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This chapter describes how, in the autumn of 1995, the author published an article in Jewish Action, the journal of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which decried the silence of rabbinic leaders about the declaration on the part of many Lubavitch hasidim that the late Rebbe is the Messiah. This silence, the author argued, combined with the treatment of messianists as Orthodox Jews in good standing, fundamentally transforms Judaism, betrays the messianic faith of the ancestors, and grants Christian missionaries victory with respect to a key issue in the millennial debate between Judaism and Christianity. At its annual convention in June of 1996, the Rabbinical Council of America responded to this challenge with a declaration that ‘there is not and never has been a place in Judaism for the belief that Messiah son of David will begin his messianic career only to experience death, burial, and resurrection before completing it’. In the aftermath of both the article and the RCA resolution, defenders of Lubavitch presented sources which allegedly demonstrate the acceptability of this patently un-Jewish doctrine. They argued that Lubavitch hasidim, unlike Christians, observe Jewish law and do not regard their Messiah as the Deity.

This chapter reviews Gershon C. Bacon's The Politics of Tradition. The book is based on Agudas Yisrael, a very important component of both Jewish and gentile political life in Poland before 1939. The chapter shows how Bacon succeeded in discovering a process of historical changes going on behind the veil of moral stories and stereotypes as the hasidim went from linking their strict, conservative distancing of religion from current politics to forming a conservative but modern party engaged in the political life of the Polish republic while maintaining strict religious observance. Probably the most important merit of Bacon's book lies in its understanding and explaining that the religious conservatism and tradition of Agudas Yisrael did not contradict an acceptance of contemporary ways of defending those values. The strength and significance of this party derived from its successful combination of these apparently contrasting elements.

This chapter discusses the controversy between Mitnagdim and Hasidim focusing on Rabbi H. Hayyim of Volozhin's response to Hasidism. Hayyim waged the struggle against Hasidism in a style entirely different from that initiated and led by his teacher and master, Vilna Gaon. It explains that while Vilna Gaon waged an unrelenting war to eliminate the deviant sect, Hayyim chose to struggle against Hasidism on the plane of ideas and education. It also discusses Hayyim's realization that Hasidim were not heretics and their motives were pure and his establishment of the Volozhin yeshiva.

This chapter investigates the world of Bobower hasidim. Those hasidim who had survived the Holocaust had taken with them their hasidic spirit, their customs, and their language, and moved to another geographic dimension. That which in Bobowa itself has become legend is in Brooklyn a physical reality. All of hasidic Bobowa is there, transferred across the ocean. Bobowa itself—the Bobowa near Tarnów—has changed too, of course, but this other Bobowa in Boro Park has changed more. However, the miracle-working tsadik and his court have remained, and so have the faithful hasidim, and their thoughts and prayers: the Messiah did not descend on to the splendid Bobowa soil, where he could have walked on a carpet of grass and herbs, but he will certainly come to the hasidim who await him on the pavements of Brooklyn.

The mid-1920s saw Joseph Rosen and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) establish the core of the Jewish colonization project in Soviet Russia, but the entire Jewish community did not share the enthusiasm of the New York-based philantrophies supporting the project. From 1924 until the early 1930s, institutional politics in the Jewish diaspora was overshadowed by a bitter conflict over the JDC's Joint Agricultural Corporation. Despite its potential benefit for the settlers, colonization sparked new hostility in America. Aside from rivalry with Zionists, the JDC had to convince America's Jews to show commitment of time and assets in Soviet Russia. Its activity in the diaspora was complicated by relations with the Hasidim in the USSR and their sympathizers in America.

This chapter explores the modes relating to Scripture that the Hasidic masters developed. It analyses the masters' sense of metaphor and poetic language, the roles of imagination, cognition, and the self, and the dynamics of translation and interpretation. It also provides a discussion through a thematic axis, which begins with a closer look at certain elements of Hadism and consider the ways in which they are manifested in the relationship between the rebbe and his Hasidim. The chapter highlights how the Hasidic masters created interpersonal connection by rhetorical means. It represents a full century of Hasidic creativity in a broad range of schools and trends, which speak of transformative learning and its experiential dimensions.

This chapter addresses the Jewish attitude towards usury in the high and late Middle Ages, treating four kinds of data: legal sources (halakhic sources), ethical and philosophical writings, biblical commentaries, and the literature of polemics. Not only was usury to Gentiles viewed as fully permissible legally, there was also no perception whatsoever that there was any moral taint to such an activity or that Jews lent to Gentiles only because there was no other way for them to earn a living. There is equally no ground for claiming that the German Pietists opposed usury. In a large, multifaceted, and formless work such as the Sefer Ḥasidim (Book of the Pious), one can find any and every idea. The polemical literature is equally unenlightening. Substantive conclusions can be drawn only from the “internal literature.” In that literature, one finds no substantive discussion of Gentile usury—neither by halakhists nor by kabbalists, and not even by ethicists, philosophers, or exegetes. They simply saw no problem in usury. The chapter then looks at the Catholic Church's attitude to usury.

This chapter looks at Abraham Joshua Heschel. Abraham Joshua Heschel emigrated to the United States in 1940, but his first thirty-three years in Europe made him the religious philosopher, biblical interpreter, and social activist he became as a naturalized American citizen. Born in Warsaw on January 11, 1907, his ancestors were hasidim, continuing the eighteenth-century pietistic movement founded by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba'al Shem Tov. This Jewish consciousness, according to Heschel, assumed a spontaneous awareness of divine presence. Heschel's relationship with Poland was painful and complex. Growing up in hasidic Warsaw, he had little contact with Polish culture, and to prepare for his secular studies, he had to learn Polish from tutors. As a child he experienced the common antisemitism of the streets. As an adolescent in Warsaw, Heschel was expected to inherit the position of rebbe—a spiritual and community leader—held by his father and uncles. However, he reconciled his hasidic vision with west European culture and history's demands, making the transition by leaving Warsaw to earn a diploma at the recently established secular, Yiddish-language Realgymnasium in Vilna. By 1933, he had completed a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Berlin. From there he went to Frankfurt, and returned for one academic year to Warsaw before finally leaving Poland in July of 1939.

