The kingdom will turn to heresy

And no protest

Eliezer Berland was born in Haifa in 1937. There are conflicting reports on how religious his family was, though they certainly weren’t entirely secular, and he was educated at religious zionist institutions. Sometime in his late teens or early adulthood, he became more religious, and learned in Lithuanian yeshivot and kolelim, where he seems to have flourished and impressed those around him with his intellect and aptitude. In those days, the barriers between Charedi Judaism and Religious Zionism were quite fluid (Jerusalem being a major exception), and Berland did not have to be make a definite decision about which precisely he affiliated to. He married the daughter of Rabbi Shalom Avraham Shaki, a politician from The Mizrahi (Religious Zionist) Workers Party.

At some point, Berland started learning Breslov teachings. Breslov is a Ukrainian Chassidic movement that was opposed by most Chassidim for roughly the same reasons that Chassidim in general were opposed by adherents of traditional Rabbinic Judaism. Its founder, R. Nahman, emphasized both the renunciation of reason and logic, and the importance for ordinary Jews of cleaving to a tzaddik (righteous man) through whom they could access levels of spiritual connection to God that they could not achieve on their own. R. Nahman invented the concept that ‘it is a great mitzvah to be happy always’, an injunction that he laboured with great effort and mixed success to uphold, and pioneered freestyle meditation in nature, known as hitbodedut, as well as various practices modelled on Sabbatean and Christian precedents, which he apparently believed necessary to redeem the holiness contained within them. The intensity of fervour which he created around himself, and the fact that both his sons died in their infancy, made it impossible to appoint a successor, and Breslov became the first active Chassidic movement to continue without a leader, rather centering its piety around a dead man. Regular pilgrimage to his grave on Rosh haShanah became a defining feature of the movement.

Breslov, like Chassidim in general, suffered terribly during both Soviet rule and the Holocaust, and emerged after 1945 a small movement. In subsequent decades, Breslov was revived as the fastest-growing and most dynamic religious movement in Israel by a number of spiritual entrepreneurs. In many cases, these were figures who had no familial connection to Breslov, but converted, so to speak, after reading Breslov literature, which was taboo or banned in most yeshivot, but was passed around among spiritually thirsty and emotionally turbulent youth. R. Schick, who founded the quasi-Charedi Breslov community of Yavniel, was from a Satmar-adjacent community; R. Odesser, founder of the ‘Na Nach’ branch, was a Karliner Chossid. Both became Breslov on their own steam after reading pamphlets. Berland, for his part, actually could claim meaningful continuity with the historical Breslov movement, being a student of R. Levi Yitzhok Bender, who had survived the Holocaust by escaping to Siberia, and arrived in Israel in 1949. Nevertheless, he did more than anyone else to create the new Israeli version of Breslov.

In 1978, Berland established the Shuvu Banim yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem, an institution explicitly oriented around baalei teshuva, people from secular or less observant backgrounds who had become pious through exposure to Breslov, and specifically Berland’s, teaching. While Breslov is a diverse movement and there are fierce arguments about who is the most authentically ‘real’ Breslov, there is no doubt that Berland was the preeminent figure in Breslov from this point until about 2010.

Then a bunch of crazy stuff happened. A member of his community claimed to have seen Berland in a room with a naked woman, also a member of the community. As is the way of things, one allegation quickly became dozens, with many of them being not just violations of biblical law against adultery,) but also the state’s laws against rape. Berland fled to Morocco, then Zimbabwe, then South Africa, then the Netherland, then back to South Africa before finally returning to Israel, where he was found guilty of two counts of indecent acts, and one count of assault, certainly a tiny proportion of his real crimes, this probably being a result of Charedi politicians (in particular Meir Porush) pulling strings. Because Israel is a joke country, he was released to house arrest after four months for health reasons, with house arrest of course meaning he could do whatever he wanted because, again, joke country. One of the things he did was set up a thriving business selling miracle remedies to exceptionally stupid and ignorant people, which were subsequently revealed to be aspirin, mentos and the like. After being convicted of fraud for this, he spent a year in prison before another release to house arrest (joke country).

As for other disturbing stuff about Berland that doesn’t meet the standards for criminal prosecution, well how much time do you have? He is on video rambling about eating human flesh, he repeatedly declared himself to be Moshiach (of course) as well as God himself (of course), he instructed followers to pray to his picture, and he would even launch into weird nonsensical invectives against Moshe Rabbeinu. Also, just for fun, it subsequently emerged that, in 1986, Berland likely ordered the murder of Nissim Shitrit, a case that cannot be legally prosecuted because of the (joke country) statute of limitations. Regardless, at the state-sponsored festival of Lag B’Omer this year in tHE jEWISH sTATE, he was honored with lighting a bonfire.

