How is religious leadership shaped, maintained, negotiated, and transferred? How does it change over time? In the presentation, Marcin Wodziński (University of Wrocław, Silesia) will focus on the key role of kinship and marriage strategies in building leadership in Hasidism, arguably the most important socioreligious movement in modern Judaism. Rich quantitative and qualitative materials, as well as GIS and social network analysis will be used to demonstrate how the networks of elite Hasidic families are constructed and how they serve to establish leadership positions, structures, and identities.

Marcin Wodziński, MAE, is a professor of Jewish history and literature at the University of Wrocław, Silesia. His research focuses on the Hebrew epigraphy, Jewish egodocuments, and the social and religious history of East European Jews in modern times, especially the Haskalah and Hasidism. Of his recent publications, he is most proud of Historical Atlas of Hasidism (Princeton, 2018) and Hasidism: Key Questions (Oxford, 2018).