(CHASSIDISM)
Aryeh Yehudah Leib ben Mordechai of Brody. Zemir ...

Aryeh Yehudah Leib ben Mordechai of Brody. Zemir Aritzim VeCharvoth Tzurim.

First edition. ff. 16 (leaves 13, 15-16 are supplied in facsimile). Lightly soiled, a few minor marginal tears expertly repaired affecting only a few letters. Modern blind-tooled diced red morocco, housed in clamshell-case. 8vo. [Vinograd Oleksinetz, 12; Mehlman 1745; Ohel Roch’l, Vol. III p. 34].

Tzvi Hirsch Margaliouth, Oleksinetz (Oleksiniec, Ukraine): 1772.


The exceedingly rare first edition of the first anti-Chassidic polemical tract. Only two complete copies known.Important for the earliest record of Chassidic life-style.
     As the Chassidic movement began to spread in the second half of the 18th century, opposition to the new religious movement also grew at an ever-increasing pace. The anti-Chassidic group, known as Mithnagedim (lit. opponents) were inspired by the Vilna Gaon, whose influence induced large swaths of the Jewish communal leadership to follow him in his hostility to Chassidism. To the Vilna Gaon, the Chassidic stress on prayer overturned the Jewish scale of values in which study of the Torah was regarded as the main path to God. As far as he was concerned, Chassidim’s overwrought ecstasy was delusional, the visions “seen” and miracles “performed” by its leaders were dangerous lies, and the emphasis on the doctrine of the “Tzadik” amounted to idolatry. Furthermore, various Chassidic innovations (e.g. the method of preparation of knives for shechitah, and the abrupt shift from Ashkenazi to Sephardi prayer rite), were seen as direct challenges to Orthodoxy and a revolutionary rejection of traditional authority.
     The battle between traditional Judaism and Chassidism began in earnest in 1772 with the publication of the present virulently anti-Chassidic tract, Zemir Aritzim VeCharvoth Tzurim. This collection of anti-Chassidic proclamations was edited by Aryeh Yehuda Leib ben Mordechai, the Sofer of Brody and is divided into seven sections, the main body of which seeks to enumerate the “evil deeds” of the nascent “cult.” This is followed by the text of the famous cherem (ban) pronounced against the Chassidim following Passover, 1772. .
     By comparing the Chassidim to the followers of Shabthai Tzvi, the publication aroused a great deal of animosity and resulted in widespread persecution against Chassidim across a wide region. The Chassidim countered with a cherem of their own, and more devastatingly, in large part at the instigation of founder of the Lubavitch dynasty, R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the Chassidim succeeded in acquiring nearly all known copies of this polemical tract - which was summarily burned. .
     Efforts at brokering a truce between the two sides proved fruitless. Although Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and Shneur Zalman of Liadi attempted to achieve a rapprochement with the Vilna Gaon, it was to no avail and the struggle only sharpened and deepened.
     
Only two complete copies of this work remain extant. One (formerly the Mehlman copy) is at the National Library of Israel and the second is held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
     See Mordecai Wilensky, “Zemir Aritzim VeCharvoth Tzurim, 5532” in: Hasidim and Mitnaggedim: A Study of the Controversy Between Them in the Years 1772-1815 (Hebrew), Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1990. Vol. 1, pp. 27-74.