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| Toledot Yakov Yosef: The first Chassidic book to be published. Koritz 1780. |
Abstract
We examine Chassidic
sources that show how early Chassidism reworked the traditional
methodologies of classical Torah study. They did this by separating the text
from the context and focusing, instead, on the divine light contained within
the letters and the words themselves. They did this regardless of the position
and meaning of these words in the sequence of the biblical storyline. This
approach was generally used to enhance the experientialism of the study process
which now became a spiritual, as opposed to an intellectual, enterprise. It
also opened a space for the theurgic or ‘magical’ use of Torah study to benefit
the student (or perhaps more appropriately, the practitioner) to utilise the
exposed light or energy to effect a change in their material reality.
