Books by Eli Rubin
Stanford University Press, Stanford Studies in Jewish Mysticism, 2025
Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity provides a comprehensive intellectual and institutional his... more Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity provides a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of Chabad Hasidism through the Kabbalistic concept of ṣimṣum. The onset of modernity, Eli Rubin argues, was heralded by this startling idea: existence itself is predicated on a self-inflicted "rupture" in the infinite assertion of divinity. Centuries of theoretical disputations concerning ṣimṣum ultimately morphed into religious and social schism. These debates confronted the meaning of being and forged the animating ethos of Chabad, the most dynamic movement in modern Judaism.
Chabad's distinctive character and self-image, Rubin shows, emerged from its spirited defense of Hasidism's interpretation of ṣimṣum as an act of love leading to rapturous reunion. This interpretation ignited a literal conflagration, complete with book burnings, denunciations, investigations, and arrests. Chabad's subsequent preoccupation with ṣimṣum was equally significant for questions of legitimacy, authority, and succession, as for existential questions of being and meaning.
Unfolding the story of Chabad from the early modern period to the twentieth century, this book provides fresh portraits of the successive leaders of the movement. Innovatively integrating history, philosophy, and literature, Rubin shows how Kabbalistic ideas are crucially entangled in the experience of modernity and in the response to its ruptures.
RABBI MENACHEM MENDEL SCHNEERSON (1902–1994), known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was one of the most... more RABBI MENACHEM MENDEL SCHNEERSON (1902–1994), known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century and the only rabbi ever awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Despite wide recognition of Schneerson’s impact, this is the first volume to seriously explore his social ideas and activism. Schneerson not only engineered a global Jewish renaissance but also became an advocate for the revitalization of education, criminal justice reform, women’s empowerment, and alternative energy. From the personal to the global, his teachings chart a practical path for the replacement of materialism, alienation, anxiety and divisiveness with a dignified and joyous reciprocity.
Social Vision delves into the deep structures of social reality and the ways it is shaped and reshaped by powerful ideologies. Juxtaposed with sociologist Max Weber’s diagnosis of “inner worldly asceticism” as “the spirit of capitalism,” Schneerson’s socio-mystical worldview is compellingly framed as a transformative paradigm for the universal repair of society. The library of Schneerson’s talks and writings is voluminous, but critics have described this distillation as artful, engaging, ambitious, bracing, relevant and imperative. Social Vision boldly upends conventional polarizations between tradition and progress, religion and science, mysticism and society, providing a wealth of intellectual and practical resources for all who seek a better future for humanity.
Peer Reviewed Papers by Eli Rubin
In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, 2024
Avrohom Eliyohu Plotkin was born in Rahachow (in present-day Belarus) in the Russian Empire, ... more Avrohom Eliyohu Plotkin was born in Rahachow (in present-day Belarus) in the Russian Empire, in 1888. After the Russian Revolution, he served as the rabbi of Ostashkov, a provincial town midway between Moscow and Leningrad, at a time when the Jewish Sections (Evsektsiia) of the Communist Party — supported by other agents of the Soviet state — were forcibly closing all the institutions that made Jewish religious life possible. In 1946 he escaped to the West, and in his last years he headed the Tomkhei-Temimim Yeshiva established at the DP Camp in Pocking, Germany. Unusually for a rabbinic scholar of his stature and of this era, Plotkin also wrote several short stories, essays, and poems that poignantly capture the tragedy and the spirit of Jewish religious life during the early decades of the Soviet experiment.
AJS Review, 2021
The maskilic characterization of the nineteenth century as a period of decline and ossification f... more The maskilic characterization of the nineteenth century as a period of decline and ossification for Hasidism is increasingly eschewed by scholars, yet continues to mark current research in significant ways. As a case study, this article takes up Rabbi Shmuel Schneersohn of Lubavitch ("Maharash," 1834-1882), rescrutinizing (1) the controversy surrounding the onset of his leadership, (2) his personality and charisma, (3) his methodological approach to the teachings and texts that he inherited from his predecessors, and (4) his theological contributions and their place in the broader trajectory of Chabad's intellectual history. His tenure emerges as a false twilight, in which a new foundation was laid for the perpetuation and expansion of Chabad-Lubavitch, as both an intellectual and activist movement, in the century that followed.
Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 2020
From 1777 and onward, the Hasidic communities in the Diaspora and the Holy Land were bound togeth... more From 1777 and onward, the Hasidic communities in the Diaspora and the Holy Land were bound together in an economic and spiritual circle of mutual reliance. A survey of the epistolary literature exchanged between these communities reveals that the terms of this circular relationship were respectively understood by R. Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk, R. Avraham of Kalisk, and R. Shneur Zalman of Liady in some ways very similarly, and in other ways very differently. They all shared a socio-mystical conception of the constitution of Hasidic spirituality. Nevertheless, the latter figures each developed the doctrines of the former in very different directions. It emerges that they disagreed not only about the practical techniques that would achieve the socio-mystical ideal, but also about if and how personal integrity could correspond to the divine measure of truth. Building on a theoretical critique of the standard bifurcation of the mystical and the social, and through close readings of relevant texts, this paper revises the conclusions drawn by Joseph Weiss regarding R. Avraham's "concept of communion with God and Men" (Part I), parses the doctrinal similarities and differences between these three Hasidic leaders (Part II), and finally uncovers an implicit polemic that can be discerned when R. Shneur Zalman's Tanya is reread in its historical and ideological context (Part III).
Kabbalah in America, 2020
Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), the seventh leader of the Habad-Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty... more Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), the seventh leader of the Habad-Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty, came to the United States as a refugee, having fled Paris as the Nazis took control of France. Yet the American future of Hasidism had already been con- sidered in a letter addressed to him in 1933 by his father-in-law and predecessor as “Lubavitcher Rebbe,” Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson. Therein we find the beginnings of a kabbalistic theorization of the pivotal role that America was to play in the realiza- tion of the very telos of creation. Transposed from the realm of kabbalistic theory into the realm of socio-historical analysis, this became the basis for the seventh rebbe’s development and enactment of a counter-cultural strategy for a post-holocaust Jewish renaissance, centered not in Israel, but in America.
JEWISH SPIRITUALITY AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION, 2019
Hasidism—which took root in Eastern Europe in the latter part of the eighteenth century and is to... more Hasidism—which took root in Eastern Europe in the latter part of the eighteenth century and is today especially vibrant in Israel and the United States—is enchanting to some and disturbing to others, precisely because it is simultaneously characterized by mystical spirituality and this-worldly exuberance; by elitist esoterism and exoteric populism; by the individualistic figure of the tzadik and the ideal of communal egalitarianism in collective life. Building on the theoretical paths charted by Philip and Elliot Wolfson this paper argues for a non-reductive "socio-mystical" approach to the study of Hasidic texts, history, practices, and phenomena. Taking up the example of Habad at the two poles of its two hundred year history it is argued that just as Habad’s contemplative practice cannot be reduced to individual mystical activity, so Habad’s communal work cannot be reduced to social activity. Contemporary Habad activism is, in fact, the culmination and realization of an intellectual tradition of great depth and breadth, at the heart of which stands the fundamental axiom that the mystical and the social are one and the same.
In Geveb, 2018
The imprint of Hasidism and Hasidic tales in modern Jewish literature has already received some a... more The imprint of Hasidism and Hasidic tales in modern Jewish literature has already received some attention from scholars, and the literary significance of Hasidic mamarim and other mystical texts has also been noted. This paper seeks to take the interdisciplinary study of Hasidism and modern Jewish literature one step further, tracing some of the ways that Chabad Hasidism’s internal tradition of “literary mysticism” has intervened in the broader trajectory of modern Jewish literature. My first task in this paper is to trace internal developments in the Chabad literary tradition over the course of the nineteenthth century, and to demonstrate how this internal trajectory was given broader expression in Khayim gravitser, a Yiddish novel by Dr. Fishl Schneersohn of Rechytsa, Berlin, and Tel Aviv (1888-1958). The second part of this paper takes a closer look at the Hebrew poet Avraham Shlonsky (1900-1973), who translated Schneersohn’s novel from the original Yiddish, and at the ways that the novel’s title character might be seen as an avatar for Shlonsky’s own self-identification as a Hasidic rebel, traveling between opposing shores. Taken as a whole, this paper aims to complicate the neat chronology that bifurcates modern Jewish literature from its Hasidic roots, and show that both Schneersohn and Shlonsky actually continued the Hasidic literary tradition of Chabad even as they embraced alternative literary forms in the cause of new agendas.
