Hasidei de'ar‘a and Hasidei dekokhvaya’: Two Trends in Modern Jewish Historiography

Abstract

Gershon Hundert, one of the leading scholars of Eastern European Jewry, has portrayed Hasidism as “one of many movements of religious enthusiasm that arose in the eighteenth century.” Though most scholars today agree with this description, they diverge regarding the goals of the movement, the causes of its emergence and spread, and its impact on Eastern European Jewry. Simon Dubnow, the father-founder of modern Eastern European Jewish historiography, considered Hasidism to be a response to the seventeenth-century communal crisis. He portrayed Hasidism as a spiritual movement of ordinary Jews who rebelled against the stringencies of rabbinic Judaism and sought spiritual accommodation from charismatic yet uneducated leaders. Benzion Dinur saw Hasidism as a popular revolution against the corrupt power of the kahal, the umbrella self-governing organization of Polish Jewry. Gershom Scholem maintained that it was the popularization of Kabbalah that was responsible for the phenomenal success of Hasidism, its rapid spread, and the mass following of the zaddikim, the hasidic masters. By the end of the late twentieth century, most scholars agreed that Hasidism was a popular movement triggered by the economic breakdown of Polish Jewry, directed against the legal authorities, and led by mystically oriented leaders with no significant rabbinic pedigree or deep knowledge of traditional Jewish sources.