Neo-Hasidic Revival

About Neo-Hasidic Revival

The Neo-Hasidic revival is the twentieth and twenty-first century retrieval of Hasidic teaching, narrative, and devotional sensibility by Jews who do not belong to the traditional Hasidic communities themselves. Its origins lie in the early twentieth century with the work of Martin Buber (1878-1965), the Vienna-born philosopher whose collections of Hasidic tales—Tales of the Hasidim, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, The Hidden Light, and the dialogical writings on Hasidism gathered in The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism—introduced Hasidic religious imagination to a wide European and eventually world readership. Buber's project was deliberately literary and philosophical rather than scholarly in the strict sense; he selected, retold, and interpreted Hasidic stories with the explicit aim of recovering what he understood as their essential teaching about the encounter between human persons and the divine in everyday life. Gershom Scholem and other historians later criticized Buber for romanticizing the material and for selectively emphasizing aspects of Hasidism that fit his own existential philosophy, but the literary and devotional impact of Buber's work was enormous, and it remains the entry point through which most non-Hasidic readers first encounter the tradition.

The second great founding figure of the Neo-Hasidic revival was Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), the Polish-born scholar and theologian who descended from a major Hasidic dynasty (the Apter Rebbe was among his ancestors) and who brought a deeply internalized Hasidic sensibility into his work as a professor at Hebrew Union College and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Heschel's books—God in Search of Man, Man Is Not Alone, The Sabbath, The Prophets, and his late masterpiece A Passion for Truth (a comparative study of the Kotzker Rebbe and Soren Kierkegaard)—communicated Hasidic religious experience to a non-Orthodox American Jewish audience and to the wider literate public in the 1950s and 1960s. Heschel was also a public moral figure: his march at Selma with Martin Luther King Jr., his witness against the Vietnam War, and his interfaith engagement made him an icon of progressive American Jewish life. The combination of authentic Hasidic background, scholarly seriousness, and prophetic public engagement gave Heschel an authority that no later Neo-Hasidic figure has fully matched.

The third foundational figure is Shlomo Carlebach (1925-1994), known as the 'Singing Rabbi,' whose musical compositions and storytelling drew on Hasidic sources and reached a vast audience through concerts, recordings, and the synagogues and study houses that he established in San Francisco, New York, and elsewhere. Carlebach was raised in a Lithuanian rabbinic family that had escaped Nazi Europe in 1939, was educated in the Lakewood yeshiva and at Chabad, but in the 1960s broke from the strictures of Orthodox communal life to develop his own outreach ministry centered on music, hugs, and storytelling. His Holy Beggars House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, founded in 1968, became a meeting point between traditional Hasidic teaching and the counterculture of the era, and his recordings of Hasidic-style melodies (some inherited from earlier dynasties, many composed by Carlebach himself) entered the standard liturgy of synagogues across the denominational spectrum. Carlebach's legacy has been complicated by credible accusations of sexual misconduct that emerged publicly after his death, and the contemporary use of his music in many synagogues now operates against the background of a sustained communal reckoning with these accusations.

The fourth major founder is Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), the Vienna-born teacher who began as a Chabad shaliach in the 1950s but gradually broke from Chabad to develop the Jewish Renewal movement. Schachter-Shalomi's distinctive approach combined Hasidic spiritual technologies with engagement with Sufism, Buddhism, the human potential movement, feminist theology, ecology, and the emerging field of psychedelic spirituality. He served as a rabbi at the University of Manitoba, taught at Temple University, founded the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal in 1993, and ordained a generation of rabbis (including women and openly gay men) who carried his synthesis into congregations across North America and beyond. The Jewish Renewal movement that emerged from Schachter-Shalomi's work is the most institutionally organized expression of contemporary Neo-Hasidism and has produced its own seminary, prayer books, and theological literature.

The Neo-Hasidic revival is not a single unified movement but a constellation of related projects with somewhat different orientations. Some figures, like Buber and Heschel, operated primarily through scholarship and literary work. Others, like Carlebach, focused on music and storytelling. Still others, like Schachter-Shalomi, built institutional structures and ordained successors. The contemporary heirs of the revival include Arthur Green (born 1941), the founding dean of the rabbinical school at Hebrew College in Boston and author of important books on Nahman of Bratslav and on contemporary Jewish theology; Lawrence Kushner, whose accessible books on Jewish mysticism have circulated widely in the American Jewish community; Estelle Frankel, Marcia Prager, Jonathan Omer-Man, and others who teach in Renewal-affiliated settings; the figures associated with the various Jewish meditation centers including the Institute for Jewish Spirituality founded in 1999; and a new generation of younger rabbis and writers who draw on the revival's resources without necessarily identifying with its specific institutional expressions.

