THE following are some general remarks on the question of where we stand in the historiography of hasidism at present, and especially after the conference of which the present volume is the proceedings. I would like to suggest, only half tongue-in-cheek, that the proceedings, dedicated to the memory of Jose ph Weiss, should have been entitled 'Via Negativa in Early Hasidism’. That seems to me an appropriate characterization of the present scholarly situation. In reopening the two great questions-hasidism's origins and its success-contemporary scholarship has negated almost all the once clearly established answers. We can no longer say that hasidism began because of persecution, especially not that it arose in reaction to the Chmielnicki massacre a century earlier or its long aftermath, as was once widely claimed. Nor can we say that hasidism was primarily or necessarily a reaction to Sabbateanism. We certainly do not think of it as a necessary reaction to Sabbateanism, as Gershom Scholem once suggested. Studies included within this volume serve to diminish the importance of the Turkish-Podolian connection with hasidism's origins. We have long known that we can no longer take Shjvḥei haBesht and its account of the early days at face value as a source for how hasidism began. Our use for historical purposes of the tales included in that work is ever being refined.

Hasidism's success can no longer be attributed to poverty or oppression, as was once a commonplace in the literature. We can no longer say that the Besht and his circle represented the lower classes, because the earliest roots of the movement appear to defy any social stratification. Nor was hasidism a rebellion of the unlettered-not with scholarly leaders such as R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye or Shneur Zalman of Lyady. We know that hasidism was not spread particularly through its books, but rather through oral teaching. It was clearly not the novelty of its ideas that caused the movement to grow. We also know that hasidism was not successful either because it was or was not messianic!

What, then, is left us by way of explanation? We have cleaned out a lot of cobwebsa lot of claims that had long lain unexamined, but were still taken as truths because we all learnt them from Dubnow and Horodecky-whose name, interestingly, has hardly been mentioned here-the writers we all read on hasidism thirty or more years ago.