Today we were having an interesting conversation about the famous chair and work of art now found in Mea Shearim in Jerusalem called the Chair of Rebbe Nachman on the Association of Hebrew Catholics facebook discussion page. A Catholic priest who is partly Jewish and a scholar of Jewish Studies commented that he would like to see the Rebbe's Chair in Jerusalem. Another Jewish Israeli scholar from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art has written a wonderful and informative essay or article about this Chair. Her name is Batsheva Goldman Ida. I have much to say about this Chair that I will write a post here at a later time. However, here is a link to this article on Academia. The article is entitled "The Birthing Chair:The Chair of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: A Phenomenological Analysis."
Batsheva Goldman Ida
The abstract states:
Discussion of the history and meaning of Reb Nachman of Breslov's chair - Dem Rebns Benkl - received in Breslov in 1808 and preserved until today in the Great Breslov Yeshiva in Me'a She'arim Jerusalem through an analysis of the Rebbe's dream, sermon Tik'u Memshala, given the same year (1808) and The Tale of the King’s Son and the Servant Woman’s Son Who Were Exchanged (1809).
She wrote this in 2008 when I was myself living in Nachlaot in Jerusalem and I can't believe I did not read this sooner than September 15 2020 as I enjoyed every sentence and felt like I was in contemplation as I read it rather than an intellectual process of reading an essay. She begins this article with this paragraph:
This essay proposes a new approach to the study of the ritual object: namely, to define its ontology within the ritual process. The move from iconography to phenomenology allows for a more comprehensive view, wherein the attitude towards the object becomes part of the definition of the object itself. This paper discusses the changing contexts of the chair of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav- that of Rabbi Nachman and the Hasidim in his lifetime, and of Bratslaver Hasidim today. The ontology of the chair, when thus defined, is seen to be in a state of flux.
She also situates it in its historical context:
In the late summer of 1808, Rabbi Nachman received a chair with ornately carved and painted animal and floral decoration. Most Bratslav Hasidim believe that this is the chair that is presently at the Great Bratslav Yeshivah in the Me’ah She‘arim quarter of Jerusalem (fig. 1). The chair stirred the Rebbe’s imagination. After receiving it, he had a dream in which he saw a chair encircled by fire. Later that year, in the fall of 1808, he composed a New Year’s sermon, “Tik‘u Memshalah” (Sound [the Shofar] of the Regime), the first three sections of which expound on the chair he saw in his dream. Then, during the following fall of 1809, Rabbi Nachman recounted “The Tale of the King’s Son and the Servant Woman’s Son Who Were Exchanged,” at the close of which he describes a wondrous chair with cut-out wooden figures of animals and birds.