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Historical processes often revolve around ideas, and ideas are formulated in texts. This chapter investigates the way a somewhat mysterious phrase in a letter of the Ba’al Shem Tov became the key to the development of the outreach ethos in twentieth-century Habad.

This chapter discusses some dimensions of self-understanding in the early generations of Hasidism. It analyses how collective self-image is expressed through the Hasidic masters' choice of motifs and themes. It also mentions the cogent subtext at work in the masters' discourses, as well as their ironic response to opponents of Hasidism and a strong assertion of identity. The chapter considers some central elements of motifs and images that Hasidic authors develop, which appear in a wide range of Hasidic homiletical works. It explores the originality of derashot lies that can be found in earlier Jewish sources and discusses ethos and sensibility that the Ba'al Shem Tov developed in his teachings and bequeathed to his followers.

This chapter gives scholarly biographical descriptions of Israel ben Eliezer. Most writers agree that Israel ben Eliezer lived from approximately 1700 to 1760 and was a person of humble origins who eventually merited the appellation Ba’al Shem Tov (the Besht), which translates as “Master of the Good Name.” The chapter talks about the Besht who had certain mystical powers and was known as a nonascetic, pneumatic-ecstatic who projected charismatic appeal. It explains how the Besht involved himself in the problems of everyday life and communicated with people through folksy discussion and the telling of stories. He was in some sense the founder of the movement that became known as Hasidism.

This chapter explores hasidism in Poland. This powerful popular Jewish movement, which emerged in the middle of the eighteenth century in Podolia and spread from there over all parts of Poland is inseparably connected with this country and its geography. If one asks what the most characteristic feature of this movement is, the immediate answer would be the tsadik — the colourful religious leader who has dominated hasidism from its origins until today, and who exerted a strong attraction on enlightened and assimilated Western Jews and even on non-Jews. However, as this chapter shows, the function of the ba’al shem, an element prominent in the early legends of hasidism, tends to be missing from the scholarship on the subject. This is all the more surprising as Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of the movement, bore this very element in his own name.

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the most studied document related to early hasidism known as Shivḥei haBesht (In Praise of the Ba'al Shem Tov): the collection of legends and stories about the putative founder of the movement, Israel Ba'al Shem Tov. While it is an eminently accessible text, it is also a complex one, particularly when used for historiographical purposes, and over the last 150 years or so scholars have been engaged in a seemingly endless spiral of deconstruction, interpretation, and application of it. The question which has been central to historical studies of Shivḥei haBesht has been its reliability as a historical source. Virtually no one accepts the stories at face value. Their obvious mythical content, and the book's very title, proclaim its hagiographic nature, and have induced scepticism among scholars and hasidim alike. The chapter then reviews the historiographical usefulness of the most significant available editions of Shivḥei haBesht.

This chapter discusses Polish sources of the Ba’al Shem Tov, which emphasized hearsay and traditional Hebrew material that is full of colorful detail. It focuses on how the Polish paid little attention to some of the written sources and testimonies from the Besht. The unsystematic way in which many scholars set about interpreting the Hebrew sources they were willing to use led to an often-confusing portrayal of the Besht. Scholars have been preoccupied with the Besht’s “message” and “way,” to the exclusion of serious consideration of the physical, social, economic, and cultural parameters. The chapter also highlights Mendel Piekarz, who demonstrated that Hasidism was not theologically innovative. Virtually all of Piekarz’s religious doctrines were anticipated or expounded by non-Hasidim.

This chapter provides a methodological case study of possible approaches to the recovery of the historical person behind Hadism. It serves as an antidote to the ideologically weighted approach by focusing more on the materials that can be drawn on to construct a description, rather than on the description itself. The chapter focuses on materials, interpretations, and methodological considerations that should now be taken into account when portraying the Besht. It also summarizes the issues and results of previous Ba’al Shem Tov research and presents contexts within which the Besht lived his life. It also examines the primary texts that contain information about Besht.

This chapter focuses on the story in Shivhei Ha-Besht about the two hasidim who were sceptical about the Besht, which may not accurately reflect early eighteenth-century attitudes toward ba’alei shem. It analyzes a logical question of whether the Ba’al Shem Tov was the founder of Hasidism and confirms if there was hasidim before Hasidism. The once dominant, and still popular, view is that the Hasidic movement arose de novo, in contrast and opposed to normative rabbinic Judaism as it was believed and practiced in eighteenth-century Poland. The chapter explains the long history of the word “hasid” in Hebrew. Its root, “hesed,” is usually translated as “love” or “lovingkindness”; hence a hasid can be someone who practices lovingkindness or compassion.

This chapter enumerates, characterizes, and assesses the historiographical weight of the various Besht sources. The attempt to capture aspects of the Besht’s life is dependent on the sources that are extant. It points out that most of the material relating to the Ba’al Shem Tov is in Hebrew. Its ready accessibility has ensured that it would be the basis of representations of the historical Ba’al Shem Tov. The chapter highlights the traditions about the Besht’s activities that are collected into Shivhei Ha-Besht and published more than fifty years after his death. It also discusses the methodologically problematic category of sources and gives the post-Besht compilers and editors of these traditions a large, and largely unacknowledged, role in determining what have been seen as the basic motifs in the Besht’s character and life story.

