CLOSE-UP
Inner World
Continued from preceding page
munication — came down against all
Chasidim from the Vilna Gaon himself, the
greatest Jewish luminary of his age. All in-
termarriage with the heretics was forbid-
den and their books were burned. But that
was hardly the end of the matter. The war
between Chasidim and Misnagdim (loose-
ly translated as those who are opposed)
would not abate for at least another
century.
During the decades leading to the First
World War, Chasidim endured the violent
batterings of pogroms from gentiles and
the convulsive stirrings of the Enlighten-
ment (Haskalah) from radical Jews.
Meanwhile, the courts gathering around
the rebbes drew both spiritual and tem-
poral power, as Chasidism took a dominant
role in Eastern European Orthodox Jewish
life. (The Chasidic Ger movement, for ex-
ample, controlled the Polish branch of
Agudas Israel, the major party of pre-
World War II Orthodoxy.) -
Needless to say, the history of European
Baruch Rabinowitz: from the Baal Shem Toy to a
New York office.
Men Of
Miracles
B
aruch Rabinowitz, seventh-
generation descendant of
the legendary Baal Shem
Tov, the founder of Chasi-
dism, sits in his small, corn-
,
puter-lined office at Scandinavian
Marine Claims, high over New York har-
bor at the lip of the Battery, near the
foot of Wall Street. In measured tones,
he speaks of an extraordinary lineage
begun in long-ago, faraway European
shtetls that continues vividly and un-
broken to the present day.
"The first Skolya rebbe had a wide-
spread reputation for his talents and
migrated to the town of Skolya, in
Poland, in the 19th century. - Rabino‘A, it:,/,
refers to the small sect of Chasidism of
which he is a significant member. "How-
ever, his generation was not considered
worthy of the powers of the baal
maafais, or miracle worker. Never-
theless, it was not uncommon for a
gravely ill person to be carried to his or
her deathbed, for the rebbe to recite a
braha (blessing) and for that person to
be healthy the next morning."
Rabinowitz, a 39-year-old computer
specialist, could have been the reigning
Skolya rebbe himself, if the chain of
linear descent had been mechanistical-
ly followed. But his father, the late
rebbe's eldest son, declined the succes-
sion. As a result, the present rebbe is
Rabinowitz's 23-year-old cousin.
"My father didn't feel up to the posi-
tion," Rabinowitz explains simply. "Be-
ing a rebbe requires a certain capabili-
ty. If you don't have the capability, you
shouldn't be doing it."
Rabinowitz's caveat is more than an
expression of becoming modesty. As he
explains it, the role of a miracle-working
baal maafais and rebbe is one weighted
with awesome responsibility. TO embrace
it is to court the ineffable powers of the
sidrah akhrah — the other side — the
vast and potent dimension beyond our
empirical senses, leading, in extreme but
not uncommon cases, to early death or
another, equally foreboding family
tragedy. 'lb Rabinowitz's mind, the
preceding rebbe, his late grandfather,
made the most formidable use of those
powers.
"In Vienna," recounts Rabinowitz in
one of innumerable such stories, "a
woman's daughter lay gravely ill. Doc-
tors tact predicted iler death. the
Chasidism ended — with savage finali-
ty — with the Holocaust. Some say that at
least 40 percent of the millions of victims
of Hitler's Final Solution were Chasidim.
Survivors regrouped around their rebbes
in postwar havens such as Israel (where
they gravitated toward centers of ultra-
Orthodoxy like Jerusalem's Mea Shearim
quarter and Bnei Brak) and the United
States (where they settled in Brooklyn,
New York).
Flourishing In America
Making their transition from the rural
shtetls of Europe's old Diaspora to the
newest version within the urban ghettos of
America, the Chasidim have established
new roots and, in many cases, flourished.
Today it is estimated that there are up to
500,000 Chasidim in the world. Thanks to
their tradition of stable, large families, the
population is reportedly doubling every ten
to 15 years.
Of the total worldwide population,
Brooklyn claims 80,000 Chasidim split in-
woman came to the rebbe and cried and
begged for his intercession. He insisted
there was nothing he could do, even
though he cried as well. The hour
predicted by the doctors came and
passed. The woman went home and
found that her daughter had unex-
pectedly rallied. The rebbe said, `G-d felt
sorry for my crying so much. He surely
didn't reward me for my merit.' "
Other tales tell of dreams about wed-
dings that accurately foretell long life,
muggers' bullets amazingly lodged in
the folds of a scarf, children's tumors
abruptly frozen into remission.
Normally, the Skolya rebbe was reluc-
tant to open such accounts in particular,
and his life and work in general, to the
world's scrutiny. Baruch Rabinowitz, his
grandson, reports that photographers
who snapped the rebbe's picture found
their film unaccountably overexposed,
and even Baruch, attempting to tape
record the rebbe at prayer, later played
back a disappointingly silent tape.
It's unarguably eerie to hear, in this
spare, quiet setting of high-tech high
finance, these anecdotes of a timeless,
unseen power at work (the present rebbe,
though quite young, is said to be simi-
larly spiritually gifted). Like his
miraculous grandfather, Baruch Rabino-
witz is well steeped in scholarly pursuits
and the necessary, resonant semantic
distinctions to be made in such matters.
"'lb call these phenomena 'paranor-
mal' is okay," he said. "'lb say it's 'magic'
is forbidden. After all. the Ibrah says,
quite straightforwardly, that the power
of the universe properly belongs to the
righteolls."
—L.W.
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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1988