Thread by @ZoharAtkins

Time for a @threadapalooza on Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810), a mystic and storyteller, who combined spiritual genius with a modernist literary sensibility. Rebbe Nachman is the sage of paradox, a depressive who believed in the liberating power of unreasonable joy.

Rebbe Nachman's usefulness and insight transcends the boundaries of his strict followers, those who tread the earth chanting "Na-na-nachman-M'uman..." Even if you disagree with his conclusions he is the best adversary there is, a formidable critic of intellectualism. 2

Rebbe Nachman (from now on, just Nachman), was the great grandson of the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov. Nachman's innovations were many, but to me, the greatest is his use of story or parable to convey his message. 3

Baal Shem Tov and other Hasidic masters used miracles and liturgical magic to heal and comfort people. Rebbe Nachman used the story. The possibility that a story itself is a kind of magical act is compelling. It is far more tenable for many than other forms of faith healing. 4

Said boldly, where others sought to use supernatural forms to make the impossible possible, Nachman knew that narrative itself could do this. Is this so different than the romantic faith underlying any creator, say, a Wes Anderson or Terrence Malick? 5

On the one hand, Rebbe Nachman is as crazy out there as the next mystic. On the other hand, his use of story makes him an ambiguous figure, one who found aesthetic freedom in religious language and found divine presence in literary irony. 6

Rebbe Nachman, for this reason, is a kind of Jewish Kierkegaard, although he eschews philosophy entirely, committing himself entirely to exegesis and parable. Rebbe Nachman is anti-theorist; or rather, his theory is expressed in forms that are dramatic, emotive and subjective. 7

Because Rebbe Nachman expresses himself through parable and through exegesis (Biblical commentary), it is difficult to say what he himself believes or argues for. We'll get to the doctrine. But the most interesting and durable part is the form. 8

Why deliver the message in the form of a story? Nachman was not the first to speak in parable, but he was the first to do so at length, creating a body of stories that double as folkloric mash-ups and Kabbalistic allegories. 9

Moreover, a classic parable has a clear exposition, a one to one meaning between the signifier and signified. But Nachman's tales are meandering and unruly, polysemous, and often inconclusive. 10

Sometime, Nachman will close his parables by giving his own expositions. But rather than settling the meaning of the tale, this will only function as yet another tale within a tale, a kind of postmodern gesture as we find in Pirandello's 6 characters in search of a play. 11

The unclosable gap between parable and meaning is itself a formal expression of the gap separating us from (and connecting us to) God 12.

Rebbe Nachman was deeply learned in the thought of Maimonides, though he is said to have forbidden his students from reading the Guide for the Perplexed. Officially, Rebbe Nachman rejects negative theology, rejects the rationalist claim that God is far and unknowable. 13

In fact, it is a staple of Hasidic sensibility more generally that God is here in our midst, available anywhere we might be open to the experience, as well as in unexpected places. God is banal, yet hidden due to our expectation that God is only lofty. 14

But Rebbe Nachman maintained the pathos of the person yearning for a distant God; he wasn't just a happy-clappy pantheist or panentheist, or a blissed out (drugged out?) new age guru. 15

On the contrary, Nachman believed God was to be found in contradiction and paradox, in difficulty, in pain. God is immanent, but particularly so precisely in those places where find faith most absurd. 16

The flavor of Nachman's mysticism is far from the one that just celebrates beauty and stillness. It's a mysticism of suffering. 17

Rebbe Nachman associates joy with closeness to God, and yet the motivation for joy is hitting rock bottom. The depressive most appreciates joy, and it is the faithless person who most understands faith. 18

Of course, we have agency and have to make it a spiritual practice to yearn, but ultimately there is no sense of spiritual achievement in Rebbe Nachman. One does not go to school for 10 years and leave a master. Life is hard. 19

And the more we feel like failures, the more God is there with us, whispering in the void, that we are here for a reason. 20

If there is a theodicy--a justification of God's ways--in Rebbe Nachman it is that the ugly things in life are themselves teachers. Either they are good in a concealed way, or they are genuinely bad, but there to awaken us to long for the beautiful. 21

But doctrine is a red herring when it comes to Nachman, whose works are often layered and move in opposite directions. 22

This said, a great starting point for his though is his tale "The Wise Man and the Simpleton" (Chacham and Tam), which is a character study of two types of people, the clever person and the idiot. 23

