The Baal Shem Tov, Mystical Union, and Individualism

Abstract

The Hasidic movement is a major turning point in Judaism, the most important and influential Jewish religious phenomenon since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE.The movement was founded in the Ukraine by the legendary Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov (‘Master of the Good Name [of God], 17007–60, also known by his acronym as the Besht). It began in reaction to the dry melancholy scholasticism which prevailed in European communities following the 1648–49 massacres and the crushing of popular messianic hopes after Shabbetai Zvi (1627–76), who was widely believed by the Jews to be the Messiah, converted to Islam in 1670. This failure created widespread grief and disillusionment among European Jews for several generations after. Hasidism drew much of its inspiration and ideas from Jewish mysticism, or Kabbalah. It attached the highest importance to joyful prayer, rather than study, in the attempt to attain unity (devekut) with God (Scholem 1955, Dan 1983, Idel 1988). While Hasidism continued traditional messianic hope, it did not teach that the messianic age was necessarily imminent.