Hassidism was born around the 1700's. He was born in Poland and his parents died when he was just a child. The people of his village sent him to school, but he would sneak away from school and wander into the woods where his teachers would eventually find him and bring him back, only for him to wander away yet again. After a while his teachers gave up bringing him back and left him alone. When he was in his teens he became an assistant to a school teacher but wasn't much help because he would take the kids of the school away and bring them to the woods where he used to go and listen to the birds and look at the trees and flowers and the rivers around them. They would sing or stand in silence just listening to the nature around them. When he became the beadle of the village synagogue, he didn't study the Talmud like he was supposed to instead, he studied the Kabbalah. This was the book of Jewish mysticism, that the rabbi's had forbidden, so he had to study in secret. He later became a school teacher and many people came to him with their problems. .
One day a man by the name of Rabbi Abraham Gershon, from the city of Brody, came to him to settle a dispute and was so impressed by him that he decided to give Israel his daughter Hannah to marry. The rabbi soon died, and Israel went to the city of Brody to ask Hannah's brother, Rabbi Abraham Gershon, for Hannah's hand in marriage. Even with protest to the marriage in the first place the rabbi decided to try and improve his brother in laws education. He tried to teach him the Talmud, but Israel was not interested. The rabbi gave up trying to teach Israel and ordered him and Hannah to leave the city of Brody. They settled in the Carpathian Mountains, and built a little house praying, dreaming, and singing to the hills. Often he would spend all his time in the mountains and only return to his wife for Shabbat. He gave birth to Hassidism there in those mountains, by being there for years thinking, meditating, singing, listening to the nature around him, writing amulets, learning from the women how to heal sickness with grasses and herbs, and how to drive out evil spirits.
