The quest for authenticity - The Thought of Reb Simhah Bunim

by Michael E. Rosen

The Przysucha (Yiddish Pshiskha, pronounced Pe-shis-kha) school of Hasidism believed in a service of God that demanded both passion and analytical study. There was little or no study of kabbalah in Przysucha, and the emphasis was not on trying to understand God, but on trying to understand the human being. It was clear to them that one could not stand with any sense of integrity before the Divine Presence unless one first had some clarity of who one really was. Directly or indirectly, Przysucha had declared an internal war upon the hasidic leadership of its time. It simply refused to accept anything that smelled of falseness and self-deception, be it the honor due to a zaddik or a particular religious practice. Przysucha equated pretension and self-deceit with idol worship. During the early part of the nineteenth century, when the center of the hasidic world was in Poland, R. Simhah Bunim transformed Przysucha Hasidism into a movement and thus rose to become a, if not the, dominant personality in the Hasidic community.

Genres: Jewish, Judaism, Spirituality, Philosophy

415 pages

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Michael E. Rosen is a British political philosopher who is active in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental European intellectual thought. He is currently a professor at Harvard University.

Rosen holds a B.A. in philosophy, awarded in 1974, and a D.Phil. awarded in 1980, both from Balliol College, Oxford. Prior to joining Lincoln College, Oxford, he served as a lecturer in politics at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1980 to 1981, an assistant professor of philosophy at Harvard from 1981 to 1982, a special fellow in politics at Merton College, Oxford, from 1982 to 1985, and a lecturer in philosophy at University College London from 1986 to 1990.

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Reviews

[Eli Raphael]

Beautiful ideas and history presented here.

[Ari]

On the personal growth front (possibly because it was exactly the right thing at the right time), both intellectually and spiritually, this is my pick for best book of the year. Over the past two weeks, I've read this cover-to-cover twice. I've also convinced my Chevrutah to get it, so will be going over it again soon, in more depth. Much like the ideals of Przysucha, if you come to this book looking for a strong wing of spirituality or serious scholarship alone, you'll be disappointed. If you leave out either interest in approaching this, you'll miss something major. However, if you come looking for a work with BOTH wings, you'll find it. Recommended, with slight caveat that you need to have some history/general knowledge of Hasidut coming into this to really get why Przysucha (Holy Yehudi/R. Simcha Bunim/Kotzker Rebbe) was/is so incredible. Giant bonuses that make this rabbinical student feel like I won the lottery: All the appendix work at the back of the book, Hebrew sources included, and the bibliography which pretty much reads to me like a menu from a book cafe somewhere located in Olam haBa. Also FOOTNOTES not end notes. I cannot tell you how important this is, especially in this book because the references are half of the importance of the book. Read the footnotes or you will miss major things.

[Benjamin]

Quest for Authenticity is in my opinion less a guide to the religious thought of Reb Simhah Bunim than it is a guide to the late Michael Rosen's ideas about spiritual pedagogy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. He's identified a thread of hasidic thought that for its time took large strides toward the destabilization of power between rebbe and hasid. By focusing specifically upon the challenges to that relationship within the short-lived Peshishchan lineage he's able to give voice to his own thoughts about mentoring. Taken as Rosen's personal philosophy the book is highly valuable. The world has lost a man of incredible compassion.

In addition to the insights he's gained through a decidedly neo-hasidic recontextualization of hasidic thought, his appendix on his method for engaging with hagiographic texts offers a non-reductionist alternative to rejecting hagiographies altogether in favor of "harder" sources.

[Yehuda Horowitz]

Very interesting and thorough, though it does get kind of repetitive.