Baʿal Shem Tov
BAʿAL SHEM TOV (master of the good name), popular designation for Yisraʾel ben Eliʿezer (c. 1700–1760), the founder of the Hasidic movement in eastern Europe, who is also known by the acronym BeSHT (commonly written "Besht"). There are few historically authentic sources that describe the life of the Besht; most information must be gleaned from nineteenth-century hagiography, especially the collection of more than three hundred stories about him, known as Shivhei ha-Besht (In Praise of the Besht; first printed in 1815), and the works of later Hasidic writers.
Born in the small town of Okopy in the southern Ukraine, Yisraʾel ben Eliʿezer is said to have begun preaching around 1738, after a long period of seclusion in the Carpathian Mountains with his wife. According to other accounts, he served throughout his life as a popular healer, writer of amulets, and exorcist of demons from houses and bodies, which were the traditional roles of a baʿal shem (master of the name) or baʿal shem tov (master of the good name)—in other words, the master of the name that empowered him to perform what he wished.
In his wandering around many Jewish communities, the Besht came into contact with various circles of pietists. In some cases he was criticized by the rabbis, but his powers as a preacher and magician attracted disciples, including masters of Jewish law and Qabbalah such as Yaʿaqov Yosef of Polonnoye (d. 1782) and Dov Ber of Mezhirich (1704–1772). As Gershom Scholem has suggested, the Besht should be regarded as the founder of the great eastern European Hasidic movement, even though our knowledge of his organizational work is scanty, and even though the first Hasidic center was established only after his death by Dov Ber, who became the leader of the movement.
Although he was not a scholar in Jewish law, the Besht was well versed in Qabbalah and in popular Jewish ethical tradition, on which he relied when delivering his sermons and formulating his theories. He saw the supreme goal of religious life as devequt (cleaving), or spiritual communion with God; this state can be achieved not only during prayers but also in the course of everyday activities. In his view, there is no barrier between the holy and the profane, and worship of God can be the inner content of any deed, even the most mundane one. Indeed, the Besht did not insist on following the complicated qabbalistic system of kavvanot (intentions) in prayers and in the performance of the Jewish religious commandments, but substituted instead the mystical devotion of devequt as the primary means of uplifting the soul to the divine world. His teachings also included the theory that evil can be transformed into goodness by a mystical process of returning it to its original source in the divine world and redirecting it into good spiritual power; this idea was further developed by his followers.
The Besht believed that he was in constant contact with the divine powers and saw his mission as that of correcting and leading his generation. In a letter preserved by Yaʿaqov Yosef (whose voluminous works contain the most important material we have concerning the Besht's teachings), the Besht indicates that he practiced ʿaliyyat neshamah, or the uplifting of the soul. In this way, he explained, he communicated with celestial powers who revealed their secrets to him. According to the document, these included the Messiah, who told him that redemption would come when his teachings were spread all over the world (which the Besht interpreted as "in a long, long time").
The Besht was convinced that his prayer carried special weight in the celestial realm and that it could open heavenly gates for the prayers of the people as a whole. His insistence that there are righteous people in every generation who, like himself, carry special mystical responsibilities for their communities laid the foundations for the later Hasidic theory of the function of the tsaddiq, or leader, a theory that created a new type of charismatic leadership in the Jewish communities of eastern Europe.
Hasidism, Overview Article.
Bibliography
Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz have translated and edited Shivhei ha-Besht as In Praise of the Baʿal Shem Tov: The Earliest Collection of Legends about the Founder of Hasidism (Bloomington, Ind., 1970). Gershom Scholem has discussed the Besht in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3d rev. ed. (New York, 1961), pp. 330–334, 348–349. Three papers concerning the Besht and Hasidism are included in Scholem's The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York, 1972), pp. 176–250. Additional bibliographic references accompany his article "Israel ben Eliezer Baʿal Shem Tov" in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971).
Several monographs dealing with the Besht and the beginnings of Hasidism were published in the 1990s, some of them concentrated around the historical figure and others on his theology and religious message. Rachel Elior emphasizes the Besht's mystical theology of divine immanence and omnipresence in her Herut ʿal Ha-luhot (Tel Aviv, 1999), whereas Moshe Idel's Hasidism between Ecstasy and Magic (Albany, N.Y., 1995) tries to integrate the Besht and his teachings with medieval mystical-magical models; Immanuel Etkas, in his historical analysis Baʿal Hashem: The Besht—Magic, Mysticism, Leadership (Jerusalem, 2000, in Hebrew), emphasizes the Besht's social message and minimizes the magical one. Moshe Rosman's Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Baʿal Shem Tov (Berkeley, Calif., 1996) presents a critical analysis of the historical sources and a detailed study of contemporary Polish documents.
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