Historical Forces
The Hasidic Movement
Hasidism came to celebrate the holiness of character traits, the holiness of faith, a general awareness of the holiness of Israel and its high rank. It came to increase feelings of holiness, which had been slumbering in the heart of nature, by means of increasing appreciation for prayer.
It was contested by an opposition deeply concerned that the practical foundation might totter as a result of an intensification of a tendency toward feeling; that the details, which support the totality, not grow blurred by a tendency toward holism; and that the power of imagination—which arouses by means of good, holy and true feelings—not overstep its bounds, bringing evil and bitter consequences to the entire nation for coming generations.
These two forces engaged one another, each one intending to foster the goodness that it saw in the other, but according to its own unique character.
Eder Hayakar, p. 25
Romanticism
There is a love that matures refined souls and prepares them to perceive a most refined and elevated ethics. This is a noble feeling that contains holiness, beauty and glory. Although humanity yearns for this, it cannot yet know it in its essential purity, freshness and natural state. This exalted song and holiness can be expressed only when accompanied in a complete and perfected manner by all aspects of life: physical, ethical and intellectual. Only then may humanity rise to that complete freedom where its spiritual inclinations will proceed in completion of might and strength, spreading their wings to the full breadth of life—to all its facets—and finding no obstacle, no stumbling block.
This wondrous vision is expressed by the faculty of the general religious spirit that the nature of the human spirit contains. Only when humanity will be filled with power and might, spiritual recognition and knowledge, will it be able to remove from this feeling (which is the most active power in general, and which rules undeterred in each particular) all those stumbling blocks that hold it back and force it onto side roads.
Only then will there appear, in exalted glory, its inner soul: the divine love that quickens us.
As long as this trait remains in its Romantic form, we cannot draw pure water from it. We will be able to do so only when the world—physical, ethical, and intellectual—will be healed of all its illnesses.
Eder Hayakar, p. 28