The Imprint of Haskalah Literature on the Historiography of Hasidism

This chapter addresses the imprint of Haskalah literature on the historiography of hasidism. Haskalah literature and the historiography of hasidism have always been interrelated. The maskilim and their writings had an enormous effect on the evolution of modern hasidic scholarship, while the depiction of hasidism in Haskalah literature bears the imprint of certain modern historiographical sensibilities and conventions. The early historians of hasidism clearly drew most if not all of their information about the movement from maskilic texts. Thus, practically all the early attempts to explain hasidism historically had gestated in the minds of scholars who were strongly imbued with Haskalah ideas and who wrote under its direct impact. Alongside this ideological impact, both direct and indirect, of the maskilim and their writings on the early historians of hasidism, the decline of the Haskalah as a viable intellectual and social movement signalled the beginning of another relationship between modern hasidic historiography and the literary legacy of the maskilim: hasidic historians began to utilize Haskalah literature as historical source material.