The revival of joy and prayer within Orthodox Judaism: the Baal Shem Tov's teaching, the rebbe's court, and the dynasties that carry it.
Hasidism began in eighteenth-century Podolia as a revival among the ordinary Jews of Eastern Europe and was opposed, at its birth, by the Mitnagdim, the opponents led by the Vilna Gaon. It is a movement within one branch, Orthodox Judaism, and it is recorded as such: the directive's own example of a movement that does not cross branches, carried here with that justification stated rather than hidden.
Sources
Primary
- The tales of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov; the Tanya of Shneur Zalman (1797).
Secondary
- Glenn Dynner, Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (2006).