From Heroism to Heterodoxy: The Crisis of a Movement and the Danger to a Faith

Abstract

This chapter traces the history of hasidism, which was born in eighteenth-century Poland with the teachings of Rabbi Israel Ba'al Shem Tov. The movement spread through eastern Europe and became the dominant form of Judaism in much of the heartland of nineteenth-century Jewry. Opponents (mitnagedim or ‘misnagdim’) did not entirely abandon the cause, but opposition waned in the face of new social and religious realities. First, it became very difficult to delegitimate a movement that commanded the allegiance of so many observant Jews. Second, the radicalism of early hasidism diminished as it was transformed from a movement of rebellion against the Jewish communal establishment into an established order of its own. Finally, the spread of the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, to eastern Europe posed so serious a threat that hasidim and misnagdim, for all their profound differences, came to see themselves as allies in a struggle to preserve their common culture, educational systems, and fundamental beliefs against the onslaught of scepticism, secularism, and acculturation working to undermine the very foundations of traditional Jewish society. The Chabad movement, now also known as Lubavitch from the town where the group's leaders resided from 1813 to 1915, played a significant role in that resistance.