Season 2: Episode 11 - A Light Out of Darkness

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It is always dangerous to destroy the illusion of a people, says Salo Barron, the great Jewish historian of the early 20th century. It often happens that disillusionment weakens the national force, which was nourished by the untrue conception. Now, I'm not looking to destroy any illusions, and certainly not to produce disillusionment, but I am looking to strengthen national force, because I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 11, A Light Out of Darkness We've been away from the heartland of Ashmas for some time, and I have to admit that despite my multicultural aspirations for the Jewish story, I feel my Yiddish and Neshama calling. And when we last laughed our brothers in Eastern Europe, they were still reeling from the devastation of the Chemelnitzki massacres, that third Hurban, the third great destruction as they saw it.

And this disaster didn't break the back of Polish Jewry, but it certainly bent it in an almost permanent fashion. The wave of destruction and reconstruction also resulted in a reorganization of social and cultural structures, which will in many ways define how our story is going to unfold in the coming centuries. Because at least in Eastern Europe, and let's recall from this point on, until the great cataclysm of the Holocaust, Polish Jewry will be the majority of world Jewry. And so the coming events will actually be definitive for Am Yisrael as a whole. Now, we've got to start local. So as much as we saw that the Chmielnitsky maskers were what welded into Polish consciousness the notion that Shretz Zayn a Yid, that it's hard to be a Jew, it only got harder moving forward.

Actually, the decade following the Chmielnitsky maskers saw invasions of eastern Poland and Ukraine by both the Russians and the Poles, frankly, nearly as brutal as the great tragedy itself. Nevertheless, after the chaos, the Jews managed fairly quickly to reestablish themselves in their old domains of eastern Poland and the Ukraine. This was for two reasons. First of all, the Polish nobles never stopped colonizing those regions, and the Jews were a critical agent in that process. And second, and most primarily, there was really nowhere else for so many Jewish refugees to go. But the life that they reestablished was on a somewhat different footing. It's not just the shadow of the past that hung over them.

I mean, who could try and imagine what it felt like to be a tavern keeper who returned to an inn where the blood of the murders still stained the floorboards. But on a more fundamental level, This breaking and rebuilding of the communities in eastern Poland and Ukraine allowed for a heavy stratification of economic classes and even the rise of a Jewish aristocracy. An aristocracy that, in truth, had been imminent for quite some time, and we've seen their rise. We saw the port Jews, those wealthy merchants, predominantly conversos, whose international connections and skills at trade fit so nicely into the mercantilist plans of the European monarchs conquering the New World. And by the way, the rise of absolute monarchy is another story that we're going to need to keep an eye on, as it's going to have a direct role in bringing modernity to the Jews.

But for now, let's just put a finger on the role which certain Jews played in floating all the loans and provisioning the armies that allowed the European kings to slaughter each other for most of the 17th century. Now, before we start blaming and talking about oppression, that we need to know, in many ways, their role was actually the culmination of centuries of oppression that they had experienced. Excluded from the trades, excluded from land ownership, financial occupations were the primary niche into which Western European Jewry fit, and liquidity was their power. And thus, the court Jews were born, a parallel to the port Jews. These were Jews who walked freely in the courts of kings, and whose wealth and daring purchased them a freedom of action which their co-religionists could only dream.

The commercial connections that they held, from Amsterdam to Vienna to Kiev, allowed them to float loans big enough to pay armies and move commodities in quantities large enough to feed and equip them. And the fact that warring kings could reward these court Jews, or factors as they were often known, simply by giving a greater degree of tolerance and privilege to the Jews under their rule in general, made them tempting servants in a time of cash-poor economies. In the early stages, these court Jews were most often the defenders of their people, deeply traditional in their personal observance, and committed to the cause of Am Yisrael. But the winds of modernity are blowing skepticism strongly through the world at the start of the 18th century, and the attractions of the high life are not as easily enjoyed when one feels bound to tradition and community.

If you want, go back to the episodes on the rise of an aristocracy in Spain, and you'll see a parallel. But, as we spoke about in episode 9 of this series, the relationship between the Jews and the Polish nobility in eastern Poland and Ukraine was particularly close, and far more widespread than that of the true court Jews of Germany and Austria that were really individuals. because the Jews in eastern Poland and the Ukraine were agents, arendators, of all the magnates that noblemen empowered to squeeze profit out of their estates at all costs. So the money they made and their intimate association with their non-Jewish employers led many of these wealthier Jews to imitate the ways of the Polish nobility.

They built massive mansions, started riding around in carriages, wearing fine clothes and jewels, even shaving their beards. This is a quote from the Kav HaYashar, an important ethical, Kabbalistic work written in 1705. Recently, a new fashion has been started and has spread far and wide, that Jews dress in Gentile clothes so that one cannot tell if a woman is a Jew or not. Jewish women go about in finer clothes than even the aristocracy, naked from the throat to their bosom. Violators amongst the people go about in Gentile fashions and even worse, shave their beards, and they teach their children French and other languages. The popular religious literature from the turn of the 18th century is filled with laments about the communal aristocracy's reckless pursuit of money and, by the way, the petits bourgeois who aspire to join their ranks.

