Reason and ‘Beyond Reason’ in Habad Hasidism

Abstract

The theme of rationalism, linked with the question of study of secular knowledge, has been a key issue in the relationship of the Jewish community with general society and in defining its own self-image from the Middle Ages to the present. In the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century, the Jews of central Europe found a variety of ways to synthesize Judaism and rationalism under the influence, to a greater or lesser extent, of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. For the hasidim of eastern Europe, however, who sought to maintain the intense spirituality of hasidism, rationalism and secular study presented a challenge to their identity. This chapter explores some aspects of the Habad responses to this issue, from the beginning of the movement to the period of leadership of the last Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson (1902–94), in the second half of the twentieth century.