Hasidim

A late Habad text attributed to Rabbi Yosef Yitshak Schneerson speaks of the Maskilim in the following way: "All the Maskilic writers, their students, and their students' students take every chance to disparage the honor of Hasidism and its princes (that is, Habad) and to belittle the value of their service to the ethical and financial good of the Jewish people."  Even though some Maskilim did see Habad as a particularly dangerous form of Hasidism, it is hard to accept the impression left by Habad historiography that the Maskilim saw only the negative elements of Habad -- in fact they presented the group in a decidedly and uniquely positive light -- even if their own motives in doing so were clear. The portrayal of Habad in Maskilic literature is important on three counts: first, because these images commanded a central place within the self-consciousness of Maskilim over different periods; second, because the Hasidic movement itself adopted certain elements of those Maskilic portrayals; and third, because these portrayals influenced -- and continue to influence -- scholarly understandings of Hasidism. The Article presents a few of those images who frequently appear throughout the nineteenth century.

This paper examines how different Hasidic groups engage with digital media and what specific factors tied to their larger tradition shape these responses. At the core of Hasidic seclusion is the idea of sheltering from the contamination of the secular world. In the attempt to preserve their pious state of existence, Hasidim uncompromisingly reject potential change of ritual, language, education and the established way of life. In the early 21st century, although seemingly stable and unchanged, Hasidic communities have been going through a lot of changes, especially since the advent of the digital media. Three major factors are reshaping American Hasidic communities: Hasidic demographic expansion, neoliberal political economy, and the Internet. The Internet has enabled community members to access previously censored information and has eased the process of leaving for those who cease to believe and practice.  Before the age of the Internet it was rather easy for Hasidic leaders to censor external information and to block outside influences. However, smart phones offer community members unprecedented access to all the previously unattainable information. This has created fluidity and discontinuity in the midst of which Hasidic society seeks to integrate notions associated with mobilities, movements and flows on the one hand with notions of fixity, groundedness and situatedness in particular settings (Greiner and Sakdapolrak, 2013: 375). The methodology of this research is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hasidic communities of New York, on digital ethnography, qualitative in-depth interviews with community members, and on discourse analysis of Hasidic press. Hasidic encounters with modernity are complex and multidimensional. However, in terms of Hasidic negotiations with digital media, I identify three main responses that I thoroughly discuss in this paper: prohibition, restriction, and legitimization.

Sefer shivḥei ha-Besht is considered the central collection of hagiographic tales regarding Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (c. 1700–1760). It was first printed in Hebrew in Kopys in the latter part of 1814 and includes hundreds of stories which circulated orally and were heard by the author. The work was soon translated into Yiddish, with significant changes, and three such translations have survived, each one very different to the others. The first translation, published in Ostróg in 1815, was believed lost. This paper offers a brief description of the recently discovered edition, discussing its uniqueness in the context of the work's printing history and on the background of Jewish publishing in Eastern Europe.

המהדורות האבודות של ספר שבחי הבעש"ט ביידיש, 1817-1815
(כולל דיון ראשוני במהדורת אוסטרהא תקע"ה - שנמצאה לאחרונה - לאחר שנחשבה לאבודה)

Mysticism Substitutes: A General Model for the Theological Development of Hasidism in the Nineteenth Century
Abstract

During the 19th century, Hasidism underwent a deep ideological transformation. From a small circle with more or less common mystical ideals, it became a decentralized movement in which various personalities and groups had a range of different religious ideals, the vast majority of which were not mystical. In this article, I would like to present a general thesis claiming that these ideals acted in the Hasidic groups that developed them as “mysticism substitutes”.

The article examines seven samples of 19th century Hasidic ideals. I show how each ideal demonstrates the direct connection between the late ideal and the early-Hasidic mystic value from which it originated and was “transformed”. The concluding chapter explains the phenomenon of mysticism-substitutes as follows: After Hasidism adopted a traditionalist character, it could no longer preserve its original values; however, it also could not discard them altogether. Therefore, the "natural" compromise was to transform them. Once developing into a conservative movement it became entangled in a paradox: the values it inherited were revolutionary, and the shift to traditionalist values required a change, which was, in turn, opposed to conservatism ("the paradox of conservatism"). Hasidism opted for "translating" the old mystic concepts into traditionalist ones, or turning practices that served as a medium for the mystical experience into ends in and of themselves. Hence, the mystic energy was not lost entirely, but rather became "conserved" in new forms that rendered a variety of non-mystic religious challenges.