The clever person is smart and ambitious, but ends up in hell. The simpleton is poor and happy, and ends up getting promoted, eventually using his power to save his "smart" compatriot. 24

Nachman's sentiment, which he seems to have genuinely believed, echoes the Rousseauvian trope of the "nobel savage." In his critique of the "chacham" (better translated as sophist rather than sage) is a forerunner of @nntaleb's epithet "IYI" ("intellectual, yet idiot.") 25

Many of these tropes, contested as they, are remain influential to date: that happiness and goodness don't derive from intellect, and may even be at odds with it; that being scientifically right doesn't make for being well adapted to the world, etc. 26

Nachman's story idealizes the person who is happy with what he has, even as his options are externally constrained. The simpleton wears a three cornered shoe (a poorly constructed one). There is something Chelm-like about the hero. 27

Of course, so much of utilitarian thought, from Peter Singer's Effective Altruism movement to Martha Nussbaum's Capabilities Approach would find in Nachman an apology for do nothingism. 28

But there is a world of difference between making Rebbe Nachman's psychological insights a normative public policy and finding them to be an effective response to one's condition. 29

Nonetheless, we do face a trade off. Do we believe that scientific and technological progress can set us free or do we believe that the answers to life's challenges lies in something more lo-tech and more elusive? 30

Rebbe Nachman played chess with secular Jews ("maskilim"). Presumably, he knew enough to converse and to enjoy conversing with the enemy. But at the end of the day, the man who could have been a chacham (clever person) aspired to be a tam (a simple person). 31

In other words, he was a self-denying skeptic. A person who was unimpressed by knowledge, but who had tasted enough of it to differentiate himself from all those irrationalists who simply shout "sour grapes." 32

The great skepticism of modernity is not reserved for Nachman and Hasidism; we find it, as I've shown in other threads, in the works of Heidegger, Adorno, and Strauss (thinkers Mark Lilla calls "reckless minds") 33

And like these thinkers, Rebbe Nachman's response is not outright rejection, but complex reworking. 34

Rebbe Nachman is not anti-modern; he doesn't think things were better in the Stone Age, or that life took a turn for the worse with literacy (the logical extension of his critique of the "chacham" and defense of the "tam.") 35

Rather, the point is that
1) more civilization doesn't mean more spiritual progress and
2) more arrogance means more spiritual regress. 36

This at least makes it possible to be a humble rationalist, a person who uses reason without believing it to be the be all and end all. That is a different posture than courting absurdism. 37

There is a lot of open terrain between the position "believe in science" and "reject science." It's possible to follow Rebbe Nachman and lie in this between. 38

Yet for rhetorical reasons, Nachman often makes it seem like a binary choice. Either truth in being an outsider or lies in following the crowd. On the surface, the form follows the gnostic choice of taking the red pill or the blue pill. 39

Take the story of the Humble King. azamra.org/Essential/humb…

The visitor-anthropologist learns that society is consubstantial with flattery and deception. While the king whose seal is truth hides away, a recluse. 40

There is a truth to the description of life as a kind of ponzi scheme, going along to get along. The hype cycle of mimesis run amok. But is there an alternative? 41

In Plato, you leave the cave, but eventually you have to return. In Buddhism, the Enlightened Bodhisattva incarnates so as to help others. Why is the divine hiding behind a curtain? 42

In any case, at the end of the story, the anthropologist gets the king's portrait, but a few things stand out:

1) we are never told what the king looks like.
2) it seems the reward is the sighting of the king, not the portrait.

43

In other words, the problem is that we pursue the wrong goal. We think the goal is to know God scientifically, objectively, through portraiture, instead of experientially and relationally. 44

The problem is relating to phenomena as an anthropologist instead of as a soul. And yet...

