THE PROBLEM

THE YEAR 1772 is generally regarded as a critical one, or at least an important turning point, in the history of hasidism. Three decisive events took place in that year which altered both the ideological and the organizational course on which the movement had originally embarked. The spring brought with it the first outbreak of bitter hostilities between the mitnaggedim and the hasidim in Vilna, whence the dispute quickly spread to other Jewish communities in Lithuania and Galicia. During the summer months Belorussia was annexed to Russia, and Galicia to Austria, in the first partition of the disintegrating kingdom of Poland; as a result, parts of the Jewish (and hasidic) community in Poland which until then had formed a single cultural and political entity found themselves arbitrarily separated. At the end of the year, in December, the supreme leader of hasidism, R. Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezhirech, died without leaving an ‘heir’ to take charge of the movement in his place.

In the light of this historic combination of circumstances, the scholarly literature on hasidism has tended to divide the history of the movement, especially from the point of view of its organizational structure, into two periods separated by a clear line of demarcation: (a) from the foundation of the movement to the death of the Maggid of Mezhirech, the period of centralized leadership under a single universally acknowledged head (first the founder, Israel Baal Shem Tov (the Besht), and then his disciple and successor, the Maggid of Mezhirech﹜; (b) the period beginning immediately after the death of the Maggid in 1772, which was marked by the onset of decentralization: the leadership split up, and the movement began to function as a loose affiliation of distinct communities connected, it is true, by the common legacy of the Besht and the Maggid of Mezhirech, but independent of each other, and each led by its own zaddik.

This periodization scheme underlies every major historical study of hasidism. Explicit discussions of it, however, have been scarce and lacking in rigour, since the organizational development of hasidism, as distinct from the evolution of its doctrines, has not received much critical scholarly attention. Processes of organizational change, inasmuch as they are observed at all, are treated casually, and up to now no systematic attempt has been made to identify their causes.