like Jacob Sassportas, Moses Hajiz, and Jacob Emden whose first response to
any unusual expression of Judaism was to censure and condemn out of a fear
that it might be some form of Sabbateanism. This mentality would crystallize
at the beginning of the nineteenth century into a novel approach to Judaism
called Orthodoxy. The first manifestation of this fear, though, would be the
rabbinic opposition to Hasidism at the end of the eighteenth century.
Hasidism and its antagonists
Hasidism, from the Hebrew term Hasidut(pietism) was a movement that begin
in southeastern Poland in the 1740s, and conquered most of eastern European
Jewry by 1810. It remains a major movement to this day. The origins of the
movement lie in the aftermath of the Chmielnicki massacres, specifically in
developments in southeastern Poland during the first half of the eighteenth
century. The scarcity of rabbis and educators in southern Poland created a grow-
ing alienation between the scholarship-centered world of Lithuania and the less
educated, more isolated Jews of southern Poland. This alienation was exacer-
bated by the scholarly emphasis on Pilpul(casuistry), a method of studying
texts that emphasized hypothetical speculation over practical application. Once
an effective means of adapting Judaism to the Ashkenazic world, by the eigh-
teenth century Pilpulhad long outlived its usefulness. Preachers and orators
from the north who were sent to the southern communities armed with this
scholarly mentality often preached a message that did not resonate among the
isolated Jewish communities in the south. The conventional notion that the
ideal Jewish life was defined and measured by the study of texts alienated those
Jews who had little or no opportunity to engage in such study.
The decline of Jewish communal life in southeastern Poland led to a grow-
ing interest among Jews in folkish forms of Jewish observance, such as a belief
in demons and spirits. This trend led to the rise of a new type of religious fig-
ure: the folk healer known as Ba’al Shem (master of the name). These
individuals knew how to use roots and flowers to mix elixirs believed to have
healing powers, and incantations that would ward off spirits. The best among
these figures were known as Ba’al shem tov(the good master of the name).
This was the background to the emergence of the founder of Hasidism,
Israel ben Eliezer Ba’al Shem Tov, also known as the Besht. Like Shabbetai
Zvi, the Besht was a charismatic figure who wrote nothing down. Thus, his-
torians have the same methodological problem in reconstructing his
biography and religious worldview. The dearth of first-hand evidence leaves
historians to assemble a composite based on the writings of his followers –
notably Shivhei ha-Besht(In Praise of the Ba’al Shem Tov), a hagiography
assembled by disciples – and on the condemnations by his opponents.
Israel Ba’al Shem Tov was born in Miedzyboz, a privately owned town
in the Podolia region of southeastern Poland. He received a traditional
World Jewry in flux, 1492–1750 133