The Legend of the Baal-Shem - Monoskop · Martin Buber titles available from Routledge: Between Man...

d d d

The Legend of the Baal-Shem

These twenty captivating stories about Israel benEliezer, the founder of Hasidism known as the Baal-Shem or Master of Gods Name, offer a profoundand charming account of the genesis of Judaismsmost significant mystical movement. Prefaced by anexplanation of the life and principles of the Hasidim,they tell of the Baal-Shems life in early eighteenth-century Podolia and Wolhynia, and of the birth of hisrevelatory faith, founded on active love, joy andprivate longing for God. Initially scorned by theRabbinical establishment, the Baal-Shems fiercepiety ultimately made him a figure of devotionamong commoners, peasants and visionaries. As adelicate portrayal both of the Baal-Shems mysticalfaith and of Eastern European Jewish daily life, TheLegend of the Baal-Shem is an ideal introduction toHasidic religious thought, and to Martin Bubers owninfluential philosophy of love and mutualunderstanding.

Martin Buber (18781965) was one of thegreatest religious thinkers of the twentieth century,and was nominated for Nobel prizes for bothLiterature and Peace. His works include I and Thou,The Way of Man and Between Man and Man.

Martin Buber titles available from Routledge:

Between Man and Man

The Legend of the Baal-Shem*

Meetings: Autobiographical Fragments

Ten Rungs: Collected Hasidic Sayings*

The Way of Man*

Also available:

Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue by MauriceS.Friedman

* Not available in the United States and Canada

MARTIN BUBER

The Legend of theBAAL-SHEM

Translated from the German byMaurice Friedman

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published as Legende des Baalschem in Frankfurt, 1908

First published in English 1955 by Harper & Row

This second edition first published 2002 by Routledge11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

1955, 2002 the Estate of Martin Buber

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis orRoutledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to

www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproducedor utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, r other means,

now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying andrecording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-203-38066-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-38684-1 (Adobe eReader Format)ISBN 0-415-28264-0 (Hbk)ISBN 0-415-28265-9 (Pbk)

CONTENTS

FOREWORD vii

INTRODUCTION ix

The Life of the Hasidim 3

HITLAHAVUT: ECSTASY 3

AVODA: SERVICE 10

KAVANA: INTENTION 19

SHIFLUT: HUMILITY 28

The Werewolf 39

The Prince of Fire 45

The Revelation 51

The Martyrs and the Revenge 63

The Heavenly Journey 69

Jerusalem 73

Saul and David 79

The Prayer-Book 85

The Judgement 91

The Forgotten Story 101

The Soul Which Descended 117

The Psalm-Singer 127

The Disturbed Sabbath 135

The Conversion 147

The Return 161

From Strength to Strength 171

The Threefold Laugh 179

The Language of the Birds 185

The Call 195

The Shepherd 203

GLOSSARY 211

vi

FOREWORD

It is fifty years since the legends of Hasidic literaturecast their spell over me. Soon thereafter I began theretelling of the Baal-Shem cycle out of which thisbook arose. The existing material was so formlessthat I was tempted to deal with it as with some kindof subject-matter for poetry. That I did not succumbto this temptation I owe to the power of the Hasidicpoint of view that I encountered in all these stories.There was something decisive here that had to be keptin mind throughout. What that was can be gatheredfrom what follows. But within these limits, whichforbid bringing in alien motifs, all freedom remainedto the epic form. Only some time after the originalGerman edition appeared in 1907 was a stricterbinding imposed on the relation which I had as anauthor to the tradition of the Hasidic legendsabinding that bid me reconstruct the intendedoccurrence of each individual story, no matter howcrude and unwieldy it was in the form in which ithad been transmitted to us. The results of this newrelation, as they took shape in the work of threedecades, were collected in the book The Tales of theHasidim (Hebrew edition, 1947; English edition,

The Early Masters, 1947, The Later Masters,1948). Later I undertook for the first time to rendersatisfaction to bothtruth and freedomin thechronicle novel For the Sake of Heaven (Hebrewedition under the title Gog and Magog, 1943; Englisheditions, 1946 and 1953).