In Geveb, 2019
Yiddish has always been the oracular mainstay of Chabad's intellectual and spiritual trajectory... more Yiddish has always been the oracular mainstay of Chabad's intellectual and spiritual trajectory. Initially it was simply the vernacular of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and its use, even in Hasidic publications, merely reflected its utility as a linguistic medium for the dissemination of Hasidic teachings. From the mid-nineteenth century, however, Yiddish became a contested language, an ideological and cultural battleground. In response to the linguistic interventions proposed by proponents of Haskalah and Zionism, Yiddish became subject to broader ideological considerations for Chabad's leaders. By the 1920s, processes of urbanization and migration had dramatically changed the linguistic environment in which Chabad sought to perpetuate its teachings, and the use of Yiddish began to be seen as a link to the past, but also as a gateway for the translation of Hasidic teachings into other languages, an initiative in which women played important roles. In this period, Yiddish also began to be framed as a linguistic bridge between alienation and intimacy, reflecting the classical Chabad concern with the sacralization of the self and the world. In the post-Holocaust era, the movement's seventh Rebbe enfolded earlier Chabad conceptions of Yiddish within a fuller theorization, drawing on the classical Hasidic doctrine of divine immanence to recast Yiddish as the language of redemption, a language whose true significance must ultimately transcend the particularity of any Jewish language, and resonate in every language.
Book Reviews by Eli Rubin
Jewish Review of Books, 2024
Review of Zimzum: God and the Origin of the World, by Christoph Schulte, translated by Corey Twit... more Review of Zimzum: God and the Origin of the World, by Christoph Schulte, translated by Corey Twitchell (University of Pennsylvania Press)
In Geveb, 2024
Against the fraught intersections of emancipation, acculturation, assimilation, and colonization,... more Against the fraught intersections of emancipation, acculturation, assimilation, and colonization, institutionalized Torah education emerged as a form of Hasidic cultural resistance powerful enough to survive the Holocaust.
Chabad.org, 2024
Artscroll’s edition of Kedushas Levi invites a reassessment of its author’s intellectual legacy
The Lehrhaus, 2019
Review essay on Alan Rosen. The Holocaust’s Jewish Calendars: Keeping Time Sacred, Making Time Ho... more Review essay on Alan Rosen. The Holocaust’s Jewish Calendars: Keeping Time Sacred, Making Time Holy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2019. pp. 251. Hardback $80 / Paperback $35 / Ebook $34.99.
Argues that Rosen provides an important corrective to the tendency of academic Jewish scholarship to engage in explicit and implicit processes of secularization, and of materialistic, or non-Jewish, reductionism. Through a new focus on what might be called "calendrical resistance," and through a fresh integration of historiography and hermeneutics, he forges a path that leads beyond Holocaust time by delving into its devestating details
Articles by Eli Rubin
Jewish Currents, 2022
A century separates us from the first decrees targeting religion in the aftermath of the Bolshevi... more A century separates us from the first decrees targeting religion in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, and decades have passed since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Yet the false dichotomy between commitment to progress and commitment to faith remains implicit in much ideological discourse and debate. “Kaddish Denied,” a semi-autobiographical story by Avrohom Eliyohu Plotkin (), provides an intimate dramatization of the Chabad experience of repressive persecution in the early decades of the Soviet era. Yet, it centers a character whose very identity is a rejection of the false bifurcation between working people and religious Jews. Plotkin's tale shows us how countercultural ideology and camaraderie becomes the stuff of memory, of identity, of intergenerational continuity and community. It also protests the assumed “shidduch” between socialism and secularism.
Chabad.org, 2021
The achievements of Rabbi Adin Even-Israel (“Steinsaltz,” 1937-2020) are well known. A towering s... more The achievements of Rabbi Adin Even-Israel (“Steinsaltz,” 1937-2020) are well known. A towering scholar, author, philosopher and social critic, Steinsaltz was honored with many prestigious awards and academic appointments in recognition of his life’s work, including his revolutionary modern commentary on the entire Babylonian Talmud. But how did young Adin, a rebellious teenager adrift in Jerusalem, morph into an internationally acclaimed rabbi, scholar and educator?