The relationship of the Neo-Hasidic revival to the older Hasidic tradition itself is necessarily complex. On the one hand, the revival depends on the textual and oral inheritance of the original Hasidic masters and presents itself as a recovery of their authentic teaching. On the other hand, it operates in a social and theological context that is utterly different from that of the original Hasidic dynasties: most Neo-Hasidic students do not observe traditional halakhah in the rigorous form expected in Hasidic communities, they generally accept egalitarian gender norms that the original masters would have rejected, and they read the inherited material through interpretive lenses—existentialist, feminist, ecological, comparative—that the original masters did not employ. Whether this represents a creative recovery of the tradition for new contexts or a fundamental transformation that should be understood as a different phenomenon altogether is one of the live questions that the revival has raised. Shaul Magid's American Post-Judaism (Indiana 2013) and his subsequent books offer the most extended scholarly analysis of these questions, and his American Hasidism volume gathers many of the principal voices in the contemporary discussion.

Teachings

The teachings of the Neo-Hasidic revival are not a single doctrinal system but a constellation of themes and emphases drawn from the original Hasidic tradition and developed for contemporary contexts. Several central teachings recur across the various branches of the revival.

The first central teaching is the doctrine of divine immanence in everyday life. Drawing on the Hasidic principle that 'the whole earth is full of His glory' (Isaiah 6:3), the revival emphasizes that authentic religious experience does not require withdrawal from ordinary life but rather the cultivation of attentiveness to divine presence in the activities of work, family, friendship, eating, and conversation. Buber's translation of this Hasidic insight into the language of his I-Thou philosophy is the most influential early articulation, but the same teaching recurs in Heschel's emphasis on radical amazement, in Carlebach's stories of holy encounters in unlikely settings, and in Schachter-Shalomi's insistence on the spiritual significance of every action.

The second central teaching is the importance of devekut, the cleaving of the human soul to its divine source. Drawing on the original Hasidic teaching that prayer should produce ecstatic intimacy with God, the revival emphasizes the experiential dimension of Jewish religious life and the cultivation of techniques—chanting, melodies, contemplative reading, body movement—that can facilitate this experience. The various Jewish meditation centers and contemplative prayer programs that have emerged from the revival represent practical implementations of this teaching.

The third central teaching is the doctrine of tikkun, the cosmic and personal repair that human action can accomplish. Drawing on Lurianic foundations as transmitted through Hasidism, the revival presents tikkun as a framework for understanding social and ecological responsibility alongside personal spiritual development. The phrase 'tikkun olam,' literally 'repair of the world,' has become central to contemporary American Jewish vocabulary and is frequently invoked by Neo-Hasidic teachers and by the broader progressive Jewish community. The relationship between this contemporary use and the more technical kabbalistic origins of the term has been analyzed by scholars including Lawrence Fine and Jonathan Krasner.

The fourth central teaching is the value of joy as a religious obligation and orientation. Drawing on the Hasidic emphasis on simcha (joy) as both prerequisite for and consequence of authentic devotion, the revival rejects the picture of religious life as primarily a matter of duty, restriction, and somber discipline. The melodic style of Carlebach's compositions, the dance and movement that often accompany Renewal services, and the general affective tone of the revival all reflect this commitment to joy as a constitutive religious value.

The fifth central teaching is the doctrine of multiple paths and partial truths. The revival generally rejects the more exclusivist claims of traditional Hasidism—that one's own rebbe represents the truest channel of divine light, that other paths within or outside Judaism are mistaken or inferior—in favor of a pluralist sensibility that recognizes diverse legitimate spiritual approaches both within Judaism and in conversation with other religions. Schachter-Shalomi's term 'deep ecumenism' captures this orientation, and his extensive engagements with Sufism, Buddhism, Christianity, and indigenous traditions reflect its practical implementation.