The present revision of The Legend of the Baal-Shem, a product of the summer of 1954, is purely ofa stylistic nature; the character of the book hasremained unchanged.

MARTIN BUBERJerusalem, 1955

viii

INTRODUCTION

This book consists of a descriptive account andtwenty stories. The descriptive account speaks of thelife of the Hasidim, a Jewish sect of eastern Europewhich arose around the middle of the eighteenthcentury and still continues to exist in our day indeteriorated form. The stories tell the life of thefounder of this sect, Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, whowas called the Baal-Shem, that is, the master of GodsName, and who lived from about 1700 to 1760,mostly in Podolia and Wolhynia.

But the life about which we shall learn here is notwhat one ordinarily calls the real life. I do not reportthe development and decline of the sect; nor do Idescribe its customs. I only desire to communicatethe relation to God and the world that these menintended, willed, and sought to live. I also do notenumerate the dates and facts which make up thebiography of the Baal-Shem. I build up his life outof his legends, which contain the dream and thelonging of a people.

The Hasidic legend does not possess the austerepower of the Buddha legend nor the intimacy of theFranciscan. It did not grow in the shadow of ancient

groves nor on slopes of silver-green olive-trees. Itcame to life in narrow streets and small, musty rooms,passing from awkward lips to the ears of anxiouslisteners. A stammer gave birth to it and a stammerbore it onwardfrom generation to generation.

I have received it from folk-books, from note-books and pamphlets, at times also from a livingmouth, from the mouths of people still living whoeven in their lifetime heard this stammer. I havereceived it and have told it anew. I have nottranscribed it like some piece of literature; I have notelaborated it like some fabulous material. I have toldit anew as one who was born later. I bear in me theblood and the spirit of those who created it, and outof my blood and spirit it has become new. I stand inthe chain of narrators, a link between links; I tell onceagain the old stories, and if they sound new,it isbecause the new already lay dorman in them whenthey were told for the first time.

My telling of the Hasidic legend aims even as littleat that real life which one customarily calls localcolour. There is something tender and sacred,something secret and mysterious, somethingunrestrained and paradisiacal about the atmosphereof the stbel, the little room in which the Hasidic rabbithe zaddik, the proven one, the holy man, themediator between God and mandispenses mysteryand tale with wise and smiling mouth. But my objectis not the recreation of this atmosphere. My narrationstands on the earth of Jewish myth, and the heavenof Jewish myth is over it.

x

The Jews are a people that has never ceased toproduce myth. In ancient times arose the stream ofmyth-bearing power that flowedfor the time beinginto Hasidism. The religion of Israel has at alltimes felt itself endangered by this stream, but it isfrom it, in fact, that Jewish religiousness has at alltimes received its inner life.

All positive religion rests on an enormoussimplification of the manifold and wildly engulfingforces that invade us: it is the subduing of the fullnessof existence. All myth, in contrast, is the expressionof the fullness of existence, its image, its sign; itdrinks incessantly from the gushing fountains of life.Hence religion fights myth where it cannot absorband incorporate it. The history of the Jewish religionis in great part the history of its fight against myth.

It is strange and wonderful to observe how in thisbattle religion ever again wins the apparent victory,myth ever again wins the real one. The prophetsstruggled through the word against the multiplicityof the peoples impulses, but in their visions lives theecstaric fantasy of the Jews which makes them poetsof myth without their knowing it. The Essenes wishedto attain the goal of the prophets through asimplification of the forms of life, and from them wasborn that circle of men that supported the greatNazarene and created his legend, the greatest triumphof myth. The masters of the Talmud intended to erectan eternal dam against the passion of the people inthe Cyclopean work of a codification of religiouslaws, and among them arose the founders of the twopowers which became in the Middle Ages the

xi

guardians and vice-regents of Jewish myth: founders,through the secret teaching, of the Kabbala, founders,through the Aggada, of the folk-saga.

