MAYA BALAKIRSKY KATZ Touro College ON THE MASTER-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP IN HASIDIC VISUAL CULTURE: THE LIFE AND AFTERLIFE OF REBBE PORTRAITS IN HABAD, 1798–2006* The “tzaddik,” or rebbe, occupies a vaunted space in both the Hasidic tradition and in the larger Jewish imagination. The charismatic leaders whose courts drew unprecedented numbers of devotees across Eastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have also captured the interest of scholars.1 A vast body of literature takes the Hasidic leader as its subject, examining leadership models within the mystical doctrine of “tzaddikism” as well as a response to modernity, social unrest, and institutional corruption. Scholars have typically approached this material from the literary legacy of the rebbe, his prolific heirs, and his closest disciples.2 The privileging of the literary output of the leaders stems, at least in part, from the availability of primary literary sources of the masters themselves, while the written documents of the disciples were typically lost along with the Eastern European communities in which they circulated. Visual sources, whether produced by the rebbe or by his Hasidim, however, have largely escaped analysis. Thus, while the oral and written traditions of the rebbe and his editors have influenced the scholarly understanding of the post that the rebbe occupied, the image bank produced and consumed by the rebbe’s disciples, some of whom were semi-illiterate, remains relatively overlooked.3 The Hasidic community that most avidly produced, collected, and preserved portraits of their leaders in the nineteenth century was the Belarusian * I would like to thank Zalman Alpert, Steven Fine, Michael Katz, Margaret Olin, and Michael Popkin for their valuable comments on this paper. A special note of gratitude to the late Barry Gourary whose elegant manner and noble character inspired my interest in his dynastic heritage. 1 In Hasidic literature this figure is referred to as a “tzaddik.” The popular American term for “tzaddik” is the Yiddish term “rebbe,” while in Israel the term “admor” (Heb. acronym for ‘Our master, our teacher, our rabbi’) has become popular. See Norman Lamm, The Religious Thoughts of Hasidism (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1999). Gershom Scholem, “Tsaddik: The Righteous One,” in The Mystical Shape of the Godhead (New York: Schocken Books, 1991), 88–139. 2 For a study that does consider the socio-political aspects of the tzaddik, see Immanuel Etkes, “The Zaddik: The Interrelationship between Religious Doctrine and Social Organization,” in ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert, Hasidism Reappraised (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1997), 159–167. 3 See Richard I. Cohen, “The Rabbi as Icon,” in Jewish Icons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 114–153. Cohen focuses on the rabbinic portraits of non-Hasidic Orthodox rabbis in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and thus does not consider how portraiture fostered a unique rebbe-Hasid relationship or how photography played a part in the identity of the rebbe. Also, see Samuel C. Heilman, Abstract Scholarship on Hasidism typically utilizes literary source material of the dynastic leaders and their top disciples, while the more typical master/disciple relationship has escaped attention. Hasidic movements have produced, distributed, and voraciously consumed visual portraits of their leaders throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The most visually productive Hasidic community is the Belarusian HabadLubavitch, which has produced images of five of its seven generations of leaders. Indeed, portraits of its leaders have been integral to the development of Habad both in Eastern Europe and its post-Shoah rejuvination in the United States. This paper begins with Habad’s visual history from the 1880s release of portrait paintings of the first and third Habad leaders in the effort to establish a unified group identity at a time of factionalism. The survey then moves to Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Rebbe of Habad, who rallied his followers with the medium of photography. Photography became a central component of his leadership in the 1930s and 1940s. The study then moves to the seventh and last Habad leader, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who expanded the use of visual culture in Habad and used his own image to forge a post-Shoah group identity around a distinctly American leader who was also the spiritual repository of the six preceding Russian leaders. Schneerson’s image production and reproduction began to model American celebrity culture in the early 1970s as part of a public campaign to inaugurate the Messianic Age. This broad dissemination of Schneerson’s image inadvertantly created an elastic Schneerson portrait, whose reflexivness, in some respects, transcended its subject. On the Use of Visual Sources © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 Also available online – www.brill.nl IMAGES 1 56 maya balakirsky katz Habad-Lubavitch, and the movement continues to extensively employ images of their leaders both privately and publicly.4 Indeed, Habad has produced images of five of its seven leaders, which is extraordinary in the history of Hasidism, as rebbe portraiture before the second half of the twentiethcentury was rare. The success of Habad’s use of rebbe portraits to foster authority and group identity has led the way for the use of the portrait in other Hasidic groups such as Satmar, Belz, and Bobov. Habad remains innovative and daring in its use of the portrait, while other Orthodox Jewish communities continue to mimic Habad’s creative use of images for their own group promotion and fundraising efforts. Visual portraits of Hasidic leaders that have circulated among devoted followers provide a site for analysis of the social institution of the Hasidic leader. Corroborating Walter Benjamin’s thesis that the nineteenth-century circulation of notables’ images negotiated the playing field between the mass public and its social superiors, portraits of Hasidic leaders played a critical role in defining the status of the rebbe by breeding recognition and fascination.5 Rebbe portraits convert personality, charisma, and reputation into material reality and offer a stable visual experience of a teacher whose accessibility would have been otherwise limited.6 In turn, as more images of the rebbe are produced, the idea of using the portrait as a means of connecting to the rebbe becomes normalized. Portraits offer insight into the complex masterdisciple relationship because they reflect the broader relationships between the artist and his sitter, the subject and his beholder, and the portrait and its patron.7 These relationships are further complicated by the Hasidic discomfort with the materialism of images on the one hand, and the status of the rebbe portraits as semi-devotional objects on the other. A complex dialectic evolved as Hasidim struggled to reconcile the perceived profanity of the mass-produced medium with the ascribed sacredness of the subject. When the subject of the portrait is a religious figure, the laborious and creative processes of the craft of portraiture are often concealed. When surveyed as a unified archive, however, the consistency of certain poses, gestures, and framing decisions becomes apparent. Portrait conventions are thus an important point of access as they are often coded with religious, cultural, and social meaning. Scholars exploring the intersection between religion and art, coining terms like “visual piety” and “religious seeing,” typically apply themselves to Christian contexts, but the Hasid’s “sacred gaze” is relevant to rebbe portraits as well.8 Looking at images, giving and receiving them as markers of religious rites of passage, praying and studying in their presence, and passing them on to future generations, are acts of “visual piety” that describe how Hasidim imbue value to portraits of their leaders. David Morgan has evoked the “sacred gaze” in his study of religious images because “the term signals that the entire visual field that constitutes seeing is the framework of analysis, not just the image itself.”9 That is, scholars have begun to consider images not only for what they depict, but for how they make us see. Rebbe portraits tell us not only what a tzaddik looks like, but also how we should look at him. These portraits play a role in the construction of the collective memory of a Hasidic master and promote specific modes of visualization. Finally, the social life of pictures—their production, distribution, collection, and the long shadow they cast over future representation—offers insight into the various stages of a rebbe’s legacy. Followers constantly reinvent portraits of their leaders according to their religious, political, and social preferences. This paper begins by tracing the origins of Habad rebbe portraits in nineteenth-century Russia and Poland and their revitalization and import in “A Face to Believe In: Contemporary Pictorial Images of Orthodox Rabbis and What They Represent,” in ed. Jack Wertheimer, vol. 2 of Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 2004), 837–878. Heilman proves that rabbinic portraits have become “trademarks of faith” in American Orthodoxy, but does not survey or analyze their history. 4 For a semi-historical, semi-ethnographic study of Habad, see Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of ChabadLubavitch (New York: Schocken Books, 2003). 5 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968), 225. 6 See, for example, Cohen, Jewish Icons, 136–137; fig. 75. 7 Richard Brilliant, Portraiture (London: Reaktion Books, 2004). Also see Joanna Woodall, Portraiture: Facing the Subject (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997). 8 David Morgan, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); S. Brent Plate, Religion, Art, and Visual Culture: A Cross-Cultural Reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 9 David Morgan, Sacred Gaze (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture 57 the twentieth century. I will trace how portraits of Habad leaders were presented to devotees by Habad-insiders during a period of political threat and social unrest in the 1880s and subsequently appropriated by cultural Zionists, Jewish encyclopedists, and the campaign for Russian Jewry in the 1980s. The period between the World Wars, when Eastern Europe saw the disintegration or dislocation of many Hasidic masters and courts, marks the first truly popular use of the rebbe portrait. I will explore how the sixth rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880–1950), the first rebbe to use the medium of photography as a central tool of his leadership, maintained his leadership in exile with creative visual solutions. An analysis of how his son-in-law, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), promoted a highly visible and public Habad presence, offers perspective on the role that visual culture played in the construction of an American Habad identity. The group’s highly visible public presence, especially its messianic arm, has sparked religious and social controversy.10 But for Habad followers who believe their leader’s growing visual presence might hasten his anointment as the King-Messiah, controversy has provided access to previously untapped public forums.11 Much of Habad’s visual culture is driven by the belief that God’s hand could be forced to inaugurate the messianic age through architecture, painting, mass media, and photography. While Habad’s messianic ideology is outside the scope of this study, its relationship to Schneerson’s portrait will be addressed in the last three sections.12 I will conclude with an analysis of Schneerson’s image making in the early 1970s, and how the enormous output of “controlled” images has supplied the material for “unauthorized” presentations. 