he "overheard the sounds of eager, loud discussions issuing from a
rabbinical college, closing his ears with his hands, [he] declared that
it was such disputants who delayed the redemption of Israel from
captivity." Men like these, who study the Law for the sake of knowing,
not of feeling, cannot claim any merit for it. They deserve to be called
"Jewish devils." Only he is worthy of reward who is virtuous rather than
innocent, who does what he is afraid to do, who, as Jacob Joseph of
Polonnoy puts it, "acquires evil thoughts and converts them into holy
ones." No asceticism for him. All kinds of human feelings deserve our
respect, for it is not the body that feels but the soul, and the soul,
"being a part of God on high, cannot possibly have an absolutely bad
tendency." Men may not be heresy-hunters and fault-finders, for none is
free from heresy and faults himself: the face he brings to the mirror,
he finds reflected in it. Yea, even the followers of Abraham possess
evil propensities, and noble qualities frequently belong to the
disciples of Balaam himself.[11]

These democratic principles put the most ignorant Jew in Russia on an
equality with the erudite Lithuanian. No wonder that they obtained such
strong hold on the people of the Ukraine, the province shorn of all its
glory. Hasidism invaded Podolia and Volhynia, swept over Galicia and
Hungary, and found adherents even in many a large community in Western
Russia and Prussia. It brought cheer and happiness in its wake, and
rendered the unfortunate Jew forgetful of his misery. Gottlober
maintains that the inspiring melodies of the Hasidic hymns were largely
responsible for the spread of the movement, even as Moody attributed the
success of his revivals to the singing of Sankey. For, as Doctor
Schechter has it, "the Besht was a religious revivalist in the best
sense, full of burning faith in his God and his cause; convinced of the
value of his teaching and his truth."[12]