The further the exile progressed and the crueler itbecame, so much the more necessary appeared thepreservation of religion for the preservation ofnationality and so much the stronger became theposition of the law. Myth had to flee. It fled into theKabbala and into the folk-saga. The Kabbala indeedthought of itself as superior to the law, as a higherrung of knowledge; but it was the domain of the few,unbridgeably removed from, and foreign to, the lifeof the people. The saga, in contrast, lived in factamong the people and filled its existence with wavesof light and melody. But it considered itself a paltrything.that barely had the right to exist; it kept itselfhidden in the furthest corner and did not dare to lookthe law in the eye, much less desire to be a poweralongside it. It was proud and glad when here andthere it was called to illustrate the law.

And suddenly, among the village Jews of Polandand Little Russia, there arose a movement in whichmy th purified and elevated itselfHasidism. In itmysticism and saga flowed together into a singlestream. Mysticism became the possession of thepeople and at the same time assimilated into itself thewhole narrative ardour of the saga. And in the dark,despised East, among simple, unlearned villagers, thethrone was prepared for the child of a thousand years.

Groups of Hasidim still exist in our day; Hasidismis in a state of decay. But the Hasidic writings havegiven us their teachings and their legends.

xii

The Hasidic teaching is the proclamation ofrebirth. No renewal of Judaism is possible that doesnot bear in itself the elements of Hasidism.

The Hasidic legend is the body of the teaching, itsmessenger, its mark along the way of the world. It isthe latest form of the Jewish myth that we know.

The legend is the myth of the calling. In it theoriginal personality of myth is divided. In pure myththere is no division of essential being. It knowsmultiplicity but not duality. Even the hero only standson another rung than that of the god, not over againsthim: they are not the I and the Thou. The hero has amission but not a call. He ascends but he does notbecome transformed. The god of pure myth does notcall, he begets; he sends forth the one whom hebegets, the hero. The god of the legend calls forth theson of manthe prophet, the holy man.

The legend is the myth of I and Thou, of the callerand the called, the finite which enters into the infiniteand the infinite which has need of the finite.

The legend of the Baal-Shem is not the history ofa man but the history of a calling. It does not tell ofa destiny but of a vocation. Its end is alreadycontained in its beginning, and a new beginning inits end.

Ravenna, 1907

xiii

xiv

The Legend of the Baal-Shem

2

The Life of the Hasidim

HITLAHAVUT: ECSTASY

Hitlahavut is the burning, the ardour of ecstasy.A fiery sword guards the way to the tree of life. It

scatters into sparks before the touch of hitlahavut,whose light finger is more powerful than it. Tohitlahavut the path is open, and all bounds sink beforeits boundless step. The world is no longer its place:it is the place of the world.

Hitlahavut unlocks the meaning of life. Without iteven heaven has no meaning and no being. If a manhas fulfilled the whole of the teaching and all thecommandments, but has not had the rapture and theburning, when he dies and passes beyond, paradiseis opened to him, but because he has not felt rapturein the world, he also does not feel it in paradise.

Hitlahavut can appear at all places and at all times.Each hour is its footstool and each deed its throne.Nothing can stand against it, nothing hold it down;nothing can defend itself against its might, whichraises everything corporeal to spirit. He who is in itis in holiness. He can speak idle words with his

mouth, yet the teaching of the Lord is in his heart atthis hour; he can pray in a whisper, yet his heart criesout in his breast; he can sit in a community of men,yet he walks with God: mixing with the creatures yetsecluded from the world. Each thing and each deedis thus sanctified. When a man attaches himself toGod, he can allow his mouth to speak what it mayspeak and his ear to hear what it may hear, and hewill bind the things to their higher root.

Repetition, the power which weakens anddiscolours so much in human life, is powerless beforeecstasy, which catches fire again and again fromprecisely the most regular, most uniform events.Ecstasy overcame one zaddik in reciting theScriptures, each time that he reached the words, AndGod spoke. A Hasidic wise man who told this to hisdisciples added to it, But I think also: if one speaksin truth and one receives in truth, then one word isenough to uplift the whole world and to purge thewhole world from sin. To the man in ecstasy thehabitual is eternally new. A zaddik stood at thewindow in the early morning light and tremblingcried, A few hours ago it was night and now it is dayGod brings up the day! And he was full of fearand trembling. He also said, Every creature shouldbe ashamed before the Creator: were he perfect, ashe was destined to be, then he would be astonishedand awakened and inflamed because of the renewalof the creature at each time and in each moment.