10 For the book that brought Lubavitch messianism into the public debate, see David Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001). See response by Chaim Rapoport, The Messiah Problem: Berger, The Angel and the Scandal of Reckless Indiscrimination (Ilford, Essex: C. Rapoport, 2002). 11 For instance, New York University held a three day conference on the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, “Reaching for the Infinite: The Lubavitcher Rebbe—Life, Teachings, and Impact,” November 6–8, 2005. 12 For an article that explores themes of messianism in Jewish American art, see Matthew Baigell, “Jewish American Artists: Identity and Messianism,” Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art, eds. Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 182–192. 13 For a work that considers early Habad history during Shneur Zalman’s reign, see Rachel Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God, The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidim, trans. Jeffrey M. Green (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); Naftali Loewenthal, “The Lower Unity: Joining Mystic Quest and Reality in the First Century of Habad,” B.D.D. (16 August 2005): 57–73. Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia, vol. 16 (Moscow: Terra, 1991), 55–60. Chaim Mayer Heilman, Beit Rebbe (Tel Aviv, [1902]), 105–106; in the Yiddish version of Beit Rebbe, see a slightly different account, part I, 98–99. Also, see the portrait insert in Mordechai Teitelbaum’s HaRav MiLiadi u-mifleget Habad (Warsaw: Levin-Epstein, n.d. [1910–1913]). Shmaryahu Schneersohn, the lithograph’s producer, wrote the introduction. While much of Teitelbaum’s work has been revisited by scholars, this work is considered the first scholarly biography of the founder of Habad, while Heilman’s Beit Rebbe is considered a more hagiographic treatment. 16 I am grateful to Zalman Alpert, librarian of the Mendel Gottesman Library at Yeshiva University, for providing a treasure trove of information on Lubavitch material culture, including this debate on the portrait of Schneur Zalman. See Shaul Shimon Deutsch, “The Story Behind the Portrait of Reb Schneur Zalman of Liadi,” Chasidic Historical Review (December 1995), 1–13; Shmuel Krauss, “Gilguliya shel temunah,” Bais Mashiach (December 1995), 21–28. See HaTamim (December 1938, 3–17. Bound edition reprinted by Kehot, vol. 2, Brooklyn: Kehot, 1975), 767–8. All future references are to the bound edition. Founding Fathers and Portraits The father of the Habad dynasty was Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1813), a disciple of Dov Ber of Mezeritch (1710–1772), who in turn was a disciple of the founder of Hasidism, Israel ben Eliezer (1698–1760), known as the “Baal Shem Tov.”13 Shneur Zalman is considered the leader of rational Hasidism, a “scientist” who “integrated Hasidism into the classical Talmudic framework.”14 Shneur Zalman’s status as a disciple of the founders of Hasidism is a prerequisite to his status as a master of his own branch. There is only one known portrait of Shneur Zalman and it appears on every illustrated history of the movement and on the covers of Shneur Zalman’s literary magnum opus, Likutei Amarim, known as the Tanya. 15 (fig. 1) According to Habad lore, the fourth rebbe of Habad, Shmuel Schneersohn (1834–1882), accidentally discovered the painting in 1855, during a conference on Jewish education reform.16 A senior Russian official at the conference produced a painting of a great rabbi who had been imprisoned 14 15 58 maya balakirsky katz on treason charges in 1798, and from the markings on the portrait the prisoner turned out to be Shneur Zalman. In the first lithograph printing of the portrait, Shneur Zalman’s eyes point upward, but the high arch of his left eyebrow is incongruent and the eye falls back into the lid, caught in an ecstatic moment one might associate with the miracle-worker, the Baal Shem Tov. However, the lithograph portrait is descriptive, importing the signs of ecstasy, rather than eliciting the emotion itself. That is, the portrait illustrates Shneur Zalman’s deeply ecstatic connection to God and otherworldly mystical concepts, yet allows the rational viewer to remain a mere spectator. Polish newspaper in 1888, during the leadership of the fifth rebbe, Shalom Dov Ber (1860–1920). In 1889, Boris Schatz (1867–1932), future founder of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem, published a description of his discovery of the painting. In the cultural Zionist periodical Hatzefira, Schatz testifies that the portrait of Shneur Zalman left a “strong impression” on him: “I never saw such a beautiful and holy face depicted.”17 Schatz’s article in Hatzefira is an important document for its lucid expression of nineteenth-century Jewish identity politics and its stated conviction that portraits of great Jewish leaders should play a vital part in Jewish life. In his article, Schatz campaigns for the Jewish collection and display of images of Jewish national heroes. Schatz references Courbet, whose “work was so inspirational to the French spirit,” to provoke Jews to create and collect works that “inspire their own nation.” From his heady introduction on the role that portraits of great Jewish leaders should play in Jewish cultural life, Schatz then records his personal discovery of the portrait of Shneur Zalman: I never saw anything better. . . . As soon as I saw it, it filled my heart with wonder because I never saw anything like it. Splendor and charm washed over it. . . . I left the painting that left such a strong impression on me that I’ll never forget it all my life. Alas, I didn’t think to copy it. . . . Furthermore, although my main artistic medium is sculpture I would have rather copied that [portrait] than expensive sculptures. Schatz then launches a bitter attack on the Jewish art of his time, especially because the artists fail to represent from life the great men of the time in all their dignity. Fig. 1. Portrait of Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1813). Lithograph 1888. Courtesy of Kehot Publication Society Though the portrait was ostensibly painted at the turn of the eighteenth century, attempts to find the original portrait have been unsuccessful. The first publication was a lithograph printing in a 17 Boris Schatz, “Maleqet Mahshevet,” Hatzefira, no. 217, December 30, 1888, 3–4. This is the sequal to a two-part article that begins in Hatzefira, December 16, 1888, 2–3. See If G-d will lead me down the path to achieve my greatest desires and goals that I’ve dedicated myself to, time for my holy duty to search for portraits of the great people of the Jewish people that are scattered all about and there is indisputable proof that the artist painted it from the real person. The portrait of the Rav of Liadi, whom [Shmaryahu] Schneersohn took about himself to publicize . . . is a great thing and we should hope that it won’t be long before the masses see this great painting. Dalia Manor, Art In Zion: The Genesis of Modern National Art in Jewish Palestine (London: Routledge, 2005). on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture The irony of Schatz’s disdain for portraits painted without “the real person” is the part he played in the portrait. In 1938, Mordechai Narkiss (1897– 1957), the founder of the Bezalel National Museum and print collector Abraham Schwadron (1878– 1957) published the story in the Israeli daily Haaretz: In 1927 Professor B. Schatz testified before witnesses, that when he was a student in the art school in Warsaw, around 1887–88, he regularly visited the house of one of the important followers of the Rav, R. Shmaryahu Schneersohn, who lost his wealth and livelihood. B. Schatz . . . offered to Rav Shmaryahu Schneerson, out of friendliness and a desire to help, to paint for him a portrait of the Rav of Liadi.18 HaTamim, the first popular organ of the Habad movement, picked up on the story and argued that Schatz was only the “skilled copyist” of the lithograph of Shneur Zalman, but that it was based on an original.19 HaTamim published documents Schatz claimed to have received from the purported owner of the portrait authorizing him to make photographs of the artist’s rendering of the original painting. But the willingness of Schatz to help his host in Warsaw may have led him to not only create a composite portrait, but to compile a forged dossier on the subject. At the turn of the twentieth century, the portrait of Shneur Zalman appears in several Jewish encyclopedias. The encyclopedia, a medium of the Enlightenment that was only adopted by Jews in the twentieth century, was nonetheless vested by the Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars with the parallel utopian desire to organize all of human knowledge.20 The portrait of Shneur Zalman first appears in The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906).21 The soft edges of the lithograph portrait have been simplified; the face and beard are constructed from the fine cross-hatchings of an etcher’s knife. The 18 Mordechai Narkiss and Avraham Schwadron, “HaToldot HaTemunah shel R. Shneur Zalman MiLiadi,” Haaretz, June 3, 1938, 11. See Yosef Yitzchak’s 1938 letter to Avraham Schwadron in response to the Haaretz article in vol. 13 of Igrot Kodesh . . . Admor R. Yosef Yitzchak (Brooklyn: Kehot, 1984), 4755. Yosef Yitzchak writes: “I appreciate your letter, but I wish you would have written me before you published your article. . . . You have caused a storm. . . . What you wrote shows no appreciation for that which is holy in Israel.” 19 HaTamim, vol. 2, 755–769. 