Jewish Schisms - Hasidim and Mitnagdim

Hasidim and Mitnagdim

Note: While the name "Hasidim" has gained popular and positive approval, the name "Mitnagdim" has fallen out of popular usage and may even be regarded as offensive by some.

The arrival of Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1698–1760), known as the Baal Shem Tov ("Master Good Name"), on the scene of Jewish history in Eastern Europe would herald the commencement of a sea change in what is known today as Haredi Judaism. Even though he did not write books, he succeeded in gaining powerful disciples to his teachings that were based on the earlier expositions of Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572) known as the Ari who had based much of his Kabbalistic teachings on the Zohar. The Baal Shem Tov came at a time when the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe were reeling in bewilderment and disappointment engendered by the two notorious Jewish false messiahs Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) and Jacob Frank (1726–1791) in particular.

The Baal Shem Tov witnessed Frank's public apostasy (shmad in Hebrew) to Christianity, which compounded Zevi's earlier apostasy to Islam. The Baal Shem Tov was thus determined to encourage his influential disciples (talmidim) to launch a spiritual revolution in Jewish life in order to reinvigorate the Jewish masses' connections with Torah Judaism and to vigorously motivate them to bind themselves to the joyous observance of the commandments, worship, Torah study, and sincere belief in God, so that the lures of Christianity and Islam, and the appeal of the rising secular Enlightenment, to the Jewish masses would be weakened and halted. To a large degree Israel succeeded in Eastern Europe.

Already during his lifetime, and gaining momentum following his death, the Baal Shem Tov's disciples spread out to teach his mystical creeds all over Eastern Europe. Thus was born Hasidic Judaism (Hasidism). Some of the main movements were in: Russia which saw the rise of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement; Poland which had the Gerrer Hasidim; Galicia had Bobov; Hungary had Satmar Hasidim; and Ukraine had the Breslovers, and many others that grew rapidly gaining literally millions of adherents, until it became the dominant brand of Judaism in Eastern Europe in the century following the Baal Shem Tov's death. The Jewish masses flocked to this new inspired brand of mystical Judaism, and retained their connections to their Jewish heritage and way of life.

Only when this new religious movement reached Lithuania did it meet its stiffest resistance among the Lithuanian Jews (also known as Litvaks). It was Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (~1720-1797), known as the Vilna Gaon ("Genius Vilna"), and those who followed his classic stringent Talmudic and Halakhic scholasticism, who put up the fiercest resistance to the Hasidim ("Righteous "). They were called Mitnagdim, meaning " oppose/d ".

The Vilna Gaon, who was himself steeped in both Talmudic and Kabbalistic wisdom, analyzed the theological underpinnings of this new "Hasidism" and in his view, concluded that it was deeply flawed since it had elements of what may be roughly termed as panentheism and perhaps even outright pantheism, dangerous aspirations for bringing the Jewish Messiah that could easily be twisted in unpredictable directions for Jewry as had previously happened with the Zevi and Frank religious "revival" fiascos, and an array of complex rejections of their religious ideology. The Vilna Gaon's'views were later formulated by his chief disciple Rabbi Chaim Volozhin (1741–1821) in his work Nefesh HaChaim. The new Hasidic leaders countered with their own religious counter-arguments, some of which can be found in the Tanya of Chabad-Lubavitch. Much of the debate remains obscure.

However, regardless of the unpopularity of the move, the Vilna Gaon and the scholars of the Beth din (" religious court") of Vilna went so far as to place at least one severe cherem upon the Hasidim, officially "excommunicating" them from Judaism, which they in turn copied and did likewise to the mitnagdim. The Vilna Gaon's strongest opposition was to the founder of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745–1812). Physical fights broke out in Vilna with each side trying to gain the favor of the Russian authorities and declaring the other side to be beyond the pale of Judaism.

The bitterness and animosity between the two camps ran deep, and basically whoever joined one wing, did not attend or pray in the same synagogues as the other wing, nor have the same Torah teachers, and they would generally not marry into each other's families, which is still more or less the rule today where there is a high degree of internal communal structure.

Little of the split between Hasidim and Mitnagdim remains within the modern Haredi world. When confronted by mutual threats, such as from the secular Jews of the haskalah, or by the onslaught of Communism and the Holocaust, or faced by secular Zionists, Hasidim and Mitnagdim do work together. When the outside world does not threaten them, their battle of ideas resumes as an intellectual debate. Each group has its own unique method of yeshiva study and communal life, no matter where they establish themselves. They tend to live in different neighborhoods that are still within commuting distance, although even these differences are quickly disappearing.

In modern-day Israel Hasidim support the Agudat Israel party in the Knesset (Israel's parliament) and the non-Hasidic Mitnagdim support the Degel HaTorah party. Degel HaTorah is led by Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman in Bnei Brak. Agudat Israel and Degel Torah have formed a political alliance. There is also another large community that follows the rabbinical teachings of the Edah Charedis. These include the Satmar Hasidim and the perushim communities which do not support any groups that participate in the Israeli government or in Israel including elections.