Neo-Hasidism

Neo-Hasidism, Neochassidut, or Neo-Chassidus, is an approach to Judaism in which people learn beliefs and practices of Hasidic Judaism, and incorporate it into their own lives or prayer communities, yet without formally joining a Hasidic group. Over the 20th century neo-Hasidism was popularized by the works of writers such as Hillel Zeitlin, Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Lawrence Kushner, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and Arthur Green.

Neo-Hasidism is not a denomination of Judaism, but rather an approach to Judaism which can be found in all movements of Judaism, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox. Among non-Orthodox Jews one can find adherents of neo-Hasidism in Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionism, and Aleph: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal.

In the 1970s and 1980s a similar movement amongst baalei teshuva— within more "traditional" Orthodoxy—was observed in the US, ^[1] influenced by Shlomo Carlebach, Aryeh Kaplan, Zvi Aryeh Rosenfeld and others, and reflecting the prevailing counterculture movement. To some extent, it has persisted to this day in such phenomena as the Carlebach minyan and the growth in the Breslov movement.