The courts of Galicia, Bukovina and Hungary: Ruzhin, Belz, Sanz, Satmar

Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin, great-grandson of the Maggid of Mezeritch, kept his court like a sovereign's: carriage, house, retinue. He explained it by saying the rebbe's grandeur was not his own but the community's honour. Accused in the killing of two informers, he fled Russia and settled in Sadigura in Bukovina; the Ruzhin–Sadigura courts descend from there.

Sanz was the direct opposite. Rabbi Chaim Halberstam, the Divrei Chaim, was known for giving away everything he received and died leaving no money. In the 1860s a bitter dispute broke out between Sanz and Sadigura over the splendour of courts and what is permitted to a rebbe; it split Galician Hasidism for years and remains one of the most painful internal conflicts of the age.

Belz took a third road. Rabbi Shalom Rokeach, the Sar Shalom, built the great synagogue of Belz and set his court on strictness of custom: a Belzer Hasid is known by order, not by wonders. Belz became the main support of Galician orthodoxy against the Haskalah.

In Hungary the line begins with the Yismach Moshe, Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum of Ujhely. His descendant Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum moved the Satmar court to New York after the Shoah and became the most consistent opponent of Zionism among Hasidic leaders; he also built in America the one community that preserved the pre-war Hungarian way of life whole.