if not higher
who: story about a rabbi by LL peretz
what: rabbi was not present during penitential prayers and everyone thinks he is talking to god in heaven. then this litvak became the disciple of the rabbi and when anyone would suggest that he went to heaven during the penitential prayers he said if not higher meaning the rabbi goes greater than the heavens.
where: jewish village in poland
when: 1900s
kabbalah becomes ethos
who: slogan by martin buber
what: the kabbalah turns into ethos which is a cultural spirit and way of life
where: eastern europe
when: 16th century
the volk
who: the word means people in the sense of populist, a movement of the roots and average people
what:The creations are anonymous and not made from one individual, they rise up organically from the people. A folk song is a song without an author- it rises up, passes through the people and transforms with everyone who uses it. Hasidism was a surrogate folk for people who were cultural populists.
when: 1800s
where: western and central europe
gedali
who: a shop owner, a hasid, speaker in babel text
what: Gedali is saying we want a utopia and humane world but how can you have a house of orphans and say you have a humane world. He’s a hasidic, jewish rabbinic, person for common decency.
The communicst revolution provides food and means of livelihood for every individual. But it doesn’t have room, space, or interest in useless things. Like an old cuckoo clock or old science kit. The kinds of little objects that adorn gedali’s shop. His shop represents tradition and the old world. The idea that you can only have things that are useful.
where: town of zhitomer ukraine
when: 1800s
cossacks
who: a group of the most violent antisemites and progromnicks, red army led by Bohdan Khmelnytsk
what: Later he collects his notes and publishes in the 1920s about the red cavalry. These cossacks were super macho and scary men. Virtuosos of military cavalry and soldiers. Babel is a jewish intellectual that is attracted to communism and the machismo of the cossacks, in the folkloric memory.
where: ukraine
when: 1920s
Yevseksiyah
who:the jewish section of the communist party
what:Yevseksia was saying we have to prove to the communists and the movement that we’re as militant as everyone and maybe even go overboard in wiping out traditional judaism. anti religion and anti zionism.
The positive would be outlawing antisemitism. Any ethnic prejudice against jews is punishable. We can’t have any of that.Trying to unite the jewish class and fill it with marxist ideology.
when: 1900s
where:soviet union
The Hafetz Hayim
who: two individuals representing the constituencies in the agudah it was rabbi avraham mordechai alter and yisrael meir kagan whose nickname was the hafetz hayim “joy of life”
what:He also believed that eastern european orthodoxy had to modernize in different ways
Wasn’t the group against modernization?
Both supported an orthodox school system in Poland that taught some secular subjects, like math or polish language, geography. And practical vocational teachings.
where:eastern europe
when: he dies in 1993
Beis Ya’akov
who: school system for orthodox girls
what: founded by sarah schenir daughter of a rebbe, with the blessing of the ger rebbe and the chofetz hayim.
when: 1800s-1900s
where: krakow poland
Sarah Schenirer
who: daughter of rebbe
what: founded school system for orthodox girls known as beis yaakov. She founded this with the blessing of the ger rebbe and the chofetz hayim.
when: 1800s-1900s
where: krakow poland
Avraham Mordechai Alter
who: ger rebbe leader of agudas yisroel
what:He says he will fight the nazis as if there is no white paper and fight the white paper as if there are no nazis.
avraham mordechai alter and Yisrael meir Kagan, whose nickname was the hafetz hayim (“the joy of life”)
He was a beloved misnagdic leader. He had people who loved him that were hasidic. But he was a different misnaged. He was like a rebbe. One of the most beloved figure in eastern european judaism in the interwar period, died in 1933. He was a huge supporter of the Agudah, ally of the ger rebbe.
He also believed that eastern european orthodoxy had to modernize in different ways
Wasn’t the group against modernization?
Both supported an orthodox school system in Poland that taught some secular subjects, like math or polish language, geography. And practical vocational teachings.
where: poland
when: 1933 interwar period
Hitler-Stalin Pact
who: stalin and hitler
what:(the two foreign ministers who signed it). It was an agreement that the new countries would have peace and that they would divide between them all of the territory that seperates them.Hasidim were so vulnerable because they are in this territory, conspicuously jewish (even non-hasidic jews who were traditional would dress in a distinctive fashion, but the hasidism were that much more conspicuous).
when: 1939
where:Germany extends its rule over polan and east prussia. And the russian union would expand into lithuania, latvia and estonia and western poland. Western and eastern poland was where hasidic jews lived, and lithuania
Khurbn
who: refers to destruction of first temple by babylonians and the shoah
what: It was a way jews understood the history of their suffering
Tisha baav → commemorates the sequence of destructions
Disaster and catastrophe are assimilated into early episodes of disaster
Khurban looks at the holocaust and sees it as earlier episodes of destruction like destruction of the temple, there is a reluctance for hasidism to understand the history of the holocaust in its own right
where: Israel and germany
when: 1900s
Yekutiel Yehudah Halberstam
who: was a rebbe of the Hasidic dynasty of Sanz-Klausenburg.
what: used mythic Kabbalistic tropes, viewing the Holocaust as a struggle with the “primordial snake”.
when: 20th century
Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro
who: visionary Hasidic master and educator known as the Piaseczno Rebbe.
what:In ghettos (like Warsaw), religious life became an act of resistance. Kalman Shapiro (Piasetshna) ran an underground synagogue. His sermons, recovered posthumously, were published as Esh Kodesh.