20 See David B. Levy, “The Making of the Encyclopaedia Judaica and the Jewish Encyclopedia” (paper presented at the 37th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries, 59 original lithograph describes Shneur Zalman’s mystical vision, while discouraging the beholder from participating in that vision. The encyclopedia illustration further disembodies that mysticism with the swift, circular strokes on the large black head covering and the jacket that offer a saintly halo around Shneur Zalman’s head. The Jewish Encyclopedia entry of “the leader of the rational Hasidim” has perceptively tamed Shneur Zalman’s wayward eyebrow and his right eye comes back to focus on this world. The encyclopedia characterizes the Habad tzaddik as “a mere teacher and not as a miracle worker,” and the encyclopedia portrait gives Shneur Zalman eyes with which to see.22 Several years later, the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia, Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia (1906–1913), opted for a portrait of Shneur Zalman that more closely followed the original lithograph.23 The entry characterizes Shneur Zalman as a rational anti-assimilationist, who “exerted extraordinary efforts” to support the czarist government against Napoleon and the possibility of assimilation. The encyclopedia depicts a scientific reformer who withdrew from the oppressive authority of rabbinical orthodoxy and suffered from the backlash of the critics of Hasidism (mitnagdim), spearheaded by the disciples of Eliyahu ben Shlomo (1720–1797), known as the Vilna Ga’on. Such a narrative must have been compelling to the scholars who were trying to revolutionize Jewish scholarship with the application of the scientific method. Both The Jewish Encyclopedia and the Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia were the products of Wissenschaft scholarship, the former employing Cyrus Adler, Louis Ginzberg, and Isidore Singer as editors, and the latter boasting Simon Dubnow.24 The Encyclopaedia Judaica was published in 1972, with 8,000 photographs illustrating its sixteen volumes. The introductory section claims that the “rich pictorial content reflects modern attitudes Denver, Colorado, June 23–26, 2002). 21 The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1905), s.v. Shneor Zalman ben Baruch (by Isaac Broydé). 22 The Jewish Encyclopedia, 299. 23 Evreiskaya Entsiklopedia, vol. 16, 55–60. 24 Grace Cohen Grossman surveys how Adler’s curatorial policies at the Smithsonian followed the scientific agenda of the Wissenschaft scholars. See Grace Cohen Grossman and Richard Eighme Ahlborn, Judaica at the Smithsonian: Cultural Politics as Cultural Model (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1997). 60 maya balakirsky katz whereby visual material serves not only as an adjunct but often supplements and crystallizes the written word.”25 The Encyclopaedia Judaica differentiated itself from earlier encyclopedias by including Israeli scholarship and coverage of the Israeli intellectual scene. The entry on Shneur Zalman follows the entry on the great Hebrew poet Zalman Shneour, of whom we are told is “a descendant of Shneur Zalman of Lyady.”26 Hermann Struck’s heroic portrait of the poet has him frowning in an angle that complements the portrait of Shneur Zalman, but the juxtaposition doesn’t end there. The entry on Shneur Zalman is illustrated by his portrait, and the portraits of the third, sixth, and seventh generation of Habad rebbeim arranged in the format of a genealogical chart. A second illustration in the entry on Zalman Shneour consists of an autographed photograph of Zalman Shneour, Saul Tchernichowsky, and Hayyim Nahman Bialik, the “three great figures in Hebrew Poetry.”27 It is aligned with the chart of the four rebbeim, so that the poet is standing closest to the tzaddik, a modern and refined version of the Hasidic visionary.28 The portrait of Shneur Zalman sets a pattern for much of the later Lubavitch visual history. The multiple portraits of Shneur Zalman, from inside Habad and out, were all attempts to coalesce Shneur Zalman’s legacy and became symbols of the rebbe’s martyrdom at the hands of the mitnagdim who denounced him to the government as a dangerous agitator. The portrait reminded contemporaries of the Eastern European Haskalah of Shneur Zalman’s prophesy that with emancipation Jews would lose their soul. Habad Hasidim clung to copies of their rebbe as a way to affirm their collective identity. Scholars of the emerging Jewish Studies field assimilated Shneur Zalman into narratives of Jewish revolutionaries and intellectuals. Schatz had laid claim to the portrait he had abandoned in its infancy, and Narkiss had advertised its cultural Zionist origins. Finally, after 1989, the portrait of Shneur Zalman became a symbol not only of his liberation from the Czarist prison system, but for the successful multi-generational Habad rebellion against Russian secular authority. The setting of a prison for the portrait became an apt symbol for future Habad rebbeim incarcerated under Russian authority, most notably the four prison terms served by the sixth rebbe of Lubavitch, Yosef Yitzchak and the death sentence he narrowly escaped in 1927.29 In his farewell message at the train station that would see him into exile, Yosef Yitzchak recalled his father’s struggle against Jewish education reform and bade his Hasidim to remember that “prisons and hard-labor camps are transient, whereas the Torah, its mitzvos, and the Jewish people, are eternal.”30 In the campaign for Russian Jewry in the 1980s, the whole of Habad history was recast as winning a war that resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the portraits stood as proof in the Habad collective memory of the historic role their rebbeim played in the struggle between Truth and Politics. The prison setting serves as a reference point to measure the distance traveled and to better appreciate the Redemption. To view Shneur Zalman’s portrait is to be reminded of the holiest Hasidic master under the control of a secular state. It is a condemnation of the state and an aide memoire that the subjugation of the body is not one of the spirit. There is no known portrait of the second rebbe, but the same pattern can be discerned in the attribution and reproduction history of the portrait of the third rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (1789–1866), known as the Zemach Zedek after the title of his halahic responsa. (fig. 2) Like the portrait of Shneur Zalman, the portrait of the Zemach Zedek has appeared in almost all subsequent retrospective monographs and in any compilation featuring the dynastic line of Habad leaders. The portrait was even reproduced as a New Year’s postcard by the Hebrew Publishing 25 Encyclopaedia Judaica ( Jerusalem and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972), 1: 5. 26 “Zalman (Zalkind) Shneour (Shneur),” Encyclopaedia Judaica, Jerusalem and New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972, vol. 14, 1428. 27 Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 14, 1428. 28 Compare with the illustrations on the entries on “Zalman Shnoeur” and “Shneur Zalman MiLiadi” in Encyclopedia Klalit Israel ( Tel Aviv, 1960), s.v. 29 See Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, The Heroic Struggle: The Arrest and Liberation of Rabbi Yosef Y. Schneersohn of Lubavitch in Soviet Russia (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1999); Rachel Altein and Israel Jacobson, Out of the Inferno: The Efforts that Led to the Rescue of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of Lubavitch from War Torn Europe in 1939–40 (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2002). 30 Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, A Prince in Prison: The Previous Rebbe’s Account of His Incarceration in Stalinist Russia in 1927, trans. Uri Kaploun (Brooklyn: Sichos in English, 1997), 35. on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture 61 Company in the 1920s, when mass-produced Rosh HaShanah postcards helped negotiate between their Jewish and American identities. 31 The Zemach Zedek’s refusal to be objectified by portraiture is well-known and the story surrounding the portrait supports this claim. The work is attributed to a gentile artist who discreetly joined the Zemach Zedek’s Sabbath congregation for direct observation.32 The artist ran back to his studio with his eyes almost closed in an effort to retain the Zemach Zedek’s image in his mind’s eye, where he “transcribed the impression of what he saw onto the canvas.”33 This technical point serves to delink the Zemach Zedek and the object of the portrait; it is an image of the rebbe that served the artist as a model and not the rebbe himself. In the case of the portrait of the Zemach Zedek, a physical painting accepted to be the original is in the private collection of Leib Ginzburg, an unaffiliated Habad descendant in Moscow.34 If the artist had indeed painted his subject from life, a couple of details appear to be amiss. The jacket has been folded over like that of a non-Jew, left over right, and the rebbe seems to be holding a secular book, opened and read from left to right. These details have compelled Habad to attribute the portrait to the ignorant eye of a non-Jew. These misrepresentations provided the impetus behind several revised portraits, where the properly-clad rebbe enjoys deliberation of a more suitable read. Of course, it is possible that this painting followed a print of a lost original, a common problem with nineteenth-century printing practices where the image is “flipped” in reproduction. As in the case of Shneur Zalman’s portrait, Boris Schatz contributed to the early history of the portrait of the Zemach Zedek. Schatz’s signature is clearly legible in an oval portrait, which appeared in the periodical Knesset Yisroel in 1888, a year and a half after it was first published by the printer N. Metz as an independent lithograph in Vilna in 1886, while Schatz was nineteen and still enrolled in the city’s yeshiva.35 (fig. 3) Schatz’s framing decisions avoid the left-right conflict altogether, presenting the Zemach Zedek only from the waist up, and avoiding any overlap of the rebbe’s jacket lapels. Despite the portrait’s origins, Habad Hasidim cling to this visage of their third rebbe, whose frail body intimates an ascetic life, adorned as a king, and situated as a Talmudic scholar. The distinct markings on the shelved books have been used to authenticate the portrait, with a comparative study of the inherited books found in the sixth rebbe’s 31 Ellen Smith, “Greetings from Faith: Early-TwentiethCentury American Jewish New Year Postcards,” David Morgan and Sally M. Promey, The Visual Culture of American Religions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 229–248. 32 I want to thank Rabbi Y. Friedman of Merkos Publications for showing me the poster detailing this account. Shalom Dovber Levine, “Toar p’nei Hod Admor HaZemach Zedek,” Brooklyn: Habad Library publication, poster. The infiltration by a non-Jew to the Zemach Zedek’s congregation is fraught with anxiety as maskilim (adherents of the Jewish Enlightenment in Russia) and Russian officials routinely disguised themselves to spy on the Zemach Zedek’s court. See Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, HaZemah Zedek u’Tenuat HaHaskalah, (Brooklyn, 1946), trans. as The Zemach Zedek and the Haskala Movement trans. Zalman Posner (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1962). 33 “Toar p’nei Hod Admor HaZemach Zedek.” The poster quotes Der Yiddishe Heim for the story behind the portrait. 34 “Toar p’nei Hod Admor HaZemach Zedek.” 35 “Toar p’nei Hod Admor HaZemach Zedek;” Yosef Leib Zasnitz, “Temunot Menachem Mendel,” Knesset Israel, 1888, 213–218. Fig. 2. Portrait of Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (1789–1866). Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Aguch Library 62 maya balakirsky katz library, which are now in the Aguch collection in Crown Heights. The two portraits of the first and third Habad leaders were published during the leadership of the fifth rebbe, Shalom Dov Ber Schneersohn (1860–1920). The Zemach Zedek’s portrait was published in 1886, followed by Shneur Zalman’s portrait in 1888. Succession after the Zemach Zedek’s reign was a matter of contention and several of his sons established courts outside of the city of Lubavitch, Russia. The movement split amongst the sons, with Shmuel staying in Lubavitch. The split occasioned the geographic distinction between “Habad” and “Lubavitch.” This factionalized community produced portraits of the early Habad masters who had challenged the Russian authorities and the mitnagdim, but ruled over a cohesive and united community. A similar “dis- covery” of a portrait of the second rebbe, Dov Ber of Lubavitch (1773–1827), would have exacerbated anxiety over factionalism because of the former rivalry between Dov Ber and his father’s top disciple, Aaron ben Moshe Halevi Horowitz (1766–1828).36 The portraits of Shneur Zalman and the Zemach Zedek evoked simpler times, when challenge to the rebbe’s authority was only external. But it was also a way for the different factions to lay their claims on being the legitimate inheritors of the authentic Habad movement. When Chaim Meir Heilman (1856–1930s), a Hasid of the Chabad-Kapust dynasty, argued for the authenticity of Shneur Zalman’s portrait, it was based on the testimony of his own rebbe.37 For Habad Hasidim in the late 1880s, the portraits of their first and third masters were a way to rally around figures everyone could agree upon. It was a bipartisanship effort to remember their roots and focus on the real enemy: the Russian authorities, the Eastern European Enlightenment, materialism, and the lapsed soul. The portraits came to symbolize an unwillingness to assimilate; they represented the fight against the mitnagdim and the adherents of the Enlightenment (maskilim).38 The adoption of Shneur Zalman by Schatz and the cultural Zionists during the reign of Shalom Dov Ber, an outspoken anti-Zionist, was a way to recruit Shneur Zalman’s support of Jewish settlement in Palestine into the Zionist cause. The fact that no photographs of the fourth rebbe are known to exist and only one of Shalom Dov Ber, who led the movement from 1882–1920 when photography was becoming popular, is instructive. While the prohibition against graven images is often cited behind the rejection of rebbe images in other Hasidic groups, this account fails to describe Habad visual history. During Shalom Dov Ber’s tenure, Hasidim were not wholly reluctant to collect family photographs. The first known photograph of the seventh rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is from 1904, when he was two years old. This is probably his pre-upsherin photograph, when a boy marks his entry into Torah education with his first haircut. In the photographic conventions of the period, the locks of hair and the 36 See Chaim Meir Heilman, Beit Rebbe, part II; Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 100–138. Heilman, 104–105. See Raphael Mahler, HaHasidut veHahaskalah (Merhavia: Sefriat Hapo’alim, 1961). Fig. 3. Boris Schatz. Portrait of Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (1789–1866). From Knesset Yisroel, 1888. Courtesy of Aguch Library 37 38 on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture naval outfit are carefully arranged and the child is formally posed before a façade of rococo tracery and moldings. A rebbe, on the other hand, is supposed to transcend a mere physical body, but the medium of photography insists on the physical. The fourth rebbe, Shmuel Schneersohn, suffered from a disfigurative disease and obesity, and a physical reproduction would have misrepresented the rebbe’s true self. Additionally, a photo-session was unbecoming of a rebbe. In the 1870s, the standard wet-collodion process required a plate to be sensitized and developed on location. Even after photography achieved great technological advances in the 1880s and 1890s, its reputation for procedure and process implicated its subject as primped, posed, and contained. The photograph was a physical humiliation for what was perceived to be an arrogant result. It was the great Jewish bankers of Warsaw and St. Petersburg, the counselors to the Czar, and even some of the more prestigious bigcity rabbis who sat for their own portraits.39 The one known surviving photograph of Shalom Dov Ber was taken in 1919 when Shalom Dov Ber considered leaving Russia, and needed a passport. (fig. 4) Shalom Dov Ber made arrangements to be photographed in his home study by a professional photographer, avoiding the risk of becoming just another subject of a commercial site. This photograph minimizes the performance of the body for the camera. In portrait photography of the early twentieth century, hands were as carefully posed as the head, and the worn posture of Shalom Dov Ber’s hands, the grey, lifeless light, and the elegant slouch of his back suggest the portrait was not posed. Artists used the scarce visual documentation of Shalom Dov Ber to create a visual identification between him and his successor. Four ink drawings were found in Yosef Yitzchak’s displaced library in Warsaw and returned to Habad headquarters in Brooklyn in 1978. Dated 1935 and signed by a female artist, Gertrud Zuckerkandl, the sixth rebbe is assimilated into the pose of the only known photograph of his father.40 (fig. 5) This composite rebbe dons a Hasidic fur hat and the traditional gartel, a belt that separates the rational from the instinctual. The tilted head and the languid pose of the 39 40 Cohen, Jewish Icons, 114–153. I am grateful to Aguch librarian Shalom Dovber Levine 63 Fig. 4. Photograph of Shalom Dov Ber (1860–1920). 1919. Courtesy of Aguch Library hands are reminiscent of the Shalom Dov Ber, while the red hair, arched eyebrows, and heavyset body type point to the sixth. This composite portrait, or consciously ambiguous portrait, follows the trend initiated by the portrait of Shneur Zalman. Facial characteristics are distinct, but they meld into the resemblance of future generations. The result is a vaguely familiar rebbe, not a direct transcription, but somehow intuitive. Viewers approach the sketches in terms of memories that they evoke. In this way the legitimacy of the successor is visually reinforced. Yosef Yitzchak and the Uses of Photography Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth rebbe of Lubavitch, was the first Habad leader to regularly pose before the camera. Yosef Yitzchak led the way in creating a heroic visual model of the Habad rebbe, understanding the need to provide his Hasidim with visual surrogates for the political and for sharing this image with me. 64 maya balakirsky katz Fig. 5. Gertrud Zuckerkandl, untitled, 1935. Watercolor and ink on paper. Courtesy of Aguch Library cultural heroes that adorned Soviet public spaces. With a flair for storytelling, Yosef Yitzchak applied himself to prodigious record-keeping in an effort to provide the definitive Habad story in the pre1950 era.41 Yosef Yitzchak’s use of the rebbe portrait modernized the Hasidic master-disciple relationship while reinforcing the traditional notion of inherited authority and power. In the summer of 1933, Hasidim in Russia began sending their portraits to Yosef Yitzchak, who was living in exile after narrowly escaping a death sentence in 1927.42 Yosef Yitzchak wrote back to his Hasidim from Riga, Latvia: Yosef Yitzchak’s letter encouraging the exchange of photographs is noteworthy in light of the persecution his Hasidim were suffering in Russia, where identifying photographs were potentially dangerous. Since its inception, photography has played a role in establishing the parameters of family, community, and nation through the participation, sharing, and collecting of photographs.44 Yosef For example, see Yosef Yitzchak, Lubavitcher Rabbi’s Memoirs: A History of the Origins of Chasidism (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 1998). 42 For Yosef Yitzchak’s references to photographs that had been sent to him, see Igrot Kodesh . . . Admor R. Yosef Yitzchak, 2:633; 4:800; 10:3743; 11:4341. For Yosef Yitzchak’s requests for individual and class photographs, including specific directions to heighten recognition, see 8:2313, 2314; 11:3984; 13:4744. Of interest is Yosef Yitzchak’s 1944 request for individual photographs at his own cost, ibid., 11: 4175; Yosef Yitzchak refers to portraits that he received of the “admorim,” i.e., portraits of great rabbis. He requests larger formats of these portraits. On the collection and distribution of photographs, see 10:3570; 13:4922. 43 Yosef Yitzchak, Igrot Kodesh . . . Admor R. Yosef Yitzchak, 2:633. 44 Roland Barthes calls amateur photography the “social protocol of integration.” See Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 7, 9–10. Walter Benjamin asserts that photography’s inescapable reference to the real world moves its controversial status out of the realm of aesthetics into that of social functions. Walter Benjamin, “Short History of Photography,” in Alan Trachtenberg, ed., Classic Essays on Photography (New Haven: Leete’s Island Books, 1980), 211. 41 When I read your names I envision your faces with great pleasure. I find happiness in seeing your pictures because my love for you is unquenchable. God should grant us blessing that I should see you soon in health and happiness. I busy myself with healing . . .43 on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture Yitzchak needed to reestablish his social position in exile and used his photograph collection to maintain his role from afar. In 1936, on the sixth anniversary of Yosef Yitzchak’s liberation from a fourteen-day prison term, HaTamim published a photograph of Yosef Yitzchak for his Hasidim in the United States, Israel, South Africa, and Australia. (fig. 6) The editors of HaTamim penned the following head note: To fulfill the desires and requests of our pure and noteworthy friends who live in faraway lands across the seas and who do not have the wherewithal to come and bask in the presence of the holiness ( pnei kodesh) of the master (admor), we have included a picture for their use.45 Although not the earliest photograph of Yosef Yitzchak available today, this was the first published photograph. For many of Yosef Yitzchak’s followers, it was the first time they ever saw an image of their rebbe. A passionate and devoted bibliophile, Yosef Yitzchak appears alone behind his consciously disorganized desk in his cabinet de 65 travail. This space houses more than just his beloved books; it includes furnishings, desk gadgets, and objets d’art. While an explication of the guiding principles behind Yosef Yitzchak’s acquisition of books and objects remains to be written, what does emerge is a deeply subjective and personal collection. Like the princely studiolos of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the cabinet de travail was a private space that displayed the collector’s position and power through the control of public access.46 In the photograph, Yosef Yitzchak is in his personal library, sometimes captioned “the heichal,” a term that usually refers to a sanctuary, and sometimes identified as “Gan Eden HaTachton,” or “the lower paradise.” He holds a cigarette in his right hand as he contemplates the twin duties set before him—the sacred text and the press he uses to seal his letters to his Hasidim and to politicians on their behalf. Yosef Yitzchak’s desk portrait appears naturalistic, yet the composition is highly constructed. The cigarette connotes deep concentration and the Hasidic absorption in sacred text. In this context Fig. 6. Photograph of Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn at his desk. HaTamim, 1936. Courtesy of Kehot Publication Society 45 Yosef Yitzchak, HaTamim, vol. 1, 7. This publication was micro-managed by Yosef Yitzchak himself, so it is impossible to distinguish between Yosef Yitzchak and his editors. 