Ba'al Shem Tov

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(known as the Besht, an acronym of Ba'al Shem Tov; 1698-1760). Founder of ḥasidism. The major problem in trying to describe the life of this charismatic personality is the lack of reliable documentation. Shivḥé ha-Besht (1814-15; In Praise of the Ba'al Shem Tov, 1970), an early biography, is crammed with legendary material which cannot be disentangled from historical fact. Nevertheless, scholars have been able to reconstruct the essential features of his life and teachings by reading between the lines of the various hagiographies, by studying the very few known contemporary documents, and by piecing together the authentic sayings as they appear in the writings of his disciples.

Israel ben Eliezer was born in the Podolian village of Okup in the Carpathian Mountains. There he earned his living as a schoolteacher or shoḥet (ritual slaughterer), eventually marrying the sister of R. Abraham Gershon of Kutow, a learned and wealthy resident of Brody, who was at first opposed to the match but subsequently became a disciple of the Ba'al Shem Tov. It would seem that before his particular teaching mission, Israel was a healer and miracleworker who employed combinations of Divine Names--- hence the title Ba'al Shem Tov, signifying "Master of the Good Name [of God]." His followers, and later Ḥasidic devotees, are more than a little embarrassed by his early career as a mere miracleworker and tend to play down this role, justifiably preferring to see him as a religious teacher with a new, exhilarating message. The fact is that, in villages and townships of the region, there were a number of mystical figures, each with his own circle of disciples. The group surrounding Israel ben Eliezer became the dominant one, however, the others either fading from the scene or being absorbed by Israel's group which, in Ḥasidic parlance, is known as the ḥavurah kaddisha or "holy company." From the beginning, Ḥasidic companies were centered on the leader, a guru-type mentor known as the Tsaddik (in this context meaning "saint"). Some scholars have inaccurately portrayed the rise of "Tsaddikism" as a later development in the history of Ḥasidism. Yet the Ba'al Shem Tov was a Tsaddik or Rebbe (a spiritual leader distinct from the traditional Rav), and his disciples and their disciples after them became Tsaddikim.

Despite the claims often made by the Ḥasidim themselves, all the evidence points to the fact that the Ba'al Shem Tov was not a profound rabbinic scholar. He was, however, equipped with a good knowledge of the Bible, the rabbinic Aggadah, and (especially) the Kabbalah, his own teachings making use of their vocabulary. These teachings do not appear to have been presented in anything like a systematic form, but were conveyed in maxims and aphorisms---probably in Yiddish. They were collected and published in works of his disciples, in rabbinic Hebrew, and naturally assume the formulation of that particular disciple, as well as his special interpretation of the master's ideas. The result is various interpretations of those ideas, making it somewhat precarious to assert with any degree of confidence that this or that idea is an expression of the Ba'al Shem Tov's original doctrine---presented offhand, as it were, and not in any methodical fashion.

Prominent among these teachings is the idea of Devekut, "attachment" (to God). Devekut in Ḥasidism means that God is in the mind of the Ḥasid at all times, so far as this is humanly possible. Even when the Ḥasidic Jew is engaged in worldly things, when he eats, drinks, or attends to his business affairs, he should realize that he is doing whatever he does as an act of worship. Torah study must likewise be engaged in as a devotional exercise, namely, the mind of the worshiper is to be concentrated on God. The Mitnaggedim---opponents of Ḥasidism ---inveighed against this aspect of its teaching, seeing in it a denial of Torah study as the supreme religious value: if the mind of the student was on God, rather than on the subject he was studying, he would never master the subject and would, indeed, not be studying at all. This explains the many tales told by the Ḥasidim in which the Ba'al Shem Tov confronts his scholarly opponents and gets the better of them. In one such tale the rabbis, wishing to expose the Ba'al Shem's ignorance, asked him what the procedure should be in the event of one's forgetting the special Rosh Ḥodesh (New Moon) insertion in the liturgy: must one repeat the whole prayer? The Ba'al Shem Tov replied: "One has to repeat the prayer---but I don't know for whom this law was intended, since I will never forget it the first time around, whereas you will forget it the second time as well."

There are also many aphorisms attributed to the Ba'al Shem Tov in which it is implied that the simple Jew with no pretensions to learning, but who is genuinely devout, ranks higher than the learned talmudist who studies with the aim of gaining a reputation for himself. Another maxim of the Ba'al Shem Tov, in the same vein, declares: "If it is highly meritorious, as the scholars affirm, to study that section in the Talmud dealing with the exchange of an ox for an ass, how much more meritorious would it be actually to effect such an exchange in a spirit of devotion." The scholar is only studying the laws governing the exchange; the Ḥasid, with his mind on God, is actually engaged in an act of worship, even when he carries out such a mundane transaction.

The Ḥasidim remark that all the Divine mysteries revealed to the Ba'al Shem Tov were not revealed to him because he was a great scholar but because he offered his prayers with intense devotion. Reciting one's prayers out of longing for God, and joyous enthusiasm (hitlahavut) in the worship of the Creator, is given special emphasis in "Beshtian" doctrine. To facilitate such intense concentration, it is reported that the Ba'al Shem Tov would smoke a pipe before praying so as to make himself ready for contemplation of the awesome act he was about to perform. Gestures, even of a grotesque kind, were allowed during prayer if they helped the worshiper to concentrate. The Ba'al Shem Tov reportedly observed that a drowning man is not ashamed to gesticulate wildly so that others will come to his assistance.

Israel Ba'al Shem Tov had two children---a son, Tsevi Hirsch, and a daughter named Adel (Odel). Very little is related about the son in Ḥasidic lore, but there are many wondrous tales about his daughter, whose own children included Moses Ḥayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow (1740-1800) and Baruch, the Tsaddik of Medzibozh (1757-1810), who became the Ba'al Shem's spiritual heir. Adel's daughter, Feige, was the mother of Naḥman of Bratslav, but the more important line of succession came through the Ba'al Shem Tov's disciples. They and those who followed them were responsible for the amazingly rapid spread of Ḥasidism: by the beginning of the 19th century, half the Jews in Eastern Europe had been won over to the Hasidic movement.

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