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Cybernetic Hasidism: An Essay on Social and Religious Change *
Author(s) -
BOSK CHARLES
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
sociological inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.446
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1475-682X
pISSN - 0038-0245
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-682x.1974.tb00733.x
Subject(s) - cybernetics , flexibility (engineering) , sociology , judaism , hierarchy , competition (biology) , torah , symbol (formal) , contradiction , epistemology , philosophy , law , theology , management , economics , political science , ecology , linguistics , biology
This paper employs a cybernetic model of a religious symbol system to explain the competition among Rabbinists, Hasidim, and Messianists in the Jewish communities of eighteenth‐century Poland. Hasidism's ability to attract adherents is explained by the great flexibility of its constitutive belief, “communion with God”when compared with Rabbinic Torah or the Messianic belief in the “lifting of sparks.” This flexibility is traced through all levels of the cybernetic hierarchy.