Chabad.org, 2020
The longtime Yeshiva University leader, who died recently at the age of 92, placed Chassidic thou... more The longtime Yeshiva University leader, who died recently at the age of 92, placed Chassidic thought at the center of his "centrist" project
Chabad.org, 2020
A chassidic meditation on the ambiguity of Achashveirosh in the Megillah and of G-d in the world
... more A chassidic meditation on the ambiguity of Achashveirosh in the Megillah and of G-d in the world
Part 1: Kingship and Theology in the Purim Story
Part 2: The Cosmic Masquerade of Divine Kingship
Part 3: Turning Theology Inside-Out
Part 4: The Mystical Significance of Achashveirosh’s Cloak
Part 5: Real-Nothingness, Real-Transcendence
Part 6: Real-Action, Real-Delight
Too often, small differences play an outsized role in the formation of individual and group ident... more Too often, small differences play an outsized role in the formation of individual and group identity. Honest differences might emerge from the diversity of society. But divisiveness has its roots in the ego’s quest for authority. As a stand-in for the hard work of finding ourselves and making something of ourselves, we often take the lazier route of identifying who we are by differentiating ourselves from others. We are left with toxic bubbles of judgmental self-righteousness. This is one of the crucial insights developed by Rabbi Shalom DovBer Schneersohn of Lubavitch (1860-1920) in a short manifesto on social disharmony and its antidote. This manifesto is well known in Chabad by its opening word, Hiḥoltsu, but it has only been briefly noted in academic literature. The present study represents the first comprehensive discussion of a text that seems especially relevant in the present political and cultural climate.
On the dialectic of revelation and concealment in Chabad's conception of tzimtzum, with particula... more On the dialectic of revelation and concealment in Chabad's conception of tzimtzum, with particular focus on the treatment of this topic by Rabbi Joseph B. Solovietchik in Halakhic Man, and on the Tzemach Tzedek's discussion of the distinction between the kav and the reshimu. A central point is that concealment and revelation are not simply understood as epistomological categories but as the ontic foundation of created reality.
The discussion of the Tzemach Tzedek also provides a good example of how he more generally approached the teachings of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, surveying the latter's different treatments of the same or related topics, and comparing, contrasting and combining them through innovative explanation, differentiation and harmonization.
A new anthology mines the oral teachings of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi for new insight into th... more A new anthology mines the oral teachings of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi for new insight into the historical development of his leadership and the crystallization of his ideology, and also charts the impact of Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin and Rabbi Avraham of Kalisk on the emergence of Chabad as a distinct Chassidic movement. “HaRav: On the Tanya, Chabad thought, the path, leadership and disciples of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi” ed. Rabbi Nochum Grunwald, Hebrew, 798 pp. (Mechon HaRav, 2015).
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Books by Eli Rubin
Chabad's distinctive character and self-image, Rubin shows, emerged from its spirited defense of Hasidism's interpretation of ṣimṣum as an act of love leading to rapturous reunion. This interpretation ignited a literal conflagration, complete with book burnings, denunciations, investigations, and arrests. Chabad's subsequent preoccupation with ṣimṣum was equally significant for questions of legitimacy, authority, and succession, as for existential questions of being and meaning.
Unfolding the story of Chabad from the early modern period to the twentieth century, this book provides fresh portraits of the successive leaders of the movement. Innovatively integrating history, philosophy, and literature, Rubin shows how Kabbalistic ideas are crucially entangled in the experience of modernity and in the response to its ruptures.
Social Vision delves into the deep structures of social reality and the ways it is shaped and reshaped by powerful ideologies. Juxtaposed with sociologist Max Weber’s diagnosis of “inner worldly asceticism” as “the spirit of capitalism,” Schneerson’s socio-mystical worldview is compellingly framed as a transformative paradigm for the universal repair of society. The library of Schneerson’s talks and writings is voluminous, but critics have described this distillation as artful, engaging, ambitious, bracing, relevant and imperative. Social Vision boldly upends conventional polarizations between tradition and progress, religion and science, mysticism and society, providing a wealth of intellectual and practical resources for all who seek a better future for humanity.
