THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
delphia, in 1822 incorporated with Columbian University at Washington; he resigned in 1825 and was "one of the founders of the Newton Theological Institution and professor of Biblical theologythere till 1836, of ecclesiastical history, 1836-45. The latter part of his hfe was spent in Hterary work. He wrote much for the religious periodicals and published, with other books, Remarks on the Book of Daniel (Boston, 1844); The Work Claiming to be the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, including the Canons, Whiston's Version, revised from the Greek, with a prize essay upon their original contents translated from the German (New York, 1848); The Design of Baptism Viewed in its Relation to the Christian Life (Boston, 1851); Infant Baptism an Invention of Man (Philadelphia, n.d.).
CHASIDIM (Heb. Hasidhim, "Pious"): 1. A Jewish religious party important during the time of the Maccabean wars. They advocated the strictest ideals of Judaism prescribed by the scribes, opposed the Grecizing tendencies of the age, and for a long time supported the Maccabees in the struggle with the Seleucidse for independence. They were the precursors of the Pharisees. See Has-
MONEAN'S, § 1.
2 . The adherents of a religious movement which arose among the Polish Jews in the seventeenth century. It was essentially a pietistic and mystic reaction against Talmudism, and thus presents a certain analogue to the pietism current in Christian circles about the same period, though there was no actual relation between the two. The founder of the Chasidim was an obscure Polish rabbi named Israel ben-Eleazar, who received the epithet of Baal Shem-Tob or " Master of the good name " (i.e., the mystic name of God), whence he was frequently termed Besht (from the initial letters b-sh-t). Teaching a religion of the heart, and discarding Talmudic formalism for personal faith and love of God, he gathered about him- The self an enormous following which num- Founder of bered many rabbis whom the legalism the Chasi- of the Talmud had failed to satisfy, dim and his About 1740 he made his headquarters Teachings, in Miedzyboz in Podolia, and there developed his two cardinal doctrines that God is everywhere, and that man may commime with God. The first tenet was pantheistic and the second cabalistic. To attain perfect communion with the deity ecstatic prayer and meditation, often induced by violent physical motions or even by the use of intoxicants, were necessary, while thus a direct influence might be brought to bear upon God himself. Formalism was altogether discarded by Chasidism, and in a like spirit the non-Jewish asceticism grafted on Talirudic ritualism by the " practical Cabala " was rejected. The Chasidim were to serve and worship God with gladness and in the freedom of the spirit, while reason was distinctly subordinate to faith.
He who realized Chasidic ideals was " righteous " zaddil-:) and had preeminence over lesser souls. Herein lay the danger of the system, for the eaddik came, in increasing measure, to be regarded as a quasimediator with God, who could influence the
deity to bestow blessings on those that had not achieved perfect righteousness and communion
with the divinity. This concept was The thoroughly non-Jewish, nor was such Zaddikim. homage ever rendered to any rabbi
as to the ordinary zaddik. The cleavage between the orthodox Jews and the Chasidim grew wider; separate synagogues were formed, and changes were made in the arrangements of the prayers, the rules for slaughtering, and other ancient Jewish customs. It was not until after the death of Besht, however, that the power of the eaddik gained full development, but then the rule was evolved that the righteous " should be supported by less holy souls in return for his mediation with God. From a sincere, though often ignorant, leader of his flock he became only too frequently a mere thaumaturgist, healing the sick and performing other miracles with his amulets and the penances which he imposed. Yet Chasidism was not a homogeneous system, but developed, in course of time, into two distinct schools, one finding its center in South Russia and Poland, and the other in Lithuania and White Russia. The cause of this demarcation was, in the main, intellectual. In South Russia and in Poland the mystical and pietistic trend was no new thing. It had already been exemplified in the movements headed by Jacob Frank (q.v.) and in the religious upheaval caused in Oriental Judaism by the pseudo-Messiah Shabbethai Zebi. It had been augmented, moreover, by the religious anarchy consequent on the political disturbances in Poland and by the savage persecutions of Chmielnicki and the Haidamacks. The result was a combination of ignorance and despair, which furnished a fallow soil for an optimistic mysticism freed from all restraints of the ritual law. In these regions, then, the eaddik flourished and worked his miracles at the expense of the still more benighted Chasidim. In White Russia and Lithuania, on the other hand, these destructive factors had not been at work, and the Talmud retained its position of honor and its conservative
power. There, moreover, the Jews History centered in the cities, and thus were of xmder the intellectual restraint and Chasidism. stimulus of the scholars of the Talmud,
while in the villages of Poland and South Russia imagination could run riot, devoid of the restraint of scholarship. For all these reasons Chasidism did not gain in the north the exclusive dominance which it possessed in the south, and its break with rabbinical Judaism was far less radical. The eaddik of White Russia and Lithuania was little more than a heterodox rabbi, and was deeply influenced by the " rational Chasidism " taught by Zalman of Liozna (1747-1812), who postulated the need of an intelligent faith rather than absolute subjection of reason, and reduced the eaddik to the place of a teacher instead of a thaumaturgist.
Chasidism, being suspected (and not without some probability) of an affinity with the vagaries »f Frank and Shabbethai Zebi, was everywhere bitterly opposed by orthodox Judaism, represented by the mitnaggedim (" opponents "). In the north.