Dovber Schneuri

Second Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch (1773–1827), known as the Mitteler Rebbe, who moved the movement's seat to Lubavitch and was tried in Vitebsk in 1825–26

Dovber Schneuri
Image
Born	9 Kislev 5534 (1773) Liozna (Lyozna), Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (from 1772 Russian Empire)
Died	9 Kislev 5588 (1827) Niezhyn (Nizhyn), Chernigov province, Russian Empire
Nationality
Residence
Occupation
Known for	Second Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, 1812/13–1827; settling the movement in Lubavitch; Kuntres ha-Hitpa'alut; the expanded Shklov edition of the Tanya (1814)
Parents
Spouse(s)	Sheina
Children	Two sons; daughters including Chaya Mushka (wife of Menachem Mendel Schneersohn)
Sibling(s)
Education
Predecessor	Shneur Zalman of Liadi
Website

Dovber Schneuri (1773–1827), known in Chabad as the Mitteler Rebbe (Yiddish: "middle Rebbe"), was the second leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. The eldest son of the founder, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, he succeeded his father in a contested succession against his father's leading disciple, Aharon ha-Levi Horowitz of Staroselye, and settled in the small town of Lubavitch (Lyubavichi), which remained the movement's centre for a century and gave it its name. He printed his father's Tanya and legal code, wrote prolifically on contemplative prayer, and urged Jews to take up crafts and farming. Denounced to the authorities in 1825, he was investigated in Vitebsk and released on 10 Kislev, still a Chabad festival; he died two years later at Niezhyn while returning from his father's grave, and was succeeded by his son-in-law and nephew, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn.

Early life

According to Nissan Mindel's biography on Chabad.org, he was born on 9 Kislev 5534 (1773) in Liozna, where his father was then the preacher, and was the eldest of three sons. Mindel writes that "He adopted the family name of 'Schneuri,' after his father, but succeeding generations changed it to 'Schneersohn,' or 'Schneerson.'" His wife, Sheina, is the subject of a chapter in Shalom Dovber Levin's Kehot history of Chabad in Tsarist Russia.

He was one of the transcribers of his father's oral discourses, alongside his uncle Yehudah Leib of Yanovitch, his brother Moshe, his nephew Menachem Mendel and the hasid Pinhas Reizes of Shklov. Loewenthal notes that "R. Dov Ber is known, for example, to have interpolated explanations of his own in some of his redactions."

Succession and the move to Lubavitch

Shneur Zalman died in December 1812 (24 Tevet 5573) during the flight from Napoleon's army; the family home at Liadi had burned. Levin quotes a letter Dovber wrote from Kremenchug that winter saying the family would stay there until the summer, and states that he settled in Lubavitch "at the very start of his leadership, at the end of summer 5573 – beginning of 5574 (1813)". A report by the investigator Korbitsky, written for the court in 1825, records that he first bought a wooden house from the local landowner and then built a large wooden synagogue, begun in 1814. Loewenthal's YIVO article dates his residence in Lubavitch from 1814. Levin adds that hasidim soon came in such numbers that he had to issue rules restricting visits.

Chabad's Challenge biography, reproduced on Chabad.org, says that after Shneur Zalman's death the government sent condolences and asked how it could repay his support for the Tsar during the war, and that Dovber "asked nothing for himself, but requested a benevolent attitude by the Russian Government towards the Jews".

The dispute with Aharon of Staroselye

The succession was contested. In Loewenthal's account, "Habad Hasidim divided into two groups, one led by Shneur Zalman's leading disciple, Aharon ha-Levi Horowitz of Staroselye (1766–1828), and the other by Shneur Zalman's oldest son, Dov Ber (1773–1827)", at a time when "the dynastic principle of succession, which tended to predominate in later Hasidism, had not yet emerged." The ideological issue was contemplative prayer: "Aharon espoused the quest for hitpa‘alut, ecstatic emotional enthusiasm, while Dov Ber taught a path revolving around bitul, self-abnegation, manifested in deep, intense, motionless contemplation." Loewenthal frames the difference as Aharon's quest for the "upper unity", in which the world dissolves in the divine, against Dovber's "lower unity", in which the world itself expresses the divine.

Many of Shneur Zalman's close followers, Loewenthal argues, followed Aharon as the figure of continuity, while "R. Dov Ber took the group under his leadership through a further stage of development", giving the ordinary hasid more room within the movement. Later Chabad tradition was not wholly hostile to Aharon: the Tzemach Tzedek "is said to have defended the memory of R. Aaron, saying that in his case, his ecstasy truly was Divine in nature".

