Hasidic Jews are known to many as those quirky people walking in the center of
Brooklyn in the dead of summer and silk caftans, big fur hats, and 17 kids in tow.
They look like they came straight out of the 18th century and to understand
who they are, that's exactly where you need to start.
It all began with a single man,
who lived in Eastern Europe, the Baal Shem Tov.
He traveled around as a practical Kabbalist
selling herbs, blessing houses and crops, producing amulets.
Providing all sorts of spiritual advice.
Doing exorcisms and living a life free of many possessions.
He spoke of how to elevate the soul.
You don't have to fast or do self-mortification out of fear,
rather it's about serving God with joy.
He introduced Kabbalistic rituals into everyday life, saying there is
nothing that doesn't have a divine spark in it.
You do. I do. That tree outside does.
He spoke of how we need to redeem the sparks and return them to God
by finding truthful meaning in everything and everyone.
He didn't have a yeshiva or thousands of students tending to him.
He just traveled as all of the Kabbalists traveled back then.
His disciple, Rabbi Dov Baer, changed the tradition of a traveling Kabbalist
because he had bad legs.
Instead people came to see him and
his disciples became the great leaders of Hasidism.
It was around these disciples that the movement emerged,
passed from father to son or son-in-law or you know some student.
While in 1772, there were thirty or forty active Hasidic thinkers and that was about it.
By the 1800s, Hasidic thought captured all of this area. So, how?!
It certainly wasn't because everyone was for it.
In fact many influential rabbis didn't want to
split between them and this new Hasidic thing and were worried this was
a false Messianic movement all over again.
Hasidim were religious enthusiasts.
When they prayed, they'd clap, jump, somersault,
crying out their souls.
In Hasidism, everything became spiritual.
The Mignadim who disliked this enthusiasm,
denounced them to the authorities.
For 25 years, there was a series of religious bans
against the Hasidism and yet during this time
is exactly when the movement grew.
The Hasidim, in order to convince people
they were part of the Jewish community, contributed in all sorts of ways.
For one thing they provided a spiritual authority in town.
Rabbis at the time mostly served as legal authorities.
Someone to tell you if your chicken was kosher for instance.
Hasidim gave blessings and cured the depressed.
They refocused what it meant to be Jewish from spending hours and hours
at the yeshiva as it was before to spending more of that time praying.
They said if you prayed with "kavanah," an enthusiastic understanding
that your prayer is G-dly.
This brought thousands to Hasidim.
Of course this made people think that they were anti-learning
less studying, more prayer, anti-learning.
So, Hasidim were the first to publish many Jewish books,
increasing the Jewish printing press from 2 to 20,
showing people they were no slouches when it came to learning either.
They also changed the laws of butchering,
shechita, introducing for instance the concept of..
sharp knives
which made them the go-to butchers.
As people talked to the butcher, he explained what he and Hasidim were all about.
They penetrated into the chavurot -
these were a groups of people who took care of one mitzvah.
For instance providing a dowry to the poor girl was one group,
visiting the sick was another, giving bread to the poor,
fixing books, providing free loans, the Chevrah Kadisha who cared for the dead.
They got into them to make sure people understood Hasidim.
They both penetrated old institutions and established new ones.
They proved that they were part of the community.
And this was the social revolution of Hasidism.
By the 1820s to 40s, this rivalry between the Mignadim and the Hasidim ended
as a common enemy came in the form of the Enlightenment, which was the
precursor to Reform Judaism.
And by the end of the century, the Mignadim and the Hasidim worked together
to create Agudath Israel, the first political organization
of the Orthodox Jews.
It united the two groups into something called Orthodoxy,
which never existed before in Judaism.
Before the split between Hasidim and not Hasidim, there was simply traditional Jews.
Orthodoxy in that way is a modern phenomenon.
They came to America largely because of the persecution by the Soviet Union
For example the head of the Chabad Lubavitch movement,
one of the Hasidic sects, escaped capital punishment and
in the 1930s moved to the United States
where he began the revival of the movement in a new place
Many of the other Hasidic dynasties came after the Holocaust,
which brings us to today to Brooklyn and the
history that was shaped by the Baal Shem Tov and Dov Baer.
To learn about how the Reform movement
was starting at the same time click to go on to the next video