IN PART, this book continues my previous study of the Haskalah and the hasidic movement in the Kingdom of Poland (sometimes also known as ‘Congress Poland’ because it was created by the Congress of Vienna) in the long nineteenth century. One reason I have returned to the same period and geographical region is my assumption that the appearance and growth of any major social movement entails changes in social structures, in how social groups relate to one another, in cultural perceptions, and even in the economic matrix. Hasidism was no doubt the largest and most important new movement to emerge within east European Jewry in those turbulent times, which in the Polish territories were marked by abrupt social, economic, and cultural transformations (industrialization, urbanization, the replacement of traditional estate structures by new social strata, changes in political status, and the evolution of modern ideologies). How did hasidism participate in these transformations? I believe that one way to approach this issue is by investigating the changes in social relations and perceptions that these developments brought about; or, in other words, how the new social formations that arose in the Polish lands defined and redefined themselves in relation to each other.

The various social groups and institutions reacted to hasidism in different ways, and the ways in which hasidim reacted to them were similarly varied. The most important players in this social nexus were (a) the Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment and its successor integrationist camp, which strove to become ‘modern’ by integrating with the surrounding society; (b) the traditional non-hasidic Jewish community, frequently and wrongly identified with the mitnagedim, an anti-hasidic group; and (c) the state and its institutions and political elites representing the state or states. In my previous book I tried to explore in some detail what the hasidic movement meant for the first of these players, i.e. the Haskalah and its successors. In this study I turn my attention to the last of the three, by considering the political history of the Kingdom of Poland and its relationship with the hasidic movement. This is thus the second part of what I hope will be a trilogy about hasidism and the context in which it developed.