420 A History of Judaism
Even within dynasties, personal disagreements between descendants
sometimes led to splits. Rivalry could be fierce – as within the family of
the Baal Shem Tov himself. In the late 1770s, the young Baruch of Medzi-
bozh, a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, set up an impressive court in
Medzibozh, presenting himself as guardian of the burial place of the great
tsaddik. As the number of his followers grew, he won recognition from
the Russian state. His claims were publicly resisted both by Shneur Zalman
of Lyady, whose authority derived from his time as a disciple of Dov Ber,
and by Baruch’s own nephew, the remarkable Nahman of Bratslav.^61
Nahman grew up within the court of his uncle and he might reason-
ably have expected to inherit his role as rebbe of what was rapidly
becoming a powerful religious movement. But at first he seems to have
been deeply conflicted, unable to accept that life in Baruch’s court rep-
resented genuine Hasidism, while uncertain that he himself had the
qualities to become a perfect tsaddik and to lead others. A journey to
the land of Israel between 1798 and 1799 seems to have transformed
his self- confidence, so that at times he came to see himself not only as a
tsaddik but as the foremost tsaddik of his generation, who alone could
solve all the problems of the world.
In accordance with this high estimation of his own powers, Nahman
required his followers to commit themselves to him even more tightly
than the normal link between rebbe and hasid. By binding their souls to
him they could overcome everything in their struggles for perfection.
The regime on which he insisted was demanding, requiring intense self-
mortification and introspection. His Bratslav followers were instructed
to take seriously religious doubts which in other forms of Hasidism
would be suppressed as the product of an evil inclination. In keeping
with Nahman’s unwillingness to accept his uncle’s conferral of auth-
ority on his successor on the basis of inheritance rather than religious
insight, Nahman’s son did not succeed him when he died at the early age
of thirty- eight. (It may have helped that the son was only four at the
time.) Nahman’s teachings embraced a search for spiritual perfection
through hitbodedut, ‘ self- seclusion’, a distinctive meditation practice in
which the hasid is expected daily to ‘break his heart’ before God in
spontaneous private prayer in his own language in order to establish a
personal relationship with the divine and greater self- awareness. Brat-
slav hasidim today still turn to Nahman himself as their rebbe, over 200
years after his death in 1810. They visit his grave in Uman in the Ukraine
in mass pilgrimage, especially on Rosh haShanah, chanting his name
like a spell to aid their meditation: ‘Na Nah Nahma Nahman me’Uman’.