Hasidism : Jewish Movement

Israel ben Eliezer, later k this instantn as Bal Shem Tov, or the Besht, felt a call in 1736. He had little learning himself, and no authentic work of his has survived. He worked outside the synagogue system and traveled around the country. He became highly influential and was visited by people who came great distances. He instaled a movement and was responsible for two institutions. First, he resuscitate the ancient model of the zaddik, or tiptop human being, superior because he had the special capacity to adhere to God. The zaddik was not a messiah in this view but also not quite an ordinary human being. He was thus a b are-assed kind of religious personality, one who could perpetuate and pass around the movement. Second, the Besht invented a form of popular prayer which enabled ordinary, humble Jews to contribute. The Bal Shem Tov achieved a level of popular participation by means of the new theory of prayer taught by him and his successors, stressing that prayer was not so practically a human activity as a supernatural act in which the human being breaks down struggledly the barriers to his natural existence and occures into the divine world. This is accomplished by winning the prayer book and concentrating the mind entirely on the garner:

He does not read, he wills. As he does so, their real(a) shapes dissolve and--this is a typical kabbalistic idea--the divine attributes out of sight in the letters become spiritually visible. It is like visual perception through

It is estimated that there are some 250,000 Hasidim in the world today, which is about one-fifth the add up that existed at the turn of the century. Some 200,000 live in the get together Stats, and one-half of that go in Brooklyn. One sect is the Lubavitchers, whose let on comes form the Belorussian city that was the home to their dynasty for many years. They are now believed to be the largest sect worldwide, though there is no numerate available, and they are one of forty sects that survived the Holocaust and the Russian pogroms. in advance World War II, there were some 50 Chassidic sects. Another surviving group is the Satmarers, and they live in the Williamsburg naval division of Brooklyn. They have the largest New York following with 45,000 members.

They originally came from Hungary and survived then war in greater numbers because the war did not reach Hungary until 1944. Other groups live in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, and they number about 35,000. A smaller number are found in west nearlychester, Rockland County, and New Jersey. Most Hasidim are suspicious of outsiders and do not like the way they have been depicted in the media, as if they were cultists (Harris 12).

Rabinowicz, Harry M. Hasidism: The Movement and Its Masters. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, 1988.

The concept of the tzaddik did not originate with Besht but is found in much earlier literature. However, the Hasidim developed the concept further and produced a example of leader unique in the Judaic hierarchy:

"Haskala" refers to the Jewish form of the European Enlightenment, and a belief in the Haskala was know as a maskil. It differed in the degree of emancipation it afforded and in other respects between East European and West European Jews, much as the Enlightenment did in cosmopolitan between Eastern and Western Europe. The Jewish Enlightenment is most tied to the Enlightenment in Germany because in Germany the movement sought-after(a) a new understanding and accommodation with the religious s
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