46 Giuseppe Olmi, “Science-Honour-Metaphor: Italian Cabinets of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Olive Impey and Arthur MacGregor, The Origins of the Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). See also Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 66 maya balakirsky katz the cigarette also offers a public view of a private habit in an exclusive space of scholarly authorship and social authority.47 The brightness of the photograph has been calibrated to give as much definition to Yosef Yitzchak’s eyes as possible, resulting in a loss of definition of the open book before him. The inability to identify the book in the rebbe’s possession creates an aura of inaccessibility and reinforces the power of the subject over his space, library, and viewer. This portrait presents the exiled rebbe from a position of power on the anniversary of his liberation from prison. The complex codes of meaning at play behind Yosef Yitzchak’s gaze, gestures, garb, and surrounding objects, as well as the coded lighting that alternates between sharp and soft focuses, encourage the viewer to contemplate the subject with the same Romantic concentration the rebbe himself displays in the portrait. The cabinet de travail is a Renaissance miseen-scene, and became one of the most recognized post-Enlightenment portrait compositions. Its usage in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographs indicates the trend in photography to imitate portraits in oil.48 Yosef Yitzchak chose a pose that was born of painting, a highly privileged medium that projects status and power on the subject. The motif circulated in a variety of ways throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century.49 At the beginning of the twentieth century the motif of the scholar’s den spawned several photographic albums of cultural and political figures exclusively in their work cabinets. The French photographer Dornac recorded many famous cultural personalities in their private studios—among them Émile Zola, Auguste Rodin, writer Pierre Loti, literary critic Jules Lemaître, and actress Sarah Bernhardt—for the photographic album Nos Contemporaines chez eux.50 (fig. 7) From the beginning of the twentieth century through 1919, photographer Chusseau Flaviens returned to some of the historical resonances of the cabinet as a site for political power and photographed kings and dignitaries sitting at their desks. Chusseau Flaviens immortalized the King of Portugal, the King of Serbia, and the King of Yugoslavia as commanders of their kingdom from the intellectual and exclusive space of their home libraries.51 This tenacious motif succeeded in attracting politicians, intellectuals, and celebrities through the early 1920s, but a decade later, artists in the Soviet Union were consciously pushing out images of class categories.52 Portraits of Lenin began to include throngs of “masses” and Lenin himself occasionally acquired a proletarian cap. Images of Stalin depicted the leader among the people, marching, saluting, and gazing directly at the viewer. Yosef Yitzchak actually chose a passé pose, a throwback to a by-gone era, when political leaders reflected dynastic power and a scholar could still be an aristocrat. Yosef Yitzchak, resplendent in his patrician den of creativity, offered a counter-narrative to the rival attraction of communism. The impeding European threat also meant a recasting of the rebbe image who could no longer project the wholly spiritual tzaddik. Yosef Yitzchak incorporated elements from both the political leader and the religious scholar, inscribing traditionalism with a solid, old motif that was being replaced by modern and class-ambiguous pictures. The rebbe in his cabinet was not a unique portrait, but the most recurring motif in Yosef Yitzchak’s image bank. In all of Yosef Yitzchak’s residences, the composition For an exploration of the cigarette in avant-garde art at the turn of the nineteenth century, see Patricia G. Berman, “Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait with Cigarette: Smoking and the Bohemian persona,” The Art Bulletin 75 (December 1993), 627–646. 48 See Gisèle Freund, Photography and Society (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980), 57–61. Portraits of famous scholars and writers that appeared in photographic albums such as the popular Galerie contemporaine (1876–1884) often included a consciously disorganized desk, an ornate upholstered chair, and a posed hand gesture. For two examples of rabbi portraits preceding the Lubavitcher examples that use the same mise en scene, see Vivian Mann and Norman Kleeblatt, Treasures of The Jewish Museum (New York: Universe Books, 1986), 124–5. 49 For the ways that the studio portrait created the public persona of Émile Zola, see Maya Balakirsky-Katz, “Painting vs. Caricature: ‘footnotes’ on Manet’s Zola and Zola’s Manet,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 34 (2006): 323–337. 50 Dornac, Nos contemporains chez eux, 1887–1917, Paris. 51 George Eastman House, Still Photograph Archive, Catalogued 12/88, JBM; 6/87, JBB. Compare to a turn of the century portrait of Theodor Herzl in his “heder avodato” (a literal translation of “cabinet de travail”). Shlomo Nakdimon, HaBank: Yezirato shel Benyamin Ze’ev Hertzl. Sipuro shel Ozar Hetyashvut Hayehudim (Israel: Milo Publishing House, 2003), 119. 52 Victoria E. Bonnell, Iconography of Power: Soviet Political Posters under Lenin and Stalin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 136–185. American artists in the 1930s, especially Jewish photographers, were producing socialist themes in the post-Depression era as well. 47 on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture 67 Fig. 7. Dornac. Photograph of Émile Zola. Courtesy of Nos Contemporaines chez eux, 1887–1917, Paris Fig. 8. Photograph of Yosef Yitzchak at his Desk, early 1940s. Courtesy of Aguch Library Yosef Yitzchak returned to again and again, is the rebbe in his cabinet de travail.53 The props in Yosef Yitzchak’s cabinet are always of interest, attesting to his dual role as Jewish scholar and man of the world. In another desk pose at “770” Yosef Yitzchak is distracted from his letter-writing campaign before The room at “770” that Yosef Yitzchak used as his personal study, was often referred to by the French term “cabinet.” See, for instance, Beit Hayenu 770 (Brooklyn: Heichal Menachem, 2006), 171. 53 68 maya balakirsky katz a pen-and-mechanical-clock combo and a bell to summon his secretaries. As rebbe, and intellectual and spiritual leader of his community, it would be appropriate that he be portrayed in a manner that was consistent with the portrayal of the great thinkers of his day. But, in addition to his role as communal leader, he was also an embattled and exiled Jew, banished for his beliefs. When Yosef Yitzchak routinely authorized a photograph of himself in his cabinet, he appropriated a universally recognized image of princely power and scholarly authority (fig. 8). Soon after the first publication of Yosef Yitzchak’s portrait at his desk, photographs were released to his Hasidim in a slow, but steady stream. Yosef Yitzchak’s willingness to disseminate his portrait to his Hasidim was consistent with the increasing popularity of rebbe photographs, which were justified by the biblical verse “And your eyes shall behold your teachers” (Isaiah 30:20).54 The photograph was meant to bridge the gap between the rebbe at home and his Hasidim abroad.55 In the mid-1930s, Yosef Yitzchak presented his grandson Barry Gourary (1923–2005) with an expensive Leica camera with which Barry took intimate photographs of his grandfather. Yosef Yitzchak was his grandson’s favorite subject, and Barry captured unusual shots of his grandfather, at home, laughing, and in his Sabbath regalia. Yosef Yitzchak’s willingness to serve as subject is symbolically charged, featuring in Barry’s claims for inheritance. As the only grandson, Barry claimed ownership of several books in the Aguch collection of the Habad library, a collection built from the personal library of Yosef Yitzchak. When Newsday ran Barry’s side of the story in May 1988, the newspaper cover was a photograph of Barry embracing one of the most recognizable and reproduced photographs of his grandfather, the sixth rebbe, as a prop.56 (fig. 9) Yosef Yitzchak used the portrait photograph to reinforce the power structure and the personal bonds between master and disciple. Those who collected his portrait were largely his Hasidim, many of whom never knew him personally. As a collector himself, the rebbe navigated the role of absent rebbe by collecting photographs of Hasidim who could not be at his side while he traveled and when he was in exile. In so doing, Yosef Yitzchak was able to hold virtual court with his extended family album. As a subject of photography, he was able to carefully craft the rebbe that he wanted his Hasidim to have, by contextualing his portraits in the tradition of the scholar ensconced in his cabinet. The cabinet image was a pose that he and his Hasidim were likely familiar with, given its popularity, and it permitted him to assimilate his role vis-à-vis his Hasidim into the broader context of inherited authority. And although mortal danger hovered over Yosef Yitzchak’s distribution policies, he realized that if he could not lead his flock by direct and personal model, he would have to lead through virtual example. While Yosef Yitzchak provided his Hasidim with a magnetic image of a heroic rebbe, his son-in-law Menachem Mendel Schneerson gave his Hasidim visual culture. 54 Gedaliah Oberlander, “Temunot v’diuknei tzadikim b’halakhah u’beminhagai Israel” in Heichal Habesht (Brooklyn: Heichal Menachem, 2006), 55–74. 55 Oberlander, 69. 56 Newsday, May 16, 1988. 