Winner of the 2002 National Jewish Book Award for autobiography and memoir, The Rebbe's Daughter: Memoir of a Hasidic Childhood (Jewish Publication Society, 2002) is translated from the original Hebrew autobiography of Malkah Shapiro, edited and annotated by Dr. Nehemia Polen, Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew College.

Polen discovered the volume accidentally on a dusty shelf of a Jerusalem secondhand store in 1986 and soon realized the author was the sister-in-law of the hasidic master Rabbi Kalonymos Shapiro, whom he was researching at the time. Malkah Shapiro (1894–1971) grew up in Poland, the daughter of the Rebbe of Kozienice, a master from one of the most notable lineages in Hasidism. The Rebbe's Daughter is her story: the memoir of an 11-year-old girl awakening to physical maturity, religious consciousness and intense curiosity about the mysteries of hasidic spirituality and Kabbalah. It is a rare window into the world of a hasidic girl in pre–World War I Eastern Europe.

This excerpt from the book's introduction is reprinted with permission of the Jewish Publication Society (www.jewishpub.org). Author's notes and bibliographic references appear in the full volume.

The Rebbe's Daughter must be read not only as autobiography but also as an elegy for a family and a way of life that has disappeared. Shapiro is deeply attached to her family and its values, portraying them in the most appreciative and complimentary light. This motive looms large especially in view of the general perception that Hasidism was in a state of decline at the turn of the twentieth century. Opinion was widespread that tzaddikim were interested only in enhancing the wealth and influence of their own courts and that the spiritual ideals and mystical practices of the movement's early period had been largely cast aside. It is sobering to read the strikingly bleak assessment in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia:

"The movement . . . has become weak and impotent. . . . External circumstances linked to internal corruption hastened the destruction of the movement. . . . [I]t is an empty shell the contents of which had been blown away by the wind, never to be revived again."

Sacred times and ritual practices are not to be rushed through. They are to be savored, entered into with all one's senses, with all the levels of one's being.

It was not only outside observers who were pessimistic about the movement; in many cases, the sons and daughters of the leaders themselves felt that Hasidism had reached a dead end. One young Rebbe, Yitzhak Nahum Twersky, wrote a moving "confession" in 1910, bemoaning what he saw as the deterioration of Hasidism in his day. This Rebbe, who was a contemporary and relative of Malkah Shapiro, did remain within the hasidic fold, but other scions of famous dynasties simply abandoned the hasidic way of life. This deterioration accelerated after World War I but was already being felt in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Implicitly, Shapiro writes to counter this view. In her depiction, her father's hasidic court is an oasis of true religion, a fountain of blessing to the community, indeed to all of eastern European Jewry. The spiritual practices are alive and vital; "truth" and "integrity" are the watchwords, the standards by which all actions are measured. The lives of her parents and family are characterized by self-sacrificing devotion to God and acts of loving-kindness. Widows, orphans, and unfortunates are welcomed at the courtyard and receive not only a handout but also dignity, a place to stay, and even employment. Far from amassing money, her father is utterly unconcerned with it: He gives away the donations the hasidim shower upon him, even to the extent of disregarding his own health and the legitimate needs of the household.

While others pointed to coarseness, superstition, and intolerance in the movement and its leadership, Shapiro's writing portrays a very different reality. Her family life was characterized by nobility and refinement; it was steeped in wisdom and the very best of Jewish and general culture. Most of all, relationships were marked by infinite gentleness.

In The Rebbe's Daughter, every religious act is a work of art, to be performed not only with reverence but with delicacy and an aesthetic sensibility. Shapiro's Hasidism is a derekh avodah—a pathway of divine service. This means that it is not enough to be punctilious in performance of the statutory commandments; every aspect of life must make a personal statement of sacredness and reverence. Everything one does must reflect one's personal religious signature, and must be informed by one's own modality of honoring God and God's presence in the world. This is the fulfillment of the early hasidic teaching that one must know God in all of one's pathways.

It should be recalled that Hasidism, at least in its early period, was a romantic movement, tending to an intensity, sometimes excessive, of religious emotion and feeling.

Each hasidic dynasty had its own style. The style of Kozienice, as portrayed by Shapiro, is deliberate, reflective, contemplative, sober, dignified. Sacred times and ritual practices are not to be rushed through. Even to fulfill them joyfully, while important, is not enough. They are to be savored, entered into with all one's senses, with all the levels of one's being. For Shapiro, Hasidism means to take the time to experience deeply, to immerse oneself so fully that the waters of holiness seep through the very pores of the skin.

Here it is helpful to note that Shapiro's brother-in-law Rabbi Kalonymos Shapiro wrote a series of works on hasidic spirituality containing a graded series of exercises leading to greater levels of sensitization to holiness. The essential technique involves visualization of sacred scenes and training one's senses to become aware of the presence of the divine in the world. The system employs extended contemplative imagery. Malkah Shapiro shares this same sensibility and wishes to immerse herself and her readers in the world of holiness that she knew as a child, by invoking a fullness and intensity of sensory description: the sights, the sounds, the smells of that life. Each bit of imagery is an element of an enveloping meditative structure.

Rabbi Kalonymos Shapiro was fond of quoting a hasidic epigram based on a creative reading of a fragment of Deut. 11:17, which reads in Hebrew "va-avadetem mehera." The standard translation is "[if you worship other gods] you will soon perish." But the hasidic reading parses the phrase as an imperative, a religious desideratum: "you must cause meherah (haste) to perish" or "you must banish haste." This kind of reflective Hasidism was becoming increasingly rare in the twentieth century, pushed aside by an urban Hasidism that was faster-paced, more militant and politicized. One of Shapiro's goals was the depiction of the older, rural Hasidism: more vulnerable, delicate, and contemplative.

All of this explains why in many passages "nothing happens." These passages are spiritual tone poems, meditative inductions, beckoning the reader to enter an ethereal, dreamlike world of holiness and tenderness.

The mood of The Rebbe's Daughter is lushly romantic. It should be recalled that Hasidism, at least in its early period, was a romantic movement, tending to an intensity, sometimes excessive, of religious emotion and feeling. That was one reason why its opponents criticized it. In Shapiro's portrayal of Kozienice in 1905, this early romanticism was very much alive.

A key teaching of Kabbalah and Hasidism is "as above, so below." In The Rebbe's Daughter, there is a profound correspondence between the inner human world, the world of nature, and the cosmic/heavenly/sefirotic world. The natural world is personified and celebrates the sacred times in harmony with the faithful in the Rebbe's courtyard. There is a harmonious balance between action and contemplation. People are seamlessly in touch with their environment.

Shapiro emphasizes auditory experience as well as visual. The sound of music is ever present, powerful and redemptive; it blends with the song of the birds. Melodies are punctuated by thoughtful silences, providing opportunities for reflection and integration. The task of the hasidic master, the Rebbe, is to convey this derekh avodah to the community, to form sacred space out of collective energies, as the entire congregation conspires—breathes together—in holy rhythm.

In sum, The Rebbe's Daughter captures Hasidism as sensuous experience.

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