Teaching: ecstasy, contemplation and prayer

Loewenthal writes that in his brief leadership Dovber "succeeded in consolidating the movement and in concretizing the ideal of the communication of Hasidism", through private audiences, public discourses and tracts. His oral discourses could last several hours; "'Not everyone has your head,' commented his uncle, R. Yehudah Leib."

His best-known work, Kuntres ha-Hitpa'alut (Tract on Ecstasy), distinguishes genuine from self-induced spiritual enthusiasm. In Loewenthal's YIVO summary, Dovber "was more critical of self-deception in this quest, as he expressed in his book Kuntres ha-hitpa‘alut. He also accorded the simple man more spiritual dignity, as is evident in his Yiddish work Pokeaḥ ‘ivrim (1817), written as a manual for the repentant." Levin, working from dated manuscripts in the Lubavitch library, treats the Kuntres as the second of three linked letters sent to the hasidim in 5574 (1813–14), the second year of his leadership. The third was printed first, as Sha'ar ha-Yihud (Kopys, 1820); the Kuntres itself was printed later, and the first letter last, as its preface (Warsaw, 1868).

Around 1823 he wrote a letter to young full-time scholars that changed their prayer practice. They were to study Hasidic teaching morning and evening as a resource for prayer, pray daily in a quorum with enthusiasm and humility, and limit contemplation during prayer to the Shema, since meditating on the whole liturgy would mean praying all day. Loewenthal calls it "a striking expression of the dialectic implicit in the process of communication of esoteric teachings": the intensely mystical technique of the Kuntres suited a small elite, and as the movement grew a different directive was needed. The broader ideal of lengthy contemplative prayer was realised only later, under Shalom Dovber Schneersohn and Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, "aided enormously by the Tomkhei Temimim system of academies".

In Derekh Hayyim (Kopys, 1819), the third part of his Sha'arei Teshuvah, he presented bitul (self-nullification) as attainable by the ordinary hasid through simple, obedient observance of the commandments. His teaching on mesirat nefesh (self-sacrifice) was central to this; Loewenthal notes that "the emphasis on the concept of mesirat nefesh has been described as a decisive factor in the early spread of 'aristocratic' and intellectual Habad through the broad echelons of Jewish society and also in the later survival of the movement as a force in Jewish life."

Works and the Shklov Tanya

Unlike most Hasidic leaders, Dovber put his teaching into print, issuing about a dozen volumes in his lifetime, helped by a follower who was a printer in Kopys. He began at once: a new edition of the Tanya (Shklov, 1814) printed for the first time a large body of his father's material, including more than thirty letters (Iggeret ha-Kodesh). Loewenthal judges that "It is likely that this new edition of the Tanya with its extra material had the effect of consolidating and strengthening the following of R. Dov Ber, in the contemporary atmosphere of conflict with R. Aaron." He also printed his father's legal code (Shulhan Arukh ha-Rav), partly lost in a fire in 1810: sections appeared in 1814 and a fuller edition in 1816. In his preface "R. Dov Ber asked that each local community should divide the Code of Law among a number of people so that the entire work would be completed 'once or twice' in the course of a year."

His own works, as listed by Loewenthal in the YIVO encyclopedia, include Be'urei ha-Zohar (1816); a prayer book with lengthy Hasidic commentary (1816); Sha'ar ha-Yihud (1820); and Sha'arei Orah (1822) on Hanukkah and Purim. His rationalistic style was attacked by Tsevi Hirsh of Zhidachov and defended by Tsevi Elimelekh of Dinov. Hard times limited sales: Levin cites letters in which he arranged for Torat Hayyim to be printed and sold in instalments because the hasidim could not afford a whole volume at once. The Korbitsky report of 1825 records 611 books in his house, lent to the townspeople.

Communal work

Crafts, farming and Kherson

Dovber issued a public letter urging that women and children be taught weaving and spinning and that Jews take up farming. The full text is printed on Chabad.org in English translation; in it he writes: "When I visited the Southern Steppes, I saw with my own eyes Jewish farmers with their wives and children working the soil every weekday with zeal and enjoyment." Loewenthal reads it as both a response to government pressure and a religious ideal: of the Jewish farmers he writes that "the fear of G-d is on their faces". Chabad's Challenge biography goes further, stating that at his request for government cooperation in settling Jews on the land, "the famous Jewish settlements of Kherson came into being."

