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The Canon · No. 080

Hasidic Judaism

Hasidism; Chassidus

c.1740 CE – present · Abrahamic · Living · Israel, US (New York), UK, Belgium, Canada

VI. REFORMATION & EARLY MODERN — 1500 – 1800

How many

Roughly 700,000–1 million and growing very rapidly, with an average of six or more children per family. Hasidim are projected to be a large share of world Jewry within decades.

Who began it

Israel ben Eliezer (c.1698–1760), called the Baal Shem Tov, master of the good name, an itinerant healer and teacher in Podolia, now Ukraine.

What it is for

To make the deepest levels of Jewish spirituality available to unlearned, poor Jews who could never master the Talmud, and to replace despair with joy.

What it worships

One God, understood in strongly panentheistic terms — there is no place empty of him. Chabad's Tanya pushes this to the claim that from God's perspective the created world has no independent existence at all.

What it holds

Divine immanence: God is present in everything, so every act, however mundane, can be a vehicle of worship. Devekut — cleaving to God, an ongoing attachment rather than an occasional experience. Joy (simcha) as a religious obligation, and melancholy as a spiritual danger. The tzaddik or Rebbe — a righteous leader who serves as a channel between the community and God, whose blessing is sought and whose court is the community's centre. This was the innovation the rabbinic establishment found most objectionable, since it looked like intermediary worship. Lurianic Kabbalah, particularly the raising of sparks, underlies the whole system.

What it does

Fervent prayer with movement, song and wordless melodies (niggunim). The Rebbe's tish, a table gathering where followers eat his leftovers as blessed food. Distinctive dress preserving 18th-century Polish noble styles — fur shtreimel, long black coat, side-curls. Yiddish as the everyday language, with Hebrew reserved for prayer and study. Strict gender separation. Largely separate education systems, which in New York and London have been the subject of sustained disputes over secular curriculum requirements.

After death

Standard rabbinic eschatology, plus gilgul, reincarnation, taken as a live and practical doctrine. The Rebbe is understood to remain able to intercede after death, and pilgrimage to a Rebbe's grave (ohel) is common practice — Chabad's in Queens and Rebbe Nachman's at Uman, where tens of thousands gather annually for Rosh Hashanah.

Its texts

Tanya (1797) by Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the systematic text of Chabad. Likutei Moharan of Nachman of Breslov. Keter Shem Tov. Collections of teachings and tales, the tales being a genuine literary genre in their own right.

Its branches

Chabad-Lubavitch (outreach-focused); Satmar (anti-Zionist, insular); Ger; Belz; Breslov; Bobov; Skver; Vizhnitz; and dozens more, each centred on a dynasty.

Of note

Hasidism began as a populist revolt against elite scholarship and became, within two centuries, one of the most rigorously traditional communities in Judaism. It is also the fastest-growing segment of world Jewry.

Its timeline

  1. c.1740 CE The Baal Shem Tov begins teaching publicly.
  2. 1772, 1781 CE The Vilna Gaon and the Mitnagdim issue bans of excommunication against Hasidim, accusing them of heresy and of neglecting Talmud study. The conflict was bitter and lasted generations.
  3. 1797 CE The Tanya published; Chabad's intellectual Hasidism begins.
  4. 1810 CE Nachman of Breslov dies at Uman; his followers famously never appoint a successor.
  5. c.1800–1900 CE Dozens of dynasties form: Satmar, Ger, Belz, Vizhnitz, Bobov, Sanz.
  6. <strong>1939–1945 CE</strong> The Holocaust destroys Hasidic Europe. Whole dynasties are annihilated; the surviving Rebbes rebuild in New York and Israel from a handful of followers.
  7. 1951–1994 CE Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, builds Chabad into a global outreach network. He dies in 1994 without a successor; a minority believe he is the messiah, which mainstream Orthodoxy rejects.
  8. 1970s–present Explosive demographic growth. Satmar's two rival branches alone number in the low hundreds of thousands.
  9. 2000s–present Public disputes over secular education, over abuse reporting, and a visible stream of memoirs by people who have left.

Sources

Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.

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