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Israel's Land: Habitation of God:
The Zionism of Rabbi Nahman
- Abstract
The Hasidim and the Holy Land
RABBI NAHMAN OF BRATZLAV, great-grandson of the Baal-shem-tov, the founder of Hasidism, has become the symbol of everything that the generations living in the Diaspora have thought and dreamt of Israel.
In Rabbi Nahman we see the great inheritor who disposes grandly of his patrimony. It was his distinction and his mission to create, without any literary intention, by means of converse with his students, a new literary genre-the symbolical tale. In Nahman’s tales ancient esoteric traditions are reworked and brought to consummate glory. And if we wish to illustrate the attitude of the Hasidic movement toward Palestine, Rabbi Nahman is our best example: all tributary movements unite in him. At the same time we sense in him something new, something that seems to anticipate peculiarly our own struggles and problems.
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