Hasidism

Hasidism, movement within Judaism that emphasizes religious piety and was developed in eastern Europe in the 18th-century and continues to be an active branch of Judaism into the 21st century. The movement’s name is derived from the Hebrew term ḥasid (“pious one”), and the movement generally emphasizes passionate religious expression and devotion while following stringent rules of religious orthodoxy. Falling within the larger category of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Judaism, Hasidic Judaism draws heavily on Lurianic Kabbala and centers around the figures of charismatic leaders, called rebbes.

Historical background

Hasidism is similar in name to previous Jewish movements—the Hasideans of the 2nd century bce and Ashkenazi Hasidism of the 12th–13th centuries ce—however, modern Hasidism’s conception of piety developed within the context of the mid-18th century in eastern Europe. At that time Orthodox Judaism, having been convulsed by messianism and underwhelmed by legalistic scholarship, was at a moment of disillusionment and confusion that created an opening for religious reimagination and revival.

In the mid-17th century the experience of Shabbetaianism, a messianic movement focused on the figure of Shabbetai Tzevi (1626–76), excited virtually all of the world’s Jewish population. The popularity of Shabbetaianism revealed the pervasiveness of Jewish exhaustion with the Diasporic experience and highlighted the fervent longing for messianic redemption. But the failure of Tzevi’s movement after his conversion to Islam fed widespread disenchantment. The antirabbinical movement led by the false messiah Jacob Frank (1726–91) was deemed heretical by Jews but protected by the Roman Catholic Church, and its followers were eventually baptized. These failed messianic movements led to widespread skepticism in the Jewish community toward any promises of the arrival of the long-awaited messiah.

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Judaism: Modern Hasidism

Meanwhile, Talmudic piety and study, sunk in excessive pilpul (acute logical distinctions that often border on hairsplitting), had been refreshed by the new critical methods of Elijah ben Solomon (1720–97), the gaon of Vilna, in what is now Lithuania. As influential as this Talmudic method of study became, many Jews were unmoved by its dry intellectualism.

Additionally, many Jews in the Polish kingdom (1772–95)—which, after the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, included Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian territories—faced economic and social oppression by the ruling classes, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It was in that region that Hasidism developed in the 18th century as a modern pietistic movement that focused neither on textual study nor a promised messianic golden age but rather appealed to popular and emotive religious sentiment and emphasized religious experience in the present world.

Development and spread

Israel ben Eliezer (c. 1700–60), known as Baʿal Shem Ṭov (“Master of the Good Name”; often called, by an acronym, the Beshṭ), is credited with developing Hasidism. Although relatively untrained according to the norms of the rabbinical Judaism of his time, he was a spiritual person who, according to legends, mixed with common people and elites alike, taught through pithy sayings and folk wisdom, and found the spiritual in the mundane. The Beshṭ was able to win to his ideas not only working classes but especially many representatives of the intellectual elite. He was opposed to ascetic practices of extant mystical Jewish expression, such as self-mortification, and instead championed a this-worldly and positively embodied religiosity. As much as the Beshṭ adopted Kabbala’s mysticism, he eliminated its austerities and emphasized that all human actions—as minute or mundane as tying one’s shoes and not limited to explicit religious commandments (mitzvot)—were to be done for the sake of God. Inspired by the methods of the itinerant preachers whose activity was becoming more intense among eastern European Jews in the 18th century, his teaching took the form of homiletic interpretations of sacred texts based on fables and parables borrowed from daily life and folklore.

Hasidism contained elements of social protest, being at least in part a movement of the poor against the wealthy communal leadership and of the unlearned against the learned—though many of its leaders, among them Rabbi Dov Baer (1710–72), who was the maggid (“preacher”) of Mezhirich, and Rabbi Levi Isaac of Berdichev (1740–1810), were well-versed in Talmudic learning. A major innovation that Hasidism introduced into Jewish religious life was the charismatic leader, the rebbe, who served as teacher, confessor, wonder-worker, God’s vicar on earth, and, occasionally, atoning sacrifice. The elite followers of Baʿal Shem Ṭov cultivated his ideas but also created courts, places where followers might come to seek respected rebbes’ teachings and blessings, which then multiplied and spread as the movement grew. The earliest rebbes were democratically chosen, but spiritual dynasties formed as the position of leadership passed to the descendants of the first rebbes on the presumption that they had inherited their fathers’ charisma. Although Hasidism spread throughout eastern Europe, it was most successful in Poland.

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Hasidism made little headway in Lithuania, where the traditional rabbinic class, under the leadership of Elijah ben Solomon, was able to stave off its influence by issuing a ban of excommunication (ḥerem, “anathema”) against the new movement. In fact, scholars have argued that this objection to Hasidism counterintuitively helped solidify the new movement as a unique branch within Judaism. The opposition’s tactic, which involved a complete boycott and cutting off of communication, was widely embraced by non-Hasidic rabbis, who were given the title of Mitnagdim (“opponents”) by the Hasidim. With the passage of time, Hasidim and Mitnagdim abandoned their conflict and came to see each other as allies against the threat to all Orthodox Jewish religion posed by Haskala (the Jewish Enlightenment) and secularization. The impact of Hasidism on eastern European Jewish communities cannot be overemphasized; even in Lithuania, where it did not take firm hold, it stimulated the growth of a homegrown pietism in the Musar (ethicist) movement of the mid-19th century, and it renewed the Talmudic energies of its opponents.

