Hasidism has attracted, repelled, and bewildered philosophers, historians, and theologians since its inception in the eighteenth century. In Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community, and Life in the Modern World, Ariel Evan Mayse and Sam Berrin Shonkoff present students and scholars with a vibrant and polyphonic set of Hasidic confrontations with the modern world. In this collection, they show that the modern Hasid marks not only another example of a Jewish pietist, but someone who is committed to an ethos of seeking wisdom, joy, and intimacy with the divine.

While this volume focuses on Hasidism, it wrestles with a core set of questions that permeate modern Jewish thought and religious thought more generally: What is the relationship between God and the world? What is the relationship between God and the human being? But Hasidic thought is cast with mystical, psychological, and even magical accents, and offers radically different answers to core issues of modern concern. The editors draw selections from an  array of genres including women’s supplications; sermons and homilies; personal diaries and memoirs; correspondence; stories; polemics; legal codes; and rabbinic response. These selections consciously move between everyday lived experience and the most ineffable mystical secrets, reflecting the multidimensional nature of this unusual religious and social movement. The editors include canonical texts from the first generation of Hasidic leaders up through present-day ultra-orthodox, as well as neo-Hasidic voices and, in so doing, demonstrate the unfolding of a rich and complex phenomenon that continues to evolve today.

"This source anthology spans Hasidic literature from the earliest generation of the mass spiritual movement through present-day writers, all occupied with a set of central questions. Principally: What is the relationship between God and the world and between God and humanity and the human individual? The final section is to be noted for its inclusion of more recent Hasidic women writers." - TraditionOnline

"Mayse and Shonkoff’s masterful collection of texts recognizes that there is a wealth of literature extending into the nineteenth, twentieth, and even twenty-first centuries. As such, it is the most comprehensive of all the anthologies published to date and the most diverse in terms of the different schools of Hasidism....this reviewer can only applaud the remarkable erudition and discernment of these two scholars..." - Journal of Modern History

"Students and scholars have long needed access to a diverse set of Hasidic sources in English translation that allows an experiential entry into its emplacement and re-orientation within the skeptical landscape of the very modern world that birthed it—this volume is thus a welcome contribution in filling that need....Clearly this volume has its heart set on expanding the horizons of Hasidism, for both students and scholars, practitioners, and those perplexed by this remnant that keeps shining on. By continuing to carry forward central question of Jewish modernity, this volume provides new lenses—from an array of genres, including women’s supplications; sermons and homilies; personal diaries and memoirs..." - Religious Studies Review