Another quote, For the sake of gaining wealth and making their fortune, they disregarded every commandment that safeguarded relations with their fellow man. The Torah, in consequence, has diminished its splendor lost. We've set our sights upon greed. That is our chief goal and purpose, and many have violated laws in minor and major ways. They're prepared to disregard God's laws if they can thereby reap one more miserable coin. This money-hungry spirit that began to spread through an area that was rapidly becoming imparished was a major force in cementing the class stratification that marked this period of Polish-Jewish history, the rich got richer, the poor poorer, and the social fabric began to tear.

That's only one problem we're facing. There's another institution that will really come close to the breaking point at this phase of our story. In episode 9, again, we spoke about the rise of lay leadership in Jewish communities and the subsequent erosion of rabbinic authority. After all, not only were the wealthy communal leaders the only ones with the power to intercede with the non-Jews, and not only did they bear the brunt of the communal tax burden, they paid the rabbis' salary. And don't forget, the communal rabbinate in Eastern Europe wasn't just a matter of organizing prayer in the synagogue and guiding ritual life. These rabbis served as the dianim, as the judges. They were the judiciary of the Jewish community, which had exercised extensive autonomy under Polish law since the early 16th century.

And there's no better way for the wealthy to consolidate their power than to subordinate the courts. So the rich magnates, amongst the Jews, mind you, who ruled communal life, began to purchase and bribe their way into the rabbinate, either having themselves appointed as rabbis or reserving the jobs for favored sons and collaborators. In our day, says the Torah HaKodesh, for our many sins, the lowly ones are on top in place of their betters and are accepted in the large communities through the influence of the overlords and money. Popular preachers called upon the rabbis, the pious and learned ones, to wage the Lord's battle wherever their influence is felt against rabbis of that ilk who may bear the name of rabbi but are not really entitled to it.

despite the attempt to shore up the institution a saying developed amongst the common people that rabbi is an acronym that their leaders judge through bribery now this was hardly a new situation that undeserving and even evil people should co-opt what is meant to be sacred leadership but in early 18th century Poland it became a class-wide phenomenon which when combined with the rise of gross materialism and intracommunal political oppression led to a social and economic stratification of Jewish communities which had never before existed, at least to this degree. So the people were poor, the rich were powerful, and the rabbinate corrupt. Sounds like a recipe for a revolution to me. Except one thing is missing.

You know, Hannah Arendt, the great German-Jewish political theorist, wrote a book called On Revolution. By the way, it's quite important work comparing the French and American revolutions. I recommend you read it. But there, she says that the two critical ingredients for revolution are, first, a widespread loss of confidence in the power of present rule, and second, a class of professional revolutionaries ready to pick up the pieces when the situation collapses. So who will they be in our story? You know, they say that the Lord never leaves his people bereft of leadership, or at least of those who can comfort them in their sorrow. And despite the steady erosion of communal rabbinic authority and the growing estrangement between the poor and largely rural masses of Polish Jewry and the economic and urban spiritual leadership, there's a rich literature of popular mysticism, moral instruction, and social protest, really, which is the product of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

And we know that there were preachers, teachers, spiritual healers who took these works of convert and instruction to their flock wherever they would be found. A sort of lower-level Jewish intelligentsia actually existed below and often right alongside the communal official rabbinate and scholars. They were the Magid, the popular wandering preachers who made their living bringing the Torah to the people wherever they were, for a few pennies at a time. They were the mochiach, the rebuker, the bearers of moral instruction, like, for instance, Rav Brach Eberch, who was empowered by the Council of the Four Lands to, quote, mend the breaches in the generation, to preach in every town without having recourse to permission from the rabbi and the leader, who, by the way, might not have been so much in favor of his moral correction.

So there's the magid, there's the mochiach, and there is the bal shem. now the Baal Shem literally means the master of the name and these men ran the range from charlatans and magicians to true nourishers of the Jewish soul they were called such because of the ability they claimed to manipulate holy names, be they names of God names of angels or even names of the Satan and evil spirits I say claimed, but they were certainly seen by the people as a direct source of divine influence. And they used popular Kabbalah, magical devices, herbal remedies and ambulances to do everything from restoring spiritual and social order to providing personal salvation. And everybody took them up on it. Jews and non-Jews from all walks of life, even the wealthiest Polish nobility, turned to the Baal Hashem to cure sickness, enable childbirth, for protection from plague and fire, to turn away the evil eye and to predict the future, interpret dreams.