Inner spirituality, outer appearance

In theory, Hasidism is rooted in Lurianic Kabbala, and nothing essential separates it from the traditional Judaism of eastern Europe. It is unique, however, because it made devequt, “being-with-God,” an object of aspiration and even a constant duty for all Jews and in all circumstances of life, even those seemingly most profane. In other words, it demands a total spiritualization of Jewish existence. This requirement entails a reevaluation, less new in its principle than in its concrete application, of the speculative concepts of Kabbala. Emphasis is placed on the inner life of the believer, and it is on this level that the supercosmic drama (whose stage is in the universe of the sefirot, the emanations of the divine) is played out. Hasidism also transforms into social reality a requirement that was part of the Lurianic doctrine of repair (tikkun), in which the process of spiritual repair is both internal growth and the important role of the tzaddik, or righteous man—i.e., the rebbe—in bringing about a healing of the world. As Hasidic Jews strive for inner healing through piety, they are also, with the exception of some branches, inclined toward insularity and refusal to participate in the secular world outside of their communities.

Hasidic Jews express their religiosity fervently through song and dance. Though neither song nor dance are absent in other branches of Judaism, in Hasidism the expression of religious devotion through singing and dancing are considered particularly significant as ways of rejoicing. Dancing during the holiday of Simchat Torah is a popular emotive way of showing, as the name of the holiday means, “rejoicing of the Torah.” Hasidic communities also have their own particular types of prayerful song melodies (Hebrew: nigunim) that express religious piety and emotion. The Hasidic nigunim vary greatly in style and form, but they typically include singing without accompaniment and sometimes without words. A prominent feature of Hasidic nigunim is the use of repeated syllables that convey affect without lexical meaning—akin to scat in jazz. Perhaps the most universally well-known Jewish tune is one of these Hasidic nigunim: “Hava Nagila” (“Let Us Rejoice”), which is commonly played at weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other happy occasions.

Although inner spirituality is one of the most important features of Hasidic Judaism, to the outside observer so are Hasidic Jews’ distinctive dress and traditional regulations around hair. Men tend to wear long black coats over white shirts, and women wear dresses that have long sleeves and high necklines. Men also often wear large fur hats called shtreimels on special occasions such as the Sabbath and holidays. Many, but not all, Hasidic Jewish men grow long beards and sidelocks (Hebrew: peʾot; Yiddish: payes), which are long curls of hair on both sides of the head. Women are required to cover their hair after marriage and do so by various means including wigs, scarves, and hats. Many of these customs of dress and grooming, based on tradition as well as orthodox interpretations of Jewish law, are also shared among other subsets of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Modern history

The strong organization of the Hasidic groups allowed them to survive the dislocation of eastern European Judaism as a result of the Holocaust and World War II. Significant populations of Hasidic Jews currently live in Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora, particularly in New York. As of the early 21st century, there are approximately 400,000 Hasidic Jews worldwide, of which about 200,000 reside in New York. Hasidic Jews also comprise about half of the population of Haredim. The prevalence of Hasidim in New York is partly for economic reasons and partly because of the hesitant and sometimes even hostile attitudes of some Hasidic groups toward political Zionism and the state of Israel.

Prominent Hasidic groups include the Belz, founded in Ukraine in 1817 and reestablished in Israel, and the Satmar, founded in 1905 in Szatmár, Austria-Hungary (now Satu Mare, Romania), with large numbers of followers in New York—particularly in Williamsburg district of Brooklyn and the Kiryas Joel community in Orange county, New York. Within Israel large communities of Hasidic Jews reside in Bnei Brak (a suburb of Tel Aviv) and Meʾa Sheʿarim (a neighborhood of Jerusalem). Other Hasidic groups include the Bobov, Breslov, Chernobyl, Ger (or Gur), Sanz-Klausenburg, and Vishnitz Hasidic Jews. For the most part these and other Hasidic communities tend to be insular.

The best-known of the U.S.-based groups, however, is the very publicly active Chabad-Lubavitchers, founded in 1775 by Shneur Zalman and named for Lyubavichi, Russia, a town that became the seat of the movement under Zalman’s son, Dov Ber. Since 1940 the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters has been located at 770 Eastern Parkway (popularly known as “770”) in the Crown Heights district of Brooklyn. The Chabad movement is known for its outreach efforts, including large public Hanukkah menorahs, a prominent website, and hundreds of college campus offices. The last Chabad-Lubavitch leader, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died in 1994 and was not replaced with a new leader—many members of the community believe Schneerson to have been the messiah.