45

The anthropologist uses the lens of a critic visitor to inoculate himself from the lies of the world. It's a compromise. A way of being in the world, but not of it. If I lie because I believe in my lie that's different than lying as part of a 'scientific' self-experiment. 46

Ironically, the anthropologist fails AND succeeds precisely to the extent that he distances himself from the world. 47

There is a classical motif in Jewish thought that the messiah is hidden. 48

Taken to a point of radicalism, this teaching might be understood to be saying that there's no discernable difference between a regular person, a person of the world, and a person who might bring about the greatest transformation. 49

It's sort of radically hopeful (transformation can come from anywhere anytime) and radically pessimistic (social science won't be able to detect any of the results said to be so wonderful). 50

I take Nachman's anthropologist visitor, and Nachman himself, to be a kind of messianic force, at once indistinguishable from the everyday, and yet subtly other than it. 51

They wouldn't pass FDA regulation, wouldn't hold up under peer review, and would be subject to the kinds of political suspicion that every leader raises when the line between healer and charlatan is ambiguous. 52

"But if Poetry makes Nothing happen" (Auden), so do Nachman's tales. They awaken the force of Nothing that "renovates the world" (Dickinson). 53

To be a storyteller, you have to be a participant and an observer, a "native anthropologist." You have to be not just "a spiritual being on a human journey" but a human being on a human journey. All material is useful, and all material can be redeemed through narrative. 54

The point is not to use parables to live a better life, but to make one's life itself a kind of parable, to find the allegory in every encounter, not to escape it, but to live it more fully (and aesthetically and spiritually). 55

Nachman is fruitfully compared to Walter Benjamin in the sense that both believed translation to be not a degradation of the original, but an elucidation and even perfection of it. Commentary is not subordinate to the original. It is the telos. 56

Both thinkers found everyday life and low culture and low states to be saturated with meaningfulness. Thus, Rebbe Nachman's use of folklore embodies this point: no form is unholy; mass culture hides divine secrets. 57

Nachman is also fruitfully compared to Leo Strauss, particularly on the notion of esoteric writing (writing whose true meaning is concealed from the superficial glance). 58

Nachman's stories often involve statements that are logically specious. We read them most effectively when we do not assume that characters always say what they mean. The speaker of Nachman's tales is not necessarily Nachman himself. 59

This is also true in the more obvious sense that Rebbe Nachman's tales were edited and organized by his student and editor, Rabbi Nosson of Remirov (the Plato to his Socrates or Paul to his Jesus or perhaps Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote). 60

More profoundly, I take Rebbe Nachman to suggest that we relate to the world itself as God's esoteric writing, with an apparent meaning cloaking a deeper one. What is this deeper meaning and why is it hidden? 61

To answer with a creed is to make the mistake of cerebrals; to think that there is a simple doctrine I just need to get into my brain and then I'll be OK. 62

If you want to get into critiquing rationalism, this is where I see existentialism's deepest blow. The problem isn't that reason is wrong, but that the solution to life's challenges isn't to be found in adapting the right mental content and then applying it. 63

Another problem with rationalism is that it reaches for answers that are universalizable and repeatable rather than singular and "non-scalable." I think the esoteric message of the world is different for each person, in accord with her being created in the divine image. 64

Nachman is a proto-existentialist when he claims that each person has a unique song in his heart, and that we find ourselves when we sing this one song. Whether as a metaphor or a literal idea, this is a compelling teaching (even though Apple appropriated it to sell iPods.) 65

Sure, Nachman was a religious Jew. But if the greatest imperative is to sing your song, who knows where it might lead. This is the ambiguity at the heart of religious existentialism. 66

That to be religious might mean you end up going your own way, even when it makes you at odds with your religion. 67

Either there is a guardrail or there isn’t. All existentialism tends to place the emphasis on choice rather than content of choice. Many try to constrain it, but this is the problem. 68

In legal theory it’s Carl Schmitt who is the existentialist, and Hans Kelsen who is the formalist. All pure existentialists are Schmittians, making the self the sovereign. My life is the exception that proves all rules. 69

Indeed, many drawn to Nachman embrace some version of this. It helps their case that Nachman did not leave behind a dynasty —unlike other Hasidic thinkers who effectively function as royal lines…there is no single uncontested successor to Nachman. 70

This also helps explain why he is a cause celebre outside the bounds of Orthodoxy. Nachman was a pietist, but he was also a prankster. If you want to make a case for a tradition of reverential irreverence -as, say, Shaul Magid does, he’s a great resource. 71

It's ironic that a thinker whose founding stance was an aversion to the arrogance of the modern enlightenment is so popular amongst (neo)liberals. 72

Why do people who are more or less market oriented and who value secular education find an inspiration in Nachman? I think it has to do w/ the fact that his stories are beautiful and aesthetically delightful. 73

Many religious people find aesthetics to be a distraction; and those who, like Bach, find aesthetics to be a means of serving God, tend to have an aesthetic of elegance and perfection. But Nachman's aesthetic is WEIRD, unkempt. 74