where: poland
when: 20th century
Yoel Teitelbaum
who: leader of Satmar sect
what:he escaped the holocaust then went to palestine and then he went to williamsburg and recruited a following he imposed strict rules that are different from the norm. he established the hasidic communtiy in Kiyras Joel without leaving williamsburg. An essential piece of his sect is anti zionism.
where: williamsburg brooklyn, Orange county
when: 20th century
Joseph Yitzhak Schneersohn
who: a rebbe the 6th of chabad lubavitch
what: got out before operation barborosa in 1940
The nazis had a policy for jews to leave until 1940 then after there was no way to get out if they did not before 1939, they were not leaving
Shneerson went to riga, latvia
He was spirited out of riga required connection in the U.S and senators other leaders that made it possible, comes to NY Yosef yitzhak schneerson became the 6th chabad rebbe following dov ber shneerson
Yosef had enormous challenge of trying to survive in the soviet union when the communist began to repress hasidism he was right in the thick of it, it had an organized emissary structure that had it survive, each branch enabled chabad to survive in the early part of the 1920s, and it became the recognized face of hasidism in soviet russia
By 1927 yosef had to flee and that was the end, he went to riga in latvia near baltic sea, just as ww2 started he fled to NY and this is how chabad came to america
when: 20th century
where: poland, latvia, U.S.
Oyneg Shabbes
who: facilitated by emanuel ringlebaum
what: kind of celebration during the sabbath. His oyneg shabbos was an archive to preserve information about what was going on in the ghettos. It was a secret archive. He would instruct people how to construct diaries etc so people would know what was happening. A lot of these things did survive and provide indispensable information about life in the ghetto
where: warsaw poland
when: 20th century
hester panim
who: theological concept
what:the hiding of the face, a kind of theological concept saying that there are moments when god hides himself from human beings and from Jews. he goes into retreat just when you need him most. Why would god do this? It’s almost a reverse psychology, the more they need me the more i hide and then they’ll make the effort spiritually and then I’ll come back into the picture.
where: jewish scripture, book of esther, talmud
when: babylonian exile
the birth pangs of the messiah
who: kalonymos kalman shapiro
what:articulated an original theology, arguing that the sufferings were linked to the “birth pangs of the Messiah”. He claimed God suffers with His people (exile of the shekhinah) and that the magnitude of divine suffering prevented the world’s destruction. Martyrdom (kiddush ha-shem) became an imitatio dei (imitation of God’s suffering).
when: 20th century
where: poland
gematriya**
who: a concept in the chosen
what: (Jewish numerology assigning numerical values to Hebrew letters) isn’t just background; it’s a key tool for understanding faith, intellect, and character, particularly through Reb Saunders testing Danny’s mind with it, revealing depth, tradition, and the tension between literal text and spiritual meaning, like chai (life) equaling 18. It highlights how deep Jewish study (Talmudic interpretation, pilpul) connects numbers, words, and divine meaning, shaping the boys’ world and challenging their understanding of tradition vs. modern thought.
when: 20th century
where: williamsburg Brooklyn
treifene medina
who: rebbes yiddish word for unkosher nation
what: after restrictive immigration laws (1924), America ceased to be a mass refuge. Early on, Hasidic leaders viewed the US negatively, often calling it the treifene medinah (“unkosher nation”) Hasidism regarded america as the “treyfe medina” and unkosher state, scene as too secular, and it was a very capitalist society not consistent to hasidic mentality and worldview
where: America
when: 20th centur
hagshamah
who: concept from hasidic leaders
what: Conceptual trauma of the kibbutz with the foundation of the state
Emphasizing the influences and echoes of hasidism in the kibbutz mentality.Saying that the notion of hagshama has similarities with a hasidic structure of thought- the relationship between the concrete and abstract, our actions and the beyond. This notion comes from avodah begashmiut which we are familiar with.
Here there is influence of hasidism. This is something that acts in celestial worlds, the world above, not just values or ideas but things that redefine what it is to be jewish. The fact that existence has these two dimensions and living out the abstract and materiality. The eyn and the yesh, this was called hagshama. All of the sudden hagshama, which is a sin according to the ten commandments (not creating an image of G-d or making g-d material), all the sudden the word became a way to draw the holiness from above to the ground. Hasidism is the reverse, elevating the sparks above. In both ways of thinking, the profane is sacred, there’s a material and the immaterial. This is about the hagshama.
where: eastern europe
when: 18th century idea
FDR
who: a president of the U.S.
what:Most jews in the 1930s worshipped franklin roosevelt because he saved the country from the great depression and falling into fascism and his new deal seemed to have a speck of socialism which is why anti semitism accused him of being jewish
So if your a jew and a boy like ruvhin it is hard to convey the sense of insecurity you will feel because it is the maximal era of anti semitism in europe
where: America
When: 20th century
David Malter
who: represented himself as as talmudic scholar, he is a maskil, a zionist, he is reuven’s father
what: David malter when he gives the history of hasidism says jews were persecuted in poland and this led to an elitist gap between the educated elite, and the masses. The elite got caught up with pilpul and the method of studying the talmud for it’s own sake, studying the talmud in an academic or scholastic way. No warmth or way to get at real issues but just displays of virtuosity. and he thinks reb saunders is stuck in the past and sort of regal. He is modern, and is a zionist.
when: 20th century
where: williamsburg brooklyn
