The Rebbe, the Soul of Moses and “Continuous Revelation”

I went to the Accent Youth Hostel in Safed for a full Sunday. I sat on the porches with the beautiful overlooks of hills and valleys. I went for pizza on the busy commercial street of Safed, on the way, I had an incredibly honest conversation with a beautiful young wife in an incredibly natural wig. We discussed my problems with women’s role in Judaism and the eventual peace she made with her role. Somewhere, in this conversation while I tried to bring up the late entrance of some of the apologetics on women’s roles into the cannon she introduced a remarkable way of explaining away every argument I could ever make. According to her understand of chassidut (apparently it’s main stream, I asked around in Safed for starters), Tzadiks are directly divinely inspired, thus it makes no difference that ideas Judaism originate in particular time and place – because in fact the eternal word of God is being revealed each and every time. Thus, any conversation about the history of ideas in Judaism is over before it begins.

When, I heard this I was taken back by the stark clarity this outlook enables, the clarity is increased that much more when you add in the notion that the soul of Moses gets reincarnated in every generation, at least according to this particular woman (I’m not a chassidut expert, but the Chabad website does have a selection of prophetic predictions that the Rebbe made, which of course came true http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=75574).

The belief in the Tzadik whose got the soul of Moses and a direct line to God is at the heart of Chabad authority; however, after some thought it occurred me that there is a similar concept from which Orthodox Feminism derives its authority, “continues revelation” a la Tamar Ross in Expanding the Palace of Torah: Feminism and Orthodoxy. According to “continues revelation” each generation has Torah to teach the world, and the will of God is continuously revealed through said Torah.

This is incredibly similar to the Tzadik, yet I embrace the notion of “continues revelation” yet, I reject the tzadik. Why? What is the crucial difference between the two concepts? Is it just the message? Could you in theory have a tzadik who speaks a message of egalitarian gender equality? Would I like it then? What if the Rebbe said, women from now one count in a Minyan, would I appreciate what he stands for then? After some brief deconstruction of both concepts – it seems that what is identical at first blush, actually represents two divergent ways of understanding God. When Tamar Roth talks about “continues revelation” she is referring to a the flexible notion of truth and the ethical wisdom of humans – both are constantly evolving – and because God is truth and God is justice, evolving truth and justice, necessitates evolving our understanding of Gods will. However, the Tzadik is a single individual with a special connection to God – there is an assumption of unfiltered God-speak coming out of the tzadik’s mouth, versus a changing spectrum of knowledge facilitated by our joint perspectives/minds/intellects. The differences go beyond the one – versus the many, to the very core of where authoritative knowledge comes from. For “continues revelation” our truth is the manifestation of God’s will by definition, but for the Tzadik his word is truth because it comes directly from God’s will. (This of course is a version of a classic question: Is murder wrong because God said so, or did God say saw because it is wrong? Plug it what ever you want for “murder.” Guess the answer the Tzadik concept grants this clasic question!) Also the tzadik continues to be relevant always – he is never wrong, not even in a thousand years, he is not bound by particularity of time and space.

Thus, go the Safed, stay at Accent, take some Chabad classes, go ahead, get a kick out of it, but when you get back back check out Tamar Ross’s Expanding the Palace of Torah: Feminism and Orthodoxy (for starters).