the scholars Reb Mordechai and Reb Moshe, the Alter Rebbe’s brothers, who also had a logical approach. He himself continued to develop that approach to learning, which greatly amazed his father, Rabbi Yanach Shik [unclear]. When Rabbi Yanach Shik [unclear] saw his son engrossed in a handwritten book, he assumed it contained his son’s own insights and asked to see them, saying how pleased he was that his son had finally begun putting his insights in writing. A few days later, Rabbi Yanach Shik [unclear] returned the book to his son and said... A few days later, Rabbi Yanach Shik [unclear] returned the book to his son and told him that it deserved to be printed and circulated widely. It was a small book in size, but rich in quality, and the brilliance of its final section was extraordinary. Reb Pinchas replied

02:52 to his father that he agreed—but on condition that the approbation not mention the author’s name. Reb Pinchas said he would pay for the printing himself. The elderly scholar Rabbi Yanach Shik [unclear] agreed and wrote his approbation without naming the author, and Reb Pinchas printed the book at his own expense. The book immediately became widely known. Within about three months, the entire print run of some four thousand copies had sold out. When the book reached Vilna, people praised it to the scholar Rabbi Eliyahu. He studied it and praised it too. He said that the main body of the book was arranged logically, and of the final section he said that it displayed illuminating brilliance, that its author was certainly a scholar with a logical mind, and that it was a mitzvah for this book to be found in every Jewish home. There was a—there was a rumor that the author was one of Shklov’s great scholars, who had concealed his name out of great humility and righteousness. With the participation of the Shklov community, the book was printed twice more that year. More than a year passed before it became known that the book, Hilchos Talmud Torah, was by the Alter Rebbe. The chassidim had bought the book even before then, but out of their great affection for it they printed it a fourth time, in a large run of some fifteen thousand copies. They distributed it throughout the lands bordering Russia, in our Holy Land—may it be rebuilt and restored—and in the lands between Russia and the Holy Land. The concealment of the author’s name in Hilchos Talmud Torah angered the opponents. They said it was one of the chassidim’s schemes to bring the lands under the leadership of their nasi, the Alter Rebbe. At that point, even the great Torah scholars among the more moderate opponents harbored resentment. By then, several handwritten booklets of halachos from all four sections of Shulchan Aruch that the Alter Rebbe had written were already circulating among the chassidim, as were several booklets of Likkutei Amarim from the Tanya, arranged in chapters, also by the Alter Rebbe. The Alter Rebbe’s new version of the prayer text

05:47 was also fairly well known, as were his other enactments, such as polished knives for shechitah and heating mikvaos. All this, together with the publicity surrounding the decree involving Dor—um, um, the scribe Drashovim [unclear] and the deliverance, increased the anger of the members of the opponents’ committee, who were fighting the Chabad chassidim and their nasi. They demanded that the scholar Rabbi Eliyahu once again place a ban on the chassidim in general, and on the Chabad chassidim and their nasi in particular, because before long they would take over Lithuania. The Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu, refused to impose a ban on the chassidim. Only with great difficulty did the wealthy Yosef Pessels persuade him to publish his opinion of the chassidim in an open letter. On 9 Sivan, the Vilna Gaon issued an open letter. Among other things, he wrote that anyone who bears the name of Jew and has fear of Hashem in his heart is duty-bound to repel and pursue the chassidim by every means and subdue them wherever Jews can reach. But when the Vilna Gaon’s associates and scholarly students saw how little impression the letter had made on the Jewish public, they were deeply distressed by the slight to his honor. They rebuked the committee members for insisting on forcing him to issue that open letter. The chassidic community in Vilna was in good spirits at the time. The letter in Iyar had brought disgrace upon its authors, and the letter in Sivan had not succeeded. Moreover, through the chassidim’s efforts, two additional communal leaders had been added to the four they already had. Of the community’s twelve leaders, six were chassidim. In addition, the Alter Rebbe’s book, which until then had circulated in handwritten booklets, was printed at that time. Because the chassidim were so eager for the book—apparently we are talking about the Tanya—they made an agreement with the publishers, the partners Rabbi Shalom Shachna, the Alter Rebbe’s son-in-law and also the father of the Tzemach Tzedek, and his partner Mordechai: whenever five booklets came off the press, they would be sent by special messenger to every chassidic settlement. Some four thousand copies were received in Vilna,

08:35 about two thousand of them for the surrounding region. Many of the more moderate opponents secretly studied the booklets—that is, the Tanya. The renowned great scholar Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin also saw that the people who followed... He too saw that the chassidim were following the right path, and that everything said about them over the decades was simply false accusation. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin himself studied the Tanya booklets, grew closer to the chassidim, and left his position on the opponents’ committee. What particularly troubled him was the slight to the honor of Rabbi Eliyahu, the Vilna Gaon. A rumor spread that the Gaon was weak and that the committee members, led by Yosef Pessels, were speaking in his name without his knowledge at all. Then the following incident occurred, revealing the true face of Yosef Pessels and of the opponents as a whole. In the year 5552. Yes, we’re going back a few years. Seventeen ninety-two. A man named Shimon, from Samogitia, came to Vilna. He had studied astronomy and geometry under a student of Yisroel Lipschitz, and grammar under a student of Zalman Hena. His knowledge of Tanach was remarkable. He found favor with the scholars Rabbi Yissachar, the Vilna Gaon’s brother, and Rabbi Avraham, the Vilna Gaon’s son. We’ve spoken about them before; they were both very interested in grammar. So the two of them, Rabbi Yissachar and Rabbi Avraham, drew this Shimon very close and appointed him general supervisor of all the Tanach teachers and Talmud Torahs in Vilna. Pay attention to what they did here. This Shimon was actually posing as a G-d-fearing man. Even the scholar Rabbi Eliyahu held him in high regard and asked him to review his own book, Dikduk Eliyahu. No one could see

