The influence of Hasidism, the pious movement of Eastern European Jewry, on fiction is a well-known, specific literary phenomenon, but it has not yet been thoroughly investigated in the context of Hungarian literature. Pál Száz's monograph examines these influences from the first adaptations of Hasidic stories into Hungarian through the works of Hungarian Jewish literature inspired by this movement up to the turn of the millennium, which marked the renaissance of this tradition in Hungarian literature due to the reception of Hasidic stories.
After mapping the subject, the analyzes discuss the most striking cases of the influence of Hasidism, for example the relevant works of József Patai, Lajos Szabolcsi, or Péter Ujvári. After the silence that lasted from the emergency period to the regime change, the contemporary effects of Hasidic stories are examined. These stories inspired the works of authors such as Géza Röhrig, Péter Kárpáti, or even Szilárd Borbély.
Among other things, the analyzes of the volume try to reveal the cases of literary tradition by validating the aspects of memory, regionality, imagination, imitation, border crossing, transculturality, or cultural hybridity. In addition, they also take into account wider literary connections, especially Czech literary connections, for example the influence of Ivan Olbracht and, above all, Jiří Langer.