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an existential history of Chabad Hasidism
"Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity provides a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of Chabad Hasidism through the Kabbalistic concept of ṣimṣum. The onset of modernity, Eli Rubin argues, was heralded by this startling idea: existence itself is predicated on a self-inflicted "rupture" in the infinite assertion of divinity. Centuries of theoretical disputations concerning ṣimṣum ultimately morphed into religious and social schism. These debates confronted the meaning of being and forged the animating ethos of Chabad, the most dynamic movement in modern Judaism. Chabad's distinctive character and self-image, Rubin shows, emerged from its spirited defense of Hasidism's interpretation of ṣimṣum as an act of love leading to rapturous reunion. This interpretation ignited a literal conflagration, complete with book burnings, denunciations, investigations and arrests. Chabad's subsequent preoccupation with ṣimṣum was equally significant for questions of legitimacy, authority, and succession as for existential questions of being and meaning. Unfolding the story of Chabad from the early modern period to the twentieth century, this book provides fresh portraits of the successive leaders of the movement. Innovatively integrating history, philosophy, and literature, Rubin shows how Kabbalistic ideas are crucially entangled in the experience of modernity and in the response to its ruptures"--
Preamble. Conflagration and cosmic rupture -- Introduction. What does ṣimṣum mean? -- The Ari as a herald of modernity -- Love and rupture in early Hasidism -- "Due to this, the known book was burned" -- Ṣimṣum, soul-knowledge, and the function of parable -- Epilogue. Ṣimṣum and the institutionalization of Chabad -- Introduction : does the world exist? -- Cosmic construction as cosmic effacement -- The Chabad sermon : articulating singularity -- Being, nothing, and Chabad's first succession controversy -- Rereading Rashaz, rereading reality -- Epilogue. Opening and closing the door on acosmism -- Introduction. A tale of two brothers -- Dynastic rupture and cosmological recalibration -- The hemshekh : a new literary collage -- The finite trace of unruptured infinity -- Chabad's internal ṣimṣum split -- Epilogue. History and the metaphysics of materialism -- Introduction. The ruin and renaissance of Lubavitch -- Rediscovering malkhut, the cosmic womb -- Why? : innovation and the purpose of ṣimṣum -- Desire, pleasure, and the transcendence of sense -- Three paths to essential originality -- Epilogue. Rashab, Freud, and the meanings of modernity -- Introduction. Undergoing and overcoming dislocation and catastrophe -- Letter writing and the Soviet ṣimṣum -- Bati legani and the triumph of humanity -- Wissenschaft, ṣimṣum and midcentury succession -- Messianic faith in the shadow of the Holocaust -- "Many-worlds" and "uncertainty" in ṣimṣum and science -- Epilogue. Living for the sake of ṣimṣum -- Postscript. The art of being.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 363-391) and index.
Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2025]