The Eastern European Problem of Hasidic Studies

Abstract

“ K A R L M A R X WA S a German phi los o pher,” writes Leszek Kołakowski in the introduction to his history of Marxist thought. “This does not sound a particularly enlightening statement, yet it is not so commonplace as it may at first appear.”1 Mimicking the Polish phi los o pher, I will begin by saying that Hasidism (lehavdil!) was an Eastern Eu ro pean phenomenon. And while this statement sounds trivial, and recurs in many publications about Hasidism, it has had limited impact on the shape of Hasidic studies. There is little of Eastern Eu rope in Hasidic studies, and, conversely (and to some extent resulting from this), there is very little Hasidism in the Jewish studies programs taught in Eastern Eu rope. This short essay is not— and cannot be— a thorough critique of the field of Hasidic studies. Still, my general impression is that there are three dominant modes in which Hasidic scholars engage with Eastern Eu rope. The first one is inadvertent erasure, in which this geography is relegated to the margins by, to paraphrase Daniel Dennett, freefloating rationales of Hasidic theology. The second one uses Eastern Eu rope as a symbolic reservoir of Hasidic culture divorced from its complex historical context, a frum variation of the Yiddishland nostalgia. The third one treats Eastern Eu ro pean spaces as actualized by Hasidic per for mance. My intention is not to discredit the prolific production of Hasidism scholarship in the phenomenology of religion, cultural history, history of ideas, anthropology, literary studies, and so on. Many excellent and illuminating studies emerge from these perspectives, but I would say that their relation to Eastern Europe is tangential at best. For the rec ord, my own work subscribes heavi ly to the first and third models.