Practices

The practices of the Neo-Hasidic revival vary across its different institutional expressions, but several characteristic features recur. The first is the use of melody and chant as primary vehicles of devotional experience. Carlebach's musical compositions, drawn from his deep engagement with Hasidic and broader Jewish musical traditions, have become a standard element of contemporary synagogue worship across the denominational spectrum. Renewal services and Neo-Hasidic prayer gatherings typically include extended chanting of liturgical phrases, niggunim (wordless melodies), and musical settings of psalms and other texts. The collective singing of these melodies is treated not as mere ornament but as a central technique for cultivating devekut and emotional engagement with the prayers.

A second characteristic practice is the use of storytelling. Buber's published collections of Hasidic tales established storytelling as a primary genre of Neo-Hasidic teaching, and contemporary Renewal rabbis and educators continue to use Hasidic stories—about the Baal Shem Tov, about Nachman of Bratslav, about the various early masters—as the central vehicle for teaching ethical and spiritual principles. The storyteller's craft is highly valued in the revival, and the ability to tell a Hasidic story well is considered a significant pedagogical skill.

A third characteristic practice is contemplative or meditative prayer. Drawing on Hasidic models but informed by exposure to Buddhist and other contemplative traditions, the revival has developed forms of silent meditation, guided visualization, and slow contemplative recitation of liturgical texts that complement the more active musical practices. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality, founded in 1999 to train rabbis and educators in contemplative practice, has been particularly influential in developing and disseminating these techniques.

A fourth characteristic practice is the participation in retreat experiences. Renewal and other Neo-Hasidic organizations conduct multi-day retreats, typically held at conference centers or rural settings, that combine intensive prayer, study, music, meals, and personal interaction in a sustained immersive environment. The Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality (founded by Schachter-Shalomi and now part of the Isabella Freedman Center in Connecticut) has been the principal site of such retreats since the 1990s. Smaller retreats are organized by individual congregations and study groups around themes like Shabbat, the High Holy Days, contemplative prayer, and ecological spirituality.

A fifth characteristic practice is the deliberate inclusion of women, LGBTQ Jews, interfaith couples, and others who would be marginalized or excluded from traditional Hasidic communities. Renewal communities are typically egalitarian in worship and leadership, women serve as rabbis and teachers in equal numbers with men, same-sex marriages are conducted, and interfaith families are welcomed and supported. The integration of these social commitments with the inherited spiritual content of Hasidism is one of the distinctive features of the contemporary revival.

A sixth characteristic practice is theological and textual study in small groups. Many Renewal and Neo-Hasidic communities organize ongoing chevruta-style study sessions in which participants read Hasidic texts together with the help of a teacher, discussing both the literal content and the personal-spiritual implications. The work of Arthur Green, Estelle Frankel, Lawrence Kushner, and others has produced study materials specifically designed for such groups.

Initiation

Entry into the Neo-Hasidic revival has no formal initiation comparable to the Hasidic yechidus or to the formal acceptance into a traditional Hasidic court. Most participants in the revival enter through encounter with one of its founding figures or texts—reading Buber's tales, listening to Carlebach's music, attending a Renewal prayer service, taking a class with a Renewal rabbi—and gradually develop a deeper relationship with the tradition through ongoing participation in its institutions and practices.

For those who wish to take the relationship further, several formal training paths exist. The ALEPH Ordination Program, founded by Schachter-Shalomi and continued by his successors, ordains rabbis, cantors, rabbinic pastors, and mashpi'im (spiritual directors) through a multi-year curriculum that combines academic study, practical experience, and personal spiritual development. The Hebrew College Rabbinical School in Boston, founded by Arthur Green in 2003, offers a non-denominational rabbinical program with a strong Neo-Hasidic orientation. The Jewish Theological Seminary, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and several other denominational rabbinical schools also include faculty and students working within the broader Neo-Hasidic frame.

The figure of the mashpia (spiritual director) has become particularly important in the contemporary revival. Drawing on the original Hasidic role of the mashpia as a personal spiritual guide who works individually with students between formal teaching sessions, contemporary Renewal and Neo-Hasidic communities train mashpi'im through several-year programs that emphasize contemplative prayer, listening, and personal accompaniment. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality and the ALEPH Ordination Program both offer such training, and a growing number of Jewish communities now have an officially designated mashpia alongside or independent of their rabbinic leadership.

