username: “But the Baal Shem Tov did spend time teaching Torah, and many of his Talmidim wrote Sifrei Chassidus (like Tzavaas Harivash, Keser Shem Tov, Toldos Yaakov Yosef, Ohr Torah from the Maggid). You think they wrote it to put on the bookshelf and never look at again?
But either way, even if it’s not an Ikkar of Chassidus, there’s definitely an Inyan to learn Pnimiyus Hatorah”
My argument was not whether chassidus and nistar was taught by the Rebbes of other streams. It was that turning it into an ikkar of limud – e.g. the way lubavicher yeshivos have, I believe, a third of the weekday seder assigned to learning chassius, and two-thirds on Shabbos – was a relatively recent Lubavich innovation. Again, it doesn’t bother me that that’s what they do in lubavich. My complaint is that the setting aside of hours each day to learn chassidus has become retroactively the shitah of the BSh”T and therefore only lubavich are following his derech.
Please don’t tell me that that is not the case, because I have been on the receiving end of that “criticism” too many times to be mistaken.
I find it interesting that you write that the Baal Hatanya tried to convince the chevraya that his derech was the correct one but they would not be convinced. I have never heard that before, but even if it is true, surely you would agree that they didn’t disagree out of laziness, jealousy, spite or any other stupid reason. If they disagreed it is because they disagreed on principles based on their shittos hakdoshos, so our view is clearly no less holy than that of the Baal Hatanya.