HASIDIM were not simply dispassionate observers of policies implemented by the central and regional organs of the state. One would hardly expect them to be, given that they were the party most interested in the favourable outcome of government investigations into hasidism. After all, an issue that was for the government only one of many social problems (and a marginal one at that), and for the maskilim an important but not a key concern, was for them something absolutely fundamental. From the beginning of government interest in them, we see petitions written by hasidim to all levels of the state administration, attempts to gain powerful allies, and various public and behind-the-scenes efforts to attain decisions favourable to their interests. As already demonstrated, a relatively large number of hasidic leaders, including such figures as Alexander Zusya Kahana, Meir Rotenberg of Opatów, and Abraham Kamienicer, were engaged in this type of hasidic shtadlanut, as representation of the Jewish community or communities before the state and local authorities was known. Hasidic literature is full of stories of tsadikim interceding in defence of the Jewish people. Several cases have been discussed in earlier chapters. The aim of this chapter is to give a more general account of those cases, and especially of the nature and mechanisms of hasidic political activism. If we set aside traditional hasidic stories—such as how the tsadik Elimelekh of Leżajsk (Lyzhansk) spilled soup so that Emperor Joseph II would spill ink at the same time and be prevented from signing an anti- Jewish decree1—surprisingly little is known about the nature of hasidic political activism and how that activism was perceived within the hasidic world.

The most important questions in this context are as follows. Why, and under what circumstances, did hasidic political activism develop? How did hasidic activists react to political challenges? Did their reactions evolve over time? How did they differ from those of non-hasidic traditional Jews? And the most important: how, and in what way, did political involvement change the hasidic movement—organizationally, ideologically, and in terms of its self-perception? Another set of important questions relates to the technical characteristics of hasidic political activism, and the relationship between that and the forms of Jewish political involvement in the pre-modern Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth.