Title Page -- Copyright -- Quotation -- Contents -- Preface to the English-language Edition -- Translator's Note -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- 1 "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 -- 2 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 -- 3 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? -- 4 "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 Reflection of the Persecutions in Bratslav Historiography -- The Persecutions Continue -- "Legacy of a Mistake": An Epilogue? -- 5 "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 -- 6 "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" -- 7 "Confession of My Tortured, Afflicted 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.