The Oral and Written Word in the Early Spread of Hasidism

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

The spectacular growth of the Hasidic movement in the years 1770-1800 has always been a key issue in the history of the movement. Various factors including poverty, class, messianism, and personal charisma have all been brought forth as partial explanations of the movement’s broad appeal. For the most recent scholarly generation, Ada Rapoport-Albert’s 1996 article “Hasidism after 1772,” published in her volume Hasidism Reappraised, has become central. A new generation of scholarship is moving forward, based on her insights, to examine the interplay between techniques of dissemination, including oral performance, and the actual content of Hasidism’s message in achieving this success. Not surprisingly, the discussion is mostly focused on the disciples of Dov Baer of Miedzyrzecz (1704-1772), the leading intellectual figure of the early movement. It was members of this circle who took to spreading the movement into new districts and who took on the battle with the mitnaggedim that so affected the movement’s fate in these early decades. The proposed papers include a discussion of Dov Baer’s own mystical view of religious language, the teachings of Levi Yizhak of Berdichev, perhaps his best-known disciple, and the relationship between oral and written versions of early Hasidic teaching.

Sub Unit

• Jewish Mysticism

Chair

• Arthur Green, Hebrew College

Individual Presentations

• ‘Beyond the Letters’: Orality and the Limits of Language in the Sermons of R. Dov Baer of Mezritch - Ariel Mayse, Harvard University

• Spatial Theory in Early Hasidism - Uriel Gellman, Bar Ilan University

• The Tsaddik as Performer: Hasidic Oral Teachings in Context - Gadi Sagiv, The Open University of Israel

• My Children Have Defeated Me’: Divine Limitation & Mystical Activism in the Kedushat Levi - Or Rose, Hebrew College