57 For this section, I have to acknowledge my debt to my Lubavitch students at Touro College and Machon L’Parnassa in New York, and Bais Chaya Mushka in Baltimore, MD, who have shared with me their photographs, scrapbooks, memories, and stories of “the Rebbe.” The Rebbe as Pop-Icon During his reign as the last Habad rebbe from 1950–1994, Menachem Mendel Schneerson was considered one of the most charismatic and influential religious leaders in American Jewish life.57 Posthumously, Schneerson is arguably the most visible and publicly recognized rebbe of the twentyfirst century. While many factors contributed to his unprecedented popularity and appeal, to a certain degree Habad’s visual program transformed Schneerson from a beloved scion of the Habad dynasty to Melekh HaMashiach, the King Messiah. It is with Schneerson’s visual program that Habad successfully transformed itself into a community of loyal disciples sans rebbe. Upon Yosef Yitzchak’s death in 1950, Menachem Mendel Schneerson immediately tied his leadership to that of his father-in-law with the help of the visual legacy Yosef Yitzchak left behind. Habad historian Avrum Ehrlich has shown that the succession of Schneerson in 1950–51 was not on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture Fig. 9. Front Cover of Newsday, May 16, 1988. Courtesy of Newsday Photo/Ozier Muhammad the smooth transition Habad has claimed and that he actively campaigned for favor over Yosef Yitzchak’s eldest son-in-law, Shmaryahu Gourary.58 Throughout the year following Yosef Yitzchak’s death, Schneerson spoke of the power of the image of his predecessor. He instructed that gazing upon the rebbe’s countenance reinforced the rebbe/Hasid relationship and directed the viewer to the right path.59 During his public speeches on the holidays of Lag B’Omer, Pesach Sheini, and again on Shavuot of 1950, Schneerson tutored his Hasidim to take the time to visualize his father-in-law’s face, either through memory or with the aid of a “picture.”60 He repeated the injunction to study Avrum M. Ehrlich, Leadership in the Habad Movement: A Critical Evaluation of Habad Leadership, History, and Succession (Brooklyn: Aronson, 2000), 307–405. Compare to Fishkoff, 73. 59 Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Eliezer Zaklikofsky, Mekadesh Yisrael: Talks and Images at Wedding Celebrations (1943–1963) (Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, 2000), 19. 60 Ibid., 17. 58 69 the image of Yosef Yitzchak at several public occasions and in personal letters. “Those who merited to see the rebbe, my father-in-law, can surely visualize the image of his face . . . even those who did not merit to see him can do so by looking at a picture. . . . And this requires only our will to do so.”61 In this way, Schneerson used the portrait photograph to affirm the tzaddik’s transcendence over time, a position that contributed to the collection and distribution of Schneerson’s portrait after his death in 1994. Like Yosef Yitzchak, Schneerson allowed the substitution of his photograph for his own presence at select events. Initially, Schneerson regulated the rights to his image and Hasidim circulated only three photographs of their leader.62 After 1960, when Schneerson no longer personally officiated at weddings, exceptions were made for couples who committed to serve as Schneerson’s emissaries in far-flung corners of the world. These wedding photographs, reproduced in portable sizes, traveled with the young couple to their new home. In-house videographers of Habad, taped Schneerson’s farbrengens, public gatherings where the rebbe delivered his teachings. Young families sent to build Habad communities around the globe were able to stay in touch with Schneerson and his Brooklyn court via satellite. These recorded farbrengens and public talks are still televised to large audiences on significant dates on the Habad calendar. The late 1960s mark the beginning of the picture explosion within Habad, when motion and still photography became a central component of Schneerson’s leadership. Habad followers explain Schneerson’s acceptance of his loyal paparazzi as reluctant, as well as a function of his compassion in regards to the livelihood and spiritual wellbeing of the photographers. In 1969, Yitzchak Berez, a photographer of Israeli political leaders, came to “770” to photograph Schneerson. He records his tenure as “the rebbe’s photographer” as coinciding with his religious awakening.63 In 1971, Levi Yitzchak Freidin asked for permission to photograph Schneerson as a matter of livelihood Ibid., 19. “The Lubavitchers,” Time Magazine, March 25, 1957. Time was the first mainstream publication to print any photographs of Schneerson. 63 Yitzchak Berez, “The Rebbe’s Photographer,” Habad Magazine, Aug. 28, 1996, 14–15. 61 62 70 maya balakirsky katz and to spread traditional Jewish observance in Israel. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of images were taken of Schneerson’s public life in Brooklyn. Some Hasidim have memorized every known photograph as a matter of Hasidic devotion, while others recognize the style of the photographer or can discern from the subject of the photograph the factual details of the scene. Freidin held an enviable position in relation to Schneerson and enjoyed certain access privileges.64 One enters Freidin’s photographs from a pedestrian vantage point, bringing Schneerson within arm’s reach. These photographs are distinguished by their acute precision, an unfaltering sense of judicious objectivity, and a conscious absence of pictorial rhetoric. Freidin’s photographs claim to present their subject without mediation. Whether or not Schneerson knew he was playing to the camera, he rarely took off his coat and hat or donned his glasses. Several years later, Yisroel Zev Goldshmidt joined Freidin with an even more powerful zoom lens, producing intimate images from the crowd. With competition, more fanciful compositions were engineered: extreme high and low angles, the use of filters, and experiments with shutter speeds in an effort to capture Schneerson’s unique charisma. One of the most famous images is Shimon Roumani’s “Baby Photo,” in which Schneerson is depicted waving to an audience at a Lag B’Omer parade. (fig. 10) The photo has been laminated on wooden plaques, animated with a moving hand, and cropped for backboards of kitchen clocks. The United States government has used the photograph to mint a congressional medal in honor of Schneerson’s “outstanding and lasting contributions toward improvements in world education, morality, and acts of charity.”65 Emerging from the shadows in the crevices of Schneerson’s hand is the pudgy face of a baby. According to one popular explication, a barren woman had just approached Schneerson for the blessing of fertility.66 Alternatively, Schneerson’s wave is cited as a salute with the future of humanity cradled in the palm of his hand. See WLCC video recorded September 25, 1981. Available on-line at http://www.770live.com/ 65 See speech by George W. Bush: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040402–16.html 64 Fig. 10. Shimon Roumani. Photograph of Menachem Mendel Schneerson. May 1987 Schneerson did not share his predecessor’s preference for the aristoratic pose inherited from European portrait painting or the attention to the formal qualities of portrait photography. Schneerson preferred a more documentary legacy, going about his day as religious and political leader, rather than alluding to it through a highly symbolic composition. The cabinet de travail was replaced with more social settings; the typical photograph shows Schneerson in the communal sections of “770,” surrounded by his Hasidim, actively performing the rituals of civic and religious duties: praying, waving, greeting, listening, and speaking. Mal Warshaw joined Berez, Freidin, and Goldshmidt in the mid-1970s and added Schneerson to a photo gallery that would eventually consist of subjects such as Coretta Scott King, the World Trade Center, and Zero Mostel. Warshaw’s intimate photographs of Schneerson and his Hasidim on Eastern For miraculous conception stories attributed to Schneerson, see Chaim Dalfin, Inspirational Stories and Anecdotes (Brooklyn: Otsar Lifrei Lubavitch, 1999). 66 on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture 71 Fig. 11. Fridrich Vishinsky. Photograph of Menachem Mendel Schneerson Parkway were exhibited a few blocks away at the Brooklyn Museum in 1976. In the museum’s first one-man photographic show, Warshaw sought what he calls Habad’s “shifting time frames” between eighteenth century appearances and the urban New York context.67 From 1981 until the last day of Schneerson’s life, Fridrich Vishinsky was one of Schneerson’s most loyal photographers. Vishinsky began to sign and date his photographs. In a Vishinsky photograph of Schneerson distributing dollar bills to visitors, the non-descript background and stark contrast of the black jacket with the white dollar bill, begs a visual correspondence between the mass-produced portrait of the father of our country, George Washington, and Schneerson.68 (fig. 11) Indeed, in the years of Schneerson’s dollar campaign, when Schneerson gave out dollars to long lines of admirers, sideshow entrepreneurs laminated personal photographs over the gifted dollar bill.69 Vishinsky’s most reproduced portraits mimic the older processes of gilded daguerreotypes or salt prints with their antiquated chestnut tints to subdue what otherwise would appear to be glossy celebrity pics. In the early 1970s, college campus centers known as “Habad houses” presented themselves as credible alternatives to Eastern religions, drug culture, and radical politics, with portraits of Schneerson playing the role of post-national, fun-loving, intellectual and spiritual guide. In the mid-1970s mobile outreach centers, or “mitzvah tanks,” hit the streets in Los Angeles and New York. U-haul trucks were equipped with loud-speakers blaring Habad songs and adorned with banners proclaiming “Tefilin [phylacteries] on Board” and “Mitzvot on the Spot for People on the Go.” “The Rebbe had sent his tanks into the battle for the soul of the American Jew,” and on the sides of the tanks Schneerson’s portrait also advertised the commander-in-chief.70 When Schneerson interpreted the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the American war with Iraq in 1990–1991 as signs For the museum catalog that accompanied that exhibit see Mal Warshaw, Tradition: Orthodox Jewish Life in America (New York: Schocken Books, 1976). Recently there has been an interest in the visual juxtaposition of Habad Hasidim in traditional garb in the rural Postville, Iowa. See The Jewish Identity Project: New American Photography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005); Stephen G. Bloom, Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America (New York: Harcourt, 2000). Vishinsky’s photograph was published as a full-page ad in The New York Times on the occasion of “The Rebbe’s Centennial,” April 18, 2002. 69 Schneerson’s dollar campaign aimed to promote charity. 70 http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/timeline.asp?AID=62178. See Carolyn Drake’s snow speckled portrait of Schneerson from the side of one mitzvah tank in Carolyn Drake “A Faith Grows in Brooklyn,” National Geographic, February 2006. 