Analysis of Hasidism

The research will include analysis of the opponents of the Hasidic movement, including the Mitnagdim.

As Gershom G. Scholem immediately makes clear in his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism that the "Polish and Ukranian Hasidism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had nothing to do with medieval Hasidism in Germany. The new Hasidism was founded shortly before the middle of the eighteenth century by that famous saint and mystic Israel Baal Shem ("Master of the Holy Name") who died in 1760 . . . " (Scholem 325).

What we are dealing with here, then, is essentially a relatively modern movement which is heavily identified with one personality.

In essence, writes Max Dimont in The Indestructible Jews, Hasidism

was a Jewish revivalist movement in which, as

in Christianity, personality took the place of

doctrine. Unencumbered by higher learning,

Bal Shem (various spellings exist of the

leader's name) stripped kabalism of its

metaphysics, which he did not understand.

Ne neutralized the messianic content of

Sabbateanism and substituted frenzied religion

for the sexual frenzy of Frankism (Dimont 229).

The development of Hasidism, therefore, closely paralleled the development of the personality of Bal Shem himself. He was

born in 1700 in Podolia, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, in or near the province o

. . .
r of traditional Judaism, but were rather attempting to breathe new and fresh life into that tradition, and to furthermore expand and amplify on the meanings and celebrations of that tradition. Whereas Sabbatai Zvi and Jacob Frank openly preached revolutionary heresy, proclaiming themselves messiah and denouncing some of the most central of Talmudic precepts and traditions, Bal Shem and his people respected and celebrated the Judaic traditions. They meant merely to bring some of those traditions a little closer to earth and to the Jewish people, and to remove them a little from the exclusivity of scholarly circles. Bal Shem "substituted a warm mysticism for the arid scholasticism" of the Talmudic establishment scholars. The omnipresence of God was believed to be in not only all the universe, in mind and in matter, in every relationship, but also in evil as well as in good. This pantheistic view had been expounded by a hundred philosophers before Bal Shem, but none of those thinkers had deeply touched the masses of people as did Bal Shem. He turned a metaphysical concept into a way of life. Although, as Sachar writes, Bal Shem left no writings himself, and his followers interlaced their own insights and commentaries with t
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Bal Shem, Bal Shem's, Bel Sham, Bible Talmud, Sabbatai Zvi, Scripture Judaic, Sabbateans Hasidic, Gaon Vilna, Hasidism God's, bal shem, Mitnagdim Maskilim, hasidic movement, bal shem's, 18th century, , gaon vilna, bible talmud, sabbatai zvi, jacob frank, bal shem's teachings, sachar writes, sabbatai zvi jacob, zvi jacob frank, death bal shem, simple textual meaning,
Approximate Word count = 4034
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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