Hasidism

Writings on Devotion, Community, and Life in the Modern World

Ariel Evan Mayse, Ariel Evan Mayse, Sam Berrin Shonkoff

• Publisher: Brandeis University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781684580170, 9781684580163
• eBook ISBN: 9781684580187
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish History

Hasidism has attracted, repelled, and bewildered philosophers, historians, and theologians since its inception in the eighteenth century. In Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community, and Life in the Modern World, Ariel Evan Mayse and Sam Berrin Shonkoff present students and scholars with a vibrant and polyphonic set of Hasidic confrontations with the modern world. In this collection, they show that the modern Hasid marks not only another example of a Jewish pietist, but someone who is committed to an ethos of seeking wisdom, joy, and intimacy with the divine.

While this volume focuses on Hasidism, it wrestles with a core set of questions that permeate modern Jewish thought and religious thought more generally: What is the relationship between God and the world? What is the relationship between God and the human being? But Hasidic thought is cast with mystical, psychological, and even magical accents, and offers radically different answers to core issues of modern concern. The editors draw selections from an  array of genres including women's supplications; sermons and homilies; personal diaries and memoirs; correspondence; stories; polemics; legal codes; and rabbinic response. These selections consciously move between everyday lived experience and the most ineffable mystical secrets, reflecting the multidimensional nature of this unusual religious and social movement. The editors include canonical texts from the first generation of Hasidic leaders up through present-day ultra-orthodox, as well as neo-Hasidic voices and, in so doing, demonstrate the unfolding of a rich and complex phenomenon that continues to evolve today.

Index

Note: Page numbers with “n” or “nn” indicate footnotes.

Abraham, 22, 41–42, 54, 84, 90, 181–82

Adam, 5n3, 21, 84, 110, 122, 129, 211, 215

Agudat Yisrael, 171, 179, 228

‘Al ha-Ge’ulah ve-‘al ha-Temurah (Teitelbaum), 253, 257–59

Alter, Avraham Mordekhai. See Avraham Mordekhai Alter of Ger

Alter, Yehudah Aryeh Leib. See Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger

Alter, Yitshak Meir. See Yitshak Meir Alter of Ger

anokhi, 46–47, 154–55, 268

ARI, the (Yitshak Luria). See Luria, Yitshak

Aryeh Leib of Shpola, 72

asceticism, xvi, 30, 35, 45, 89, 120–25, 192, 278

Ashkenazi liturgy: Hasidism’s alteration of, 27–29, 92–93; Yitshak of Komarno on, 130, 139. See also Mitnagedim

assimilation, xxv, 11, 109, 163, 244. See also Haskalah; secularism

Avnei Nezer (Bornstein, A.), 171, 189

‘Avodat Yisra’el (Hapstein, Yisra’el), 94–95

Avraham ben Aleksander ha-Kohen of Kalisk, 56, 60–62, 63, 67

Avraham Mordekhai Alter of Ger, 171, 177–80, 245, 246

Avraham the Angel (Avraham Friedman), 30–36

Avraham Yehoshu‘a Heschel of Apt, 101–3, 137

awareness (da‘at/de‘ah): as homeland, 39–40, 274; as spiritual consciousness, 8, 25–26, 76, 166

ayin (Nothingness), 8, 20, 30, 31, 58, 66, 68, 71, 97, 271

Ba‘al Shem Tov (Yisra’el ben Eliezer), xv, 3–16, 66, 137, 138, 193, 195, 277

Bahya ibn Pakuda, 117

Bais Yaakov schools, 206–12, 279

Barukh of Mezhbizh, xvi, 4, 16, 72, 81

Be’er Mayim Hayim (Hayim ben Shlomo Tyerer), 85–86

Bein, El‘azer, 236–38

Beit Yosef (Yosef Karo), 92

Belzer Rebbe. See Rokeah, Shalom

Belz Hasidism, 126–29, 179, 206–7, 219–20, 228

Benei Mahashavah Tovah (Shapira, K. K.), 232, 234–36

Benei Yissakhar (Shapira, T. E.), 130, 131–32

Ben Porat Yosef (Ya‘akov Yosef Katz), 4–5, 7, 9, 138

Berezovsky, Shalom Noah, 274–78

Ber of Rovne, 96–97

BeSHT, the. See Ba‘al Shem Tov

Biale, David, xxiv

bitul (dissolution of ego/duality), 9, 21, 31, 57, 58, 59, 60, 68, 69, 70–71, 121, 139–40, 165, 170, 234, 235, 236. See also devekut; serving God; union with God

Bobov/Bobowa Hasidism, 120

body. See corpo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I | Emergence, Challenge, and Renewal (1736–1815)
• II | Ascendancy and Dominance (1815–1881)
• III | Decline, Renaissance, and Destruction (1881–1945)
• IV | Renewal and Reconstruction (1945–Present)
• Index