[The link below is to a lecture in Hebrew on the topic]

R. Nachman’s tales are widely seen as the forerunners of Modern Jewish Literature if not as marking the beginnings of Hebrew literary modernity. This view is confirmed by studies dealing with a range of topics, from R. Nachman’s intellectual history and psycho–biography, to his theological and mystical teachings. But such studies rely on much extra-literary support for this view, citing historical circumstances and intellectual-historical studies to confirm this essentially literary-aesthetic statement. This is not to say evidence of R. Nachman’s particularly literary contribution is lacking. Almost every canonical Modern Hebrew and Yiddish author has read and in some way engaged, polemicized or rewritten the tales of R. Nachman. From Joseph Perl and I. L Peretz, through Mendele Mocher Sforim and Bashevis Singer, all the way to Kafka, Agnon and beyond—R. Nachman’s effect on modern Jewish letters is lasting, while specifically literary argumentation for his position “at the beginning” is surprisingly lacking. The aim of the present paper is to offer an explicit articulation of R. Nachman’s literary–aesthetic contribution to the development of modern Jewish writing.

A notable characteristic of Enlightenment ideology, which solidified into a major European political project at the turn of the eighteenth century, was the creation of public spaces into which Jews were allowed to enter. Following the logic of social emancipation, Jews lost not only their urban-geographic distinctiveness, but their sartorial and linguistic identifiers as well. The invisibility of difference has since become a central characteristic of Jewish social emancipation. R. Nachman anticipated this change to visibility in the public sphere, recognizing both Maskilim and the 1804 “Statute Concerning the Organization of the Jews” as signaling a change to public representation. In his literary activity and thought, R. Nachman deliberated the challenge this new reality would pose to the representation of Jews in terms of literary depiction. How does one represent Jewish difference when the very logic of its appearance is that it be invisible? While R. Nachman’s writing played a largely anticipatory roll with regard to these challenges, the literary-aesthetic possibilities he identifies and develops constitute his central contribution to Modern Jewish literature.

R. Nachman identifies the power of literary representation to contend with an emerging social order on an aesthetic level. The challenge of representing a world where groups are defined by invisible differences is the overarching task R. Nachman theorizes and attempts in his tales, which form part of his deep engagement with the broader political-aesthetics he insightfully identifies in his contemporary moment.

A late Chabad text attributed to Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn speaks of the Maskilim in the following way: “All the maskilic writers, their students, and their students’ students take every chance to disparage the honor of Hasidism and its princes (that is, Chabad) and to belittle the value of their service to the ethical and financial good of the Jewish people." Even though some Maskilim did see Chabad as a particularly dangerous form of Hasidism, it is hard to accept the impression left by Chabad historiography that the Maskilim saw only the negative elements of Chabad – in fact they presented the group in a decidedly and uniquely positive light – even if their own motives in doing so were clear. The portrayal of Chabad in maskilic literature is important on three counts: first, because these images commanded a central place within the self-consciousness of Maskilim over different periods; second, because the hasidic movement itself adopted certain elements of those maskilic portrayals; and third, because these portrayals influenced – and continue to influence – scholarly understandings of Hasidism. The article presents a few of those images which frequently appear throughout the nineteenth century.

This Lecture aims to offer a critical assessment of modern Jewish hagiography in Eastern Europe, a literature that underwent a renaissance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We will locate this literature within the full context of the social and theological changes wrought by the pietistic and mystical Hasidic movement. Much of the research on Hasidism has focused on the historical and theological aspects which brought about the formation of a movement and the rise of tsadikim (literally “righteous ones” or “saints”) who stood at its center, but little on the literary genres that promoted them. We will introduce new perspectives on this literature and focus on the way it fashioned a new model of religious leadership and offered a unique conservative path in modernity.

The seminar will survey the central stages in the development of Jewish hagiographic literature from the German pietists of (Hasidei Ashkenaz), the sixteenth century Kabbalists in Tzfat and Sabbatean texts to works written by the Hasidic followers of Israel Baal Shem Tov in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In other words, we will trace the appearance of Jewish hagiographical literature influenced by Kabbalah. This is one of the most popular, widespread literary genres in Jewish society in the modern period and has been extremely influential. We will discuss the unique nature of this literature and its major trends, we will read and analyze a selection of texts from the various periods (in Hebrew and Yiddish) on the background of the specific contexts in which they were written and printed. We will focus in particular on the theological and sociological aspects of how this literature was created, the figure of the Tzadik/saint/Kabbalist in Jewish society, as well as the manner in which the Jewish Haskalah Movement (The Jewish Enlightenment) and early scholars of Jewish studies (Wissenschaft des Judentum) from the nineteenth century onwards viewed this literature.

This paper examines the politics of piety inherent in the performance of language, belonging, and subjectivity, with a particular focus on how gender informs language practices and Hasidic ideology. This research combines the theoretical and methodological framework of language biography with the theory of language ideology in order to explain how the use of language at an individual level reflects larger-scale ideologies in Hasidic communities. The research was conducted through narrative biographical interviewing, supplemented by ethnographic research during which the researcher assumed the role of a participant-observer. Narrative approach to identity construction and social practice has been used because life stories are uniquely suited to inform us about individual and private choices as they are influenced by wider communal beliefs, heritage, and ideology. The reconstruction of language biographies shows how speakers use the triglossic linguistic repertoire (Loshn Koydesh, Yiddish, and English) in negotiating their identity, and how linguistic repertoires are gender-conditioned.