Preface to the English-language Edition • Translator’s Note • List of Abbreviations • Introduction • “Lies My Teacher Told Me”: Hasidic History as a Battlefield • Orthodox Historiography’s Strategies of Memory and Repression • “I Too Am Not Objective”: History as It Should Have Been • Apostate or Saint? In the Footsteps of Moshe, the Son of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady • “Would That My Parents Had Been Cruel”: Straying Children of Zaddikim and Rabbis • “And to Anger You I Will Convert”: Parent- Child Relations and Conversion • Polemic and Apologetic Memory • “He Has Regained His Former Strength”: Moshe Prior to His Conversion • Leon Yulievich or Piotr Aleksandrovich? The Archival Testimony • “He Had Done So in Sane, Sound Mind”: Maskilic Memory Traditions • “He Was in His Right Mind”: The Apostates’ Testimony • In the Historian’s Workshop • “The Time Has Come for Moshe’s Story to Be Revealed”: Hasidic Memory Traditions • “He First Lost His Mind and Then Left His Faith” • “It Never Happened”? The Ongoing Struggle over Memory Traditions • One Event, Multiple Interpretations: The Fall of the Seer of Lublin • “A Flame Hovering over His Head”: The Seer of Lublin in His Hasidim’s Eyes • “This Was No Simple Matter”: The Fall of the Seer in Hasidic Memory Tradition • “Foolish and Ignorant”: The Seer of Lublin in His Opponents’ Eyes • Ma’asei harav or Sefer nekiyut uferishut: The Satire’s Transmission and Its Author’s Identity • Sefer nekiyut uferishut: Structure and Content • “From Drunkenness and Heavy- headedness I Fell”: Tracing the Maskilic Version of the Fall • The Seer’s Fall: A Suicide Attempt? • “Happy Are the Persecuted”: The Opposition to Bratslav Hasidism • Three Waves of Persecution • “A Fearful, Soul-shaking, Bone-shattering, Dispiriting Scene”: The Maskilic Testimony • “Per the Hooligans’ Code”: The Talne Hasidim’s Anti- Bratslav Campaign • The Rzhishchev Affair and the Edict Forbidding Zaddikim to Travel • “The Bratslav Hasidim Eat Treyf ”: The Teplik Scandal • “They Are Not Beholden to Any of the Leaders of Our Time”: The Clash over Obedience • “God Seeks the Persecuted”: The Refl ection of the Persecutions in Bratslav Historiography • The Persecutions Continue • “Legacy of a Mistake”: An Epilogue? • “Excitement of the Soul”: The World of Rabbi Akiva Shalom Chajes of Tulchin • From Foe to Friend • Chajes’s Literary Legacy • “Out of My House, Impure One!” Rabbi Akiva Chajes in Light of Memoir Literature • Rabbi Akiva Chajes’s Change of Heart • Rabbi Akiva Chajes’s Appointment as Rabbi of Dubova and the Kadavar Controversy • In the Thicket of Memory • “How Times Have Changed”: The World of Rabbi Menahem Nahum Friedman of Itscan • Hasidism and Philosophy • Biography • Literary Legacy • “Religious Zeal Is a Plague Recounted in the Torah”: Between Innovation and Conservatism • Disregard or Polemic? Hatov vehatakhlit • A Humanist among Hasidim? • “What Befell the Rebbes’ Grandchildren Who Left the Fold”? • “It Is Forbidden to Uphold This Book” • “Confession of My Tortured, Affl icted Soul”: The World of Rabbi Yitshak Nahum Twersky of Shpikov • Shpikov Hasidism • Biography • “Freedom, Freedom!” The Twersky Sisters • “A Sacrifice on My Mother’s Altar”: Taking Stock of the Confession • “The Spirit of the Times”: The Confession’s Historical Context • “My Tiny, Ugly World”: The Text of the Confession • Notes • Works Cited • Index