Hasid
Jewish honorific
Ḥasīd (Hebrew: חסיד, "pious", "saintly", "godly man"; plural חסידים "Hasidim") is a Jewish honorific, frequently used as a term of exceptional respect in the Talmudic and early medieval periods. It denotes a person who is scrupulous in his observance of Jewish law, and often one who goes beyond the legal requirements of ritual and ethical Jewish observance in daily life. In the Mishnah, the term is used thirteen times, the majority of which being in the Tractate Pirkei Avot.
Hebrew etymology
The Hebrew word Ḥasīd appears for the first time in the Torah (Deuteronomy 33:8) with respect to the tribe of Levi, and all throughout the Hebrew Book of Psalms, with its various declensions. In classic rabbinic literature it differs from "Tzadik" ("righteous") by instead denoting one who goes beyond his ordinary duty. The literal meaning of Ḥasīd derives from Chesed (חסד) (= "kindness"), the outward expression of love (lovingkindness) for God and other people. This spiritual devotion motivates pious conduct beyond everyday limits. The devotional nature of its description lent itself to a few Jewish movements in history being known as "Hasidim". Two of these derived from the Jewish mystical tradition, as it could tend towards piety over legalism.
Rabbi Saadia Gaon, the medieval Hebrew linguist and biblical exegete, translated the Hebrew word Ḥasīd in Psalm 18:25 into the Judeo-Arabic word אלמחסן, meaning, "he that does good."
Usage in rabbinic texts
As a personal honorific, both "Ḥasīd" and "Tzadik" could be applied independently to the same individual with both different qualities.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hasid” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.