Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
Note on Transcription ix
Place Names ix
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1 Emergence 11
1.1 The Journeys of R. Israel ben Eliezer (the Besht) According to the Shivḥei ha-Besht 12
1.2 The Disciples of the Great Maggid of Międzyrzecz [Mezrich], 1760–1815 16
1.3 Hasidic Settlement in the Land of Israel, 1747–1815 22
1.4 The Anti-Hasidic Opposition, 1772–1800 26
CHAPTER 2 Expansion 33
2.1 Expansion of Hasidic Leadership: Stages, Borders, Dynamics 34
Marcin Wodziński and Uriel Gellman
2.2 Demography of Hasidism, c. 1900 52
CHAPTER 3 Dynasties 59
3.1 The Territorial Expansion of Hasidic Dynasties 60
3.2 Economic Status 81
CHAPTER 4 Courts 89
4.1 The Topography of a Court 90
4.2 The Influence 95
CHAPTER 5 Shtiblekh—Prayer Rooms 107
5.1 Shtiblekh in Urban Topographies 108
5.2 Exterior and Interior 112
5.3 The Shtibl and the Court 115
CHAPTER 6 The New World, 1900–1939 141
6.1 Hasidic Prayer Halls in the United States of America, 1900 141
6.2 Hasidism in New York, 1918–1939
CHAPTER 7 World Wars, Interbellum, the Holocaust 153
7.1 Tsadikim during the First World War 153
7.2 Tsadikim in Revolutionary Russia and the USSR, 1917–1964 160
7.3 Hasidic Yeshivot in Interwar Poland 164
Shaul Stampfer
7.4 The Holocaust 168
CHAPTER 8 Survival and Rebirth 177
8.1 Routes for Surviving the Holocaust, 1938–1945 178
8.2 Antwerp, 1930–2008 183
Veerle Vanden Daelen
8.3 Hasidic Centers Today 188
8.4 Tsadikim Today 209
8.5 Chabad Centers, 1999–2016 214
CHAPTER 9 There and Back Again 223
9.1 Imagined Boundaries 225
9.2 Pilgrimage Sites 229
Bibliography 239
Maps, Figures, Tables 247
Index 253
