“I have been having real problems with my hisbodedus lately,” reads a post from a user who calls herself Yiddishe Mama on the Breslov Hasidic group’s web forum. “Every time I try, I lose my thought, get distracted, fall asleep(!), feel totally overwhelmed. As a consequence, my hisbodedus has trailed off… Help please :)”
Help came quickly. “Shalom dear Yiddishe Mama,” one hisbodedus authority begins. “Take a nice shower, eat a good breakfast, put on some good Jewish neshama music—maybe the Breslov radio—get up and start to sing and dance, and you will soon feel Hashem giving you new strength.” Another user, who has posted a Rabbi Nachman excerpt about the power of speaking, writes: “Dearest Yiddishe Mama…we need nothing other than Rabbi Nachman’s words!”
A third suggests that Yiddishe Mama should wake up at chatzot—precisely six hours after nightfall—to do hisbodedus “because it is much easier not to be distracted when the whole world is sleeping.” This is also “the ‘sweetest’ hour,” when “Hashem is very accessible and His mercy and compassion at its highest.”
Hisbodedus?
Pronounced “his-BOY-ded-us,” the word is Yiddish for the medieval Hebrew word hitbodedut, and translates literally as “making oneself alone” or “seclusion.” For the last 2,000 years Jews have been known as gregarious, social beings who enjoy eating, arguing, praying and dancing in groups. Isolation has been anathema to Judaism; so it is not surprising that hisbodedus, in the words of Moshe Idel, a scholar of Hasidism at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, is the result of “external influence.” Its origins lie in Sufism, Islam’s equivalent of Kabbalah.
The term first appeared in Hebrew late in the 12th century when the Spanish doctor Judah Ibn Tibbon translated the works of Arabic-speaking Jewish scholars—including? Maimonides’ magnum opus, Guide for the Perplexed. According to Haim Kreisel, a professor of medieval Jewish thought at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, Maimonides and his contemporaries used its Arabic equivalent in their commentaries on Sufi literature. From there, hisbodedus entered the lexicon of Kabbalah and eventually caught the attention of mystics in Safed, including Isaac Luria, the 16th century rabbi on whose teachings the Hasidic movement, founded by the Baal Shem Tov in mid-18th century Eastern Europe, is based.
As a pre-modern populist, the Baal Shem Tov taught that the most learned Torah scholar was no better off in God’s eyes than the poorest illiterate. Many Hasidic groups grew out of his teachings, including the Breslov movement, led by his great-grandson, Rabbi Nachman. Under Rabbi Nachman hisbodedus was reincarnated as both an easy and powerful form of prayer, defined as “talking to God.” “The essence of hisbodedus is simplicity—to express ourselves to G-d in simple, straightforward language the way we would talk to an intimate friend,” reads Breslov.org.
Despite the constraints of modernity and urban life, Breslovers worldwide still pour their hearts out to God each day. “Here in Brooklyn,” says Rabbi Dovid Sears, head of Brooklyn’s Breslov Center, “a small group of Breslover Hasidim goes out to a nearby nature preserve once a week for hisbodedus. Others go to the public parks near their homes. Others may even do hisbodedus on their rooftops—quietly, one hopes! But with our busy schedules, a park bench often suffices.”
Hisbodedus isn’t the only approach Judaism offers for personal prayer to God. The psalms also serve the same purpose. In addition, Chabad, another Hasidic group, has its own, rarely used but similar technique: hisbonenus. But hisbodedus, conducted in one’s native language and, according to Breslov.org, seen by Rabbi Nachman as reflective of “the highest level of devotion,” is as vital to Breslov Hasidism as meditation is to Buddhism.
“Nobody else has emphasized this as a primary practice with specific and clearly articulated mystical goals,” says Sears. “It’s more than just talking to God.” In fact, hisbodedus is designed to help people refine themselves, overcome obstacles and, in some cases, “attain a kind of spiritual breakthrough.”
Would a Breslover doing hisbodedus in the park look different from a meditating Buddhist? “Absolutely,” says Sears. “The Buddhist would typically be seated in a formal manner on a cushion in total silence, with eyes very slightly open or sometimes closed. A Breslover Hasid might be standing still or pacing back and forth or even sitting on a rock or a folding chair while reflecting on a certain issue. He might be speaking aloud, or reflecting in silence, or even screaming out to G-d.”
The Breslovers like to tell the tale of Rabbi Nachman, who, as he lay on his deathbed in Uman, a city in Ukraine, asked his grandson Yisrael, a toddler, to pray for him. Yisrael shouted “God! God! Let grandpa get better!” Onlookers chuckled, the story goes, but Rabbi Nachman interrupted them: “This is how one must pray to God,” he said. “How can one pray differently?” —Jeremy Gillick
