court and at the table of the zaddik, even though this meant leaving his wife
alone to raise children, manage the household, and earn a living. This ideal
was reinforced by the stories of the Besht’s devoted wife supporting him
while he wandered around the Carpathian Mountains. Later critics of
Hasidism would single out the detrimental effects of Hasidism on the fam-
ily and the double burden of the wife of the hasid, who had to earn a living,
manage the household, and raise the children while the hasidate and sat at
the table of his rebbe.
To some degree, Shneur Zalman of Lyady was able to dampen this disrup-
tion to Jewish family life. In his major work, Tanya, he defined the concept of
the benoni, the ordinary Hasidic Jew. This concept emphasized that the ordi-
nary hasidneed not strive to be a zaddik. Rather, the benonicould achieve
spiritual fulfillment through the conventional life of father, husband,
provider, as long as he maintained the proper Hasidic demeanor. The upshot
is that Hasidism was the solution to a crisis of rabbinic authority and Jewish
identity in eastern Europe. In western and central Europe, this challenge
required a radically different solution.
World Jewry in flux, 1492–1750 137