Even on a personal level, both Rabbi Nahman and Rabbi Zadok identified with the religious value inherent in failure. As a child Rabbi Nahman already struggled with the pains of religious frustration and spiritual absence, as Rabbi Nathan, Rabbi Nahman’s most prominent disciple, describes in his biography of his teacher:
He would often speak to God in heartfelt supplication and pleas … but nevertheless he felt he wasn’t being noticed or heard at all. On the contrary, it seemed to him that he was pushed away from the service of God in all kinds of ways, as though he were utterly unwanted. Days and years passed by, and still he was far from Him; he had not attained any sense of nearness at all…. At times he would become depressed, he would say that despite his begging and pleading to draw near to God’s service, no attention was being paid to him at all.286
The spiritual angst and heartrending emotion pervading Rabbi Nahman’s writing is a hallmark of Bratslav thought. Green notes this as a difficulty in studying and systematically analyzing Rabbi Nahman’s work.
When Nahman says that “everyman is filled with suffering,” Nathan reminds us that Nahman himself was pained greater than that of any other man. When Nahman speaks of the great distance from God that the man of faith may feel at certain times, we cannot but recall those passages in Nathan’s biographies which speak of Nahman’s own awareness of the gulf between himself and God. While Nahman never speaks in the first person in the Liqqutim themselves, it is quite clear that a great many passages in them cannot be understood except as oblique references to his own spiritual situation. In this way he is unique among Hasidic authors. The homilies of most Hasidic masters are largely impersonal in character; indeed, there is sometimes little in either style or content to distinguish the teachings of one zaddiq from those of another. Nahman’s teachings, on the other hand, are always recognizable by their highly personal mythology … 287
The struggles and oddities of Rabbi Nahman’s life are intertwined with his works and theology, as is evident in countless examples.288 It was a crucial part of Rabbi Nahman’s theology that one’s personal life circumstances must be actively incorporated and synthesized into the greater body of one’s scholarly works. A common refrain in Rabbi Nahman’s work is the power of failure and struggle to enrich and empower an individual.289
In fact, an entire chapter in Rabbi Nathan’s biography on Rabbi Nahman is dedicated to Rabbi Nahman’s spiritual struggles.290 These stories are quite atypical for a Hasidic work, which usually tend to focus on the miracle working and piety of the Hasidic leader. The legacy Rabbi Nahman hoped to impart was not one of inborn piety but rather of spiritual torment and struggle that ultimately nurtured a deeper and more mature religious life.
Rabbi Zadok, though far less turbulent than Rabbi Nahman, also incorporated his life’s struggles into his work, albeit much more obliquely. Two struggles loom large over the course of his life: his divorce and subsequent wandering through Europe, and his never having had children. Rabbi Zadok never addresses his divorce in his writings, but he alludes to childlessness many times. His collection of sermons, Pri Tzadik, is an allusion to his own perception of his children (referred to in Rabbinic literature as the pri, the fruits of an individual) being represented by the Torah thoughts he imparted to his students.291 Additionally, Rabbi Zadok dedicated an entire work entitled Poked Akarim,292 The Remembrance of the Barren to the theological implications of the inability to conceive.
The only source of autobiographical information we have from Rabbi Zadok himself is in his work Divrei Halomot, The Message of Dreams, which documents his dreams. The dreams are mostly theological or Talmudic in nature but a few have autobiographical insights. In the third dream, dated 1843, Rabbi Zadok describes what he calls “the roots of my soul”.293 This text is the most authoritative presentation of Rabbi Zadok’s self-image. Its interpretation, however, cannot be definitively determined. The thrust of the dream is the powerful religious energy present in sins and the potential to channel such energy into greatness, ultimately resulting in the redemption. Why this relates to “the root” of Rabbi Zadok’s soul is less clear.294 What emerges from this dream is the central role that the Hasidic idea of “descent in order to elevate” played in Rabbi Zadok’s life. This idea appears in many Hasidic works dating far earlier than Rabbi Zadok; however, its passionate articulation as “the root” of his soul is certainly distinct.295
Given their respective emphasis on the religious value of struggle it is not surprising that both Rabbi Nahman and Rabbi Zadok address the question of whether a person is permitted deliberately to seek out spiritually compromising situations. If religious struggle is enlightening, why not seek it out? Rabbi Nahman and Rabbi Zadok, however much they agreed in other areas, sharply disagreed about searching for opportunities to sin in order to test religious fortitude.
