Hasidism in Poland

Hasidism is a mystical pietistic movement that originated in the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and by the mid-nineteenth century became the most influential religious, cultural, and social force among eastern European Jews. However, by Hasidism in Poland, or Polish Hasidism, both the scholarly literature and the Hasidim themselves usually understand the Hasidic movement as developing in territories in central Poland and not of the pre-partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This is, thus, territory significantly narrower than pre-partitioned Poland-Lithuania, or even ethnic Poland. It is usually understood as synonymous with the 19th-century Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, also known as Congress Poland, created in the wake of the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Indeed, the division of Hasidism into its major geographical branches, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Galician, Ukrainian, Hungarian, and Romanian, reflects the 19th-century political and cultural divisions of eastern Europe. Thus, a “Polish Hasid” is a follower of the tsadik of Ger (Góra Kalwaria) or Alexander (Aleksandrów) in central Poland, but not of Galician Bełz or of Volhynian Trisk (Turzysk). This might be confusing because, at times, scholarly literature––especially by historians of the Early Modern period––does speak also in a much broader sense about Polish Hasidism as opposed to medieval Hasidei Ashkenaz, German Hasidism. In this latter meaning “Poland” equals the pre-partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that is, the cradle of Hasidism. In this article we shall follow the narrower meaning of Poland, that is, territories of the 19th-century Kingdom of Poland with some concessions for the whole territory of interwar Poland and territories of occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust as well as for the post-Holocaust period. It should be also noted that the very concept of dividing Hasidism into geographical entities, Polish Hasidism among them, has been repeatedly criticized on the ground of the argument that the geographical spaces in which Hasidism operated crossed political frontiers and that the descriptive categories commonly ascribed to Hasidim from the various regions are inaccurate and simplistic.