Doctrine and practice

Sometimes people do bad things and abuse their position of authority to do so. If a policeman takes bribes, it doesn’t mean it’s bad to have police etc. However, in some cases, it is clear that the abuse discredits not just the individual, but the ideology and organization behind that individual. For example, if there is a religion that teaches that person X is a great tzaddik, and that it is an obligation to obey in every respect person X, and if person X appears to be doing bad things that is an illusion, and also maybe person X has special permission to do bad things, and person X is a rapist, that is legitimate grounds for thinking this religion is actually dogshit. And that’s what we have here. To elaborate a bit further:

1. The basic premise of Breslov philosophy is the renunciation of one’s powers of critical evaluation in pursuit of pure faith. As their adepts commonly put it: ‘faith begins where logic ends’. In its original form, this was a deliberately paradoxical doctrine, because R. Nahman was a quintessentially neurotic Ashkenazi intellectual prone to a dramatic excess of thinking. He is generally considered in academic scholarship to have been a manic depressive and his religious philosophy was a kind of self-help, making use of many concepts that would in due course be re-discovered in psychology. How effective this was for himself and his disciples is for each man to judge, but the propagation of these doctrines among the MENA Jews of Israel who constitute the overwhelming majority of converts to Breslov entails a difference of quantity that amounts to one of quality. For the typical Breslov adherent, renouncing cognition is not a lifetime challenge only to be achieved fitfully in moments of religious ecstasy, but a relief from a tedious and unnatural imposition they are glad to be rid of. The propagation of Breslovism in Israel is roughly analogous to the sale of alcohol to the Indians, something that can be justified by abstract economic or philosophic dicta, but which is clearly grossly irresponsible behavior in the light of biological facts. The result is a religious community upon whom any absurdity or obscenity can be imposed without opposition.

2. The next premise of Breslov philosophy is the obligation of Jews to connect to God through connecting to a tzaddik who contains within himself a greater degree (or the same degree but less concealed) of God’s own presence on earth. This doctrine is common to all Chassidic groups - which is an important reason that chassidut was declared outside the bounds of Judaism by the Rabbis of Europe (a decision which is has never been formally revoked as far as anyone can demonstrate). However, Breslov differs from other chassidic movements in three respects. The first is simply the degree of emphasis placed on this connection. The second is that, in all other branches of chassidut, Rebbe status is hereditary, which means the tzaddik is trained from youth to fulfill a certain role, and act accordingly.¹ In Breslov, at any rate its Israeli manifestation, anyone can become a tzaddik, and there may even be a preference for those who have worked to get there from lowly spiritual origins. The third is that, whereas in mainstream chassidut, everyone is a member of one chassidus with one Rebbe, by default the one he was born into, Breslov’s organizational anarchy allows its adherents to move from holyman to holyman depending on who gives them more subjective feelings of fulfilment. This creates an environment of competitive holymen entrepreneurs who are competing for the adulation of people who have been propagandized in advance to be unable to make reasonable judgements about which holymen are actually more holy.

3. Breslov doctrine explicitly teaches that the tzaddik cannot sin, and that any actions the tzaddik performs which would appear to be sins are not actually so. This inevitably shades into the doctrine that acts which are sins for others are not sins for the tzaddik. The theological basis for this is that the purpose of mitzvot and good deeds is to liberate sparks of holiness trapped in demonic ‘husks’,² but there are additional ways to liberate these sparks not contained within the halachic system. By extension, there may even be ways to liberate these sparks that contravene the halachic system.³ Of course, you and I can’t know what these are, but the tzaddik does, and, as above, trust me bro.

4. Because the function of the tzaddik is to liberate sparks of holiness trapped deep among the husks and therefore inaccessible to ordinary Jews, he must have a special connection with these dark forces that makes it possible to outwit and do spiritual warfare with them. This will manifest itself in certain characteristics normally associated with the dark side⁴ such as cruelty, rage or an elevated libido (🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩). The tzaddik will engage in constant spiritual battle with these dark forces, and this will outwardly manifest itself in behaviours that, to the unfaithful, look like mental illness. Thus, erratic behaviour, emotional dysregulation, and just generally being a massive weirdo are not, as common sense would have it, evidence of unfitness for spiritual leadership, but precisely a sign of being uniquely qualified.

