The courts of Polish Hasidism: Lizhensk, Lublin, Przysucha, Ger

After the death of the Maggid of Mezeritch his students scattered, and Hasidism turned from one circle into a dozen courts. Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, in Noam Elimelech, described the tzaddik as one who lifts the community's prayer and answers for it—the beginning of what would be called the institution of the rebbe.

His student the Chozeh of Lublin carried it to its limit: they came to him in thousands, and the court lived by wonder and counsel. Against this rose his own student, the Yehudi ha-Kadosh of Przysucha, who held that wonders make a person slack and that the work must be his own. From Przysucha came Kotzk, with its demand for truth without consolation, and from Kotzk came Ger.

The court of Ger was founded by the Chiddushei ha-Rim, Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Alter, who brought heavy Talmudic study back into Hasidism where Kotzk had all but set it aside. His grandson, the Sfat Emet, took the court as a boy and grew it into the largest in Poland.

Alongside stood courts of another temper. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev became known for defending his people before Heaven rather than reproaching them. Rabbi Nachum of Chernobyl, in Meor Einayim, taught the search for the divine inside an ordinary day. None of these courts cancelled another—and that is their mark: the argument was about measure, not about faith.