A Passion for Truth (A Jewish Lights Classic Reprint)

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Summary: A courageous book by an Author with a Jewish Heart
Review: By discovering the Voice that comes from the spirit of Kotsk, you might well find that the presence of God Himself is hovering over the stance, the attitude and the soul searching that are inherent in the Kotsker Rebbe's teachings and sayings. The Kotsker Rebbe is/was doubtless a Man of God, no compromise, no patting on the back, no fooling around, with man or with scripture. His spirit and his sayings, almost like those of Abel/Hevel, look like they are set to endure untill the end of days.

With this book, for a handful of worldly dollars, you can acquire a hook and a ladder that may connect you straight back to Heaven, nay, even way better, that brings the Presence of the Holy One close to you (Eternity starts right here, not tomorrow) and give you a feel for His Personal Concern, but you are of course free to skip it, if you so wish. You cannot serve Him, said Joshuah of Nun, 'cause He is a Holy God, so it often ends up (or looks) like it is God Himself that is serving us, in hallowing our service to Him. I'm exasperated by your prayers, He used to say, but He sometimes kindly forgets to mention it...

The sayings from Kotsk are almost in straight line with the sayings of the Prophets and the Tanakh (no religiosity, here, and no fancy personal views either), so that this book is not really about the fear of Heaven, but about the fear of God Himself. Just as there were many prophets of Baal, and only one Elijah, there were many Hasids, but only one Kotsker Rabbi. The Voice from Kotsk was the Voice of a Prophet, unextinguished, and still very much alive, with the ability to stirr up consciences.

Why wouldn't God be pleased to give us more Rabbis of the same kind of cut as that of the Kotsker Rebbe? Maybe it is the fact, as Rav Soloveitchik once mentioned in one of his lectures, that our generations simply prove themselves unworthy. God sends out a Voice of a Prophet only when there are people to receive it (i.e., lost sheep). The Word of God cannot return empty handed, in vain, like a fancy and pleasant music or discourse, without having reached a specific aim, having fulfilled a mission (i.e. the calling in, and gathering of exiles, or lost ones). This is a scriptural statement which cannot be broken, a statement of which all Creation bears ample testimony: Creation endures only because the Word of God called it into existence. So, is the whole of Creation really full of God's Glory, even for us humans, just as it is for God's Holy Angels (a typically Beshtian proposition)? Nay, this would be tantamount to self-deception, hassidic intoxication, pantheistic worship, a circumvoluted and crooked way of implicitly making God the Servant of our own generated evils, an alibi for lawlessness, an enslavement of the Divine Will and Mercy to the basic need of our own defrauded human condition, of our wicked and deceitful hearts (depression often looks like a daughter of falsehood). In the Kotsker's saying, God is only present where He is let in, where he has gained an entry, an access so to speak, but from the rest of Creation, He remains shut off and left out by Man's pride, by Man's intoxicating self-worship, by Man's idolatrous worship of Nature and by the apparent causality that seems to rest in his own hands, all of them sisters of self-deception, sheqer and falsehood being the root of all evil both in this world and in that which is to come.

Truth lies in the grave, otherwise our present-day creation could not endure, but it will one day be resurrected (daily prayers).

Go and find out what God requires from you, said the Voice of the Prophet, namely Truth in the inward parts. Truth usually engenders love and mercy, but love and mercy do not necessarily engender Truth, actually quite seldom so. We seem to be tributary to a lost human condition that shuts off God and His Divine presence through our own lies and our own self-deception. God simply cannot tolerate any falsehood, no matter in what form it may present itself, be it even in the form of adulterated truth. This book hints at a path that seeks to restore the essential Presence and the Voice of God in our lost World, an advocacy for God Himself, so to speak. In my mind, the Kotsker Rebbe was a witness upon whom the Spirit of the Prophets of old came to rest in order to stirr him up for a cause that was not his, but God's. There haven't been many men that have availed themselves for such. Enough said, unfortunately or fortunately, I'm no author, but Abraham Joshua Heschel, he is an author, and a very kindhearted one at that. It is my guess that you might well enjoy this book greatly, and that it might even bring you some of that sober and peacefull joy, the kind that doesn't fade. And if you feel like me, you might even find that some of the Besht's sayings are sometimes almost nauseating in the nearby pantheistic worldview they imply (medicine seldom tastes any good in itself), and that more especially in the light of the purity of the Kotsker's sayings.

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Summary: Abraham Heschel's True Passion
Review: The book analyses the thoughts of the Kotzker Rebbe by contrasting and comparing him to the Danish theologian and philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. Few men could ever have conceived and written such an incisive work; no one else could have approached it with such an inner feel for the Hasidic tradition and yet, with a mind open to the teachings of Christian theologians.

Every thought resonates with Heschel's major "popular" statements of religion and Jewish philosophy, "God in Search of Man', and "Man is not Alone". It is obvious from reading this work that Heschel's own philosophy drew heavily on the Kotzker Rebbe's teachings - strip away the adornments and seek the essence and truth.

It is quite unfortunate that Heschel's major work on the Kotzker was never translated from the original Yiddish. Until such translation is published, this book alone provides both an incisive look at theological radicalism and a sense of the misdirection of most modern theories of religion.

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Summary: Knowing the Kotzker Rebbe
Review: There are a lot of books about Chasidism, but not about this interesting character. In "A Passion for Truth", Abraham Joshua Heschel shows the deep and intricate personality of one of the most significant Chasidic Rabbis: Menajem Mendl of Kotzk. One of the most important things in this book is the link that Heschel establishes between the Kotzker Rebbe and the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard. Throughout this amazing book, Heschel shows the semblance and differences of these two important figures of the Nineteen-century. "A Passion for Truth" is a book that everyone who wants to know about Chasidism and the Kotzker-trend system has to read.