Peer Reviewed Papers by Eli Rubin
Book Reviews by Eli Rubin
Argues that Rosen provides an important corrective to the tendency of academic Jewish scholarship to engage in explicit and implicit processes of secularization, and of materialistic, or non-Jewish, reductionism. Through a new focus on what might be called "calendrical resistance," and through a fresh integration of historiography and hermeneutics, he forges a path that leads beyond Holocaust time by delving into its devestating details
Articles by Eli Rubin
Part 1: Kingship and Theology in the Purim Story
Part 2: The Cosmic Masquerade of Divine Kingship
Part 3: Turning Theology Inside-Out
Part 4: The Mystical Significance of Achashveirosh’s Cloak
Part 5: Real-Nothingness, Real-Transcendence
Part 6: Real-Action, Real-Delight
The discussion of the Tzemach Tzedek also provides a good example of how he more generally approached the teachings of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, surveying the latter's different treatments of the same or related topics, and comparing, contrasting and combining them through innovative explanation, differentiation and harmonization.
Chabad's distinctive character and self-image, Rubin shows, emerged from its spirited defense of Hasidism's interpretation of ṣimṣum as an act of love leading to rapturous reunion. This interpretation ignited a literal conflagration, complete with book burnings, denunciations, investigations, and arrests. Chabad's subsequent preoccupation with ṣimṣum was equally significant for questions of legitimacy, authority, and succession, as for existential questions of being and meaning.
Unfolding the story of Chabad from the early modern period to the twentieth century, this book provides fresh portraits of the successive leaders of the movement. Innovatively integrating history, philosophy, and literature, Rubin shows how Kabbalistic ideas are crucially entangled in the experience of modernity and in the response to its ruptures.
Social Vision delves into the deep structures of social reality and the ways it is shaped and reshaped by powerful ideologies. Juxtaposed with sociologist Max Weber’s diagnosis of “inner worldly asceticism” as “the spirit of capitalism,” Schneerson’s socio-mystical worldview is compellingly framed as a transformative paradigm for the universal repair of society. The library of Schneerson’s talks and writings is voluminous, but critics have described this distillation as artful, engaging, ambitious, bracing, relevant and imperative. Social Vision boldly upends conventional polarizations between tradition and progress, religion and science, mysticism and society, providing a wealth of intellectual and practical resources for all who seek a better future for humanity.
Argues that Rosen provides an important corrective to the tendency of academic Jewish scholarship to engage in explicit and implicit processes of secularization, and of materialistic, or non-Jewish, reductionism. Through a new focus on what might be called "calendrical resistance," and through a fresh integration of historiography and hermeneutics, he forges a path that leads beyond Holocaust time by delving into its devestating details
Part 1: Kingship and Theology in the Purim Story
Part 2: The Cosmic Masquerade of Divine Kingship
Part 3: Turning Theology Inside-Out
Part 4: The Mystical Significance of Achashveirosh’s Cloak
Part 5: Real-Nothingness, Real-Transcendence
Part 6: Real-Action, Real-Delight
The discussion of the Tzemach Tzedek also provides a good example of how he more generally approached the teachings of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, surveying the latter's different treatments of the same or related topics, and comparing, contrasting and combining them through innovative explanation, differentiation and harmonization.
two poles of unity and multiplicity. According to Isaiah Berlin, this existential
dilemma lies at the heart of Tolstoy’s great epic, “War and Peace.” All people
that are not superficial believe in some kind of cohesive vision. But when the
threads of life start to unravel, even the wisest of men may be rendered mute.
In “The Gate of Unity and Faith,” Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi expands
the quintessence of faith into the circle of reason, and fits the square of
dissonance into the circle of life.
Part 1 - The Hypernomian Character of Minhag in Hasidism / Part 2 - Minhag and the Reshaping of Jewish Practice in the Post-War Era / Part 3 - Minhag and the Expansion of Women’s Participation in Nomian Practice / Part 4 - Nomos and Subjectivity in Ramash’s Harmonization of Halakhah and Minhag
Part 1 - Traversing the Habad / Hagat Dialectic
Part 2 - Mind and Heart Within and Beyond the Tanya‘s Leaves
Part 3 - Foregrounding Affect in Rashab’s Samakh vav
Part 4 - Re’uta deliba and the Fusion of Sonship with Servitude
Philip Wexler, with Eli Rubin and Michael Wexler, Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe's Transformative Paradigm for the World (New York: Herder and Herder, 2019)