The Light of Learning. Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust

Talk by Glenn Dynner on his recent book.

The Light of Learning tells the story of an unexpected Hasidic revival in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. In the aftermath of World War I, the Jewish mystical movement appeared to be in shambles. Hasidic leaders had dispersed, Hasidic courts lay in ruins, and the youth seemed swept up in secularist trends as a result of mandatory public schooling and new Jewish movements like Zionism and Socialism. Glenn Dynner shows that in response to this, Hasidic leaders reinvented themselves as educators devoted to rescuing the youth by means of thriving networks of heders (primary schools), Bais Yaakov schools for girls and women, and world-renowned yeshivas.
During the ensuing pedagogical revolution, Hasidic yeshivas soon overshadowed courts, and Hasidic leaders became known more for scholarship than miracle-working. By mobilizing Torah study, Hasidic leaders were able to subvert the "civilizing" projects of the Polish state, successfully rival Zionists and Socialists, and create clandestine yeshiva bunkers in ghettos during the Holocaust. Torah study was thus not only a spiritual-intellectual endeavor but a political practice that fueled a formidable culture of resistance. The Light of Learning belies notions of late Hasidic decadence and decline and transforms our understanding of Polish Jewry during its final hour.

Glenn Dynner is an American author and historian specializing in the religion and history of East European Jewry. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies and a Professor and Chair of Religion at Sarah Lawrence College.

The respondent is Naftali (Tali) Loewenthal. a Jewish academic from England and a member of the Chabad Hasidic community. A professor in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, and the director of the Chabad Research Unit, a division of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the UK, his main area of study is Hasidism and Jewish Mysticism.