Likutey Moharan 2025

One of the texts I’ve always found the most difficult, and in some strange way the most important, is Likutey Moharan by Rebbe Nachman. I doubt I’m alone in that. It is clearly a central work. People return to it again and again, and I can see why. But still, every time I open it, I feel thrown.

There is something in it that speaks to me, that grabs me, and at the same time I can’t seem to hold onto it. It does not let me in easily. The language twists, the logic jumps, the images feel like they come from a world that is not mine, and yet I keep circling back to it. I cannot ignore it. It is like the text is aware of me, even as it keeps itself at a distance.

It is not just that it is hard. There are plenty of hard texts. It is more that it feels deliberately unavailable. Like it is not trying to be understood, at least not in any conventional way. There is a kind of holiness in how opaque it is. And that tension, between being drawn in and shut out, is exactly what keeps me coming back.

It calls me somehow from this place of not belonging. I do not know if I will ever really understand it, but maybe that is not the point. Maybe the not understanding is part of the work. Maybe it is the way the text insists on a kind of humility, or patience, or just staying with the mystery.

Whatever it is, it works on me. Even when I do not know what to do with it. Maybe especially then.