Books of the Saints: Readers, Writers and the Development of a Hasidic Literary Tradition

• In Event: Spiritual Experience and Literary Form: Creativity, Practice, and Awareness in Ḥasidic Thought and Society

Abstract

Scholars have generally defined Hasidic literature as works that were produced within the Hasidic movement. However, this definition ignores the complex interrelationship between the emergence of the Hasidic movement and the production of a corpus of literature that became identified as Hasidic. After presenting the methodological issues involved in defining literary forms, genres and traditions in general and the particular difficulty of differentiating Hasidic literature from earlier and contemporary homiletic, ethical and mystical writings I will propose a more nuanced definition of Hasidic literature. I will show how Hasidic writing practices emerged from an oral tradition combining a particular mystical discourse and praxis and highlight the underappreciated role played by such writings in the spread of the movement. I will then trace the development of Hasidic literary practices into a particular literary tradition and indeed, multiple traditions, by examining the various responses, both positive and negative, provoked by the initial literary efforts as well as the evidence for the growth of a specific readership for Hasidic texts. I will argue that the dissemination, expansion, imitation of, and even resistance to, the new modes of discourse, and, above all, the extensive, implicit and explicit, intertextuality exhibited by these works all contributed to the development of an awareness among readers of a distinct literary tradition and to its subsequent perpetuation as such. Furthermore, the dissemination via this literature of an original constellation of ideas and symbols and a unique conceptual and linguistic vocabulary created a shared discursive universe that contributed to the formation of a distinct Hasidic identity. Furthermore, the mere possession of a Hasidic book could serve as an identity marker for even those who were unable to directly assimilate its contents. I will conclude with a brief discussion of some of the literary and poetic features of Hasidic literature and the kinds of aesthetic pleasure they evoke. Looking beyond the more narrative elements such as parables and folktales found in this literature, I will point the role played by myths, metaphors and a range of hermeneutical practices in shaping a particular Hasidic literary form and a particular Hasidic literary experience.

Author

• Chaim Elly Moseson, University of Hamburg