Abstract
No issue was more central to the emerging Hasidic communities of the late eighteenth century than that of leadership.¹ Conceived in the midst of both a Jewish community and a larger Polish society beset by crises of public office, the phenomenon that was to be called Hasidism bore at its very heart an image of master and disciples, bound together by bonds at once esoteric and personal, an image that stood out in relief against those corruptions of leadership that many had come to revile. It was in fact participation in such a relationship that defined one’s sense of belonging