A New Books in Jewish Studies Podcast:
Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism (Stanford UP, 2024)
Hosted by Avi Bernstein-Nahar
The New Books Network · March 16, 2025
In his latest book, scholar Ariel Evan Mayse faces up to an enduring question about the Jewish religious movement known as Hasidism: How did it manage to innovate in the realms of Jewish study and practice with such daring and yet at the same time produce communities ready and willing to subject themselves to the rigors of inherited Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse turns to ritual studies rather than history or theology in order to grapple with this enigma, and does so with clarity, insight, and profound ambition.
Image: Todros Geller, From Land to Land, 1935, via Wiki Commons