It would take an outright idiot not to see in advance that this doctrinal apparatus is liable to be abused. It would be more accurate to say that it was designed to be abused.⁵ Luckily for Berland, outright idiots are never in short supply in Israel, and he spent many happy decades engaging in his abominations before things got rocky. Even today, he still retains something in the region of ten thousand still-devoted followers, and many more indirect followers, which brings us to our main topic (for real, that was just a preamble).

Blairism but with added narcissism and heresy.

In what was once Merry England, New Labour came to power in 1997 on the crest of a very bad song:

So it turns out that was not completely accurate. Anyway, in Israel, there is no crappy gentile creation we cannot ‘elevate from the mundane to the spiritual’ by making it worse, so:

The lyrics to this song are as follows:

God is a good father, and is always boasting about me, and only sees my good points,
He sees that I want to be good, but sometimes I can’t, and I lack some prayers,
And God also saw the desire that was in me and I tried, and I didn’t give up,
He sees my shame, and how bitter I felt, that I have to keep starting from the beginning.

God, may He blessed always loves me,
And there will only be good for me,
God, may He blessed always loves me,
And there will only be good for me,
and it will be better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better, and better,
And there will only be good for me.

This song has become a cultural sensation here. If you say ‘there’s no way that any culture could be that lame’, then, sorry, you’re wrong. Read about it here, and here, and here, and here, and, look, you have Google, leave me alone.

I’m not even going to bother explaining what is wrong with these lyrics. There is a well-known practice in contemporary Judaism where you open the Bible to a random page and the verse you find will have some relevance to your life. I have my doubts, but you can do a similar thing with why this song is messed up and it will probably work:

שָׂנֵאתִי מָאַסְתִּי חַגֵּיכֶם וְלֹא אָרִיחַ בְּעַצְּרֹתֵיכֶם׃
כִּי אִם־תַּעֲלוּ־לִי עֹלוֹת וּמִנְחֹתֵיכֶם לֹא אֶרְצֶה וְשֶׁלֶם מְרִיאֵיכֶם לֹא אַבִּיט׃
הָסֵר מֵעָלַי הֲמוֹן שִׁרֶיךָ וְזִמְרַת נְבָלֶיךָ לֹא אֶשְׁמָע׃

You get the gist.

What I want to talk about is who wrote the lyrics, namely Eliezer Berland’s closest student, and chief disseminator of his ideas: Shalom Arush. Arush comes from a family of Moroccan immigrants, and, as was common at the time, became not very or not observant. His return to observance came as a student of Berland, and from him he received all of his learning and ideas. Given their extremely close relationship, Arush was certainly aware of Berland’s erratic behaviour, and general nutcasery, seeing this as part of the mysteries of the truly righteous man. It’s very implausible that he was wholly unaware of his ‘strange deeds’, as such actions are known in Sabbatean and neo-Sabbatean movements. When allegations about Berland became public, Arush staunchly defended him, declaring that his doubters were ‘retarded’ and ‘woeful’, as well as helping to organize protests for his release and praying for him at various graves. Arush has never recanted this, nor said anything on public record admitting his mistake, and - whatever his apologists might say - there is no reason at all to think that he regrets any of it, though he has helpfully suggested that women should not make private visits to holymen and their giant libidos.

Simpler days

Arush is either a שוטה גמור⁶ or aרשע גמור⁷, or some mixture of שוטה and רשע. Either way it’s obvious that he is completely unfit to teach, lead, or have any influence over any synagogue, school or anything. When I say it’s obvious, I don’t mean ‘it’s not really obvious, but I’m using a cheap rhetorical trick to bamboozle the plebs’, I mean it’s so obvious that, if it requires any kind of elaboration to you, your entire worldview is completely screwed up, your brain doesn’t work at a basic level, and you should just shut up, sew your lips together and cut off your fingers so you can’t type because you’re literally not allowed to have an opinion. At the most charitable, you can say that if Arush was willing to withdraw from public life and spend a few years learning Torah from Aleph Beit again without the sick, twisted ideas of his mentor, then maybe he could return to the rabbinical profession after that. In reality though, he promotes not only the exact same ideas he promoted during his decades as Berland’s right-hand man, but still distributes even the same pamphlets he wrote during this period, from one of which comes the lyrics to that infernal song. Anyway:

I support Right Wing Zionism because muh Rambam.

The Third Temple