They were even known as exorcists. So wonder workers are certainly as old as humanity. And the term Baal Shem itself was already in use at least as early as the period of the Geonim, though they tended to use it with derogatory connotations. This is what anthropologists call the shamanic side of Judaism But in the specific culture of European Jewry the Baal these masters of the name were the inheritors of the mantle of the Hasidei Ashkenaz those mystic pietists of the 12th to 13th centuries. Go back to season 1, episode 23 for the full story. But just note for now that the Hasidim, these pious ones were not a product of 18th century Ashkenazi culture as people often think the very idea of Hasidim of small circles of people devoted to an intensity of divine service exists already in the book of Maccabees it's there in the Mishnahh and certainly there were Hasidim in Europe hundreds of years before the present phase of our story and these Hasidim these pious ones combined mysticism, asceticism, and an embrace of God's presence in nature in order to craft an intimate experience of the divine, which was available everywhere.

They handed down through the generations a tradition, a tradition of knowledge and practice of how to mediate between the human and the divine realms. And let me tell you that the business of the Baal Shem was booming in the late 17th century. And there were many reasons for this. Like we said, this growing gap between the rabbinate and the masses. Plus, the spread of Kabbalah in general, and in particular in the 17th century. There was the power of the printing press, let's not forget, to market and popularize new ideas and personalities. And frankly, there was an almost total lack of formal medical care outside of major cities. And of course, the most basic reason. You know, the best advice I ever received about giving sermons, and you should listen up if you're a sermonizing type, is, speak to what hurts, and people will always listen.

And we can see from the extensive literature that remains, that the Baal Hashem did just that. It brought not only healing, but comfort and hope, in the face of the darkness of exile, and it seemed to be getting darker by the day in the 17th century. And so, a Baal Hashem, who had not only a mastery of the mystical and practical powers which the people needed, but could speak to and heal their broken hearts might become known as a Baal Shem Tov that a master of the good name. There's one more element that needs to be addressed before we can get to the Baal Shem Tov and the birth of Hasidut as we know it. And we have to address it both because it's real and because it's going to significantly muddy the waters of the spiritual revolution to come.

and that is the link between the Balei Shem and the ongoing Sabbatean struggle in Europe. I know that Shabbat HaTzvi has been long dead in our story but nevertheless, his antinomian brand of mystic messianism his tying together the breaking of the law and the coming of redemption is alive and well as we will shortly see. Now some of the Balei Shem in their capacity as wandering preachers who really reached the people in every place fought the heresy tooth and nail. And in fact, often stood shoulder to shoulder with the official rabbinate in a way that they were loath to do on almost every other issue. But that mode of wandering preacher who offered mystic salvation, often in the form of amulets with secret names written on them, or through teaching doctrines that could justify the base behaviors of those who sought them out, was a powerful tool for spreading the heresy underground as well.

And despite the fact that Shabtai Tzvi died well before the end of the 17th century, the real damage done to the social fabric of European Jewry by his heretical attempt at a messianic revolution showed itself in the 18th. The hallmark of the Sabatine heresy is that from the outside, its followers look just like everybody else. And outside the small circle of the Donmeh, if you recall, those were those disciples who converted together with Shabtai Tzvi when he was forced with the choice of apostasy or death. So outside them, in the beginning, the mass of followers of Shabtai Tzvi did not differ from other Jews in their attitude to halachic practice or in the way in which they walked in the world.

now it's true that Avraham Cardozo the Converso's Habitian prophet that we discussed in the last episode had preached this doctrine of the revolutionary nature of the Messianic Torah but there's very little evidence that before the turn of the 18th century that there were widespread heretical practices much less ideas but there's very little evidence that before the turn of the 18th century heretical practices, as opposed to ideas, define the Sabbateans. In fact, the outstanding prophet of the Sabbateans in Poland in the 17th century was Joshua Heshal Hatzorif. He composed what's known as Sefer Hatzorif. He was a silver worker. Consisting of thousands of pages of mystical and numerological explanations, mostly around Shema Yisrael, the great declaration of unity of God, It was a work that proclaimed himself as the Messiah ben Yosef, the Messiah son of Joseph, and Shabtai Tzvi as the Messiah son of David, a familiar theme that we've seen before in Cardozo's work.

It was divided even into five parts, and his followers saw it as the future Torah of the Messiah. But despite this, its attitude toward rabbinic law and tradition was completely conservative. In fact, parts of these so-called revelations were held in very high esteem by the Hasidim of the 18th century. In his last years, Heshal Tzoref joined forces with Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid from Shidlov. He was a famous rebuker, Mochiach, who wandered and preached repentance to the people. And they together became the moving spirits of the Holy Society of Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid. It was a group of hundreds of people who, on one hand, indulged in extreme asceticism, which as we've noted before, really was a hallmark of the Sabbateans amongst the normative Jews.