Personal initiation into the deeper levels of Neo-Hasidic practice typically happens through extended relationship with a teacher or community over many years rather than through any single ceremony. The willingness to commit time to ongoing study, regular prayer, retreat participation, and engagement with the difficult ethical and theological questions that the revival raises is itself the principal qualification for deeper involvement.

Notable Members

Martin Buber (1878-1965), the Vienna-born philosopher whose Tales of the Hasidim, The Legend of the Baal-Shem, The Hidden Light, and dialogical writings introduced Hasidic religious imagination to a wide European and world readership. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972), Polish-born scholar and theologian descended from a major Hasidic dynasty, whose books God in Search of Man, Man Is Not Alone, The Sabbath, The Prophets, and A Passion for Truth communicated Hasidic religious experience to a non-Orthodox American Jewish audience and to the wider literate public.

Shlomo Carlebach (1925-1994), the 'Singing Rabbi' whose musical compositions and storytelling reached a vast audience and whose Holy Beggars House of Love and Prayer in San Francisco became a meeting point between traditional Hasidic teaching and the counterculture. Carlebach's legacy is now complicated by credible accusations of sexual misconduct that emerged after his death.

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924-2014), the Vienna-born teacher who founded the Jewish Renewal movement, ordained a generation of rabbis and mashpi'im through ALEPH, and developed an integrative approach combining Hasidic spiritual technologies with engagement with Sufism, Buddhism, the human potential movement, feminist theology, and ecology.

Arthur Green (born 1941), founding dean of the Hebrew College Rabbinical School and author of important books including Tormented Master (a study of Nachman of Bratslav), Seek My Face Speak My Name, and Radical Judaism. Lawrence Kushner, prolific author of accessible books on Jewish mysticism. Estelle Frankel, Marcia Prager, and Jonathan Omer-Man, important Renewal teachers. Jacob Staub, Ebn Leader, Daniel Matt (also active in academic kabbalah), and other figures associated with Renewal and broader Neo-Hasidic projects.

Among contemporary scholars and analysts: Shaul Magid, whose American Post-Judaism and American Hasidism offer the most substantial scholarly treatment of the revival; Or Rose, founding director of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning at Hebrew College; Ariel Mayse, scholar of Hasidism and contemporary Jewish thought; Yossi Klein Halevi, journalist and writer engaged with the broader phenomenon. The institutional figures of the revival include the directors of ALEPH, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Hebrew College Rabbinical School, and the various Renewal-affiliated congregations and study centers across North America. Mordechai Gafni, an early figure in the Renewal world, was later expelled from the movement after sustained allegations of sexual misconduct.

Symbols

The Neo-Hasidic revival has cultivated several recognizable symbols and visual elements that distinguish it from both traditional Hasidism and other contemporary Jewish movements. The most distinctive single element is the colorful tallit, often hand-painted or hand-woven in non-traditional designs and colors, that has become a recognizable signature of Renewal and Neo-Hasidic prayer. Where traditional Hasidic tallitot are typically white with black stripes and conform to a narrow set of standardized designs, the Neo-Hasidic tallit may incorporate rainbows, mandalas, animal imagery, calligraphic divine names, or images drawn from nature. The visual departure from traditional norms is itself a deliberate symbolic gesture about the revival's relationship to the inherited tradition.

The kippah of the revival has similarly diversified beyond traditional black or velvet forms to include knitted, beaded, batik, and embroidered designs that incorporate various non-traditional motifs. These too function as identifying markers of Renewal and Neo-Hasidic affiliation in the wider Jewish community.

The figure of Reb Zalman himself, photographed in his characteristic colorful clothing with his white beard and warm expression, has become an iconic image of the contemporary revival. Photographs of Schachter-Shalomi, of Heschel, of Carlebach, and of the other founders are displayed in Renewal congregations and study centers, and their faces have become recognizable visual symbols of the movement.

The musical instrument—the guitar in Carlebach's hands, the drum, the wooden flute, sometimes the shofar used outside its traditional liturgical contexts—has become a symbolic object of the revival. Where traditional Hasidic gatherings use the human voice and sometimes the violin or clarinet, Neo-Hasidic gatherings have integrated a wider range of instruments drawn from folk and contemporary musical traditions.