This chapter assesses the author's proposal of a resolution about messianism to the Rabbinical Council of America. The proposal reads as follows: ‘In light of disturbing developments which have arisen following the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt''l, the Rabbinical Council of America declares that there is no place in Orthodox Judaism for the belief that Mashiach ben David (Messiah son of David) will begin his Messianic mission only to experience death, burial and resurrection before completing it’. The RCA resolution evoked substantial coverage in the Jewish media. It was not formulated as an attack against Lubavitch and addressed the messianist belief in a mild language. Nevertheless, some Lubavitch hasidim levelled strong attacks against the RCA and even stronger attacks against the author.

This chapter explores the debate on avodah zarah. Within days of the appearance of the author's article, Ha'aretz published a brief response entitled ‘Al tige'u bimeshiḥai’ (literally, ‘Do Not Touch My Anointed Ones’) by Rabbi Gedalyah Axelrod, one of the signatories of the ruling requiring belief in the Rebbe's messiahship and the head of a rabbinic court in Haifa. He described the quotations about the Rebbe's divinity as ‘anomalous comments which should not have been made’, arguing that ‘these exceptions are being taken care of by Chabad rabbis everywhere by means of education and guidance’. Meanwhile, Rabbi Butman's article presents an indication that the problem of avodah zarah in Lubavitch is not confined to the tiny number of hasidim who use a liturgical formula calling the Rebbe God. It reflects a theology that is widespread and deeply rooted in the very heart of the messianist camp, and to some degree even beyond.

This chapter highlights the importance of the Chabad community and the nature of its messianic profile. The success of Lubavitch outreach is not surprising at all. Its adherents combine deep commitment with an obligation to devote a few years to missionary work. Lubavitch hasidim display no less commitment, and the best of them become missionaries not for two or three years but for the remainder of their lives. Since their target is not the entire world but the Jewish community alone, their impact is swift and abiding. What, then, is the messianic profile of this highly significant movement? The factions within provide dramatically contradictory information to outsiders, so that messianists claim that virtually everyone believes, even if some oppose public affirmations, while the non-messianist leadership contends that the believers are a very small number of mostly marginal hasidim of relatively recent vintage who know how to make noise and intimidate.

This chapter evaluates the widespread assumption that the maskilim opposed all forms of superstition, including magic and miracle-working, because they viewed it as a hallmark of hasidism and the ignorant masses. It rejects the Haskalah's twin allegations that tsadikim engaged in magic and that magic was the sole province of the hasidim. These allegations were inaccurate — not all tsadikim practised magic, and it was in fact also a central element in the culture of the Lithuanian mitnagedim — but they were convenient grist to the propaganda mill. The maskilim were so apprehensive about the danger that hasidism posed to the future of Jewish society that they had no compunctions about exaggerating its evils. This exaggerated image, together with a tendency to ignore hasidism's genuine spiritual elements, also coloured later scholarship on the movement.

This chapter covers the prominence of the Jewish Question in the political debates of the last years of the Commonwealth, as well as in the later journalism of the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Poland regarding interests in hasidim. It analyzes the cradle of Polish Hasidism, Podolia and Volhynia, the south-eastern borderlands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where from the 1740s to 1760 the putative creator of the group, Israel ben Eliezer, also known as the Besht was active. Though Hasidism appeared in the lands of central Poland as early as the mid-eighteenth century, the governments that controlled these territories between 1772 and 1830 did not become aware of it until nearly the end of that period that the existence of hasidic groups became an issue in Jewish politics. It explains how the lack of official interest in Hasidism was caused by the very complicated general history of the states of central and eastern Europe at the start of the nineteenth century. The growing wave of interventions in issues related to Hasidism and the fact that the question of the legality of Hasidism became tied up with the issue of religious fraternities.

This chapter covers the investigation in 1823–4, which revealed the discrepancies between the government's official policy towards hasidim. It analyzes the subsequent investigation that started at the end of 1824 and continued into 1825 that fully revealed the nature and destructive consequences of unresolved contradictions. The chapter also describes the seeds of the failure of the government's policy concerning Hasidism, such as anti-Jewish fears and prejudices, and disdain and paternalism regarding Jewish society as a whole and “fanatical hasidim” in particular. These prejudices were evident as early as 1824, at the high point of the great investigation, and they ultimately contributed to the complete disintegration of the political strategy. It also talks about the less visible factors that played a part in shaping the policy towards Hasidism, which included growing ignorance on the part of the bureaucrats involved, coupled with incompetence, natural inertia, and their own self-interest.

This chapter is devoted in its entirety to an analysis of hasidic political activity as a reaction to the policies directed at Hasidim. It describes the actions of Rabbi Isaac of Warka, the best-known hasidic political activist in nineteenth-century Poland, as a case study for the direct and indirect hasidic involvement in elite politics. The chapter focuses on the nature and mechanisms of hasidic political activism and how little is known of how that activism was perceived within the hasidic world. It identifies the technical characteristics of hasidic political activism and its relationship with the forms of Jewish political involvement in the pre-modern Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. This chapter also outlines how much modern hasidic politics were inherited from earlier forms of shtadlanut and other traditional Jewish politics, as well as how it adapted to modern circumstances.