In many ways in their practice, they were more strict. So they indulged in that, and together a messianic hope that centered on the land of Israel. As we've seen since at least Avram Cardozo, that the negation of exile and the return to the land was bound up with Sabbateanism. Between 1696 and 1700, this holy society of Rebbe Yudah Hasid traveled across Europe on their way to the Holy Land and aroused incredible enthusiasm wherever they passed. He was a well-known preacher. They arrived in Jerusalem in the fall of 1700 between 500 and 1,000 perhaps poor and suffering Ashkenazim and they were not well received. It's not just that they were suspected by the Turks and it's not just that they were a huge burden on the community there.

everyone around them saw them as Sabbatean heretics now I don't want to shock anyone because your Zionist education may have focused on the Aliyah the going up of Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid through the lens of Zionist historiography as the first wave of return to the land, which in many ways indeed it was in its day, the Aliyah of these Hasidim to Jerusalem also represented a peak of Sabbatean activity Rabbi Yehud himself died almost immediately upon arrival which was bad news for his movement because it basically dissolved for reasons that really lie outside our story he did leave behind, by the way, something you can see if you come here to the fair city of Jerusalem which is a synagogue that became the central synagogue of the Ashkenazim in Jerusalem its destruction by the Jordanians after their brutal occupation of the old city in 1948 earned it the name, as you may know, of the Hurva, the destroyed one but you go visit it now, and it's been completely rebuilt Meanwhile, it matters for us, first of all, to see how widespread and how difficult to identify the Sabbatean movement was amongst European Jews, and that Rebbe Yehuda really represents the peak and the end of the moderate Sabbatean movement.

From here on out, the idea of respecting rabbinic law was on the back burner, and the notion that the nullification of the Torah is its true fulfillment is going to gain ground. waves of controversy are sweeping over Europe and any charismatic Kabbalistic teacher was immediately suspected and sometimes rightly so of being a Sabbatean even the Ramchal if you're familiar with Rav Moshe Chaim Luzato the great Kabbalistic master from Padua, even the Ramchal was accused, now if you don't know you should know that today he's as mainstream as it gets, I mean Archkoll loves this guy but in 1727 his claims of divine inspiration and his novel Kabbalistic revelations caused controversy to swirl around him for a decade.

He was excommunicated and seen as a Sabbatean, although in all fairness history has proved him out. But there's no question that the real explosion and then implosion of Sabbateanism in Europe occurred through the Frankist movement. Born Yaakov ben Yehuda Leib in Korlovo, it's a small town in Podalia, which is in the south eastern portion of what was then the Polish kingdom, Jacob Frank rose to be the chief prophet and leader of the radical Sabbateans in Europe, ultimately claiming, of course, to be Messiah and then the reincarnation of Shabtai Tzvi himself. Now, he was in his beginnings the product of a traditional Jewish society, though in his later years he would boast of his ignorance of rabbinic law and pride himself on being what he called a prostak, just a simple man.

But apparently along the way, one of his early teachers belonged to the Sabbatean sect and promised Frank that he would initiate him into their faith after marriage, which was the custom amongst the Sabbateans. And in 1752, when he married, there were two Sabbatean emissaries at his wedding. Afterwards, they accompanied him on his travels through the Turkish Ottoman Empire and initiated him into his faith, because he was indeed, it seems, a Turkish citizen. His reputation grew as he traveled, and his following as well. Now his first brush with scandal was actually in 1756, when he was discovered conducting a Sabbatean ritual with his followers in a locked house. His opponents claimed that they surprised him in the midst of a religious orgy.

Frank's followers were imprisoned, but he himself went free, because the local authorities believed him to be a Turkish citizen that they couldn't touch, and he crossed the Turkish frontier and there, early in 1757, officially converted to Islam, following in the footsteps of his master. In the wake of this and other heretical outbursts back and forth, a session of the Council of the Four Lands proclaimed a ban against the members of all his sect and furthermore included in that ban a restriction on the study of the Zohar and the Kabbalah before age 40. The council returned to Rav Yaakov Emdin, well known as a fierce opponent of the Sabbateans. We might tell the story of his conflict with Rav Yonatan Eibschitz in the coming episode, I haven't decided.

But for now, just know that he was as big as it gets intellectually, although he had so many sharp edges that he didn't have so many friends. And he actually advised the council to seek help from the Catholic authorities based on a very important argument. An argument, in fact, in many ways was a turning point in the emerging notion of orthodoxy amongst Jews. Rav Yaakov Emden claimed that the Sabbatean faith was a mixture of the principles of all other religions, and essentially constituted a new religion, and as such was forbidden by canon law. Remember, Judaism was permitted by canon law. We might have a lowly state that Augustine had condemned us to, but we did have legitimacy in the eyes of the Church.

but by saying that Sabbateanism was not genuine Judaism and therefore forbidden by law in essence he was claiming that only the form of Judaism that had been sanctioned by generations of traditions and was upheld by the legal authorities of its day could make a legitimate claim to being Judaism do you hear it? in the long run that assertion is going to have serious implications in the intra-Jewish struggle but for now it actually backfired. Frank's followers, severely harassed by Jewish officialdom and pushed into a corner, proclaimed themselves contra-Tamudis against the rabbis and sought the protection of the church from their Jewish persecutors. And they succeeded big time. The church saw them a ripe plum, potential candidates for mass conversion, which would be quite an accomplishment at this point as modernity approaches.