The Hebrew letter, especially as drawn or visualized in contemporary Jewish meditation practice, has become a particularly important symbolic element. Renewal prayer often involves the visualization of specific letters, and contemporary Jewish artists associated with the revival have produced extensive visual work centered on Hebrew letterforms in unconventional configurations.

The Tree of Life, the standard kabbalistic schema of ten sefirot connected by twenty-two paths, appears throughout Neo-Hasidic visual material, often in distinctive contemporary artistic interpretations. Lawrence Kushner's books, in particular, have been illustrated with Tree of Life imagery that has become recognizable to American Jewish readers.

The shtetl and the destroyed Hasidic world of Eastern Europe function as a kind of background symbolic presence in the revival, often invoked through old photographs, references in liturgy and storytelling, and the persistent question of what was lost in the Holocaust and what can be recovered from it. The visual culture of the revival operates in part as a form of mourning and remembrance for that destroyed world even as it creates something new in the present.

Influence

The influence of the Neo-Hasidic revival on contemporary Jewish life and on the broader religious landscape has been substantial and continues to expand. Within American Jewish religious practice, Carlebach melodies have become standard liturgical music across the denominational spectrum, used in Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, and many Modern Orthodox synagogues. The integration of this musical inheritance into mainstream worship is among the most visible signs of the revival's reach.

Within American Jewish theology, the work of Heschel, Green, Schachter-Shalomi, and their successors has shaped a generation of rabbis, educators, and writers who occupy positions of leadership across the institutional Jewish landscape. The Hebrew College Rabbinical School, the ALEPH Ordination Program, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and the various Renewal-affiliated congregations together have ordained or trained many hundreds of rabbis and teachers whose work carries Neo-Hasidic sensibility into communities throughout North America and beyond. Books by Renewal-affiliated authors continue to appear at a steady pace from Jewish Lights Publishing, Jewish Publication Society, and other major Jewish publishers.

Beyond the explicitly religious sphere, the revival has influenced contemporary Jewish culture through music, literature, film, and visual art. Carlebach-style musical performance has become its own subgenre, with festivals, recordings, and dedicated venues. Hasidic stories adapted for contemporary audiences have appeared in various literary forms, and the visual representation of Hasidic life in films, photographs, and graphic novels has often drawn (sometimes accurately, sometimes loosely) on the imagery the revival made widely accessible.

The revival has also contributed to the broader conversation about religion and spirituality in American culture more generally. Heschel's witness during the civil rights and antiwar movements established a model of prophetic Jewish public engagement that subsequent generations have continued. The interfaith dialogues conducted by Schachter-Shalomi and others, the Jewish presence in interreligious meditation and contemplative communities, and the engagement with Buddhism and other traditions have all contributed to the integration of Jewish voices into the broader American spiritual landscape.

Within the academic study of Hasidism and Kabbalah, the revival has provided both subject matter and impetus. Shaul Magid's American Post-Judaism (Indiana 2013), his American Hasidism, and his subsequent essays offer the most extended scholarly analysis of the revival's theological significance. Or Rose, Ariel Mayse, Yossi Klein Halevi, and other scholars have produced studies of individual figures and themes within the movement. The continued interest in the revival as a topic of academic research is itself a sign of its cultural visibility.

Finally, the influence of the revival is visible in the gradual softening of boundaries between traditional Hasidic communities and the broader Jewish world. Younger generations of Modern Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, and others are increasingly willing to engage with Hasidic texts, attend Hasidic farbrengens, and incorporate Hasidic teachings into their own religious practice in ways that previous generations did not. Some of this softening reflects the cultural work of the Neo-Hasidic revival in making Hasidic material accessible and respectable across the denominational spectrum.

Significance

The significance of the Neo-Hasidic revival lies in its role as the principal channel through which Hasidic spirituality has reached non-Hasidic Jews and non-Jews in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For the vast majority of contemporary Jews who encounter Hasidic teaching at all, the encounter is mediated through Buber, Heschel, Carlebach, Schachter-Shalomi, Green, or one of their successors rather than through direct contact with a traditional Hasidic community. The revival has thus shaped contemporary Jewish religious sensibility in ways that go far beyond the relatively small number of people who formally identify with Renewal or related institutions.

