WHEN ANALYSING hasidic political activity it is important to consider its scale, and particularly the relationship between activities on the macro and micro historical levels. The political activism of Alexander Zusya Kahana, Rabbi Meir of Opatow, and Rabbi Isaac of Warka discussed in Chapter 5 consisted for the most part of interventions at the level of the highest state authorities and involved attempts to solve problems pertaining to the Jewish community as a whole. This applies to nearly all the best-known initiatives of hasidic shtadlanim, such as Rabbi Isaac's successful efforts to legalize eruvin, to allow rabbis to monitor kosher meat butchers, to argue for changes in divorce laws, or even, as an example of an unsuccessful intervention, to deal with the problems of Jewish prisoners. This portrayal of hasidic politics as being chiefly engaged in problems at the macro level is what has come down to us in the literature; I am thinking particularly of Raphael Mahler's evocative narration of the hasidic leadership of the passive resistance of the Jewish masses, or the martyrological historiography of the Lubavitch dynasty, focusing on the sufferings of the holy men of the Schneersohn family at the hands of the central government.

Nevertheless, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a significant proportion of hasidic political activism, at least in terms of the number of matters dealt with, was concerned with local issues. Such cases include the campaign in Cze?stochowa in 1820 in defence of the right to use the mikveh (see Ch. 2, §4), the campaigns to obtain the support of the Voivodeship Commission for a hasidic rabbinical candidate in Płock in 1829 and Pilica in 1835 (Ch. 4, §§1–2), and even Meir Rotenberg's intervention in Opatów in 1824–5 in defence of the right to freedom of assembly (Ch. 5, §2). There were countless similar political initiatives in virtually every Jewish community in eastern Europe. The vast majority had a purely local, communal character, and many of them involved hasidim. Thus in considering the nature of hasidic political activism it is important to examine the communal level too.