[Avodah] What is the source for the minhag of Chasidim to have HaKafos on SA?

[Minden]

R'n TK wrote:
>> [...] Rav Schwab adding hakafos to Maariv of Simchas Torah in not one, but two such shuls. [...]
>
> I suspect his reason was that the minhag /not/ to have hakafos on ST was not a /genuine/ minhag but a Reform-influenced practice.

O. Kay. As I learned from my father za"l, I counted to 100 before answering. So, in all calm, let me point out some things:

- Not having hakofes isn't a minneg at all.  *Having*  hakofes is one. Or would you say it's a Florida-Jewish minneg  *not*  to put a clothes peg on your nose on Rosh choudesh Cheshven?

- Hakofes are a recent reform (uncapitalised, but it's a minneg, not a movement anyway). There might have been hakofes earlier in minneg Ashkenez, but only in few communities, and they were a slow procession once around the almeimer, not boozing and bouncing or other disgraces of the Toure. And this is about hakofes at all, not about evening hakofes, second third or fourth hakofes.
In case of doubt, the German minneg is the original, the Eastern minneg a reform (or novelty, if you like that better). Please write this a hundred times, and say it before nachtlainen.

- Germany does not equal Reform. (Please write this a hundred times, and say it before nachtlainen.) And concerning frum Poland versus frai Germany - may I remind you that of the Jews in pre-war Warsaw, between 70% and 80% were  *not*  shoumer mitzves?

- Breuer's has kept more of the original minneg Ashkenez, but Frankfurt's polonisation started in the 18th century at the latest, went on during the 19th, and today's KAJ is even less original, not least due to the chareidisation, and also because of false assumptions like yours. Add to the demand to be like other chareidists specific demands, which led to the introduction of the Polish ritual of Yizkor, for example, because Holocaust survivors wanted to bemoan their relatives in this way that they saw elsewhere.

- Rav Schwab zetza"l was very strongly influenced by the Eastern yeshives he went to as a youth.


Lipman Phillip Minden
http://lipmans.blogspot.com