But hitlahavut is not a sudden sinking into eternity:it is an ascent to the infinite from rung to rung. Tofind God means to find the way without end. The

4 THE LEGEND OF THE BAAL-SHEM

Hasidim saw the world to come in the image of thisway, and they never called that world a Beyond. Oneof the pious saw a dead master in a dream. The lattertold him that from the hour of his death he went eachday from world to world. And the world whichyesterday was stretched out above his gaze as heavenis to-day the earth under his foot; and the heaven ofto-day is the earth of to-morrow. And each world ispurer and more beautiful and more profound than theone before.

The angels rest in God, but the holy spirits goforward in God. The angel is one who stands, andthe holy man is one who travels on. Therefore theholy man is higher than the angel.

Such is the way of ecstasy. If it appears to offer anend, an arriving, an attaining, an acquiring, it is onlya final no, not a final yes: it is the end of constraint,the shaking off of the last chains, the liberation whichis lifted above everything earthly. When man movesfrom strength to strength and ever upward andupward until he comes to the root of all teaching andall command, to the I of God, the simple unity andboundlessnesswhen he stands there, then all thewings of command and law sink down and are as ifdestroyed. For the evil impulse is destroyed since hestands above it.

Above nature and above time and abovethought thus is he called who is in ecstasy. He hascast off all sorrow and all that is oppressive. Sweetsuffering, I receive you in love, said a dying zaddik,and Rabbi Susya cried out amazed when his handslipped out of the fire in which he had placed it, How

THE LIFE OF THE HASIDIM 5

coarse Susyas body has become that it is afraid offire. The man of ecstasy rules life, and no externalhappening that penetrates into his realm can disturbhis inspiration. It is told of a zaddik that when theholy meal of the teaching prolonged itself tillmorning, he said to his disciples, We have notstepped into the limits of the day, rather the day hasstepped into our limits, and we need not give waybefore it.

In ecstasy all that is past and that is future drawsnear to the present. Time shrinks, the line betweenthe eternities disappears, only the moment lives, andthe moment is eternity. In its undivided light appearsall that was and all that will be, simple and composed.It is there as a heart-beat is there, and becomesperceptible like it.

The Hasidic legend has much to tell of thosewonderful ones who remembered their earlier formsof existence, who were aware of the future as of theirown breath, who saw from one end of the earth to theother and felt all the changes that took place in theworld as something that happened to their ownbodies. All this is not yet that state in which hitlahavuthas overcome the world of space and time. We canperhaps learn something of this latter state from twosimple anecdotes which supplement each other. It istold of one master that he had to look at a clock duringthe hour of withdrawal in order to keep himself inthis world; and of another that when he wished toobserve individual things, he had to put on spectaclesin order to restrain his spiritual vision, for otherwisehe saw all the individual things of the world as one.


But the highest rung which is reported is that inwhich the withdrawn one transcends his own ecstasy.When disciple once remarked that a zaddik hadgrown cold and censored him for it, he wasinstructed by another, There is a very high holiness;if one enters it, one becomes detached from all beingand can no longer become inflamed. Thus ecstasycompletes itself in its own suspension.

At times it expresses itself in an action, consecratesit and fills it with holy meaning. The purest formthat in which the whole body serves the aroused souland in which each of the souls risings and bendingscreates a visible symbol corresponding to it, allowingone image of enraptured meaning to emerge out of athousand waves of movementis the dance. It is toldof the dancing of one zaddik, His foot was as lightas that of a four-year-old child, And among all whosaw his holy dancing, there was not one in whom theholy turning was not accomplished, for in the heartsof all who saw he worked both weeping and rapturein one. Or the soul lays hold of the voice of a manand makes it sing what the soul has experienced inthe heights, and the voice does not know what it does.Thus one zaddik stood in prayer in the days of awe(New Year and the Day of Atonement) and sang newmelodies, wonder of wonder, that he had neverheard and that no human ear had ever heard, and hedid not know at all what he sang and in what way hesang, for he was bound to the upper world.

