Hasidic Tales and Eastern European Jews
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A story has been told of a man who, in troubled times, would go to a particular spot and pray, and God would answer him. His son did not know the prayer, but he would go to the spot, and that would be sufficient for God to answer. This man's son knew neither the prayer, nor the spot, but he remembered the story and told it. That, too, was sufficient. This story, based on a Hasidic tale, illustrates the worth afforded storytelling by this group of people. Hasidism revitalized religious life and reordered the traditional hierarchy of values for Eastern European Jews and their descendants, beginning in the eighteenth century. This paper will examine Hasidic tales as a literary product of this movement. The authority of Eastern European Jewry's religious leaders was undermined on a number of fronts in the eighteenth century: pogroms, or massacres, from the outside and false messianic movements from the inside. out of this period of instability arose a particularly charismatic figure, Israel ben Eliezer Ba'al Shem Tov. There had been others designated with the title, "Balal Shem, " literally, "Master of the Name, 11 signifying one who could use the divine name to work wonders. But to Israel was added, "Tov" meaning "Master of the Good Name. " His wonder-working was wholesome, as well as efficacious. Around the Ba'al Shem Tov gathered a community of disciples and followers, which grew into the Hasidic movement.
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o be an active rather than passive participant in the storytelling. This approximates a contemporary analysis of the experience of literature, whereby the creator and audience are co-creators of the literary "event."
Interestingly, despite the dwindling numbers of Hasidism in the twentieth century, as its descendants either emigrated West and, in the main, assimilated or were decimated by the Nazi Holocaust, Hasidic tales were reaching a wide audience. This
resulted in large part from the use of Hasidic materials and motifs by such fiction writers as Y.L Peretz, S.Y. Agnon, and, later, Elie Wiesel.
The Meaning of the Tales
For the most part, Hasidic tales are a "hybrid" of a story and an anecdote (Buber, "Preface" ix) The teaching is expressed in "symbolic actions" that frequently spill over into "utterances" which supplement or help to interpret them (Buber, "Preface" ix) Typically, the Hasidic master, or Tzaddiq (literally, "Righteous One"), performs an act which is puzzling or even incomprehensible to those around him; at a critical juncture, the meaning of the act becomes clear, and witnesses are reinforced in their faith (Patai 669). Following is an example, "The Axe [sic]," attributed to the Ba'al Shem Tov:
Once
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Kabbalah Drawing, Seven Beggars, Strangely Besht, Shem Tov, Traditional Judaism, Buber Preface, European Jews, Kabbalah Jewish, Evil Desire, Israel Green, hasidic tales, shem tov, nahman's tales, ba'al shem, ba'al shem tov, seven beggars, olga marx york, baal shem, schocken books, york schocken, trans olga marx, marx york, olga marx, marx york schocken, schocken books 1947,
Approximate Word count = 2958
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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