ABSTRACT

The Maggid of Mezseritz, who led the Hasidic movement after the Besht's death, is the major exponent of the Hasidic interpersonal contraction doctrine. To construe the social meaning of contraction, the author shall thus draw mainly on the Maggid's philosophical formulations. Indeed, one may wonder whether the origins of the stereotypic noncontracting Western male/father chauvinist should not be traced to the very same Oedipal-Prussian father socialization model. It is usually used admiringly and unquestionably in the West to raise both contemporary feminists and masculinists alike. Kierkegaard concludes that learning and love cannot be realized through what it termed the Oedipal-Prussian internalization of the father's threatening power, or through the Maggid's contracting father-teacher image, but only through God's total self-concealment. Kierkegaard insists that this appearance is no mere "contracted" outer garment, "like the filmy summer-cloak of Socrates, which though woven of nothing, yet both conceals and reveals" but "his true form and figure".