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Here was a teacher of humility who sat throned amid tapestries, a preacher of righteousness who, when he feigned to be absorbed in God, was wallowing in his carriage! Yea, these Rabbis of the Chassidim were whitewashed sepulchres; and, as the orthodox communities did not fail of such, it seemed a waste of energy to go out of the fold in search of more.
And I weep the more over this spoliation of my Chassidim, because there is so much perverted goodness among them, so much self-sacrifice for one another in distress, and such faithful obedience to the Zaddik, who everywhere monopolizes the service and the worship which should be given to God.
He was a lean, emaciated, sickly young man, but his eyes had the fire of a lion's, and his glance was as a god's. When he spoke his voice pierced you, and when he was silent his presence filled the room. "The Chassidim!" I cried. "They died out with Judah the Saint." "Nay, this is a new order. Have you not heard of the Baal Shem?"
These things are too high for me. "Nay," I said, laughing. "If you were not such a man-of-the-earth, you would know that to cut out one line of one prayer is enough to set all the Rabbis excommunicating." "Ay," said he; "but I know also that in some towns where the Chassidim are in the ascendant, they depose their Rabbis and appoint a minion of Baer instead."
A great scholar who would not accept his infallibility, was thrown into such terror by his menacing look that he fell into a violent fever and died. And this I witnessed myself." "But there are no Chassidim in our place," said I, trembling myself, half with excitement, half with sympathetic terror. "What comes he to do here?"
Even the enemies of the Chassidim and they were many and envenomed admitted his learning, and complained that his defection to the sect had greatly strengthened and drawn grave disciples to this ignorant movement.
In lieu of an Ibn Ezra or a Maimonides, we have Jehuda Hachassid and Eliezer of Worms, with their mystical books of devotion, Sefer Chassidim, Rokeach, etc., filled with pietistic reflections on the other world, in which the earth figures as a "vale of tears." Poetry likewise took on the dismal hue of its environment.
"Why, but there are Chassidim, and there will be more " He stopped suddenly. "Nay, I spoke at random." "You spoke truly," said I sternly. "But speak on do not fear me." "You are a Rabbi designate," he said, shaking his head. "What of it?" "Know you not that everywhere the Rabbis fight desperately against the new Order, that they curse and excommunicate its members." "Wherefore?" "I do not know.
A sardonic smile twitched the corners of his lips, as he remembered how the poor Rabbi and his pretty wife, after fruitless hints, had lent him the precious tomes to be rid of his persistent all-night sittings, and the smile lingered an instant longer as he recalled his own futile attempts to coerce the supernatural, either by the incantations of the Cabalists or the prayer-ecstasy he had learnt later from the Chassidim.
And he organized his followers by external signs noisy praying, ablutions, white Sabbath robes, and so forth so that the spirit died and the symbols remained, and now of the tens of thousands who call themselves Chassidim and pray the prayers and perform the ceremonies and wear the robes, there are not ten that have the faintest notion of the Master's teaching.
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