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Hasidic Judaism ( Hebrew: Chasidut חסידות) is a Haredi Jewish religious movement. It is also known as Hasidism, and the adjective Chasidic/Hasidic (or in Yiddish Chasidish חסידיש meaning "righteous" from the Hebrew root word chesed חסד meaning "loving kindness") is applied. It originated in Eastern Europe ( Belarus and the Ukraine) in the 18th century. In its initial stages, it received opposition from several contemporary leaders, most notably the Vilna Gaon of Lithuania, united as the mitnagdim (Hebrew: "opposers").The movement was founded by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1700-1760), also known as the Baal Shem Tov (abbreviated as Besht). It was formed in a time of persecution of the Jewish people, when European Jews had turned inward to Talmud study; many felt that most expressions of Jewish life had become too "academic", and that they no longer had any emphasis on spirituality or joy. The Ba'al Shem Tov set out to improve the situation.
1 Prelude
In Poland, where since the sixteenth century the bulk of the Jewry had established itself, the struggle between traditional rabbinic Judaism and radical Kabbalah influenced mysticism became particularly acute after the Messianic movement of Sabbatai ZeviSabbatai Zevi also transliterated Shabbethai Shabbetai Sabbetai or Shabtai Zvi or Tzvi ( July 23, 1626 possibly September 30, 1676) was a famous claimed Messiah and Kabbalist. He was the founder of the Sabbatian movement (Sabbatianism) that was more Judai. Leanings toward mystical doctrines and sectarianism showed themselves prominently among the Jews of the southeastern provinces of Poland, while in the north-eastern provinces, in LithuaniaThe Republic of Lithuania ( Lithuanian Lietuva Polish Litwa, German Litauen, French Lituanie, Spanish Lituania, Estonian Lituania, Finnish Liettua) is a republic in Northeastern Europe. One of the three Baltic States along the Baltic Sea, it shares border, and in White RussiaWhite Russia is one of the names for the former Soviet republic of Belarus. Similar names are used in a number of other languages for instance, "Weissrussland" in German, "Wit-Rusland" in Dutch and "Baltarusija" in Lithuanian. The name "White Russia" is a, rabbinical Orthodoxy held sway. Jews that follow this tradition are called Litvish. This was due in part to the social difference between the northern Lithuanian Jews and the southern Jews of Ukraine. In Lithuania the Jewish masses were mainly gathered in densely populated towns where rabbinical academic culture (in the yeshibot) was in a flourishing state; while in Ukraine the Jews were more scattered in villages far removed from intellectual centers.
Pessimism in the south became more intense after the Cossacks' Uprising under Bohdan Chmielnicki and the turbulent times in Poland (1648-60), which completely ruined the Jewry of Ukraine, but left comparatively untouched that of Lithuania. The economic and spiritual decline of the South-Russian Jews created a favorable field for mystical movements and religious sectarianism, which spread there from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century.
Besides these influences there were deeply seated causes that produced among many Jews a discontent with rabbinism and a gravitation toward mysticismMysticism is meditation, prayer, or theology focused on the direct experience of union with divinity, God, or Ultimate Reality, or the belief that such experience is a genuine and important source of knowledge. Perspectives of mysticism A wide range of pe. Rabbinism, which in Poland had become transformed into a system of religious formalism, no longer provided satisfactory religious experience to many Jews. Although traditional Judaism had adopted some features of Kabbalah, it adapted them to fit its own system: it added to its own ritualism the asceticism of the "practical cabalists" of the East, who saw the essence of earthly existence only in fasting, in penance, and in spiritual sadness. Such a combination of religious practises, suitable for individuals and hermits, was not suitable to the bulk of the Jews.
Hasidism gave a ready response to the burning desire of the common people in its simple, stimulating, and comforting faith. In contradistinction to other sectarian teaching, early Hasidism aimed not at dogmatic or ritual reform, but at a deeper psychological one. Its aim was to change not the belief, but the believer. By means of psychological suggestion it created a new type of religious man, a type that placed emotion above reason and rites, and religious exaltation above knowledge.
