Hasidic Judaism

Hasidism arose among Ashkenazi Jews and its courts remain a defining Ashkenazi institution.

Known as the Maiden of Ludmir, the rare woman who held court, received petitioners and taught in the manner of a male Hasidic rebbe.

The Hasidic courts are the institutional form the doctrine took, and each descends from a particular founder.

Upsherin is a Hasidic and Sephardi custom, largely absent from Lithuanian practice.

Hasidic Jewry is one part of what is now called Haredi Judaism; the Lithuanian Misnagdic world is the other, and the two were formed by opposing each other.

Breslov Hasidism is a Hasidic court, contained within Hasidic Judaism specifically rather than the broader Haredi umbrella.

Chabad-Lubavitch is a Hasidic court, contained within Hasidic Judaism specifically rather than the broader Haredi umbrella.

Placed in the Lurianic prayer books at the counting of the omer and before the evening prayer, where the shorter Ashkenazi rite has nothing.

The belt is fastened for prayer to divide the upper body from the lower, a Kabbalistic reading of the requirement to prepare oneself before standing to pray.

Hasidism grew directly out of the Lurianic Kabbalah and made its categories the ordinary language of piety rather than the reserve of a trained few.

Worn on the Day of Atonement and at the Passover meal, and by the leader of the additional service for rain and dew.

The itinerant preacher whose sermons wove scripture with parable is part of the world Hasidism grew out of and carried forward.

The tomb attributed to Shimon bar Yochai draws the largest annual gathering in Israel on the thirty-third day of the counting of the omer, and the observance is Hasidic in its present form.

Metatron, the prince of the presence of the Talmud and the Heikhalot literature, is a live figure in the Hasidic reading of the Kabbalah rather than an antiquarian one.

Hasidic teaching keeps the angelic figures of the Talmud and the Kabbalah as real orders of being, and the bedtime and Sabbath angelic texts are said in full.

The wordless melody is a Hasidic form generally, and every court keeps its own repertory of them.

Gematria, the reckoning of the numerical value of the Hebrew letters, is a standard tool of Hasidic homiletics and appears constantly in its published teaching.

Raziel, the angel of the secret, is kept in Hasidic devotional practice chiefly through the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, a book circulated as a household amulet as much as a text.

The rebbetzin holds no ordination and no formal office, and in Hasidic communities she nonetheless carries real authority among the women of the court.

Hasidism draws its central texts from the kabbalah taught in the town, and the connection is textual rather than a matter of pilgrimage.

Sandalphon appears in the Talmud as the angel who weaves the prayers of Israel into a crown, an image Hasidic teaching keeps.

The fur hat is worn by married men on Sabbaths and festivals in most Hasidic communities, and the pattern of it identifies the court a man belongs to.

The Shulchan Aruch is held as the standard authoritative code of practical halakha.

Hasidic communities are Ashkenazi and the ban binds them as it binds the rest of that world.

The tzadik of Hasidism is not merely a righteous man but a channel between the community and God, and the rebbe court is the centre of Hasidic life.

Hasidim of other courts visit the grave without the annual gathering having the standing it holds for Breslov, for whom it is the movement's central observance.

Sung slowly before the Sabbath and drawn out, the Hasidic use of the Safed love poetry being as much a matter of tune as of text.

Hasidic prayer follows Nusach Sefard, the order taken from the kabbalists of Safed, rather than the Ashkenazi rite of the very communities the Hasidim came out of.

Vilna was the seat from which the bans against the Hasidim were issued from 1772, and the movement remembers the city as the centre of the opposition it had to survive.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. A boy becomes obligated at thirteen and reads from the Torah. A girl becomes obligated at twelve, and the manner in which that is publicly marked varies widely across this body and is not a Torah reading.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The groom veils the bride before the ceremony.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The search for leaven is made by candlelight on the night before Passover eve.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Brit Milah is performed by a mohel on the eighth day, and the day is not moved for convenience.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Burial is in the earth, without embalming, ordinarily within a day.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Chalitzah is performed where a man dies childless and his brother declines to marry the widow, and it is what releases her to remarry.

Israel's election is affirmed in the classical form shared with Orthodox Judaism generally.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The marriage is solemnised under the canopy.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Orthodox practice holds brit milah on the eighth day without exception unless the child's health forbids, performed by a trained mohel with blessings and the naming, and the day is not deferred for the Sabbath or a festival.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Coming of age is a matter of obligation taking effect at a fixed age rather than of a ceremony conferring it.

The judge of a rabbinical court sits under the law of the Shulchan Aruch's Choshen Mishpat, which governs the constitution of a beit din, the competence required of those who sit on it and the procedure it follows.

Devekut, cleaving to God through joy and fervor available to ordinary Jews and not to scholars alone, is this movement's founding contribution, per Gershom Scholem's account of its origin under the Baal Shem Tov.

Hasidic practice has its own form of ecstatic dance with its own rules about who dances and when.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Conversion requires acceptance of the commandments before a rabbinic court, circumcision where applicable, and immersion, and conversions performed outside this body are not recognised.

Hakafot are danced at length, and the dancing is treated as worship rather than as celebration around it.

Halakha is held divinely given and binding, observed within courts organized around a rebbe rather than through the older model of the scholar alone.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Hoshanot are said with the four species on each day of Sukkot.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Kabbalat Shabbat opens the Sabbath on Friday evening.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Orthodox observance keeps the full detail: separate dishes and sinks for meat and dairy, a waiting period after meat before dairy, reliance on recognised rabbinic supervision for processed food, and separate arrangements for Passover.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Visiting the graves of parents and of the righteous is customary before the High Holy Days.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Betrothal and marriage, once separate by a year, are performed together under the canopy.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. A garment is torn by the mourners.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Maariv is prayed at night.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Marriage is contracted by the giving of an object of value in the presence of two witnesses, and it is followed by the seven blessings.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The dead are remembered at Yizkor on four days of the year.

A personal Messiah is awaited in the classical Orthodox form.