Hasidism is a Jewish movement dating from the eighteenth century. It began as a strong movement and then lost much of its force as times changed and because of its own internal failures, but the underlying conception persisted and was revived during the period of Jewish existentialism. Hasidism is not a single sect but an idea and an attitude that has given birth to a number of different philosophical systems, though all are linked in terms of a sense of spiritual community.
The gospel of Hasidism was born in eighteenth-century Europe through the offices of Bal Shem Tov, in Poland. The conditions in Europe at that time were similar to those in ancient Palestine in the first century A.D., and just as Christianity developed out of a period of oppressive rule and strife, so did Hasidism develop in a time of political oppression, social unrest, revelation, penance, and mystic cults. Hasidism sloughed off the obscene, the gross, and the sexual in Sabbateanism and Frankism and kept only the essence of a new religious movement intended to exalt the spirit:
But just as Christianity in its early forms was unrealistic in its attitude toward the state, so early Hasidism was unrealistic in its attitude toward the dual role man has to play on earth--his role in relation to stat, and his role in relation to God (Dimont 287).
Hasidism was a complex belief system. Where the Talmud preached that no ignorant man could be pious, Hasidism taught the opposite, affirming the Jewish spirit without the Jewish tradition.
Israel ben Eliezer, later known 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 founded a movement and was responsible for two institutions. First, he revived the ancient concept of the...