Three Modes of Contemplation in Prayer in (Contemporary?) Habad

• In Event: Song, Tale, and Prayer in Hasidic Devotion

Abstract

This paper is part of an ongoing project exploring spirituality in contemporary society, with special reference to Habad.
In earlier Habad texts there is a strong focus on systems of contemplation. One could define three main modes. One, delineated in Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s Tanya (1797), focuses on the first two lines in the Shema. The first line (Shema Yisrael etc) expresses the Upper Unity, in which all existence is perceived as dissolved in the infinite Divine, the second line (Barukh Shem etc) expresses the Lower Unity, in which a world is perceived but it is filled with the Divine.
Another mode concerns ideas found in Habad literature expounding details of the Verses of Praise. For example, a teaching by the second Habad leader, Rabbi Dovber (d.1827) invites the individual to see himself (or, today, herself) as joining the spiritual pleroma of the universe to the infinite Divine. This is expressed as an exposition of Ps.145:1, ‘I will exalt/elevate my G-d [explained as the divine pleroma, the G-dliness within the world] to the [infinitely exalted] King’.
A third mode takes a possibly complex passage of ‘deep’ Habad Hasidic exposition and applies it to the contemplative process. For example a lengthy passage by Rabbi Shalom Dovber Schneersohn (d.1920) focuses on the divine ‘delight’ in Creation, which is particularly expressed on the Sabbath. The contemplative might seek to internalise that Divine delight as he or she prays on the Sabbath.
To what extent are any of these modes relevant in the 21st century? Interview material collected by this author (and presented at a previous AJS conference) has indicated that for some men and women, contemplative techniques are at least occasionally a part of their prayer. Can one be more specific? The paper will attempt to investigate this aspect of Habad society by considering contemporary texts in English and/or Hebrew produced as aids for contemplation, and also through information gained from interviews/questionnaires with men and women of Habad today.

Author

• Naftali Loewenthal, N. Loewenthal