Hasidism began in eighteenth-century Ukraine as a revolt against a Judaism its founders felt had become the property of scholars: the Baal Shem Tov taught that an illiterate person praying with genuine fervor stood higher than a learned one praying by rote. The opposition (the Mitnagdim, led by the Vilna Gaon) was fierce and included excommunications. Two centuries later the movements have largely converged in practice, and Hasidic communities are now among the most rigorous in observance.