This chapter focuses on four Hebrew texts that mention the Ba’al Shem Tov and were written during his lifetime by people who knew him personally. It emphasizes on how the texts prove that he actually did live and contain information about his role, activities, and character. The first of the testimonies is the responsum of Rabbi Meir of Konstantynow, which contains remarks addressed to the Besht. There can be no doubt that Israel from Miçdzyboz, addressed by Rabbi Meir, the man who “provides balm and medicament to the person without strength” and is associated with the sage Gershon, is the Besht. The chapter evaluates the tone of Rabbi Meir’s remarks that implied that the Besht was respected and famous. Yet what Meir chose to single out in praise of the Besht were his healing abilities.

This chapter talks about a collection of hagiographic stories about the Besht and his associates called the Shivhei Ha-Besht. It mentions Dov Ber of Ilintsy, the compiler, who included five citations from letters that the Ba’al Shem Tov wrote in the Shivhei Ha-Besht. The fifth quotation, unlike the other four cases, is where Dov Ber indicated that he was copying, not what someone had told him, but what he saw in a manuscript copy of the letter. The chapter points out how neither Dubnow nor Scholem presented the letter in their discussions of the Besht’s views on asceticism. Yet the letter to Jacob Joseph of Polonne provides a clear and reliable statement of the Besht’s antiasceticism.

This chapter reviews the Shivhei Ha-Besht, which is considered the most prolific, interesting, intriguing, problematic, and most exploited source relating to the Ba’al Shem Tov. The title in Hebrew means, “Praises of the Ba’al Shem Tov.” The book is a collection of more than two hundred hagiographic stories concerning the Besht and some of the people associated with him. The chapter mentions some of the stories, such as the birth of the Besht, the Besht’s marriage, the Besht and the robbers, the Besht as Rabbi Gershon’s coachman, the Besht’s revelation, and the Besht’s prayer. Every writer on the Besht has made use of the Shivhei Ha-Besht in constructing a portrayal. The chapter also analyzes the relationship of the stories in Shivhei Ha-Besht to historical events.

This chapter and the next consider the same phenomenon from different perspectives. The present chapter is a story of historical processes: the emergence of the enclave form of the haredi paradigm, contrasting with early hasidic inclusivism and the revival of the inclusivist ethos in twentieth-century Habad. Chapter 2, with the ‘Sacred Epistle’ of the Ba’al Shem Tov at its centre, considers the development of Habad outreach in terms of the idea, expressed in the Ba’al Shem Tov’s letter, that the ‘spreading forth of the wellsprings’ hastens the advent of the messiah.

This chapter reviews the course of the Besht’s life that was affected by the geopolitical and sociocultural-economic environment in which he lived. It describes how the Ba’al Shem Tov is often portrayed in popular works with only superficial attention to his surroundings, as if his life transcended time and space. The interest in connecting the Besht’s activities and teachings to later history has frequently obscured his relationship to the place and period in which he actually lived. The chapter mentions a few historically oriented scholarly writings that attempt to relate the patterns of the Besht’s life to conditions in Poland and its Jewish community in a general way. It provides a clearer perception of the country and the region where the Besht lived, which can help establish the parameters of his existence and contribute to an understanding of the range and nature of his activities.

This chapter mentions the scholars of hasidism, the school of spirituality initiated by Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, that have occasionally noted certain parallels between the hasidic movement and the various sects that emerged in early modern Russia. It talks about the Old Believers' faction that seceded from the Russian Orthodox Church at the time of the schism of the second half of the seventeenth century. It also highlights the sects and others whose origins are obscure and independent of the Raskol, which proliferated in the course of the eighteenth century and spread primarily within the rural population of the Russian empire. The chapter discusses the Russian government that endeavoured to suppress Old Believers, making them leave their districts of origin in northern Russia and flee to the border regions of the empire. It recounts the sectarians that settled in Ukraine during the same time that the hasidic movement was getting under way.

This chapter reviews Moshe Rosman's book, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov. This is a historical reassessment of the life and work of the Ba'al Shem Tov (known as the Besht). This re-evaluation stems from a comprehensive, systematic study, which focuses critically on both the findings of previous research and the methodological premisses on which that research relied. Unlike scholars whose attention to the beginnings of hasidism arose out of a general interest in Jewish mysticism, Rosman came to the subject from the social and economic history of Polish Jewry. These factors influenced Rosman's work, and the chapter surveys each part of the Founder of Hasidism with that in mind.

This chapter examines the fundamental security and the economic and political power which the Jews possessed in 16th–18th century Poland. While many Polish Jews recognized that they were essentially secure in fact and behaved accordingly, at least some of the rabbinic and lay leadership felt that this security was a precarious one, threatened from many quarters, not to be taken for granted. Ultimate power belonged to someone else — the king who decreed, the nobility who enforced, the mob who attacked. These elements had to be pleased or placated; otherwise, seeming Jewish security might quickly evaporate. The feelings of powerlessness that some Jews felt can be detected in many of the stories about the founder of Hasidism, Israel Ba'al Shem Tov, and his successors, which show that part of the Hasidic leader's popular appeal was his ability to avert Jewish falls from the graces of the ruling authorities or his knack for outsmarting non-Jewish opponents.

At this point I am enlarging on the theme of the previous chapter. The concept of hafatsah, of bursting through borders, recognizes and enfranchises the ‘other’. Or does it? We saw the steps which Rabbi Menachem Schneerson and his Habad movement made towards the estranged Jew. But what about the non-Jew? Does he or she remain irredeemably ‘other’, beyond the sacred canopy?