The Jewish Enlightenment and Mesmerism (GIF Young, 2013-2014)

Modern Judaism, 1991

Already at the beginning of the 20th century several prominent neo-Hasidic writers confessed that nostalgia for the attractions and charms of Hasidism in their writing did not reflect any honest attempt on their part to adhere to the religious beliefs of true Hasidim. Modern literary use of the charms and treasures of Hasidic tradition was now meant to serve the purpose of constructing a secular Jewish identity, or at least one which could serve as a distinct alternative to rabbinic notions of Jewish identity and tradition. Secular modern writers and thinkers promoted an amended version of Hasidism precisely because they hoped to rely upon it as leverage for legitimizing their newfound resentment of Halakha, of the rabbis and of the practice of basing Jewish attachment on philosophical and dogmatic properties of the old classical theology. The next generation of Jewish writers – operating in the following decades of the 20th century from a modern and secular vantage point - features a long line of literary attempts to cling to the unique heritage of Hasidism and reformulate it, not only by abandoning pretensions of ‘returning to the religious fold’, but also by attempting to ground and justify the spiritual distance felt by both the writers and their new readership from Rabbinic and Orthodox Judaism. However, these writers also exhibit attempts to blur and dull the sense of a chasm dividing between their secular and humanist sensibility and an authentic atmosphere of ‘Jewish spirituality’. Such attempts deliberately make life difficult for anyone who would propose to draw a clear distinction between the religious longing manifest in genuine Hasidic writing and its secular parallel. Drawing such distinctions becomes even more complicated when we attempt to compare such literary phenomena with contemporary tendencies in American Jewry that speak of ‘Jewish Renewal’ via open and uninhibited return to Jewish mystical and Hasidic sources. On the one hand, such tendencies do not signify a simple ‘return’ to the original fold of the Hasidic movement. On the other hand, they should also not be taken merely as limited expression of superficial nostalgia for the traditional past. Rather, they represent an attempt to found a new, modern Jewish identity, aided and abetted by Hasidic precedent. Moreover, even the specific ’renovations’ or stereotypes through which Hasidism is currently portrayed appear very familiar to anyone who has already witnessed them in the writings of neo-Hasidic secular writers at the beginning of the 20th century. Despite these similarities, I wish to point to a basic difference between recent attempts to revive the Hasidic heritage as a tool or source of inspiration for religious worship, and prior secular attempts to enlist Hasidism for the purposes of constructing a modern Jewish identity that stands in clear opposition to rabbinical Judaism, challenging the assumption that Jewish identity mandates maintaining specific theological positions or dogmas.

Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996

The Lehrhaus, 2024

This is an historiographic essay covering the last 30 years of secular historical research on the emergence and early growth of the Hasidic movement among European Jews For those of you who have bookmarked, there is a session open for comment here: https://www.academia.edu/s/6c75c983d6/histories-of-hasidism-the-last-three-decades-in-research

Oxford Bibliographies, 2022

A bibliographic resource to support scholars, students, and seekers in their studies of neo-Hasidism. From the introduction: “Neo-Hasidim” (sing. Neo-Hasid) are non-Hasidic Jews who draw upon Hasidism for purposes of spiritual or cultural renewal. Neo-Hasidism is thus rooted in a belief that the core of Hasidism—often identified with the movement’s earliest generations—is transferrable to other sociological contexts. Neo-Hasidim tend to be more secular and liberal-minded than Hasidim, but this is not necessarily the case. Note that even the most radical innovators within Hasidism itself, such as Nahman of Bratslav, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczno, or Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson, are not “neo-Hasidic” per se, since they operated within Hasidic communities. A border case, however, is women from Hasidic families who have been excluded from the central sites of Hasidic identity performance due to their gender and yet drawn deeply upon Hasidism in their own lives. When neo-Hasidism emerged in Central Europe at the dawn of the 20th century, it represented a striking cultural shift. From the Enlightenment through the 19th century, liberal Jews had generally cast Hasidism as backward, superstitious, and irrational. This was largely a strategic position: by differentiating themselves from “uncivilized,” “oriental” Ostjuden (Eastern European Jews), especially those ecstatic Hasidim, liberal Jews could demonstrate their own worthiness of citizenship and civil rights in modern nation-states. Around the turn of the century, though, a new generation of Jews rejected these bourgeois, assimilationist aspirations. On one hand, unmitigated discrimination against Jews and a rise of racial anti-Semitism seemed to suggest that liberal Jewish denigration of Ostjuden was unproductive, if not immoral. On the other hand, at the same time, a wave of neo-Romanticism swelled in the region, as more and more Europeans asserted that modernist rationalism, promises of progress, and industrialization and urbanization had only bred disenchantment and alienation. Many turned to folk cultures, mythologies, and mysticisms as keys to a renewed vitality. From this perspective, Hasidism took on a new aura. The first wave of what came to be called neo-Hasidism began as a literary phenomenon. Modern Hebrew and Yiddish writers such as Y. L. Peretz (b. 1852–d. 1915), Mikhah Yosef Berdichevsky (b. 1865– d. 1921), and Samuel Abba Horodezky (b. 1871– d. 1957) wrote glowingly about Hasidism from decidedly non-Hasidic—or, in some cases, ex-Hasidic—vantage points. Around the same time, Hillel Zeitlin (b. 1871– d. 1942) and Martin Buber (b. 1878– d. 1965) celebrated Hasidism as a resource for Jewish religious renewal. Decades later, a second wave of neo-Hasidism took shape among spiritual seekers in the North American Jewish counterculture of the 1960s. Sparked initially by immigrants who had fled the Shoah (Holocaust)—most notably Abraham Joshua Heschel (b. 1907– d. 1972), Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (b. 1924– d. 2014), and Shlomo Carlebach (b. 1925– d. 1994)—the neo-Hasidic ethos gained steam through activities of US-born seekers and scholars, especially through the Jewish Renewal movement. Additional, and sometimes surprising, offshoots of neo-Hasidism continue to spread through today.

Studying Hasidism: Sources, Methods, Perspectives, 2019

Hasidism, a Jewish religious movement that originated in Poland in the eighteenth century, today counts over 700,000 adherents, primarily in the U.S., Israel, and the UK. Popular and scholarly interest in Hasidic Judaism and Hasidic Jews is growing, but there is no textbook dedicated to research methods in the field, nor sources for the history of Hasidism have been properly recognized. Studying Hasidism, edited by Marcin Wodziński, an internationally recognized historian of Hasidism, aims to remedy this gap. The work’s thirteen chapters each draws upon a set of different sources, many of them previously untapped, including folklore, music, big data, and material culture to demonstrate what is still to be achieved in the study of Hasidism. Ultimately, this textbook presents research methods that can decentralize the role community leaders play in the current literature and reclaim the everyday lives of Hasidic Jews.