What is Chassidus — a philosophy, a psychology, a historical movement, a lived religious experience, or something irreducible to all of these?

In this opening seminar, we explore how to study Chassidus without flattening it into an abstract theory. Beginning with Jung, archetypes, comparative religion, Plato, Aristotle, phenomenology, and the example of the chassidishe tish, the discussion asks what it means to read Hasidism on its own terms.

The central question: can Chassidus be understood through psychology, philosophy, history, or sociology — or does each lens reveal something while also distorting the whole?

Topics include: Chassidus, Hasidism, Jungian psychology, archetypes, lived religion, phenomenology, Jewish thought, comparative religion, the tish, the Rebbe, Plato vs. Aristotle, and the problem of interpretation.