Epistle against the Hasidim

For there are seven abominations in their hearts to ensnare the souls of the innocent, and they abolish public study of the Torah, and they cast off the yoke of the Torah from their necks and from the necks of their precious children, who are comparable to fine gold, who used to sit first in the heavenly kingdom—for, as the Talmud declares: “Who are the true rulers? The rabbis!”—to read the scriptures and to study the Mishnah, and they were the first to arrive at the bet midrash in the mornings and the last to leave it at night—albeit the most important thing is not study but practice; they would adopt the practices of the saintly ones upon earth, and no unrighteousness nor the slightest derisory thing was ever heard to exist among them. But ever since the day that this “nation” came into existence, they have cast off the yoke from their necks, and they constantly go and gather together in pairs—each of them, having been invited, they proceed along in their impure state, when the Hasidim tell them, day by day, that Heaven forbid that they should waste their lives on the study of Torah, but that they ought rather to concentrate on the service of God, namely, on prayer; and Heaven forbid that they should ever be sad, but rather be in a perpetual mood of levity and joy, as they maintain that sadness renders void the unity of God. Further, Heaven forbid that they should ever feel anguish over any particular transgression they may have committed, so as to avoid falling into a state of sadness. In addition, they wait two hours before reciting their prayers, which is excessive, until the respective times for recitation of the Shema, and even of the Amidah, have elapsed; and they ruin their lives by reason of the vapidity emitted from their mouths. Indeed, neither the one form of religiosity nor the other has become firmly established with them, for they abandon their Torah study day by day, and their prayers too are an abomination, by reason of the fact that they say: “Heaven forbid that one should understand and focus upon the meaning of the words of the prayers, and that, when one does understand and focus upon the meaning of the words, that constitutes ‘extraneous thoughts.’” The divine fury and burning wrath associated with disqualified offerings and with sacrifices offered up outside the precincts of the Temple may justly be laid at their door. Their children learn to be recklessly wanton in their prayers, just like any boorish person, for they are a topsy-turvy generation. They perform somersaults in front of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, akin to those of aliens and gentiles, with their heads underneath and their feet on top. Has any such kind of irreverence ever been heard of or seen before? Moreover, their religious laws are different from those of the entire nation of Israel, and they do not observe the laws of the Supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He; but rather, they create for themselves a society of abandonment—whose purpose is to abandon the customs of the early authorities, and they overstep the boundaries set by the early authorities with respect to their prayers; and all the people flee at their cries, at the sound of the uproar and tumult generated by them in their prayers, and from the city being rent asunder thereby. They halt in the middle of their prayers, and pour scorn upon those who study the holy Torah; they continually create noise by reason of their jesting and mockery and their crazy hilarity. These are just some of their ways.