Individualism and the Hassidic Praxis of Storytelling

• In Event: Hassidic Literature, Media, and Secular Modernity

Abstract

This paper examines the Hassidic chronotope and the ways in which it expresses and shapes Hassidic perceptions of individualism and community. My discussion will situate Hassidic expressions of individualism alongside other trends in modern philosophy, espoused by Kant, Kierkegaard, Buber and Nietzsche. I shall then ask what Hassidic hagiography adds to this philosophical discourse and why it was rejected by modern Jewish culture. Hassidic hagiography emerged as a genre when it was mass-produced in mid-nineteenth century Galicia. It expresses modernity in its focus on the human and spiritual value of concrete individuals, but at the same time it suggests that those individuals recognize themselves only when encountering the gaze of another individual that is usually a member of the Hassidic community. Examining, from a literary perspective, the placement of man in time and space in Hassidic hagiographies, this paper will show that Hassidic perceptions of Individualism recognizes the gaze of the other as an essential element in defining the individual. Emphasizing the praxis of storytelling and the dependence on intra-subjective communication, Individualism shaped by Hassidic hagiographies exposes the paradox that lays in the modern reconstruction of the individual as a coherent, autonomous entity within a Jewish context.

Author

• Chen Mandel-Edrei, University of Maryland