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Updated: May 1, 2025
Rabbi Israel died in 1850, but the "Sadagora dynasty" branched out rapidly, and proved a serious handicap to modern progress during the stormy epoch of emancipation which followed in Austria soon afterwards. Another hot-bed of the Tzaddik cult was Podolia, the cradle of Hasidism.
Fear of the orthodox environment compels him to observe almost complete silence with reference to Hasidism, although, in his private correspondence and in his anonymous writings he denounces it severely. Levinsohn was not satisfied to propagate his ideas by purely literary means.
With the establishment of the rabbinical seminaries in Zhitomir , this former centre of Hasidism became the nursery of Haskalah. The movement was especially strong in Vilna, the "Jerusalem of Lithuania," as Napoleon is said to have called it. From time immemorial, long before the Gaon's day, it had been famous for its Talmudic scholars.
It was in the hot-bed of the most fanatical species of Hasidism that the first blossoms of Haskalah timidly raised their heads. When he came back to his native land, it was with the firm resolve to devote his energies to the task of civilizing the secluded masses of Russian Jewry.
As if to counteract this demoralizing tendency, a new sect, known as Hasidim, originating in Lithuania and headed by Judah Hasid of Dubno and Hayyim Malak, taught its devotees to hasten the advent of the Messiah by doing penance for the sins of Israel. Time was when all writers on the subject, usually Maskilim, thought it their duty to cast a stone at Hasidism.
Hasidism, triumphant, having conquered the whole of Russian-Poland, threatened to crush all thought and reason at the very time in which the Kulturkampf was battering at the gates of the Polish ghetto. Rapoport, we have seen, contended with Hasidism in a witty pamphlet.
They did not keep luxurious "courts," did not hanker so greedily after donations, and laid greater emphasis on talmudic scholarship. Hasidism produced not only leaders but also martyrs, victims of the Russian police regime. About the time when the Tzaddik of Ruzhin fell under suspicion, the Russian Government began to watch the Jewish printing-press in the Volhynian townlet of Slavuta.
His pensive mind, stifled by Rabbinic scholasticism, turned to the Kabbalah. Mystical exaltation more and more took possession of him, and the day came when he all but declared himself a follower of Hasidism. It was his mother who saved him. He yielded to her prayers, and was held back from committing a perilous act of heresy.
Hasidism invaded Podolia and Volhynia, swept over Galicia and Hungary, and found adherents even in many a large community in Western Russia and Prussia. It brought cheer and happiness in its wake, and rendered the unfortunate Jew forgetful of his misery.
Rabbi Baer, the son and successor of the "Old Rabbi," did not inherit the creative genius of his father. He published many books, made up mostly of his Sabbath discourses, but they lack originality. His method is that of the talmudic pilpul, transplanted upon the soil of Cabala and Hasidism, or it consists in expatiating upon the ideas contained in the Tanyo.
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