hasidic

Updated: August 6, 2024

Hebrew books, which were then almost exclusively of a religious nature, such as prayer-books, Bible and Talmud editions, rabbinic, cabalistic, and hasidic writings, were then issuing from the printing presses of Vilna, Slavuta, and other places, and were subject to a rigorous censorship exercised by Christians or by Jewish converts.

Simon Dubnow - History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II: From the death of Alexander I. until the death of Alexander: III. (1825-1894)

But hand in hand with it went an impenetrable spiritual gloom, boundless credulity, a passion for deifying men of a mediocre and even inferior type, and the unwholesome hypnotizing influence of the Tzaddiks. Spiritual self-intoxication was accompanied by physical. The hasidic rank and file, particularly in the South-west, began to develop an ugly passion for alcohol.

Simon Dubnow - History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II: From the death of Alexander I. until the death of Alexander: III. (1825-1894)

But he soon escaped to Austria, and settled in 1841 in the Bukovina, in the townlet of Sadagora, near Chernovitz, where he established his new "court." Many Hasidim in Russia now made their pilgrimage abroad to their beloved Tzaddik; in addition, new partisans were won among the hasidic masses of Galicia and the Bukovina.

Simon Dubnow - History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II: From the death of Alexander I. until the death of Alexander: III. (1825-1894)