Hasidism חסידות
The movement begun by the Baal Shem Tov: service through joy, prayer and closeness to the simple person.
Hasidism arose in mid-eighteenth-century Podolia, in a world wrecked by the Chmielnicki massacres and disillusioned by the false messiah Shabtai Tzvi. The Baal Shem Tov brought an idea that sounded almost scandalous: God is present everywhere and in everyone, and a simple Jew praying from the heart is no less precious than a scholar.
Hence its practices: prayer with fervour, song and dance, story instead of treatise, service through the ordinary. Hence too the figure of the tzaddik, the rebbe, to whom people come not only to learn but to ask.
After the Baal Shem Tov the movement was led by the Maggid of Mezritch, who sent students across Eastern Europe; the dynasties—Chabad, Breslov, Ger, Satmar, Belz—grew from them. The Vilna Gaon and the mitnagdim responded sharply, fearing the neglect of study.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- the Tanya, introduction — the book of the Alter Rebbe — the systematisation of the teaching
- Shivchei HaBesht — the earliest accounts of the Baal Shem Tov
- “Maggid Devarav leYaakov” — the teaching of the Maggid of Mezeritch
Documents of the period
- the Vilna Gaon’s letters and the bans of 5532 — the documents of the dispute with the Mitnagdim
Basis: documents and evidence.