Patrick Wulfleff

The observation of similarities in these two seventeenth- and eighteenth-century movements has led many scholars on both sides to make the sweeping statement that, in terms of devotional practices, German Protestant Pietism and Eastern European Jewish Hasidism had a great deal in common.

The aim of this dissertation project is to determine whether or to what extent these analogies between the pious practices of the two groups can indeed be considered common interests or affinities. The analysis shall focus on the primary concerns of both movements. On a very basic level, what ideas or concerns lead us to consider seventeenth-century German Pietism and eighteenth-century Hasidism as piety movements or even as religious revivals? Furthermore, in what respect do both differ from their established origins? Together the juxtaposition of these central concerns and the self-definitions of both movements form the foundation of this comparative study. Of further interest is the relation between the development of the two movements and the particular socio-cultural and intellectual environments of each.

However, the main focus of this study is the comparison of their respective practices of piety as outgrowths of these primary concerns. This leads to the question of how the precepts of the "founding fathers" were carried out in the daily lives of the revivalists: are there really any analogies, similarities or even affinities? This reconstruction will seek to establish a typology of the characteristics of piety specific to the time between the late baroque and the Enlightenment eras.