The revival has also raised, and partly answered, the question of whether Hasidic teaching can survive translation into post-traditional contexts. Buber's literary retellings, Heschel's theological treatises, Carlebach's musical settings, Schachter-Shalomi's Renewal liturgies, and Green's contemporary theology all represent different experiments in this translation, with different emphases and different degrees of fidelity to the original sources. The cumulative result is a substantial body of contemporary Jewish religious creativity that owes much of its character to Hasidic inheritance even when it departs sharply from the lived practice of contemporary Hasidic communities.

A third dimension of the revival's significance lies in its contribution to the broader project of post-Holocaust Jewish renewal. The destruction of European Hasidic life in the Holocaust posed a question that the early founders of the revival took with the utmost seriousness: how could the spiritual heritage of the destroyed communities be carried forward in a fundamentally different historical situation? Buber's continued work on Hasidic tales after the war, Heschel's late writings on the East European Jewish world, and Schachter-Shalomi's development of Renewal as a deliberate reconstruction project for post-Holocaust diaspora Jewry all reflect this dimension of the revival. The contemporary heirs of these founders continue to negotiate the relationship between mourning the destroyed Hasidic civilization and creating new forms that honor its legacy.

The revival has also contributed substantially to the cultural integration of Jewish mysticism into the broader American religious and intellectual landscape. Hasidic sensibility has entered American Jewish prayer books, liturgical music, religious education, and theological literature in ways that would have been unimaginable before the work of the founders. The popularity of Hasidic stories among non-Jewish readers, the influence of Heschel on the civil rights movement, and the visibility of Carlebach-style melodies in contemporary synagogues across the denominational spectrum together represent a substantial diffusion of an originally cloistered tradition into the wider culture.

Finally, the revival has produced its own distinctive literature on contemporary Jewish theology and spirituality. Green's Seek My Face Speak My Name and his more recent Radical Judaism, Schachter-Shalomi's Jewish with Feeling and the various ALEPH Alliance publications, and the steady stream of books from Renewal-affiliated authors together constitute a recognizable body of post-traditional Jewish religious writing that has shaped the landscape of contemporary American Jewish thought.

Connections

The Neo-Hasidic revival descends directly from the tradition of Hasidism founded by the Baal Shem Tov and developed by his successors including Dov Ber of Mezeritch, Elimelech of Lizhensk, Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, and especially Nachman of Breslov, whose stories and teachings have been particularly important for the revival. Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, the famously austere and demanding Kotzker Rebbe, became a particular favorite of Heschel, whose late work A Passion for Truth set the Kotzker in dialogue with Soren Kierkegaard.

The textual foundation of the revival rests on the classical Hasidic literature including the Likkutei Moharan of Nachman of Breslov, the published discourses of the Maggid of Mezeritch, the writings of various early Hasidic masters, and the larger Hasidic narrative tradition that Buber and Heschel translated and interpreted for non-Hasidic audiences. The broader kabbalistic foundation includes the Zohar, the Lurianic compilations Etz Chaim and related texts, and the foundational Tanya of Schneur Zalman of Liadi, which Schachter-Shalomi taught for many years before founding the Renewal movement.

Other earlier figures whose work the revival draws on include the Baal Shem Tov's great-grandson Nachman of Breslov, whose tales and teachings have been particularly important; Aryeh Kaplan, whose translations of medieval kabbalistic texts entered the broader American Jewish vocabulary in the 1970s and 1980s; and the historian Gershom Scholem, whose work on Hasidism, even when it sharply criticized Buber, gave the revival some of the historical resources it draws on.

The revival stands in close relationship with several other contemporary movements. With Chabad it has both strong historical connections (Schachter-Shalomi began as a Chabad shaliach, and Carlebach was educated in Chabad institutions) and significant differences in its post-Orthodox orientation. With the Popular New Age Kabbalah of the Berg Centre and similar movements it shares the project of presenting Jewish mystical material to non-traditional audiences but differs in its emphasis on liturgy, community, and theological depth rather than on practical segulot. With Lurianic Kabbalah it shares foundational mystical concepts though it interprets them in distinctively contemporary ways. With the Lithuanian Mitnagdim and Mussar tradition it stands in dialectical relationship as the alternative pole of contemporary Jewish religious sensibility, often defining itself against what it perceives as the austerity of the Lithuanian world. The academic study of Kabbalah has produced a substantial scholarly literature on the revival, including the work of Shaul Magid, Ariel Mayse, Or Rose, and Yossi Klein Halevi. For broader context see Kabbalah.

Further Reading