What follows is an attempt to understand “selflessness” in Jewish mysticism and chassidus. It will take a few posts, and even then won’t be complete. It’s difficult to explain directly, so the essays will approach it from different angles. How they connect may not always be obvious, but they have been set in a particular order to build upon each other.
Over the next few weeks, I may say some things that alarm you and go against many established norms. My goal is not contrarianism for its own sake. This is about killing a cliché. You don’t kill a cliché by abandoning it. You kill it by reintroducing the experiences and concepts it was meant to symbolize. My aim here is not to say something new, then, but to say all the old things in a way that circumvents the usual framework. I aim for what the clichés were meant to say but say no longer. Please, by all means, continue to enjoy the usual framework if it still works for you. If you like it, keep it.
I don’t.
It is a testament to the widespread confusion of our time that many view traditional religion as a form of selfishness. True, religions brandish certain old notions of charity and justice, but these crawled so that the modern and post-modern social movements could run. The biblical tithe seems drab beside the various socialisms et al. Reports on the news abound of disruptive activists willing to tear it all down and burn themselves on the pyre, all in the name of the other.
Celebrity scammers like Sam Bankman-Fried may have made mockeries of “effective altruism” as a cause de jour, but proponents nevertheless are ruthlessly efficient in portioning out their time and money. Pursuits such as Torah study, prayer, and even festive meals with family and friends take up much of Judaism’s time and energy and comprise the bulk of its communal life. Today’s popular thinkers usually partially embrace these things, seeing as they may be required for communal cohesion, mental health, and other things that, in low enough measures, might impact one’s net productivity. As ends unto themselves, however, they seem wildly selfish besides the activist form of life. How can one justify the hours-long Shabbos meal and an entire day of rest, on which one isn’t even meant to think about doing something productive like preventing malaria in Africa? The Shabbos day of rest as an inherent good is a commitment, in the vast majority of cases1, to throwing valuable altruism hours away.
Jewish mysticism only makes it worse. A single private act between the Jew and G-d is of eternal cosmic significance. Worldly forms of altruism are selfishness without a Divine component.2 True love of another is the basis of the entire Judaism and is only achievable through profound effort at self-refinement.3 A soul can come to this world for seventy or eighty years to do a single spiritual favor for another.4 Perhaps the average human being is created simply to war against their inner animalistic impulses.5 The Divine purpose of all creation is achieved through private contemplation and joy in G-d’s unity.6 G-d will set aside all worlds above and below (read: and all the other people who live in them) to care whether a single Jew accepts Him as King.7 A human being cannot help or harm another without G-d’s consent.8
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