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What! would you have righteousness always pay and wickedness always fail! Where then would be the virtue in virtue? It would be a mere branch of commerce. Do you forget what the Chassid said of the man who foreknew in his lifetime that for him there was to be no heaven? 'What a unique and enviable chance that man had of doing right without fear of reward!"
We heard nothing but singing and clapping of hands, while the children danced. Sometimes one of the elders looking on could not resist joining in the fun, and tied his kaftan behind his back so as to leave his legs free, put one of the youngsters on his shoulders, and danced like a chassid or a jolly Irishman.
The text in Kings seemed to me rather wrenched from its context in the fashion already nauseous to me in the orthodox schools, but as I had never in my life had such moments of grace as in my mountain-walks, I expressed so hearty an acquiescence in the doctrine itself shocking to the orthodox mind trained in elaborate codification of the time-limits of the dawn-prayer or the westering-service that mine host was more persuaded than ever I meant to become a Chassid.
Chayyim Malach, Judah Chassid, and other Galician mystics, in the second decade of the eighteenth century brought down upon themselves a rabbinical decree of excommunication. At the same time a much more profound movement, instinct with greater vitality, made its appearance among the Polish-Jewish masses, a movement rooted in their social and spiritual organization.
Silent were all the fiery orators of all the letters of the alphabet; silent the Polish patriots and the lovers of Zion and the lovers of mankind; silent the bourgeois and the philosophers, the timber-merchants and the horse-dealers, the bankers and the Bundists; silent the Socialists and the Democrats; silent even the burly censor, and the careless Karaite and the cheerful Chassid; silent the landlord and his revolutionary infant in their fortified cellar; silent the Rabbi in his study, and the crowds in the market-place.
He moved towards him, and broached the subject afresh. The lounger shook his head. 'You may persuade that foolish Chassid, said he, 'but you cannot expect the rest of us to join with these heretics, these godless, dancing dervishes, who are capable even of saying the afternoon prayer in the evening! His neighbour was a Karaite, drifted here from another community.
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