THERE are various alternative dates for the beginning of the hasidic movement. One is from the probable start of the career of Israel b. Eliezer Besht as an itinerant preacher, usually set at around 1736. Another is from the establishment of the first hasidic ‘court’ by Dov Ber of Mezhirech after the Besht's death in 1760. Still another is from the beginning of the conflict between hasidism and its opponents, a conflict that started with the proclamation of the ban against the movement in 1772, and turned hasidism into a distinct historical phenomenon. From the literary point of view, the year 1780 could be seen as the beginning of hasidism, with the publication of Toledot Ya'akov Yosef by R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye, the first hasidic work to appear in print. But whichever date one chooses, there is no doubt that eventually hasidism became a major religious movement in Judaism. Now well into its third century, it is the most enduring phenomenon in Orthodox Judaism in modern times.

Taking into account both its longevity and the profound impact it has made on Jewish society, it seems remarkable that virtually all the histories of hasidism written in the present century have been focused on a short period, from the middle of the eighteenth century to no later than 1815. Moreover, some of the most important studies of hasidism, such as those by B. Dinur, J. G. Weiss and S. Ettinger, were confined to the beginnings of the movement, while others, most notably S. Dubnow's, which purport to offer a comprehensive history of hasidism in fact dealt with it only up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Dubnow wrote also a general history of the Jewish people, but the volume he dedicated to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made only few and cursory references to the hasidic movement. The entries on hasidism in modern Jewish encyclopedias, while attempting to cover the entire history of the movement, similarly concentrate almost exclusively on the early decades; chronological and genealogical charts are sometimes substituted for proper historical discussion of the last 150 years of hasidism. The movement is often portrayed as a ‘late medieval’ or ‘early modern’ phenomenon, totally irrelevant to contemporary Jewish life.