Studies in East European Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism

Joseph Weiss (1918–69) showed a single-minded commitment to identifying and describing the mystical element in Hasidism and to unraveling the spiritual and historical meaning of the Hasidic movement. The studies collected here most of them written more than forty years ago are still quoted in every serious study of Hasidism. Joseph Dan’s Introduction written especially for this paperback edition examines Weiss’s scholarship both in the context of subsequent scholarly research and in the light of the resurgence of Hasidism since the Second World War. He concludes that many of Weiss’s detailed perceptive and empathetic studies are as relevant to understanding developments in the contemporary Hasidic world as they are for understanding the emergence and growth of Hasidism in the eighteenth century.