This lecture will present the major findings by a team of scholars about the history of Hasidism, from its origins in the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. This pietistic movement started in a remote corner of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but, by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it became a central actor on the stage of modern Jewish history. Despite predictions of its demise after the Holocaust, Hasidism today has around three-quarter of a million followers and continues to fascinate Jews and non-Jews alike. David Biale is the Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor of Jewish History at UC Davis.