and the Frankists, in turn, used their protected position to petition the church for a public disputation between themselves and the leaders of the Jewish community Sabbateanism was coming out from undercover And just like the heyday of the Middle Ages, when the rabbis faced off against the bishops and debated for the legitimacy of their faith, now they wanted their day in court. So the rabbis managed to avoid accepting the invitation for nearly a year. But after great pressure from the bishop, the disputation finally took place from June 20th to 28th, 1757. And needless to say, it didn't go well. On October 17th, 1757, the local bishop issued his decision in favor of the Frankists, imposing a number of penalties on the Jews, the chief of which was a condemnation of the Talmud as worthless and corrupt, with an order that it be burned in the city square.

It's a story we've been hearing since the 13th century. all the local homes were to be searched for copies of the Talmud. And according to contemporary accounts, many cartloads of the Talmud were in fact destroyed. And the story only gets crazier from here. There was a mass conversion of the Frankest to Christianity, their growing reputation for orgiastic rituals, their support of the blood libel against their former Jewish brothers, which, by the way, began to become a major issue for Polish Jewry in the 18th century. and it's worth noting that once the reality of this last gasp of widespread Tabataianism faded which indeed it did with Frank's death even though his daughter Eva continued in his way for some time what's interesting is that Frank was remembered by many of the descendants of his followers not as a crazy prophet or reincarnation of Shabtai Tzvi but rather as an early fighter for liberation from the ghetto and against rabbinic stricture, and a bridge to Enlightenment liberalism.

You never know how history is going to treat you. But for now, for our story, I want to come back to the burning of the Talmud in 1757. Because, alongside the communal rabbis who watched in horror as the dispute went against them, legend has it stood the holy Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement. you know it's noteworthy that the Frankist movement had erupted in Podolia and Galicia within the very communities that in a short time became the heartland of the Hasidim and the Hasidim would later tell the tale that the Baal Shem Tov had heard of the decree in a prophetic vision on the eve of Yom Kippur preceding the dispute and when he heard he ran to the synagogue threw himself to the ground before the Holy Ark and cried out whoa for they wish to remove the Torah from us How will we go on living scattered amongst the nations without the Torah?

And the Hasidim added that their master was also angry with the rabbis as well. Now why would that be? I can understand being angry with the bishop. I can understand being angry with the frankists. But angry with the rabbis? Maybe, just maybe, he was angry with the rabbis for creating a situation in Am Yisrael in which the burning of books could threaten the survival of the Torah itself. We're going to get a proper presentation of the Baal Shem Tov in a few minutes. But at this stage, I just want to note the way in which the Shivchea Besht connects Shab Taitzvi and the father of Hasidut. Now the Shivchea Besht, literally the praises of the Baal Shem Tov, Besht is the acronym for Baal Shem Tov, we're going to use that going forward, remember it.

This book is a collection of more than 200 stories concerning the Bash. It was first published in 1814, and it's considered many of the stories were actually written in his lifetime. And it follows the model of the Shivchei Ha'ari, the praises of the Holy Ari and Sfat, I hope you'll recall, which was unique in its day, in creating a legendary aura around a charismatic leader and transforming the stories of his doing into a primary source of knowledge about his path. so there in the Shivchei Besht it records the legend of an event in the early life of the Holzebel Shem Tov quote Shabtai Tzvi came to the Besht to seek a way to rehabilitate his soul which could come about only through blending soul with soul, spirit with spirit being with being the Besht proceeded with great caution because he feared that Shabtai Tzvi was a great evildoer.

Once, when the Besh was asleep, Shabtai Tzvi, may his name be blotted out, it says, came and tempted him, that he managed to throw him down into the lowest part of the netherworld. And the Besh looked around, and he found himself together with Jesus of Nazareth, upon a board called a slate. The Besh said that there was a spark of the sacred in Shabtai Tzvi, but that Samael the Satan trapped him in his dungeon. I just wonder, what exactly was that temptation that the Besh succumbed to, which landed him in this lowest place of the netherworld? I can hazard a guess, though, seeing it was Shabtai Tzvi who took him there, and none other than Jesus of Nazareth, who was his companion. You know, the notion of a revolutionary nature of a Messianic Torah wasn't invented by Shabtai Tzvi, nor even by the Jesus of Nazareth.