In Rabbi Nahman’s biography there is passage which states Rabbi Nahman not only welcomed temptation, he prayed for it. Discussing his teacher’s battles with sin, Rabbi Nathan writes:
The Rebbe said: “I actually begged and prayed that God should send me temptations. I was very confident that I would not rebel against God, as long as I did not lose my mind—for how can a person sin and disobey God unless he is literally insane. With just a little sense, all temptations can be overcome.”296
Rabbi Nahman sought opportunities to prove his self-restraint. He seems bound to realize the Talmudic description of “same place, same woman” literally. As described by Rabbi Nathan, Rabbi Nahman appears cavalier about the prospect of succumbing to sin:
The Rebbe said: If the Rabbis had not explicitly said it is forbidden to say “An arrow in Satan’s eye” (Kiddushin 30a), I would say it. I simply cannot understand the stories we are told about the sages of the Talmud who found sexual desire a very hard and burdensome thing to deal with. For me, it is nothing. Nothing at all …. For me there is no difference between a man and a woman.297
Aside from the aforementioned Talmudic passage, there is another precedent for such requests, as seen with King David, who sought to cement his status as worthy of being included as one of the forefathers by requesting a test from God.298 As students of King David’s life know, he did not pass his test with Batsheva. Nonetheless, Rabbi Nahman may have extracted from the story of the baffled King that temptation, however dangerous, can still be requested. After all, though struggles with sin may cause a minor fall, they can also create a major lift.
Rabbi Zadok, on the other hand, is emphatic that placing oneself into situations of potential temptation is prohibited. In his long treatise on repentance Rabbi Zadok mentions that he was in possession of a work known as Rav Yaiva, which did permit a person to test his own fortitude by returning to the proverbial “scene of the crime.” He writes:
… A while back I was in possession of the work Rav Yaiva299 and I saw there in his commentary on Psalms on the verse “He flatters himself in his own eyes (until his iniquity is to be found hateful)” (Psalms 36:2), that he cites in the name of the Baal Shem Tov in the name of the Heavenly Yeshiva that it is permitted to bring oneself, the person who is involved in repentance, to such a situation. Later on I saw written in the work Kli Yakar300 (the beginning of Parshat Hukat) writes similarly and explains in the name of others the Talmudic passage “in the place where the penitent stand there even the wholly righteous cannot stand.” Meaning that [ the righteous] are forbidden to seclude themselves (with a woman) and bring upon themselves spiritual trials, as opposed to the penitent (who are permitted to do so) … and regarding this matter it requires a tremendous amount of study to determine if it is true and it should not be spoken of at all … and if such an activity was permitted (to bring oneself to a spiritual trial) perhaps it is only in regards to those instances where the person is not explicitly violating any prohibitions. Similar to the story cited regarding Kind David (Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin 2:3)301…. In truth, even in this regard it is not clear to me for the evil inclination desires and conquers and is not satisfied unless
it has apprehended that which is prohibited … and [David] did not do this in order to purify his repentance and trials, rather just in order to awaken his righteous inclination over his evil inclination and break his desires.302
Rabbi Zadok is adamant that the process of repentance need not involve actually entering into spiritually compromising situations. The place where penitents stand may be more spiritually meaningful than those who have never fallen, but they still cannot actually enter places where their faith will be tested.303
Rabbi Nahman and Rabbi Zadok both stood in unique places. They extended the blanket of Hasidic thought to provide comfort and encouragement to people that others may have neglected. Still, however large and warm that blanket may be, Rabbi Zadok cautioned that it should not be used to allow limitless validation. Those who struggle with temptation, according to Rabbi Zadok, need to be honest about their limitations. Rather than reentering the locations where sin occurred, let the Knower of Concealments testify on your behalf.