11:32 This Shimon was actually part of the Haskalah movement, and his entire aim was to draw the Jewish people into it. He sorted the students in the Talmud Torah schools according to their abilities. For the exceptionally gifted ones, who had already begun studying Gemara in yeshivah, he arranged for them to study Tanach with commentaries besides Rashi’s. Once he was sure he had poisoned them with his venom, what would he do? He would arrange for them to travel to a town in Germany, on the pretext that they were going to a yeshivah in Minsk, Slutsk, Smorgon, or Brisk. In fact, he sent them to Germany to study secular subjects. For about four years, Shimon, the inciter operating in secret, worked diligently and systematically to ensnare young souls and bring them under the wing of the Haskalah. Every six months, he would select gifted students and, with a show of innocent concern that they should “go away to a place of Torah,” send them to schools under the influence of the maskilim in Galicia and Poland. No one knew about this except that same Yosef Peseles, whom we already mentioned as a secret maskil. Yosef Peseles, an opponent of Chassidus, was also secretly a maskil and supported the maskilim with large sums of money. No one suspected that this Shimon was, in fact, a Jew who did not observe the mitzvos at all. During his years in Vilna, Shimon ingratiated himself with the leading chassidim. Since he did not involve himself in the dispute between the misnagdim and the chassidim, he sometimes even acted as a mediator in communal matters, in disagreements between the community leaders on the two sides. He was especially clever in winning the trust of the leaders of Vilna’s chassidim, Rabbi Baruch Mordechai and Rabbi Moshe Meisels. Both were meticulous about grammar and fond of Lashon Hakodesh, so they drew Shimon close. Rabbi Moshe Meisels, who had a particular fondness for writing poems, even honored Shimon by showing him his poems. As mentioned, the Alter Rebbe’s version of the prayers had already spread among the chassidim at that time.

14:12 Some had written its changes by hand into the Shelah’s Shaar Hashamayim siddur, which was closer to the Alter Rebbe’s version. More often, they wrote the Alter Rebbe’s version of the prayers into the Ashkenaz siddurim they used. Now, the very idea of a distinct prayer rite for the chassidim increased the misnagdim’s anger toward them. But everyone, even the misnagdim, acknowledged that the grammar in the Alter Rebbe’s siddur had been sifted through thirteen sieves. Even in the piyyutim and prayers whose wording he did not change, he corrected the vowel markings according to the rules of grammar and proper language, astonishing even the experts in grammar. Shimon, the maskil operating in secret, would praise the Alter Rebbe’s siddur. He would say that he could say nothing about the wording or the order of the psalms, since he had no involvement in hidden matters. But as far as the rules of grammar were concerned, he could say unequivocally that its precision had no equal. Shimon expressed his surprise that the chassidim did not study grammar and the Hebrew language. Let us add a few points of background here. The chassidim of Galicia were the first to suffer from the maskilim’s campaigns and persecution. The chassidim of Volhynia and Poland came next. The Chabad chassidim were among the last. The reason was that some Berlin maskilim had encountered leading Chabad chassidim—Rabbi Yosef Kolbo, Rabbi Pinchas Shick, that is, Pinchas Reizes, Rabbi Binyamin Kletzker, and other chassidim from Shklov—at the Leipzig fair. The maskilim saw that the Chabad chassidim had a broad understanding of inquiry into G-dliness and the hidden teachings, in addition to their extensive knowledge of the revealed Torah. At the same time, they engaged in avodah of the heart and the refinement of character. To defeat them, the maskilim told themselves, would take people with great energy and strength. For about five years, from 5551 to 5556, the maskilim worked hard to wage a campaign against the chassidim of Lithuania and Ukraine. They sent emissaries to chassidic communities to promote the need to study

16:54 grammar and to know the Hebrew language. But wherever they went, people kept their distance from them. When they came to shul, they were not called up to the Torah; when one of them needed to say Kaddish, no one answered amen. Most often, they were simply driven out of the chassidim’s shuls. Reports of this reached the maskilim’s headquarters. Their emissaries told how they had been met with insults, abuse, and expulsion. Not only had they achieved nothing among the chassidim, but the chassidim’s opposition was reinforced by the spread of a shocking report about what had happened in Ponevezh. What happened in Ponevezh? Let’s tell the story. A class for in-depth Gemara study had been established there. One of the teachers, who came from Zelkova, taught the students Tanach with various commentaries. After some time, the teacher told the students to ask their parents for permission to study at the non-Jewish school in town, where the priest was the head teacher. When the students completed their studies, the non-Jewish students received certificates, but the Jewish students did not. Two Jewish students could not withstand the test and converted. Word spread throughout the region that the students had converted because of the teacher from Zelkova. In any event, the maskilim saw that they were unable to overcome the chassidim. The maskilim’s committee then charged Shimon with visiting the chassidic communities, including the chassidic capital, Liozna. When he completed his journey, he was to bring back a report and present his findings on how to fight the chassidim and defeat them. Shimon, who was already familiar with the chassidim’s outlook and had often enjoyed discussions of intellectual questions with the chassidim of Vilna, thought he was the best person for the mission. He also hoped he would succeed in his work, so he accepted the committee’s proposal. Citing family matters, as he said, he took three months’ leave, until the end of the term, and set out to visit the chassidic communities and their capital.