All you have to do is look in the prophet Jeremiah, in the 31st chapter. See, a time is coming, declares the Lord, when I'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. And it will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke though I espouse them, declares the Lord but such is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after these days declares the Lord I will put my teaching into their innermost being and inscribe it upon their hearts then I will be their God and they shall be my people no longer will they need to teach one another and say to one another heed the Lord now I am familiar with how Christianity uses these words it is the first appearance of the concept of a new covenant but you should know that there's a classic rabbinic source for the idea of the revolutionary nature of the Torah of the Messiah if you look in Kohelet Rabbah 11.8 it says that the Torah that we learn in this world is like a nothing vapor before the Torah of the Messiah and it seems to me that the thing which the Baal Shem Tov shared with Shab Taitzvi and Jesus as well was a messianic vision The following is from a letter that was preserved by one of his closest disciples.

throughout the world. He's quoting a verse, when your springs spread outward. That when the Torah of Hasidut has achieved its dispersion amongst all the peoples as the Messiah to the Baal Shem Tov himself, then redemption is at hand. So we're going to have to ask the question of what makes the Baal Shem Tov different? Jesus of Nazareth became the founder of a new religion and the relationship with the old religion is somewhat fraught, as you may know, and Shabtai Tzvi was a crazy schismatic heretic. What was it that allowed the radicalism of Hasidut to stay within the body of Israel, and through this, to bring it new life at this critical juncture in history? Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer was born approximately 1700, in a small town in Podolia, which was only beginning to recover from the devastation of the Turkish-European wars.

Don't forget that they stopped the Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1683. His parents were poor and left him an orphan while he was still young. And they say that the only inheritance he received were his father's last words on his deathbed. My beloved son, remember this as long as you live. God is with you. You need not be afraid of anything. It might not sound like much, but let me tell you, he made those few words into an entire world. The communal organizations of Polish Jewry, as we've noted, were at their height of this stage of history. They looked after the young boy, ensuring not only that he was fed, but that he received a proper education as well. And he had promise, but apparently traditional schooling didn't quite fit.

Young Yisrael would study a few days, and then he would disappear from class for just as long. And when people went in search of him, they would find him sitting off at a quiet spot in the woods. They would send him back to his teacher, but before long he'd flee to the solitude of the forest once again. But he made his way, and when he became a teenager, the community was no longer responsible to care for him. And through his intelligence and simple honesty, which won over everyone he met, he became assistant to a school teacher in a small community, close to the city of Brody, in the western Ukraine. Part of his job, apparently the one he loved the most, was to escort the young children to and from school.

And the early legends of his life tell us how he would lead them in song and praise of God as they walked amongst the trees. We find him next as a caretaker in a synagogue, once again seeking the simplest employment, which would allow him to avoid notice and spend most of his time in contemplation of God. Legend has it that it was at this time a strange figure by the name of Rav Adam Baal Shem appeared at the synagogue with a package of manuscripts. He claimed that his own father's will had instructed him to deliver them to a youth named Yisrael ben Eliezer because they, quote, belonged to the root of his soul. And it was from this Rav Adam, which is a strange name that Jews rarely use, that young Israel learned the secrets of the Balei Shem.

It also appears to be at this point that he acquired a copy of the writings of the Holy Arizal, the mystic master from Sfat, who we've spoken about a number of episodes ago. Now you need to know that despite having been written in the late 16th century, the majority of the Ariz writings were published only after the death of the Bast at the end of the 18th. That's because the rabbinic authorities feared that the road from the teachings of the Ari to the heresy of Shabtai Tzvi was just a little bit too direct, and therefore their publication was delayed by a ban. And the movement which arose in the wake of Rabbi Yisrael's teachings, the Hasidim, would actually bring the mystic Torah of the Ari to a much broader section of Am Yisrael than the Sabbateans ever did.

But, unlike the Sabbateans, it would serve as a path deeper into the Torah, and not as a bridge out of it. So, Yisrael soon married. But the brother of his wife, a prominent rabbi in Brody, couldn't bear to live in close proximity to a brother-in-law who dressed like a peasant and spoke like a boor, and who appeared to be empty of any Torah. This is the stage at which the stories say his light was hidden. And so the rabbi gave his sister, and her new husband, a horse and wagon as a dowry, and sent them packing off into the Carpathian mountains. There, according to Hasidic tradition, Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer spent seven years in near solitude, earning his living by digging clay out of the hillside and loading it onto the wagon for his wife to take to the market in the nearest town.

They also say that it was there, among the deep forests and the snow-covered peaks of the Carpathians, that the essential idea which would underlie his later teachings crystallized. that the whole world is filled with his glory. Literally. Or as the Hasidim would say, Mamish. He eventually came down from the mountain and settled in the town of Tlust, where he once again became a schoolteacher. Now poverty was the dominant reality of his family's life, as it was for so many Jews around them. It may have been that at this point Rabbi Yisrael began to reveal himself as a Baal Shem, a master of the secret names, in order to alleviate his own suffering, or it may have been that he could no longer stand silently by while others suffered around him.