The Limitations of Learning from Failure
Dr. Sim Sitkin knows how to fail. A professor of management at Duke, he wrote a long article on how organizations should strategically incorporate failure into their corporate culture.304 Not all failures encourage learning. In order to learn from failure you need to fail strategically. In an approach he calls “the strategy of small losses” he points to five ingredients “that contribute to the intelligence of failure”:
(1) They result from thoughtfully planned actions that (2) have uncertain outcomes and (3) are of modest scale, (4) are executed and responded to with alacrity, and (5) take place in domains that are familiar enough to permit effective learning.305
Instead of viewing failure as an organizational liability, he asks his readers to consider “that failure may actually be a safety and survival-enhancing asset in organizations.”306 Still, he cautions:
Failure should not be pursued for its own sake. It is a means to an end, not the end itself. If the goal is learning, then unanticipated failure is the unavoidable byproduct associated with the risks inherent in addressing challenging problems.
You need the right kind of failure to produce effective learning.
The limitations on learning from failure may shed light on a puzzling passage of Talmud about the value of learning from failure. In tractate Gittin (43b) the Talmud records the oft-cited phrase, “A person cannot understand words of Torah until they (i.e., the words of Torah) have caused him to stumble” . On the surface this phrase is simple enough—in order to successfully develop Torah knowledge, failure will inevitably be a part of the process. The context of this passage, however, is puzzling.307 The Talmud is in the midst of a discussion about betrothing a woman who is half slave and half free. One opinion erroneously suggests that such a marriage should be invalid since it is comparable to trying to betroth just half of a woman, which is decidedly void. In explaining the flawed analogy, the Talmud says:
Are the cases comparable? There, where he betroths half a woman, he leaves a portion of the woman out of his acquisition. That is why the betrothal does not take effect. However, here, she was a half-maidservant half-free woman when he betrothed her, and he did not leave a portion of the woman out of his acquisition, so the betrothal should take effect.
After correcting the mistaken analogy, the Talmud presents the passage that a person does not understand words of Torah before first falling.
In one respect this passage does connect to the broader legal discussion of the Talmud since the mistaken analogy is an example of stumbling on words of Torah. Still, the context is strange. This is the only time in the entire Talmud where this passage is evoked to justify a mistaken assumption. There must be thousands of instances in the Talmud where an initial suggestion is rejected in the process of coming to a conclusion. The dialectic process of rejection and refinement is a hallmark of Talmudic discourse. So why, of all places, does the Talmud decide to teach us about the value of failure in the process of learning here—in the seemingly unrelated and obscure discussion of half betrothals?308
Perhaps there’s a reason why this passage appears here. The Talmud was discussing the comparison between betrothing a woman who is only half-free and betrothing only half a woman. The distinction between the cases is that in the half-slave case, the act of betrothal was complete despite the fact that only half of the woman was eligible for marriage. But he did a complete acquisition. In the latter case of betrothing just half of a woman, there still remains another half that could be betrothed. His act of acquiring was only performed halfway. Herein lays the connection to failure. There is much to learn from failure. But in order to learn from failure, first every effort must be made to avoid it. You can’t leave anything in your act of acquiring. Failure, as Dr. Sitkin emphasized, cannot be sought. Educational failures emerge from concerted and sincere efforts to succeed that naturally fall short. Pursuing failure in order to learn will just leave a mess. Life will provide plenty of opportunities to learn from failure—but don’t go looking for them. You can be sure that they will find you. And when they do, there will be a lot to learn.
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RABBI’S SON SYNDROME: WHY RELIGIOUS COMMITMENT CAN LEAD TO RELIGIOUS FAILURE
I ask nothing of you in the way of a declared position on religion. Your mother may have demanded more of you here,—entreated more; I cannot. I ask but this: that you will give earnest, serious consideration to the fact that we exist on this planet for a shockingly brief fraction of Eternity; that it behooves every man to diligently seek an answer to the great question,—Why am I here? And then, as best he can, to live up to the ideal enjoined by his answer. And if this carries you far, and if it leads you to embrace any of the great creeds of Christendom, this will be to your mother an unspeakable joy, and perhaps not less so to me; but it is a question which cannot be settled by the mere filial desire to please.
