OF THE THREE POLITICAL PLAYERS discussed in this book—the government, the hasidic activists, and the maskilic activists (who were by definition not directly involved in the confrontation between the state and hasidim)—the hasidim were clearly the most effective. Their astonishing success was due not only to the outstanding political talents of their leaders but also to their ability to identify and exploit the many significant weaknesses of the other players.

The weaknesses of others do not diminish the magnitude of the hasidic success but remind us of the nineteenth-century east European context in which it was achieved: a minority religious community of low social status and lacking civil rights facing a non-democratic state that determined the rules of the game. The state wielded a multitude of mechanisms of social control, ranging from what Pierre Bourdieu has called ‘symbolic violence’ to legislative power to direct force, but always holding the trump card: political dominance. Hasidic politics had to adapt itself to the space created for it, consciously or not, by the state's own politics. The fact that the playing field, as it were, was chosen by the state did not necessarily mean that the chances of success were loaded against the hasidim: the state was limited by its own internal weaknesses and conflicting goals, as well as by external factors. Most importantly, the imbalance between the state and the representatives of a small social movement created the possibility of the latter exploiting the situation to its own advantage, especially since the power of the authorities was not proportionally matched by knowledge about their opponents, whereas the hasidim, lacking power, built up a formidable arsenal of knowledge. When they deemed it politically appropriate, hasidim could simply pretend that they did not exist as a separate category; Alexander Zusya Kahana could maintain that he was not a hasid (as we saw in Płock in 1829), and the tsadik Abraham Twersky from Turzysk (Trisk) could claim that he was not a hasidic tsadik, just a merchant travelling for trade.