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. Scribal work on Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot is done to the received halakhic standards, and a scroll that fails them is not used.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The body is washed and purified by the burial society before dressing.

The Talmud is held as authoritative and binding, alongside the Hasidic emphasis on fervent prayer and mystical piety.

The Tanakh is held as divinely revealed scripture.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Maaser, the tenth, is given from income, and the practice survived the loss of the agricultural tithes it began as.

The Torah is held as verbatim divine revelation given at Sinai.

Affirmed in the classical Orthodox form; this movement's contribution is less a revision of the doctrine than a mystical intensification of how it is lived.

The grave of Nachman of Breslov, and the destination of the Rosh Hashanah gathering.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The Yahrzeit is kept with Kaddish and a lamp on the anniversary of a death.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The couple withdraw alone after the ceremony, which completes the marriage in halakhah.