Reply To: How come all frum Jews today aren’t Chassidic?

Today is the yarzheit of R’ Chaim of Volozhin, in effect the founder of the modern Litvish Yeshivah and the ancestor of the Soloveitchik family. Reb Chaim was the author of Nefesh HaChaim, a very mystical and kabbalistic sefer that quotes extensively from the Zohar and other kabbalistic sources that informed chassidus. Although his philosophy focuses more on Torah study, it also includes considerable material about kavanah in davening, meditating on Hashem’s oneness and the fact that “ein od milvado” (there is nothing but Hashem.) So he is an illustration of what I and others were saying — many of the same themes found in chassidus have long been found in non-Chassidic Orthodox Judaism (including Sephardic, I might add) for centuries.