Hasidism

Jewish pietistic and mystical movement that arose in eighteenth-century Eastern Europe and is organised around rebbes and their courts; Chabad-Lubavitch is one of its branches

Hasidism (also Chasidism, Chassidism or Hasidic Judaism; adherents are Hasidim) is a religious movement within Orthodox Judaism that began in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century. It combines fervent prayer, kabbalistic ideas, and loyalty to a spiritual leader, the rebbe or tzaddik ("righteous man"), around whom Hasidic communities, called "courts", are organised. The movement divided into many courts, usually named after the town where each began (Satmar, Ger, Belz, Vizhnitz, Bobov, Chabad-Lubavitch and others). These are listed at Hasidic dynasties.

Chabad-Lubavitch, the subject of most of Powerbase's coverage of the movement, is one Hasidic branch among many. Its founder, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, was a second-generation leader whose teacher was a disciple of the movement's founder. Scholars regard it as distinctive within Hasidism in several respects, which are set out below.

Origins

The tradition, as Jerome Mintz summarises it, is that Hasidism began with Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov (the "Master of the Good Name", 1700–1760), a pious healer and wonder-worker in Podolia and Volhynia, whose teachings "inspired fervent and joyous fulfillment of the law". The Baal Shem Tov's chief disciple, Dov Ber of Mezritch (Dov Ber, the Maggid or "Preacher" of Mezritch, 1704–1772), established a court that became the model for later Hasidic communities. The historian Immanuel Etkes dates the first steps of Hasidism "as a movement" to soon after the Baal Shem Tov's death in 1760, and the first Hasidic court to around the mid-1760s under the Maggid; within a few years the Maggid's disciples had founded more courts "in the same pattern".

Historians disagree about why the movement arose. In the account given by Rachel Elior, the earliest scholars of the subject, Simon Dubnow tied Hasidism to the distress of Polish Jews after the Ukrainian uprisings of 1648–9 and the pogroms that accompanied them, and to the failure of the Shabatean messianic movement in the 1670s; Ben-Zion Dinur likewise saw it as a response to two crises, the failure of Shabateanism and the weakening of Jewish self-government in Poland. The next generation of historians, including Jacob Katz, Israel Heilperin and Yeshayahu Shahar, challenged this because Hasidic sources show no awareness of social tension or of social reform. Elior writes that by the last decades of the eighteenth century the circles around the Baal Shem Tov, which had formed in the 1740s and 1750s, "had become a substantial force", and that by the early nineteenth century they had become "a mass movement" reaching Ukraine, Galicia, Poland, Russia, Hungary and Romania.

Rebbes and courts

In Mintz's description, the tzaddik or rebbe replaced the community rabbi as leader in the new Hasidic congregations, prayer and its manner were changed in accordance with Hasidic mystical ideas, and the power of the rebbes became the "ascendant feature" of the movement within a generation. As the movement settled, leadership passed from father to son and the congregations became dynastic courts, each centred on the rebbe's house, a study-house or synagogue, a yeshiva and a ritual bath, with resident followers living nearby. Each court developed its own "patterns of prayer, dress, and custom".

Mintz also records that critics saw the rise of the rebbe as a "cult of personality" that debased Hasidism, that complaints of abuse of position and power multiplied as the number of rebbes grew, and that feuds between courts became commonplace; he gives Israel Friedman of Rizhin (1798–1850), known for his wealth and display, as the example critics cited. To the Rizhiner's loyal followers, Mintz adds, his display of wealth was "a symbol of spiritual riches and devout homage".

Opposition

Hasidism met strong opposition from other Orthodox Jews, particularly the Lithuanian rabbinic establishment, who became known as the Misnagdim ("opponents"). Mintz writes that learned rabbis who felt threatened by the new "populist movement" argued that Hasidism diminished the place of learning in favour of "idolatrous worship" of the leaders, and charged that Hasidic enthusiasm and miracle tales were delusions. Heilman and Friedman say that at the turn of the nineteenth century Chabad "remained in ongoing competition with the other movements, particularly Hasidism's opponents, the Lithuanian mitnaggedim". The rivalry produced two arrests of Shneur Zalman of Liadi by the Russian authorities in 1798 and 1800 after denunciations by opponents, described at Shneur Zalman of Liadi.

Nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Mintz describes Jewish life in nineteenth-century Eastern and Central Europe as insular and Yiddish-speaking, and says that from the late nineteenth century the Jewish community as a whole slowly broke free of political, economic and intellectual bondage, with Socialism and Zionism attracting the children of the pious and others drawn to emigration to the New World; he notes that most rebbes stayed in Europe rather than accompany followers to the United States, and that "social change among the ultra-Orthodox was barely perceptible until the start of the Second World War". Heilman and Friedman write that "all Hasidic groups had found themselves decimated after the Holocaust". The present-day distribution of Hasidic households is discussed at Hasidic dynasties, which cites a 2016 study by Marcin Wodziński and reports it as finding 62,062 Hasidic households in Israel, 53,485 in the United States and 5,519 in Britain (of 129,211 worldwide).

Chabad-Lubavitch within Hasidism

Heilman and Friedman describe Chabad (the name is an acronym of the Hebrew words for wisdom, understanding and knowledge, Chochmah, Binah, Da'at'), the "special strand of Hasidism" established by Shneur Zalman of Liadi, as the line from which present-day Lubavitchers descend. They identify three features that set it apart from other Hasidic groups.

• A missionary orientation. They write that in the eighteenth century Hasidism sought to persuade all Jews, but that by the end of the nineteenth century that mission "was largely over", whereas Chabad "has never given up missionizing". The use of emissaries (shluchim) goes back to the fifth Lubavitcher rebbe, Shalom DovBer Schneersohn (1860–1920), and became the special concern of the seventh, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whose main targets were non-religious Jews. The part played by Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch in coordinating emissaries is covered on its own page.
• Organisation. Etkes calls Chabad under Shneur Zalman "the largest group of Hasidim in Eastern Europe at the time" and notes that its patterns of organisation, including regulations governing visits to the court and a system of emissaries and local leaders, were, "as far as we know", unparalleled in other Hasidic sects.
• Engagement with the outside world. Heilman and Friedman contrast Lubavitchers with "other Hasidim" who they say remain "far more anchored" to their own communities, and note that Lubavitch men do not wear the fur hat (shtrayml) common among other Hasidim. They also write that, unlike other Hasidic rebbes, who "shied away from such media", Menachem Mendel Schneerson embraced mass media for what he saw as his holy mission.

Heilman and Friedman also write that after the Second World War Chabad was in a "particularly bleak" position, because most of its members had been in the Soviet Union and Lubavitcher leaders' hostility to Zionism had discouraged early emigration to Palestine, so that its leaders "clearly needed a new strategy". Chabad-Lubavitch's later history, including its messianic turn after 1994, is covered at Chabad-Lubavitch movement and Chabad messianism.

See also

• Hasidic dynasties
• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Shneur Zalman of Liadi
• Misnagdim
• Satmar
• Ger
• Belz
• Vizhnitz
• Bobov
• Breslov
• Haredi and Hasidic groups in the US