Hasidic Judaism in the context of "Vilna Gaon"

Religious Jews are Jews who practice and observe Judaism. They may be affiliated with:

• Karaite Judaism
• Conservative Judaism
• Masorti Judaism
• Orthodox Judaism
  • Hasidic Judaism
  • Religious Zionism
  • Haredi Judaism
  • Modern Orthodox Judaism
• Reconstructionist Judaism
• Reform Judaism
• Jewish Renewal
• Non-Ashkenazi branches, such as Sephardic Judaism

Herem (Hebrew: חֵרֶם ḥērem) is the highest ecclesiastical censure in the Jewish community. It is the total exclusion of a person from the Jewish community. It is a form of shunning and is similar to vitandus "excommunication" in the Catholic Church. Cognate terms in other Semitic languages include the Arabic terms ḥarām "forbidden, taboo, off-limits, or immoral" and haram "set apart, sanctuary", and the Geʽez word ʿirm "accursed".

Jewish Renewal (Hebrew: התחדשות יהודית, romanized: Hitḥadeshut Yehudit) is a Jewish religious movement originating in the 20th century that endeavors to reinvigorate modern Judaism with Kabbalistic, Hasidic, and musical practices. Specifically, it seeks to reintroduce the "ancient Judaic traditions of mysticism and meditation, gender equality and ecstatic prayer" to synagogue services. It is distinct from the baal teshuva movement of "return" to religious observance of Orthodox Judaism.

Yiddish, historically Judeo-German or Jewish German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages, and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages. Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet.

Before World War II, there were 11–13 million speakers. 85% of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Modern Hebrew in Israel. However, the number of Yiddish speakers is increasing in Haredi communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of the world (for a total of 600,000).

Jews compose approximately 12% of New York City's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel. As of 2020, over 960,000 Jews lived in the five boroughs of New York City, and over 1.9 million Jews lived in the New York metropolitan area, approximately 25% of the American Jewish population.

Nearly half of the city’s Jews live in Brooklyn. The first recorded Jewish settler was Jacob Barsimson, who arrived in August 1654 on a passport from the Dutch West India Company. Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia, for which many blamed "the Jews", the 36 years beginning in 1881 experienced the largest wave of Jewish immigration to the United States, when the Jewish population rose from about 80,000 in 1880 to 1.5 million in 1920. In 2012, the largest Jewish denominations in New York City were Orthodox, Haredi, and Conservative Judaism. Reform Jewish communities are prevalent through the area. Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan is the largest Reform Jewish synagogue in the world. The large Jewish population has led to a significant impact on the culture of New York City. After many decades of decline in the 20th century, the Jewish population of New York City has seen an increase in the 21st century, owing to the high birth rate of the Hasidic and other Orthodox communities.

Hebrew cantillation, trope, trop, or te'amim is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic Text of the Bible, to complement the letters and vowel points.

These marks are known in English as 'accents' (diacritics), 'notes' or trope symbols, and in Hebrew as taʿamei ha-mikra (טעמי המקרא) or just teʿamim (טעמים). Some of these signs were also sometimes used in medieval manuscripts of the Mishnah. The musical motifs associated with the signs are known in Hebrew as niggun or neginot (not to be confused with Hasidic nigun) and in Yiddish as trop (טראָפּ): the word trope is sometimes used in Jewish English with the same meaning.

This article lists figures in Kabbalah according to historical chronology and schools of thought. In popular reference, Kabbalah has been used to refer to the whole history of Jewish mysticism, but more accurately, and as used in academic Jewish studies, Kabbalah refers to the doctrines, practices and esoteric exegetical method in Torah, that emerged in 12th-13th century Southern France and Spain, and was developed further in 16th century Ottoman Palestine. These formed the basis of subsequent Jewish mystical development.

This is a partial list of Jewish Kabbalists; secondary literature incorporating Kabbalah is enormous, particularly in the voluminous library of Hasidic Judaism that turned esoteric Kabbalah into a popular revivalist movement. Hasidism both adapted Kabbalah to its own internalised psychological concern, and also continued the development of the Jewish mystical tradition. Therefore, only formative articulators of Hasidic thought, or particularly Kabbalistic schools/authors in Hasidism are included here. In the Sabbatean mystical heresy that broke away from Judaism, only the founders are listed. Solely academic-university Jewish studies researchers of Jewish mysticism, not being "Kabbalists", nor necessarily Jewish, are not listed here; nor are separate non-Jewish derivative/syncretic traditions of Kabbalah.