—John Swain to his son William J. Bennet, The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood
The Challenge of Children of Rabbis
In a cramped office overcome with rabbinic tomes and papers in need of filing sits a daughter with her father. Her name is Tamar and she is showing her father an artistic rendering of their relationship. On her laptop she shows her father a crude animated rendering of a girl walking in her father’s shadow. No matter where the girl walks in relation to her father, his shadow is cast over her. And Tamar’s father does indeed cast a long shadow. Tamar Aviner is the daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a Rosh Yeshiva of a prominent yeshiva, rabbi of a noted community, and one of the acknowledged visionaries of the Religious Zionist movement in Israel. This scene, part of the moving 2011 Israeli documentary “The Rabbi’s Daughter,” powerfully depicts some of the struggle of growing up as a child in the home of a rabbinic parent. The documentary, which presents three different stories of daughters of prominent Israeli rabbis, highlights the somewhat counterintuitive relationship that those who grow up in rabbinic homes often have with religion.
Whether you are a son or a daughter of a rabbi or any other clergy member, it is somewhat intriguing that growing up in a devout religious home can often create a deleterious relationship with religion. A rabbinic home, one would assume, should be the best environment in which to grow up in order to ensure lasting religious commitment into adulthood. And to be sure, some of the most prominent rabbinic leaders in history have been a part of rabbinic dynasties. The Sofer family, the Soloveitchiks, and the Kotlers are but a tiny sampling of examples in the rich history of rabbinic dynasties. Nonetheless, children of rabbis and clergy in general do have a particular struggle with religion. Understanding this phenomenon—the religious struggle of children of clergy—can help provide a framework to consider why religion itself leads some away from religion.309
In a 1988 article entitled “Children of Rabbis,” psychologist and professor Irving Levitz investigated “the impact of the rabbinate on the developing self-identity of rabbinic children.”310 The study, which was conducted
through a series of in-depth interviews with thirty children of rabbis across the denominational spectrum, uncovered some important themes in the religious struggle of children of Jewish clergy. While the subjects in the study were from American families, some of their testimony could have just as easily been featured in the Israeli documentary. One woman in Levitz’s study expressed the following:
I always struggled to maintain an identity of my own. I was always introduced by name, then followed by “the Rabbi’s daughter.” It was as if I couldn’t be whole without having the attachment to my father’s profession noted …. My brothers had it worse …. I used to cringe at overhearing congregants comment on the “Little Rabbis.” Even though I really believe that many of these remarks were well intended, the reality was that my brothers and I felt as if we were stripped of the dignity of being who we were first and foremost.”311
For many children growing up in rabbinic homes, the otherwise difficult struggle to develop a personal identity is compounded by the cumbersome expectations foisted upon them. Citing an earlier study from 1980, Levitz emphasizes the connection between religious struggle and religious expectations:
…[T]he higher standards and greater expectations placed upon children of clergy create for them inordinate difficulties in growing up. Consequently, children of clergy experience feelings of isolation and inner conflict emanating from the strong desire to maintain the family image while being accepted by peers as individuals with an identity apart from their ancillary role.312
Religious life by definition demands higher religious standards. Growing up in a rabbinic home, however, puts children squarely in the center headquarters where those standards are shaped and regulated for the community.
The loneliness and isolation created by the religious expectations within the rabbinic home are, of course, nothing new. David Assaf, in his incisive work Untold Tales of the Hasidim, examines some of the more infamous tales of children of rabbis who eventually left religion altogether.313 Most of his analysis centers on the varying versions surrounding the religious departure of Moshe, son of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Chabad Rabbi. Before delving into the precise details surrounding Moshe’s alleged apostasy, Assaf cites a moving memoir of Yehudah Leib Levin, whose grandfather was Rabbi Moshe of Kobrin, a harbinger of the Slonim Hasidic dynasty. Yehudah recounts how his parents’ anguish exacerbated the difficulty of his departure:
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