Originally published in Tzvi M. Rabinowicz (ed.), The encyclopedia of Hasidism (1996), p. 27. The early hasidic masters claim that the Besht taught a new way in the service of God—one in which the asceticism prominent in the Lurianic Kabbalah was abandoned in favor of avodah begashmiut, (worship through corporeality). The basic argument says that the…