These are my own gleanings from a book by Netanel Miles-Yepez & Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, Foundations of the Fourth Turning of Hasidism: a manifesto (2014, Albion-Andalus). I hope they encourage you to buy the book. I have paraphrased in order to clarify my own understanding, but there are also direct quotations from the book. The notes in square brackets are my own thoughts and responses, rather than ideas gleaned from the book itself.
Hasidism
- 1 “Hasidism is the willingness to make ourselves transparent to God’s grace and will, to live in the authentic Presence of God—nokhach p’nei Ha’Shem—as if facing God in every moment, allowing this awareness to change our behaviour, to make sacred acts out of potentially profane and purely secular moments.”
- 3 “Judaism … has seen three … turnings of Hasidism, … each an appropriate expression of the highest and most integrated levels of spirituality available in that period.”
The first turning of Hasidism – Essenes, 1st hasidism wrote Dead Sea Scrolls
The second turning of Hasidism – Mediaeval period
The third turning of Hasidism – Pre-industrial Eastern Europe
The fourth turning of Hasidism – 20th century
- Repentance – “t’shuvah, continually ‘turning’ one’s awareness back to the divine source, remembering from whence we come and our common identity in the divine being” – “reorientation to a radical humility” – “there is always room for repentance”
- Prophecy – “the prophetic consciousness is still available” – “If Hasidism … is a genuine ‘openness to the divine will,’ then prophecy is the product of such openness (as seen in the root of the word, navi, ‘open’ or ‘hollow’).” i.e. deep intuition.
- Prayer – “The primary means of cultivating one’s ‘openness to the divine will’ is prayer” – “it is not enough to be able to connect in prayer; we must also understand the sacred technology which allows us to make the connection.”
- Practices – Hanhagot – prescriptions for spiritual practices and remedies
- Guidance – Rebbe is a rebbe only when serving the function of a rebbe.
- Community – farbrengen (time spent together) for growth
- Law – “looking at the original function of the law in its original context to see how it may be best applied today to achieve similar ends”
- Providence – “hashgachah pratit, a ‘specific personal providence,’ in which all events are seen as happening with a specific or particular purpose” – all has a Divine purpose – “nothing happens that is not divine or divinely ordained”
- Renewal – “marry the magisterium of a religious tradition, i.e. its inherited body of knowledge and wisdom, to a new reality map or paradigmatic understanding of the universe” – “re-evaluate our traditional spiritual teachings and practices, considering their ‘deep structures’, analysing their function in different historical periods to better understand how they might apply, or be adapated for use in our own time”
- Deep Ecumenism – “Providence … demands that we acknowledge a similar sacred purpose at work in these deep structures” [of other religions] – “deep ecumenism, in which one learns about oneself through participatory engagement with another religion or tradition” – “every religion is like a vital organ of the planet; and for the planet’s sake, each must remain healthy, functioning well in concert with the others for the health of the greater body”
- Egalitarianism – gender inclusion, full diversity
The Thirteen Aspirations of Faith