An article that I prepared in connection with the research group “Jewish Ritual Dynamics” run out of Erfurt just appeared in in Historia Religionum 10 (2018): 41-52. I am not allowed to post the offprint, but the abstract is below:
This article re-examines both the ancient rabbinic constructions of the ḥasidim ha-rishonim, sometimes translated “the pious ones of old,” and their modern interpretations. Modern scholars have often portrayed the ḥasidim ha-rishonim as uniformly positive exemplars of piety whereas the rabbinic evidence upon which these arguments are based is at best ambivalent. This paper argues that both the rabbis and modern scholars used the concept of the ḥasidim ha-rishonim to do cultural work that illustrated the shared ritual dynamics in which each group functioned. The rabbis used the ḥasidim ha-rishonim mostly to counter visible expressions of supererogatory piety against the backdrops of Christian holy men and Jewish “people of the land,” or amē ha-aretz. Modern scholars, particularly those working after the Holocaust, interpreted the ḥasidim ha-rishonim at least partially through the nostalgic lens of contemporary Hasidim.
Keywords : rabbis, piety, late antiquity, Hasidism, historiography.