Hebron and the Holy Land

He revived the Chabad fund for hasidim in the Holy Land and supported a settlement in Hebron, where he bought a synagogue; he hoped to emigrate but never did. Chabad.org dates the Hebron colony to 5583 (1823). In the 1820s his health declined and he withdrew partly from private audiences; difficult cases were to go to his brother Haim Avraham and his son-in-law Menachem Mendel, "Only in the last resort was the matter to be brought before R. Dov Ber himself."

Karlsbad

In summer 1825 he travelled to the spa at Karlsbad for his health, partly incognito. He wrote to his son-in-law: "here they think that I am a merchant, not a Rabbi". There he met Akiva Eger and Mordekhai Bannet of Nikolsburg, and a long discourse he gave before Eger survives. Levin notes that the denunciations against him were lodged with the governor in Vitebsk while he was abroad.

Arrest and investigation

In June–July 1825 Simcha Kissin lodged three denunciations against him with Governor-General Nikolai Khovansky in Vitebsk. According to Levin, who summarises the case file published by Kehot in 1998, Kissin portrayed the hasidim as a money-grabbing movement that exploited the young and took over communal funds, ritual slaughter and printing, and demanded its suppression. He attached a letter of 1814 on the distribution of the money collected after Shneur Zalman's death, from which he claimed Dovber had raised about 140,000 roubles and distributed only 35,000.

Levin's timeline from the file is as follows. He was summoned to Vitebsk after Sukkot 5586, and his first interrogation took place on 7 October 1825. On the same day as his third interrogation (19 October), a policeman was sent to bring Aharon of Staroselye to Vitebsk, and Aharon was questioned on 21–28 October. Dovber petitioned the governor for release on 6 Kislev and was sent home on 10 Kislev 5586. Levin stresses that this was not yet an acquittal. The Mogilev provincial court cleared him on 11 Kislev 5587 (1826), Khovansky appealed to the Senate, and the Senate confirmed the acquittal on 21 Kislev 5588 (1827), twelve days after his death. The ruling also left the ma'amad system of voluntary contributions to the Rebbe's household legal, and it went on funding Chabad's leaders.

During the investigation he wrote a tract for the governor of Vitebsk explaining the kabbalistic meaning of sovereignty and declaring his loyalty to the Tsar. Loewenthal calls it "a unique document in the history of Hasidism: a Hasidic tract addressed to a non-Jew." He adds that the charges were not dropped and that an attempt was made to implicate Dovber in the Velizh blood libel. Chabad.org's account says the forger turned "three or four thousand rubles" into "one hundred and three or four thousand", and that he was accused of sending money to the Turks and of building a synagogue with the dimensions of the Jerusalem Temple. 10 Kislev is still kept as a Chabad festival.

Death and succession

Shortly after the Cantonist decree of August 1827, which made Jewish boys liable to conscription from the age of 12, Dovber travelled to his father's grave at Haditch to pray. Levin dates the journey to the start of 5588 (1827). On the way back he fell ill at Niezhyn. One of his last discourses dealt with the decree, and he gave discourse after discourse through his last night, dying near dawn, according to accounts in Hielman's Beit Rebbi. He died on 9 Kislev 5588, his 54th birthday, and was buried in Niezhyn.

"Although R. Dov Ber left two sons, he was succeeded as Rebbe by R. Menahem Mendel, the grandson of R. Shneur Zalman, who had married R. Dov Ber's daughter, Hayah Mushka." Loewenthal explains the name: "later generations of Habad thought of R. Dov Ber as being the 'middle' leader, in between R. Shneur Zalman and R. Menahem Mendel. For this reason R. Dov Ber is known as the 'Mitteler Rebbe.'"

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Shneur Zalman of Liadi
• Aharon of Staroselye
• Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (Tzemach Tzedek)
• Shmuel Schneersohn
• Shalom Dovber Schneersohn
• Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
• History of Chabad in Tsarist Russia – Selected Chapters, 1770–1920

Bibliography

• Shalom Dovber Levin, Toldot Chabad b'Russia HaTzarit – Perakim Nivcharim, 1770–1920, Brooklyn: Kehot / Otzar HaChassidim, 2010, ISBN 978-0-8266-5327-7. Chabad-side.
• Ma'asar u-Ge'ulat Admur ha-Emtza'i (The Imprisonment and Liberation of the Mitteler Rebbe), Brooklyn: Kehot, 1998. Chabad-side edition of the case documents (cited via Levin; not seen).
• Naftali Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-226-49045-8.
• Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825–1855, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1983, ISBN 0-8276-0216-2.

External links

• The Mitteler Rebbe – Chabad.org portal
• Lubavitch Hasidism – YIVO Encyclopedia