Whether consciously or not, Nachman embodies the case that being an artist, or even a life-artist, is a way of being faithful. 75

Not being a professional artist, but art as a calling. He proves inadvertently the modern sense that art is the last refuge of spirit in our disenchanted time. 76

Nachman was not only a masterful storyteller, but an avant garde textual commentator, who upended classical commentary. 77

The signature of his dizzying poetic commentary style is to say this is this is this is this is this and then to just create chains of images, phrases, and referents whose connections are associative, but hardly obvious. 78

Sure, he has a precedent in the Zohar for doing this, but his chains are even more far-out, and also his reasoning is never given. His ability to do this on his own authority is remarkable, a kind of improv by way of encyclopedic mashups. 79

Of course, if you think everything is everything this isn't crazy, but the hard part is knowing what to align, what patterns to find.

Classic Midrash is intertextual: this word appears in this verse and also in this verse.

80

Nachmanian Midrash is intertextual if the world were the Torah and any two things that resembled one another might be said to be allusions to one another. It's intertextuality on acid. 81

Nachman shows commentary itself to be an art form, a way of using text to facilitate a religious experience rather than just clarify terms or answer moral questions. 82

While Nachman confines himself to the Jewish canon, the range of his allusions is an example of the kind of pastiche work we'll later find in Benjamin's Arcades Project. Nachman is a kind of "collector" in Benjamin's sense, redeeming through juxtaposition and curation. 83

I've compared Nachman to Benjamin and Strauss and a little bit to Schmitt and Kierkegaard.

Other thinkers I think he bears commonality with are Foucault and Adorno. 84

How so? The issue turns on what is called in Jewish theology "tzimtzum." Tzimtzum either means the contraction of God away from the world or the contraction of God into it. Either way, it's a kind of restraint on God's presence, a diminution so that something not-God can be. 85

Kind of like a person in a relationship who talks all the time and has to learn to be quiet so the other person can talk. 86

Theologians have long debated whether the contraction of God is apparent or real. While not exact (there are exceptions), it's often said that Hasidim thought the contraction to be only apparent, while Mitnagdim or rationalist opponents took the contraction to be real. 87

That is, is the world one in which God has abandoned us, leaving only a small trace of goodness, or is God here with us, but perhaps buried under a removable grime? 88

This seemingly abstract question is also basically a question of agency, a question of our ability to make a difference. Those who think God is here with us embrace theurgy, the idea that our actions matter, can affect God. 89

Those who think God is not here see human action as a kind of futility, a making due with a non ideal situation. 90

I take Adorno and Foucault to be internally conflicted on these questions. Optimists in spite of themselves. Believers in agency in spite of themselves. This is how I understand Nachman. A believer in grace and uplift despite or even because of an experience of sclerosis. 91

In the Politics of Piety, Saba Mahmood finds a sense of agency and creativity in a community of religious women who otherwise appear oppressed to a Western gaze. 92

The Nachmanian seeker, the simpleton, likewise seems oppressed, and yet possesses a kind of radical grace.

The Nachmanian anthropologist, the rebbe, leading the way, seems complacent in the social lies, and yet is reworking and countering them through parable and art. 93

I can't be the simpleton Nachman praises. And he couldn't be that simpleton either. But there are moments in life where what we need is belief, not criticism, surrender not cleverness. 94

Maybe we shouldn't go 100 percent towards the one side, unless we want a life ruled by capricious tyrants, but you don't have to go all the way w/ Nachman to appreciate his criticisms, formal, spiritual, and aesthetic, of the Enlightenment. 95

He tells us to make our prayers like a three cornered shoe. This is way of saying "be good enough." Great advice. So much focus on being consistent and principled and well thought out can get in the way of just doing it. 96

Would I prescribe Nachman to a psychotic with delusions of grandeur? No. But as an antidote to academic neurosis, absolutely. We need a few doses. 97

The politics of Nachman's critique of rationality leads seemingly to the valorization of the charismatic leader who can help us escape. But they might just as easily lead in anarchic direction to a politics that honors the song in each of us. 98

We can't really know, because Nachman's writings have the advantage and disadvantage of being stories within stories. 99

But the inability of a story to become law, of a poem to become policy, is not a deficiency. It is a final bulwark against the modern assault on mystery in the name of progress.

100. End. There is no end.