67 68 72 maya balakirsky katz that the Messianic era had finally arrived, his followers visually positioned Schneerson as the long-awaited Messiah. Schneerson’s choice of words recalls his 1950 speeches exhorting his Hasidim to visualize Yosef Yitzchak: In the last three years of his life, Schneerson’s Hasidim began an unprecedented public campaign in an effort to compel God to anoint their rebbe as the Messiah. The use of mass culture and counterculture to spread his image was out of step with his Hasidic peers, and not quite in the tradition of Yosef Yitzchak, but it was very much in step with American media culture. There is something distinctly American about the lines of people that would crowd the space in which Schneerson would make his appearances, the flash of cameras that recorded the fans at the doorstep of “770,” and the trinkets, postcards and posters available at the end of the tour on Eastern Parkway. Habad has placed its unique style of the menorah alongside the Christmas tree, co-opting a Jewish American symbol into the Habad brand. Their gigantic public menorah has been juxtaposed with the White House, in a claim of cultural equivalence. And, the one-dollar bill, as American a symbol as possible, has become inextricably linked with the man who passed it out.72 When Schneerson was hospitalized in June 1994, the international Habad community grieved publicly. New photographs of Schneerson began to be considered inappropriate, although several photographs were still published. A month later with the death of their great leader, the number of life drawings, painting, photographs, and film stills appeared to be set. However, with an increasing pace since Schneerson’s death there has been a resurgence of interest in the existing image bank in Habad life. By the early 1990s Habad had one of the strongest Jewish web presences, extending its Brooklyn borders with an ever growing online community. Images of Schneerson circulate amongst Habad devotees, publicists, and drop-outs, often reinvigorated or reinvested along party lines. Schneerson appears on yellow blimps, coins, cuff links, watches, clocks, kippot, tzedakkah boxes, and decorative plates. (fig. 12) Trading cards bearing portraits of Schneerson and other Habad rebbeim are given as prizes in schools and children receive special albums designed for storing their rebbe photo-gallery. Schneerson is worn on the body: in jackets, wallets, key chains, and amulets. At Habad weddings, Schneerson’s robe is worn by the groom and Schneerson’s wife’s handkerchief adorns the bride. Habad faithful wear Schneerson’s particular style of snap-brim hat, short-sleeved Arrow shirts, and sheer argyle socks. Schneerson also appears in more conspicuous sites, such as the 2005–2007 $20,000 a month billboard on New York City’s West Side Highway paid for by Jewish Women United for the Redemption. (fig. 13) Schneerson’s name does not appear anywhere on the billboard; recognition is assumed. The photograph on the billboard is a stock-portrait super-imposed on a non-descript white background. Its meaning derives from the heraldic text: “Moshiach is here. Just add in goodness and kindness.”73 What began as an extension of Yosef Yitzchak’s use of the photograph to stay connected with his Hasidim mutated into an entirely new dynamic by the end of Schneerson’s life. This Americanized rebbe was able to extend his reach well beyond the traditional bounds of Hasidic leaders by enlisting the photograph’s democratic form to reach a growing popular base. Instead of the photograph aiding the rebbe/Hasid relationship, it had largely supplanted it. Many of Schneerson’s far-flung Hasidim knew Schneerson only virtually. Perhaps this was a function of Schneerson’s enormous success; he 71 And He Will Redeem Us: Moshiach in Our Time (Brooklyn: Mendelsohn Press, 1994); quoted as Shabbos Vayeitzei 5752 1992, ch. 18. Available online at http://www.moshiach.net/ blind/ahwru/chap_1–2.htm; 72 See cover of Habad Magazine, November 1994, 1:7. See “. . . And There Was Light: A Photographic Chronicle of the Public Chanukah Menorah Celebrations Sponsored by Chabad-Lubavitch Around the World (Brooklyn: Merkos l’Inyonei Chinuch, 1987). This album argues that “the public menorahs symbolize this [American] spirit of liberty and have thus won a place not only in Jewish life but also in the life of the American people.” 73 For a brief overview of the ways in which Habad has kept the rebbe “alive” through the use of video, see Jeffrey Shandler, “The Virtual Rebbe,” Entertaining America: Jews, Movies, and Broadcasting (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 264–267. One should understand, see and sense, in the literal sense in this materialistic world, the true and complete Redemption in all actuality, and one should study the teachings of Moshiach in a way that he can actually visualize it . . . All we need to do is to open our eyes and see him.71 on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture Fig. 12. Rebbe Memorabilia and Keychain Stand. Crown Heights, 2006. Photography by the author. Fig. 13. Billboard paid for by Jewish Women United for the Redemption. New York City’s West Side Highway, 2005–present. 73 74 maya balakirsky katz had followers on every continent. But the effect was that his Hasidim were largely followers of a mass-produced rebbe, a rebbe who was framed by a group of professional photographers. For Hasidim versed in relating to their leader through the mediums of still and motion photography, Schneerson continues to assert authority from the grave.74 The self-generated publicity as well as the sincere interest of the world press motivates Habad emissaries working for the Redemption. Habad publications claim that Schneerson approved every image before publication, including illustrations in children’s journals.75 However, not all media was as tightly controlled as Schneerson and his administrators would have wanted. Even when Schneerson announced that specific events were to be unadulterated by recording of any sort, Hasidim nonetheless stuck contraband cameras into key holes and open windows, desperate to capture their rebbe for future reference. A controversy over the photographs of Schneerson’s final years arose. Some preferred the earlier photo gallery of a powerful leader, while others saw Schneerson’s weakened physical state as emblematic of his role as a suffering servant. In one such photograph, the autonomous space Schneerson typically occupies is infringed upon by the succession of frames, the faux wood panels and low-drop ceiling, the drawn curtain, the cage-like booth viewed from the outside, and the surrounding crowd of much younger administrators. (fig. 14) Schneerson floats out of reach, separated by the defined space in which he sits and the undefined space between his frame of reference and ours. The curtain that threatens to conceal Schneerson should he begin to tremble or loll adds to the human pathos of the photograph and reveals Schneerson as he never should have been. The existence and mass production of photographs often required some editing. Often the photo-editing was fairly innocuous, lending over- used portraits a far more self-conscious dramatic appeal. Other photographs of Schneerson in France and Germany in the late 1920s and the 1930s are difficult to come by, possibly because Schneerson did not look like a rebbe. Shimon Deutsch, in his controversial biography of Schneerson’s early years, published a photograph of Schneerson in 1928 at the University of Berlin and his passport picture without the traditional head covering.76 These originals were never previously published by Habad and the missing head coverings have been reinstated in current publications. In published photographs of Schneerson’s wife and her sisters, necklines are filled in and knees are covered.77 The editing of Schneerson’s family photographs is politically charged, authenticating the dynastic legitimacy of Schneerson with a highly edited family history. While the public display of women is highly unusual, portraits of Schneerson’s mother have been favored over portraits of Schneerson’s wife. Chaya Mushka’s chic style, frank femininity, and barrenness may have made her an inappropriate subject for visual veneration, especially in conjunction with portraits of her husband. Portraits of Schneerson are often flanked by his mother, Chana (Yanovski) Schneerson (1880–1964), and his father, Levi Yitzchak Schneerson (1878–1944) in a visual genealogical reference that frames Schneerson as a direct descendant of Shneur Zalman, rather than an heir only through his marriage to Chaya Mushka. In a community that voraciously collects and distributes objects no matter how mundane for their connection to Schneerson, photographs of Schneerson’s brother Yisroel Aryeh Leib have found no place in Habad visual history. Yisroel Aryeh Leib left Habad and religious life altogether. Settling down in London as “Marc Gourary” to work on a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Liverpool, his success in the sciences could in no way be integrated into the worldly Habad mold. Images of Yosef Yitzchak with his future sonin-law bespeak an early favoritism on the part of Yosef Yitzchak and a choseness on the part of 74 One literal example of this is the practice of sending inquiries to the gravesite, where secretaries randomly open a tome of Schneerson’s collected works for answers. 75 See, for example, Esther Altman, “Michel Schwartz with the Rebbe”, L’Chaim, October 23, 1992. The first Israeli Lubavitch magazine, K’far Habad, printed a weekly portrait of the rebbe. For a survey of Habad institutions and Schneerson’s administration of them, including those institutions concerned with public relations and media, see Ehrlich, Leadership in the Habad Movement. 76 Deutsch, Larger than Life, 204–205. 77 Ibid., 273, 276–7. Controlling the Image on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture 75 Fig. 14. Eli Y. Photograph of the Rebbe, 1994. Courtesy of Aguch Library Schneerson. These photographs are sought after: they include the oft-reproduced 1935 photograph of the two arm-in-arms in what is usually captioned “Perchtoldsderf, Austria” and the egalitarian chess game on Christmas Eve.78 The desire to own a visual partnering between Yosef Yitzchak and Schneerson has created an art market for vivid paintings. British artist Raphael Nouril painted the most popular version of the famous “Engagement Photograph” of Yosef Yitzchak with his future sonin-law in the bifurcated light of a classical style portrait. When the artist presented the painting to Schneerson in 1988, Schneerson remarked that the painting was “better than the original.”79 The release of images of Yosef Yitzchak with his other son-in-law, Shmaryahu Gourary, is controlled and the few images that circulate are often edited. Yosef Yitzchak traveled to Palestine and the United States in 1929–1930 with his eldest son-in-law Shmaryahu Gourary (1898–1989). Though the trip was recorded with both still and live action film, there are few visual records from this period and the original film footage of the tour was not released from Yosef Yitzchak’s per- sonal collection until the 1990s.80 The 1929 film footage includes close-ups of Gourary at Yosef Yitzchak’s side alongside long shots of the Statue of Liberty and the eager crowds who came to pay tribute to Yosef Yitzchak.81 The highly selective release of images from Yosef Yitzchak’s 1929 trip may have been motivated by the fact that the symbolic force of the visual accounts did not coincide with the transfer of leadership. In a photograph of Yosef Yitzchak leaning on a cane and supported by his two sons-in-law, Gourary is often missing.82 By the mid-1980s, the official Habad organization was not the sole provider of images of Schneerson and the Habad dynasty. In trying to own a single portrait of Schneerson and then “reaching out” to world Jewry through it, Habad has lost their monopoly over the image. A whole art industry has sprung up to paint, photo-montage, and animate the dynastic line of rebbeim into events and places they have never been, framing Schneerson as the culmination of the six preceding Habad generations by referencing images already in circulation. Carl Braude, who has used identical methods for many of the Hasidic sects The attribution of this photograph to Christmas Eve stems from the tradition to refrain from Torah study on Christmas Eve in memoriam to Christian violence against Jews. 79 The subscription card for this print is reprinted in Deutsch, Larger than Life, fig. XI. 7, 203. Deutsch argues that the young man standing next to the seated Yosef Yitzchak is not Schneerson, although his analysis does not leave this author convinced. 