Horowitz, Aaron Halevi. Sha’arei Avodah

Important Work of Starosselje Branch of Chabad Chassidism. Rabbi Aaron Halevi Horowitz was for thirty years the preeminent disciple of R. Shneur Zalman until the latter's death in 1812. A controversy then arose over the succession, with some Chassidim accepting the son R. Dov Baer Shneuri as their Rebbe, and others embracing R. Aaron Halevi. Ideologically, the son and the disciple differed over their approach to Avodah. R. Aaron encouraged an ecstatic type of worship, while R. Dov Baer (referred later as the “Mitteler Rebbe”) taught that worship must be focused inward and should not display outer manifestations. To answer the challenge of the Starosselje school, R. Dov Baer penned Kuntres HaHithpa’aluth ("Tract on Ecstasy"), a remarkable analysis of different spiritual states. Our text, Sha’arei Avodah, offers Rabbi Aaron Halevi Horowitz's approach to divine service. In the Introduction, the Author claims his teacher R. Shneur Zalman, did not reject ecstatic worship, even if itbe contrived or forced. In the first half of the twentieth century, R Abraham Dov Baer Hakohen Levine (known as the "Malach") encouraged his disciples (including many former students of Yeshiva Torah Voda'ath in Brooklyn) to study the works of R. Aaron Halevi of Starosselje. See L. Jacobs, Seeker of Unity: The Life and Works of Aaron of Starosselje (1966); R. Elior, Torath ha-Elokuth be-dor ha-sheni shel Chasiduth Chabad (1982); M. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism (1996), pp. 189-211; R. Dov Baer Shneuri, Kuntres ha-Hithpa’aluth, in Ma’amrei Admo”r ha-Emtza’i (1991), pp. 37-196