yaakovwise

This is not a simple question. I know because I spent six years doing (part-time) a Ph.D on the origins, development and politics of the hareidi/hassidic communities in Manchester, England. Hassidism is definitely a movement within Orthodoxy. It has an agreed start date;a well-documented history and a defined ideology. What most hareidi Jews (especially the non-Hassidic) themselves believe is that they are observing ‘normative’ or Rabbinic Judaism based on the written and oral Torah. Most reject additional adjectives such as ‘ultra-‘ or ‘fervent’ (only used in the USA)or ‘strictly.’ Because I wanted to refer to austritt gemeinde I included the phrase ‘independent Orthodoxy’in the title of my thesis. In the UK this means those kehillos not associated with the predominately modern Orthodox Jewish establishment such as the United Synagogue, the Office of the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Thus there is a strong case for saying that the term ‘hareidi’ (it only really came into general use in the 1890s)is just a description of Judaism as it was before the enlightenment.