Furio Biagini

Social Utopia and Jewish Spirituality

The ties between social utopianism and Jewish spirituality are close and deep-rooted. "Anarchist" tendencies can be found in certain central aspects of Jewish culture, some of which are seen as the Jews' particular contribution to human civilisation. Within Judaism itself, these tendencies, together with the messianic idea, have produced a certain diffidence towards all forms of power. At the same time the particular historical experience and social situation of the Jewish people over centuries, exiled throughout the world, uprooted and subject to constant persecution by foreign powers, has strengthened this political orientation, even if it has often led an underground existence in halakhic Judaism.
The utopian and revolutionary element of prophecy and particularly of Jewish messianism reached its ultimate form in the Kabbalah of Luria and the critical theology of the Shabbatin (and later in the antinomism of the Frankists). These two worlds of thought contributed to a new vision of the world and were at the roots of the birth of Hassidism, the final phase in the development of Jewish mysticism. Hassidism was a popular religious-mystical movement that developed among ordinary Jews in the early 18th century. The movement represented a rebellion, which had strong mystical and "libertarian" connotations, of the poor against the elites which held the reins of power within the Jewish community. Hassidism taught the need for critical vigilance in order that individuals could avoid beginning to play power games which would take away the autonomy of individuals, their capacity to develop their abilities to the full and to carry out their unique vocations.
Some people have focused here on the social revolutionary dimension, others on the rehabilitation of the imagination and the dream, while still others see this as a mutation and vulgarisation of the Kabbalah of Safed and Rabbi Isaac Luria. Hassidism is not however a single system or a single doctrine. It is a religious current which has many different manifestations, each of which focuses on a particular aspect.