It was on this day, 18th Ellul, that an elderly couple, Eliezer and Sarah, celebrated the birth of their only son, whom they named Yisrael.
Yisrael, who would grow up to be famous as the Ba’al Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. The Ba’al Shem Tov, who would found the Hassidic Movement, which would revolutionise Judaism and Jewry.
Much has been written and said about Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov; but how much is history, how much is parable, how much is myth, how much is legend? - In Hassidic lore, the borders between these are uncertain. Dreams can be as certain as reality, prayers can define events, parables can be as true as history.
We know that Yisrael was born on 18th Ellul, but the year of his birth is uncertain: maybe 1698, maybe 1700.
He was born in a small village called Okop; on this, almost everyone agrees. Yet no one knows for sure exactly where Okop is: maybe near Kamenetz, maybe on the banks of the River Dniepr, maybe in Bukovina, maybe part of Galicia.
As Elie Wiesel expressed it, “evidently the Ba’al Shem succeeded in turning even geography into a mystery” (Souls on Fire, Chapter 1).
So much of his life - particularly of his early life - is shrouded in mystery, that, as Wiesel continues, “the historians…, frustrated by his elusiveness,…fight him. Some go so far as to doubt his existence. They would like us to believe that he was - quite simply - invented by his disciples, whose own existence they fortunately do not doubt. Others, to restore the balance, claim that…there were actually two Ba’al Shem Tovs, and that the Hassidic movement was founded…by the other”.
Yisrael remained a hidden Tzaddik until he was 36 years old…and then he was revealed as the Ba’al Shem Tov. And then, in the remaining years of his life - about 24 years, but even the date of his death remains a mystery - he released the earthquake that would shake up the entire Jewish world.
Like all revolutionaries, the good and the evil alike, Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov fomented tremendous controversy. His main antagonist was the Vilna Ga’on, Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (1720-1797).
The rivalry, often the bitter hostility, between the followers of these two Torah-giants would rend the Jewish world in two for generations: on one side the Hassidim, the “pious ones” or “devout ones”, on the other side the “Mitnagdim”, the “Opposers” (“Misnagdim” in the East European Ashkenazi enunciation).
The Vilna Ga’on and his followers charged the Hassidim with heresy, with blasphemy. The Hassidim believed in serving G-d in ecstasy, with song and dance. Feasting and fervour were as important as erudition and praying. For the Mitnagdim, this was a dangerous departure from traditional Judaism.
It would take well over a century for this dispute to be resolved. But today, Hassidism is firmly ensconced as a major force in Judaism.
I posit that the triumph of the Hassidim over the Mitnagdim was foreseeable even in those earliest years when the Ba’al Shem Tov and the Vilna Ga’on were still debating; indeed not only foreseeable, but even inevitable.
Two radically different interpretations of Judaism were battling. The Jews on one side defined themselves as Hassidim - that was who they were, what they were, what their Master defined himself and them as. The Jews on the other side defined themselves as Mitnagdim - opponents, meaning opponents of the Hassidim, opponents of Hassidism, opponents of the Ba’al Shem Tov.
Both sides defined themselves in terms of their relationship to Hassidism. The Ba’al Shem Tov’s opponents allowed the Ba’al Shem Tov to define the spiritual battlefield. Though they opposed the Hassidim, their own identity depended on the Hassidim.
Of course the Hassidim would inevitably prevail.
And this brings us to a crucial lesson for Israel today:
Just as more than two-and-three-quarters-centuries ago Hassidism burst onto Jewish history changing it forever, so too a century-and-a-half ago political Zionism burst onto Jewish history changing it forever.
Just as Hassidism aroused the hostility of so many Jewish traditionalists who declared it a heresy, so too did Zionism.
Our determination to return to our ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel, is as old as Judaism itself.
Jewish history began with G-d’s first ever imperative to our father Abraham: Leave your family, your father’s house, your familiar surroundings, everything you have ever known, and make Aliyah, because only in the Land of Israel can you ever become a great nation, only in Israel can you have descendants who will continue your mission (Genesis 12).
And ever since the Roman Empire snuffed out Jewish sovereignty in Israel more than 2,000 years ago, the single most persistent theme in Judaism has been the yearning and the determination to return to our Land and to restore our national sovereign independence therein.
Our liturgy, our literature, our poetry, our works of philosophy - all are saturated with the longing for the Land of Israel.
Our history is replete with Jews returning to Israel, whether singly or in groups, even when the journey to Israel was fraught with danger and life in Israel was harsh, Jews suffering under bitterly hostile foreign occupations, whether Christian or Muslim.
Nevertheless the advent of political Zionism a century-and-a-half ago was the first centralised and coordinated effort to restore Jewish national sovereign independence to Israel since the Bar Kochba Revolt in 132 C.E.
When political Zionism arose, the Jewish world was split between the Zionists and the anti-Zionists - as split as it had been a century-and-a-third earlier between the Hassidim and the Mitnagdim.
And just as the very fact that it was the Hassidim who defined the controversy made it inevitable that they would win, so too the very fact that Zionists and Zionism determine the later controversy makes it inevitable that Zionism will win.
The Jews on one side define themselves as Zionists: this is who they are, what they believe in. The Jews on the other side define themselves as anti-Zionists - opponents of Zionism.
Both sides define themselves in terms of their relationship to Zionism. The ant-Zionists have allowed the Zionists to define the spiritual and ideological battlefield. Though they oppose Zionism, their own identity depends on the Zionists.
Indeed we can go back much further into the past, to the Maimonidean Controversy which exploded after the Rambam (Maimonides) wrote his Guide for the Perplexed. The Rambam, too, had revolutionised Judaism - and was viciously excoriated for it by the traditionalists.
The Rambam posited in the Guide that Judaism could be explained and supported rationally, through philosophy and science and logic; the traditionalists were outraged, insisting that all Judaism needs is its own internal traditions.
The traditionalists’ argument was that by presenting logical and philosophical arguments proving the truth of Judaism, that truth automatically becomes open to debate, instead of being an unarguable fact derived from tradition.
The Rambam also aroused the traditionalists’ fury with his Mishneh Torah, an exhaustive compendium of Halachah (Jewish religious law). The traditionalists were outraged, insisting that he had cheapened Halachah by making it so easily available to all.
Halachah, they insisted, had to remain the preserve of Talmudic scholars, erudite experts who had mastered all the intricacies of the Talmud.
So some of the greatest rabbinic authorities of the generation declared the Rambam to be a heretic, excommunicated him, and condemned his books to be burnt.
That controversy, too, has long since been resolved, and the Rambam is today universally revered as one of the greatest rabbis in history.
Again, the very fact that it was called the Maimonidean Controversy made it inevitable that the “Maimonideanists” (if I may coin the word) were predestined to win. It was the Rambam and his ideology that defined the spiritual battlefield: even the anti- Maimonideanists allowed the Rambam and his followers to define the terms of the debate.
As with the Maimonidean Controversy, as with the Hassidim facing the Mitnagdim, so too today with Zionism facing anti-Zionism:
The side which defines the parameters of the debate has already won, the side which defines itself in terms of their opponents have already conceded defeat.
Of course Zionism will prevail.