Either way, his reputation as a Baal Shem spread like wildfire. In particular, the amulets written by Rabbi Yisrael were known to be effective and people from across the Ukraine wrote to him and were willing to pay significant amounts to receive them. Soon he had to employ a scribe even to do so his success as a healer and a spiritual guide soon elevated him to a Baal Shem Tov a master of the good name in the eyes of the people around him. And of course, there's no better way to open people's hearts to a new teaching in Torah than to speak to their pain and heal what ails them. And somewhere between 1740 and 1745, the Baal Shem Tov ceased to wander, moved his home to the city of Mezboz in Podolia and revealed his light.

And now the people would come to him. And what exactly did they hear from this master of the good name that was so transformative? Well, first of all, I need to give a caveat. Once again, as I've said in so many times in the past, I am not a scholar of Hasidut. And furthermore, this is not the context in which were going to unfold the entirety of the Torah of the Baal Shem Tov. And I have to say that there's another story that we'll have to tell, I can tell at this point in a coming episode, about how his own teachings became a movement. But for now, let's just remember that the teachings of the Holy Baal Shem Tov were actually truly oral in their origins. You know, they say there was once a man who wrote down the Torah of the Baal Shem Tov, that he'd heard from him, and then the Besht was walking down the street and he saw a demon walking and holding a book in his hand.

And he said to the demon, What's the book that you hold in your hand? And the demon answered back, This is the book that you have written. And the best understood that there was a person who was writing down his Torah. And he gathered all of his followers and asked them, Who amongst you is writing down my Torah? The man rose his hand and admitted it, and he brought the manuscript to the best. The best examined it and he said, There's not even a single word here. That's mine. nevertheless his words were written down and in the next episode we'll have to talk about his great disciple who wrote the toldot Yaakov Yosef but for now we'll suffice ourselves with a few words from Sava'at HaRibash the testament of the Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem it's a collection of the best teachings compiled by his students and followers and it's an invaluable source of instruction in his path in it he interprets the verse the kol drakeha de'eu in all your ways know God as an all-embracing guide to divine service in everything that exists in the world he says there are holy sparks there is nothing empty of the sparks, even wooden stones even all the actions that a person executes to the Besh, every event that occurs, everything a person sees or hears are all opportunities to know and serve God There is no time, no circumstance, and no place in which you cannot connect with the infinite.

Now that sounds beautiful, but it will be a source of much controversy with normative rabbinic Judaism, which had tended to place the emphasis for connection with God in what we think of as religious practice. The deepest expression of that connection to God is dvekut, the cleaving to God. And the essential tool for dvekut is prayer. Now there's a common misconception out there that the Bech somehow denigrated Torah study, that he was really in a revolt against the intellectual class. Now it's true that he taught that even the deeds of the simplest Jew, if done correctly and with absolute sincerity, were equal and perhaps even higher than those of the greatest scholars. But he wasn't downgrading Torah learning.

He was upgrading prayer. You know, when the Bech's fame began to spread, His followers began to come into conflict fairly quickly with some of the non-Hasig Jews, and in particular because they were unwilling to submit to the somewhat rigid time schedule of traditional prayer. Their attitude was that if the goal is to vekut, cleaving to God, then one couldn't possibly cleave to God until they were ready, whether it fit the time schedule or not. And that wasn't just a personal issue. Jewish prayer is a pillar not only of divine service, but also of communal life. We prayed together in a synagogue and at this point in European history it was often illegal to open new houses of prayer in a particular town.

So therefore, conflict was inevitable. Picture the five guys that were ready to pray and the six other ones that weren't. And so the story goes that the Bash was summoned before the Council of the Four Lands, that supreme authority of religious life in Poland, to account for his behavior. The head of the Council of Avram, Abba, asked, jugged by your conduct, it would seem that you are possessed of a Holy Spirit, but there are those who say you are unlettered. Let us now test your expertise in the laws of the Torah. So they asked him to explain the rule of what happens when one forgets to say Yalev Yavvo on the new moon. It's a special prayer that's added into the service. It doesn't matter if you don't know what it is.

What you need to know is it's a classic test question. And the expectation was that he would now demonstrate his virtuosity and command over all verbinic literature. But that's not the way the Besht saw things. He simply replied, this law has no purpose for you or for me. For you may well forget to perform something for which the penalty is very great before I forget what prayers I must recite. You can imagine that wasn't so well received. So prayer was the primary method for achieving this divine union of de Vekut and joy was its goal and result. because for the holy Baal Shem Tov joy was the key and central path of divine service and was itself a means to repair the world and therefore a key to redemption.

