In the century and a half since they reconciled, the two groups [Chassidim and traditionalists] have been heavily influenced by each other and have become similar in many ways. Chassidim have come to value Torah scholarship more than they did in the 18th and 19th centuries, and today there are Chassidishe yeshivas and kollels that are not all that different from their Yeshivish counterparts. The influence of Chassidus on the Yeshivish world has been even stronger. It has adopted many Chassidishe minhagim and aspects of the mystical Chassidish approach to Judaism. Yeshivish communities have also taken to treating prominent talmidei chachamim and roshei yeshiva in ways similar to how Chassidim treat their rebbes.
Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries features prominently in the construction of Chareidi identity. It is the milieu in which that identity formed, and it is the Judaism of that world – or rather, an idealized version of that world as they imagine it to have been - that they seek to imitate and perpetuate.[i] They believe that this Judaism is “authentic” Judaism, the norm from which all other streams of Judaism, including Modern Orthodoxy, have deviated. They are the guardians of this authentic Judaism, the “Torah True” community[ii] – a name they gave themselves which captures their belief that only they are true to the Torah, and, by implication, that all other Jews are not.
The importance of Eastern Europe to Chareidi identity is so great that within that world, it's implicitly assumed that one is either a Litvak or a Chassid. People are of course aware that there are those within their communities who have non-Eastern European backgrounds, but the communities of origin of non-Eastern Europeans are seen as satellites of “normative Judaism,” i.e., Eastern European style Orthodoxy. Yekkes, Sephardim, and others from non-Eastern European communities are subsumed within the Eastern European hegemony, and often lose many of their distinctive minhagim. I once mentioned to a Yeshivish person that such-and-such was an Eastern European minhag, not a universal Ashkenazi one, and one which my family, which came from Germany, didn’t share. She gave me a confused look, and said “But Ashekenzaim are from Eastern Europe!” Never mind that “Ashkenaz,” has been the Jewish geographical designation for France and Germany since the Middle Ages.[iii] There is only one “Torah true” Judaism, and so all groups that come within the Chareidi tent become subsumed within the Eastern European model.
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