עבודה בגשמיות · Worship through the physical

The signature Hasidic teaching: God is served not only in prayer and study but in eating, in trade, in conversation, in sleep — because the divine sparks are held in those things and nowhere else can they be reached. Eating with the right intention is not a concession to the body. It is the only way that particular spark gets lifted.

This is the whole movement in one sentence, and it is a change of ADDRESS rather than of doctrine. Luria already said the sparks were scattered; Hasidism says they are scattered into your ordinary day, which converts an adept's cosmology into something a carter can do. ⚠⚠ And it is exactly what the opposition found intolerable — if every act is potentially worship, the boundary between holy and profane has been moved, and a tradition built on that boundary has to say so.