80 For a videotape that incorporates much of the 1929 footage, see Shimon Shaul Deutsch, Habad in America (1929–1940), vol. 1, VHS (Brooklyn: Hasidic Historical Productions, 1995). Also see Yeshiva University archives, “Habad Poster collection, 1929–1973.” 81 For comments by Yosef Yitzchak on America, see Yosef Yitzchak, Likkutei Dibburim, vol. 2, Brooklyn: Kehot Publication Society, talk given on Simchat Torah 1929, 286. 82 The cane was part of the rebbe’s dress code. It was linked to Moses’s staff and photographs reveal that even the youngest rebbeim used them in public. 78 76 maya balakirsky katz after his initial success with Habad, depicts Schneerson communing with Shneur Zalman or Yosef Yitzchak. He also paints the first, third, fifth, and sixth Habad leaders watching the two year old Schneerson leading the way down a leafy forest path. Baruch Nachshon gave Schneerson wings and Ari Harpaz animated Schneerson’s beard with the risen dead in the era of the Messiah. When a car in Schneerson’s entourage hit and killed a black child and riots erupted for three days in 1991, portraits of Schneerson were pulled from their original contexts by black rioters and juxtaposed with other polemical images and text. Anna Deavere Smith wrote and performed a one-woman play, “Fires in the Mirror,” about the racial tensions in Crown Heights after the riots.83 While Smith plays Hasidic men and woman, black activists and neighbors, Schneerson, who was criticized for not taking a more public role in the events, appears only as a portrait, a prop in her one-woman play on racial politics, ethnic identity, and multiculturalism. An acknowledgement of Schneerson’s image transfer into the world of popular entertainment is Al Hirschfeld’s 2002 caricature of “The Rebbe Schneerson.” (fig. 15) Hirschfeld, the acclaimed “Line King” of the entertainment industry, issued a series of 770 caricatures from a commissioned original “to spread the rebbe’s image and message.”84 With the witticism one expects of Hirschfeld, each print sells for $1,800, a product of the numerical equivalent for “chai,” life. The sliced arcs of the rebbe’s eyes, pushed closed by the yeast of his smiling cheeks describe a presentness that is at once immediate and atemporal. Hirschfeld’s rebbe exudes dough-boy glee, but the elegant posture of his hand on the Torah crown awards this rebbe with a custom-made “Tony” for a great show.85 R.B. Kitaj’s 2005 show at the Marlborough Gallery, “How to Reach 72 in a Jewish Art,” includes many Lubavitch references, including his 2003 painting Los Angeles No. 26 (Nose Kiss). (fig. 16) The male angel is a hybrid of a self-portrait with that of Schneerson’s profile. In his signature midrash on the portrait, Kitaj writes: “He/I looks by chance like a cross between myself and the Lubavitcher Messiah Schneerson. My shoulder-insignia is that of a self-awarded Jewish General.” While the gesture is clearly disturbing, pairing a fully-clad rebbe with a female nude à la Manet’s 1863 Le déjeuner sur l’herbe, it is mechanical, and from the corresponding gesture of the female angel, unfulfilling. Kitaj’s subversion of Habad’s use of military metaphors and stock rebbe portraits is only effective if the originals to which he refers still convey their core patriotic and hegemonic meanings. 83 Anna Deavere Smith and George C. Wolfe, Fires in the Mirror, American Playhouse, 1993, VHS. 84 Interview with Hirschfeld exclusive representative Margo Feiden, April 26, 2006. 85 This smaller Torah probably refers to the “rebbe’s torah” or “mashiach’s torah,” begun by the sixth rebbe in 1941 an completed by the seventh in 1970 in preparation for the messiah. 86 Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 1. Conclusion The painted portraits of Habad leaders published in the late 1880s initiated a visual program to promote group identity and normalized the use of the portrait to stand in for the rebbe’s body when geography and time made him unavailable. These portraits—reproduced in cultural Zionist organs, Jewish encyclopedias, and American Rosh HaShanah cards—were revisited to ease the immigrant experience in both Israel and the United States in the early twentieth century. Beginning in the 1930s, photographs of the last two Habad leaders became widely available, which effectively enabled the rebbe to lead in absence and rejuvenated the Habad community in New York in the challenging decades following the Shoah. Beginning in the 1970s, portraits of the last Habad rebbe were used in the battle against assimilation, and in preparation for the Redemption. Habad launched a visual program to actively transform the Hasidic tzaddik to that of the universal Jewish messiah. Gershom Scholem has asserted that “Judaism, in all its forms and manifestations, has always maintained a concept of redemption as an event which takes place publicly, on the stage of history and within the community. It is an occurrence which takes place in the visible world and which cannot be considered apart from such a visible appearance.”86 Habad’s prodigious visual output was deeply intertwined with its messianism, which further reinforced the centrality of the portrait in Habad on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture 77 Fig. 15. © 2002 Al Hirschfeld. Drawing reproduced by special arrangement with Hirschfeld’s exclusive representative, The Margo Feiden Gallaries Ltd., New York. culture. While the literary output of Habad leaders had a transcendent influence over Habad culture, the constant and public visual display of Schneerson’s image has allowed him to achieve immanence. The influence of the Tanya and the other writings of Habad rebbeim derive their importance in Habad culture as founding documents that shape the theology of the movement, while 78 maya balakirsky katz Figure 16. R.B. Kitaj. Los Angeles No. 26 (Nose Kiss), 2003. © R.B. Kitaj, courtesy, Marlborough Gallery, New York the image of Schneerson has become indistinguishable from Habad culture. Proximity to the persona of Schneerson and identity with the visual image of Schneerson becomes the sine qua non of Habad Hasidism. We have also seen how the nineteenth century discomfort with the objectification of the tzaddik’s body in portraiture led to the development of pictorial and theoretical strategies to deal with the abject materialism of the mass-produced portrait subject. The negotiation between the rebbe, the subject of the portrait, and the medium of painting or photography has been a particularly creative and meaningful process for Habad because of its nineteenth-century focus on the harmonizing of mystical thought and practical observance.87 In the dissemination of esoteric concepts to unschooled followers, the portrait reinforced the rebbe’s authority in both the spiritual and the practical life. The portrait has been recruited in Habad’s twentiethcentury activist motto “to spread forth” (ufaratzta) in the battle against Jewish assimilation. The ubiquity 87 Naftali Loewenthal, “The Lower Unity,” 57–73. Loewenthal describes the process of institutionalization of mystical doctrine and its dissemination to followers in Communicating the Infinite. 88 Raphael Nouril, “A Portrait of Two Rebbes,” Habad of rebbe portraits in the latter twentieth century has led to attempts to reverse the subject/object relationship. When the Hasid stares at a portrait of the rebbe, the relationship between the portrait and the rebbe is often denied. The portrait has failed to capture anything but an illusion of physical substance. But when the portrait is said to initiate the gaze, the pupil is described as inspired, blessed, and even reborn. Rather than a rebbe “captured” on film, the rebbe’s ubiquitous gaze rejects appraisal by “watching over us.”88 Schneerson taught that “when the image of his master, the rebbe, stands before him, all obstacles . . . [if ] they impede the fulfillment of his mission . . . fall away.”89 While the slow and controlled nineteenth-century release of portraits to Hasidim created a venerable object out of every individual portrait, by the end of the twentieth century, the image was divested of its uniqueness, but its power was reinforced with the rebbe’s visual omnipresence in both public and private spaces. An exploration of Habad’s visual production provides a texture to the Habad story that is otherwise missing. In monographs of Hasidic masters, scholars focus on the transfer of knowledge from master to disciple through the written word and often overlook how the visual image shapes the master-disciple relationship. While a great deal is known about the interplay between the rebbe and his Hasid, the wealth of cultural cues and references embedded in the portrait offers insight into the mechanics of charisma, power, and devotion. Once a visual image of the rebbe becomes available, the rebbe’s legacy is no longer solely dependent on his literary production. From the “found” portrait of Shneur Zalman, to the careful exclusion of portraits, to the metamorphosis of the classical portrait into the celebrity-rebbe, Habad has demonstrated an elastic use of the rebbe image. With a photo archive numbering in the tens of thousands, and with the creation of group identity symbols such as full-scale and miniature replicas of “770” and the Habad menorah, it is hard to think of Habad outside the context of its visual creations. While I have isolated some key Magazine, November 1994, 24–25. “Perhaps they were now keeping an eye on me, guiding me unerringly to the final brush stroke of the painting.” 89 Mekadesh Yisroel, 19. on the master-disciple relationship in hasidic visual culture models for the original rebbe portraits, I have also demonstrated the gradual assimilation of these subjects into avant-garde art and popular culture, into the museum, the home, and the subway. In the collection and publication of Schneerson’s image, the goal has been to be definitive. A veritable Catalogue Raisonné of Schneerson’s myriad poses and settings has been in the making for years. The reproducibility of Schneerson’s portrait has assigned the most candid poses a schooled elegance. As Habad followers employ the new routes of distribution that Schneerson put in motion, they also challenge the image/message he promoted. What is rapidly emerging is a whole new 79 level of interface in which Habad Hasidim and portraits of Schneerson are working hand in hand to co-brand products. Posthumously, Schneerson gives his face and name to schools, summer camps, schwarma and pizza joints, bookstores, clothing stores, and music albums. The rebbe’s image was never simply a faithful mirror, but constitutive, made and modeled by its curators, who by extension, created, molded and defined Habad culture. The hierarchies, discursive conventions, and the narrative approach construct the rebbe as subject and as such, provide valuable material for the student of Habad culture and the Rebbe/Hasid dynamic.