gaining millions of adherents, until it became the dominant brand of Judaism. Only when this new religious movement reached Lithuania did it meet its first stiff resistance at the hands of the Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks). It was Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (c. 1720 – 1797), known as the Vilna Gaon ("Genius [of] Vilna"), and those who followed his classic stringent Talmudic and Halakhic scholasticism, who put up the fiercest resistance to the Hasidim ("devoted [ones]"). They were called Mitnagdim, meaning "[those who are] opposed [to the Hasidim]". The Vilna Gaon, who was himself steeped in both Talmudic and Kabbalistic wisdom, analyzed the theological underpinnings of this new "Hasidism" and in his view, concluded that it was deeply flawed since it had elements of what may be roughly termed as panentheism and perhaps even outright pantheism, dangerous aspirations for bringing the Jewish Messiah that could easily be twisted in unpredictable directions for Jewry as had previously happened with the Tzvi and Frank religious "revival" fiascos, and an array of complex rejections of their religious ideology. The Vilna Gaons views were later formulated by his chief disciple Rabbi Chaim Volozhin (1741–1821) in his work Nefesh HaChaim. The new Hasidic leaders countered with their own religious counter-arguments, some of which can be found in the Tanya of Chabad-Lubavitch. Little of the split between Hasidim and Mitnagdim remains within the modern Haredi world. In modern-day Israel Hasidim support the Agudat Israel party in the Knesset (Israel's parliament) and the non-Hasidic Mitnagdim support the Degel HaTorah party, led by Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky and Rabbi Gershon Eidelstein. Agudat Israel and Degel Torah have formed a political alliance, the United Torah Judaism party. There is also another large community that follows the rabbinical teachings of the Edah Charedis. These include the Satmar Hasidim and the perushim communities, which do not support any groups that participate in the Israeli government or state activities, including elections. Orthodox versus Reform From the time of the French Revolution of 1789, and the growth of Liberalism, added to the political and personal freedoms granted by Napoleon to the Jews of Europe, many Jews chose to abandon the foreboding and isolating ghettos and enter into general society. This influenced the internal conflicts about religion, culture, and politics of the Jews to this day. Some Jews in Western Europe, and many Jews in America, joined the religiously liberal new Reform Judaism movement, which