Letters of Light. Kalonymus Kalman Epstein
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its emphatic focus upon the purity or impurity of a person’s inner intent. The Torah, in various places, makes the point that following the commands of God will bring material reward. While the Hasidic masters did not negate that aspect in principle, they went out of their way to emphasize that doing any mitzvah for the purpose or consideration of reward impugns the integrity of one’s very deed. It is this distinction that the homilist located in the wording of a single verse within the episode relating to Abraham and Lot.
As the Stars That Shine by Their Own Light50
God brought Abram outdoors and said to him, “Count the stars,” and he told him “So shall your offspring be” (Gen 15:5), meaning that they will be similar to the stars which are intelligent beings, as it is written “And the knowledgeable will be radiant (like the bright expense of the sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever,” Dan 12:3). For the stars do not receive brightness one from another; rather, each one shines by itself, by its own light, and therefore the light of one star is not similar to that of another. And God promised him, “So shall your offspring be,” in that each one of them will serve God according to that person’s own intelligence (and inner lights), and their mitzvot will not be in the manner of something that one person learns from another. Rather, all will be true (springing from an inner truth of the person). And understand.
Comment: Just as, echoing the Zohar, Kalonymus Kalman provided a meaning to the words Lekh-l’kha, which directed the listener’s understanding in quite an unexpected direction, so he similarly provided an unexpected suggestion for the reference to the stars in connection with God’s words to Abraham. This is the case even though the Torah-text makes it quite clear that the implication is numerical in nature: Abraham’s descendents will be too numerous to be counted.
Kalonymus Kalman heard in that reference to the stars something very different—not their vast number, but rather the idea that “each star shines by its own light.” To the Kraków preacher, the stars are to serve as a model for the individual. One should not seek to be a carbon copy of anyone else. Rather each person has to reach deep within himself to find the gateway to understanding. That image of “shining by one’s own light” is reflected in a number of the preacher’s other homilies and serves as one of the principal thrusts and concerns of the homilist. In his turning to the stars as a model of true community, Kalonymus Kalman was perhaps inspired by an early rabbinic source which taught that “just as among the stars there is no hatred or envy or rivalry, so it is the case among the righteous, and just as among the stars the light of one is not similar to that of another, so it will be among the righteous.”51
43. Maʾor va-shemesh, I, 8b-9a.
44. Noʿam ʾElimelekh (Lekh-l’kha).
45. Zohar, I, 78b.
46. See Sefer ha-yashar, ed. Dan, 68; also Ginzberg, Legends, 5:210, n. 16.
47. Likkutei shoshanah (affixed to Noʿam ʾElimelekh), beginning.
48. Maʾor va-shemesh, I, 9a.
49. Maimonides, Mishneh torah, Hilkhot teshuvah, ch. 10.
50. Maʾor va-shemesh, I, 11a.
51. Sipre: ʿEkev, 83a, #47, on Deut 11:21.
Vayera
The Pearl of Healing52
“The Lord appeared (to him) . . . .” (Gen 18:1)
On the basis of a talmudic source,53 Rashi explained that the Lord did so “to visit the sick.” But one notes that Rashi’s words et ha-ḥoleh (“the sick one” as the object of the verb) are superfluous, as the commentator could more easily have said “to visit him.” The Gemara relates that a pearl was suspended from Abraham’s neck, and any ill person who saw it was immediately healed.54
But that very idea would seem to convey that there are different levels of holy men (tzaddikim). There are those who draw down healing for the ill through their own actions; they actually bless the ill with their hands and by that means the person is healed. And there are those who bring healing simply through the holy man’s seeing the ill person. And still higher is the level of the tzaddik that an ill person who sees him is immediately cured, insofar as something of the holy essence of God is present with the tzaddik. When the ill person sees the holy man, simply seeing him awakens in him a thought of t’shuvah (repentance) and he subjects his heart to his Father in heaven, and this brings on his healing. As is found in the Talmud,55 whenever Israel subjected their hearts to God, immediately they were cured. [In the toraitic accounts of the battle with Amalek, the Israelites triumphed only when Moses’ hands were held high (Num 17:11–12), and a plague of serpents was overcome by constructing a copper serpent (Num. 21:8); the Mishna, however, clarified that in both of those episodes, the only determinative factor was the Israelite’s subjecting their hearts to God.]
And this is alluded in the Gemara in reference to the pearl hanging from the neck of our father, Abraham, in that any ill person who would see it was immediately healed, meaning that the sick person was cured through the presence of the Divine situated with the patriarch. And that is the good pearl which alludes to God’s presence.
. . . And the verse concludes, “. . . he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot” (Gen 18:1), meaning that though Abraham was in a state of inner warmth and exalted enthusiasm, he nevertheless felt very humble in the presence of the blessed Holy One. It always seemed to Abraham that he was situated only at the very opening of the tent and had not entered further to any extent at all.
Comment: The above passage is interesting in light of the fact that the figure of the Hasidic tzaddik or rebbe came, early on, to be associated in the folk-mind with a belief in the latter’s healing powers and with similar miraculous abilities that loomed important in the tales and lore associated with the Hasidic tzaddikim. While that theme is not totally absent in the homilies of Kalonymus Kalman, in Maʾor va-shemesh as in various other Hasidic homily-texts there is relatively little attention directed to that theme of the tzaddik as a healer. That distinction has been pointed out as an example of the ways in which Hasidism would address very different sectors of their population of followers and their particular interests in quite different ways.56
In the above homiletical excerpt, one notes how the preacher transformed the motif of the pearl of healing. The rabbinic agada itself, as quoted above, typifies a large group of tales from various locations and cultures involving a magic artifact.57
In the transformation of the talmudic passage at the hands of the Kraków master, however, the purely magical element gives way to a different kind of theme, namely the effect of t’shuvah (repentance). The cure occurs not via some kind of magic object, but rather as the effect of an awakening of thoughts