R’Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro of Piasetshna, the legendary rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto who refused to escape without his followers and was murdered by the Nazis in Treblinka in 1943, was himself one of the most creative Hasidic minds of the 20th century. According to “Hasidism,” however, Shapiro “agreed with many of the critiques of Hasidism as a movement that lost its original spirit and animating mysticism, becoming instead a rigid social framework devoid of any vitality.”
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