The ideal of piety of the Ashkenazi Hasidim and its roots in Jewish tradition

This article is the revised version of a lecture given at the Third Congress of the European Association of Jewish Studies, held in Berlin, July 26–31, 1987. I thank Israel Yuval for commenting on the first German draft, and Kenneth Stow, Sarah Gluck, and Aubrey Pomerance for their efforts in shaping and improving the English translation.