Joseph Weiss (1918-69) showed a single-minded commitment to identifying and describing the mystical element in hasidism and to unravelling the spiritual and historical meaning of the hasidic movement. The studies collected here are still quoted in every serious study of hasidism. Joseph Dan's Introduction, written specially for this paperback edition, examines Weiss's scholarship both in the context of subsequent scholarly research and in the light of the resurgence of hasidism since the Second World War. He concludes that many of Weiss's detailed, perceptive, and empathetic studies are as relevant to understanding developments in the contemporary hasidic world as they are for understanding the emergence and growth of hasidism in the eighteenth century.