The Kabbalah, the mystic Torah, teaches that judgment can only be sweetened at its source. And for the Rizal and the masters who preceded the best our ability to sweeten these judgments and thus perfect creation comes through a mastery of complex theosophic systems systems which affect changes on the scale of the cosmos of all existence repairing the Godhead as the academics say and the best certainly agreed that humanity had been empowered through the Torah and in particular through the Kabbalah to complete creation and bring redemption he just shifted the scale of this work from the cosmos to the individual he moved from tikkun olam, the fixing of the world to Tikkun Hamidot, the fixing of myself and our ability to find beauty within the ugliness of life, he says to see the spark of light even in darkness actually reveals God's deeper intent in creating darkness to begin with and that in turn allows us to celebrate even the most difficult of experiences as an expression of divine will and this joyous celebration itself redeems the divine spark with what appears to be evil carrying it up to its origins in God's will reconnected, the evil is sweetened and transformed through our embracing it with joy the Besh taught that our consciousness transforms the world that redemption finds its expression not in mystic tikkunim fixings of the systems of the Ari or in the explosive heretical messianism of the Sabbateans but in ordinary people who can serve God in joy in the face of the evils of life and that's extraordinary and now you can hear why it caught on.

You know, there's so much more to say and I can see now that it's clear that the next episode is already taking shape. I just want to finish off this taste of the teachings of the Holy Baal Shem Tov with two last words. Number one, the Baal Shem Tov used to say where your thoughts are, there you are, all of you. Now this isn't just the power of positive thinking, which I'm a big believer in and he was definitely an advocate of keeping one's eyes on the good in life, in particular, not wallowing on one's past sins, but empowering oneself to make fixings going forward. This is an assertion that the real tool we have for shaping creation is our consciousness, that we're partners with God through how we know the world.

And last, but certainly not least, is the principle I mentioned in the beginning, that God's glory fills the whole world. This means, of course, that God's presence is always with us. And so ultimately, what it means to be a chassid is that you're never alone. So the times, they are changing in Europe and in the coming century for the whole world. We're going to see all the institutions of the medieval age in retreat. By mid-18th century, the Encyclopedias in Paris will be an open rebellion against the Church, that last bastion of the old world Christian consciousness that had held sway across the continent for a thousand years or more. Enlightened absolutism and revolution are going to replace the divine right of kings, and slowly but surely the contours of the Western world as we know it will begin to take shape.

At the same time as these rebels and progressives are raising the flag of reason and using it as a stick to beat ecclesiastical authority back into a corner, and to cow the nobles by the way, the Holy Baal Shem Tov is forging his own path away from the entrenched institutions of the rabbinic establishment of his day, and really away from reason itself and crafting a mythic world that could hold up to the challenges of modernity and he might have been a spiritual rebel but this wasn't a rebellion. And this, more than anything else, answers the question of what kept the Hasidim in when the Sabbateans were so clearly out even though, at first glance, there's quite a bit of overlap in what was happening there more than just geographic, at least.

There was never any ideological rejection of other Jews by Hasidim, whatever conflicts are to come and certainly no claims to Messianic exclusivity. The Torah and its normative practice remained the basis for all their communities. And no matter how their opponents tried to spin it, the changes in customs and the mild antinomism of the Hasidim didn't touch the bizarre and immoral practices of the Frankists and their like. It's true that the estrangement of the economic and intellectual elite from much of the Jewish masses helped fuel the rise of Hasidut, But this was not a social protest movement or an anti-clerical rebellion. In the end of the day, the Holy Bala Shem Tov's words had the power to transform Polish Jewry because he spoke to their souls and brought them comfort, hope, and joy.

He spoke to their souls and he gave them new voice as well. The obscure and complex mythic symbolism of the Zohar and the Arizal were replaced by the power of story and sharp aphorisms that capture both the depth and simplicity of the Baal Shem Tov's path. There is greater complexity ahead, both intellectual and social. The coming two generations will see the rise of a full-scale movement of Hasidut, and with it an almost fratricidal opposition. Great books will be written, bands of excommunication issue, cultural battles lost and won. But when the Holy Baal Shem Tov went to his grave in 1760, none of that had happened yet. He left behind them a world whose time-hallowed structures were starting to crumble around the Jews.

But it was a world a little lighter, more hopeful, and filled with joy. So I'll just end with this thought. An apprentice blacksmith, after he'd learned his trade from the master, made a list for himself of how he must go about his craft. How should he pump the bellows, secure the anvil, and wield the hammer? He left out nothing. When he went to work at the king's palace, however, he discovered to his dismay that he could not perform his duties, and was dismissed. He'd forgotten to note one thing, maybe because it was so obvious, that first he must ignite a spark to kindle the fire. he had to return to the master who reminded him of the first principle which he had forgotten I just want to thank a few people I want to thank the people who give their hard-earned money to make this show possible I want to invite you to join them I'm right now in the midst of the campaign and if you go to rovmike.com you hit the donate button in the upper right hand corner or you find my Patreon site that's www.patreon.com slash mfoyer you can give a little bit of per podcast support.

I also want to thank the Land of Israel Network for providing a platform to do the work that I love to do. I want to thank the Pardes Institute that's p-a-r-d-e-s dot org dot il for giving me the opportunity to speak to so many Jews from so many places. I want to thank Suom Yaakov because it's my home. And I want to thank you for listening. I'm Rav Mike Foyer and this is The Jewish Story.