Hasidism (redirected from Hassidism)

Hasidism or Chassidism (both: hăs`ĭdĭz'əm, khă–) [Heb.,=the pious], Jewish religious movement founded in Poland in the 18th cent. by Baal-Shem-Tov. Its name derives from Hasidim. Hasidism, which stressed the mercy of God and encouraged joyous religious expression through music and dance, spread rapidly. Baal-shem-tov taught that purity of heart is more pleasing to God than learning. He drew his teaching chiefly from Jewish legend and aroused much opposition among Talmudists, who in 1772, pronounced the movement heretical. Hasidism shows the influence of the Lurianic kabbalah (see kabbalah; Luria, Isaac ben Solomon). After the death of the Baal-shem-tov, the single most important characteristic of the movement—the leadership role of the zaddik—developed. The zaddik, the charismatic leader around whom various Hasidic groups gather, serves as an intermediary between his followers and God. Leadership is passed from father to son (or in some cases to son-in-law). By the 1830s the majority of Jews in Ukraine, Galicia, and central Poland were Hasidic, as were substantial minorities in Belarus and Hungary. In the 20th cent., Hasidim are the staunchest defenders of tradition against increasing secularism in Jewish life. Since the Holocaust, the main centers of Hasidism are in the United States and Israel. The most notable Hasidic community in the United States is composed of the followers of the Lubavitcher rebbe, who are noted for their outreach to other Jews as well as for their messianic fervor. Romantic reworkings of Hasidic doctrine by Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz, theologian Martin Buber, and others have become popular outside traditional Hasidic circles.

Bibliography

See G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1946, repr. 1961); M. Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man (tr., 1958, repr. 1966) and The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism (tr., 1960); E. Wiesel, Souls on Fire (1972); H. Rabinowicz, Hasidism and the State of Israel (1982) and Hasidism: The Movement and Its Masters (1988); G. D. Hundert, ed., Essential Papers on Hasidism (1991).

---

Hasidism

Pietistic and mystical movement in Judaism that originated in 18th-century Poland. It was a reaction against rigid legalism and Talmudic learning in favour of a joyful form of worship that served as a spiritual outlet for the common people. Hasidism began with the preaching of the man later known as the Ba'al Shem Tov. Teaching that God was immanent in all things and that piety was more important than scholarship, he won followers known as Hasidim (“loyalists”). Dov Baer founded the first Hasidic community c. 1710, and countless small communities soon sprang up in Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and Palestine, each led by a zaddik. Communal services were marked by dancing, shouting, and singing, through which participants reached a state of spiritual ecstasy. Though excommunicated from Orthodox Judaism in 1772, the Hasidim continued to flourish. By the 19th century Hasidism had become an ultraconservative movement that was accepted by the Orthodox as legitimate. Huge numbers of Hasidim fell victim to the Holocaust, but their survivors established vital movements in Israel and the U.S. The Lubavitcher sect, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., numbers about 200,000.