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Dis-covering the Self: The Piaseczno Rebbe's Project of Hasidic Renewal

Tue, December 18, 10:15 to 11:45am, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Beacon Hill 1 Complex

Abstract

Rabbi Kalonymus Shapira developed intellectually and emotionally in the troubled interwar period. He combined traditional Jewish mysticism and modern psychology to create a program of individual therapy along with a longer vision of collective social reform. Scholarly interest in Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno has focused on his Holocaust sermons (Esh Kodesh) written in the Warsaw Ghetto, and on the pedagogical aspects of his interwar writings. This lecture foregrounds other important, largely unexamined facets of his thought and creativity. Like the Rebbe's Holocaust discourses, his earlier works exhibit an acute historical consciousness, strikingly modern psychological and phenomenological insights, and rare mystical attunement. This paper will consider some cogent, underlying themes in his interwar writings: dimensions of self-awareness, introspection, and the need for inner psychic unity, gestures of empowerment, an urgency of communication, and the endless desire for Divine presence. I will consider the consonances between these topics and innovative ideas emerging during those years in psychology, phenomenology, and neo-hasidic thought. This paper offers new perspective on the Rebbe’s mysticism and spirituality in the context of his hermeneutical activity; it also seeks to shed new light on his conception of Hasidism and its historical and redemptive mission.

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