But the truest life of the man of ecstasy is notamong men. It is said of one master that he behavedlike a stranger, according to the words of David the


King: A sojourner am I in the land. Like a man whocomes from afar, from the city of his birth. He doesnot think of honours nor of any thing for his ownwelfare; he only thinks about returning home to thecity of his birth. He can possess nothing, for heknows: That is alien, and I must go home. Manywalk in solitude, in the wandering. Rabbi Susyaused to stride about in the woods and sing songs ofpraise with so great ardour that one would almostsay that he was out of his mind. Another was onlyto be found in the streets and gardens and groves.When his father-in-law reproved him for this, heanswered with the parable of the hen who hatchedout goose eggs, And when she saw her childrenswimming about on the surface of the water, she ranup and down in consternation seeking help for theunfortunate ones; and did not understand that this wastheir whole life to them: to roam on the surface of thewater.

There are still more profoundly solitary oneswhose hitlahavut, for all that, is not yet fulfilled. Theybecome unsettled and fugitive. They go into exilein order to suffer exile with the Shekina. It is oneof the basic conceptions of the Kabbala that theShekina, the indwelling presence of God, endlesslywanders in exile, separated from her lord, and thatshe will be reunited with him only in the hour ofredemption. So these men of ecstasy wander over theearth, dwelling in the silent distances of Gods exile,companions of the universal and holy happening ofexistence. The man who is detached in this way is thefriend of God, as a stranger is the friend of another


stranger on account of their strangeness on earth.There are moments in which he sees the Shekina faceto face in human form, as that zaddik saw it in theHoly Land in the shape of a woman who weeps andlaments over the husband of her youth.

But not only in faces out of the dark and in thesilence of wandering does God give Himself to thesoul afire with Him. Rather out of all the things ofthe earth His eye looks into the eye of him who seeks,and every being is the fruit in which He offersHimself to the yearning soul. Being is unveiled in thehand of the holy man. The soul of him who longsvery much for a woman and regards her many-coloured garment is not turned to its gorgeousmaterial and its colours but to the splendour of thelonged-for woman who is clothed in it. But the otherssee only the garment and no more. So he who in truthlongs for or and embraces God sees in all the thingsof the world only the strength and the pride of theCreator who lives in the things. But he who is not onthis rung sees the things as separate from God.

This is the earthly life of hitlahavut which soarsbeyond all limits. It enlarges the soul to the all. Itnarrows the all down to nothing. A Hasidic masterspeaks of it in words of mystery, The creation ofheaven and of earth is the unfolding of something outof nothing, the descent of the higher into the lower.But the holy men who detach themselves from beingand ever cleave to God see and comprehend Him intruth, as if there was now the nothing as beforecreation. They turn the something back into nothing.And this is the more wonderful: to raise up what is


beneath. As it is written in the Gemara: The lastwonder is greater than the first.

AVODA: SERVICE

Hitlahavut is embracing God beyond time and space.Avoda is the service of God in time and space.

Hitlahavut is the mystic meal. Avoda is the mysticoffering.

These are the poles between which the life of theholy man swings.

Hitlahavut is silent since it lies on the heart of God.Avoda speaks, What am I and what is my life that Iwish to offer you my blood and my fire?

Hitlahavut is as far from avoda as fulfilment isfrom longing. And yet hitlahavut streams out ofavoda as the finding of God from the seeking of God.

The Baal-Shem told, A king once built a greatand glorious palace with numberless chambers, butonly one door was opened. When the building wasfinished, it was announced that all princes shouldappear before the king who sat enthroned in the lastof the chambers. But when they entered, they sawthat there were doors open on all sides which led towinding passages in the distance, and there wereagain doors and again passages, and no end arosebefore the bewildered eyes. Then came the kings sonand saw that all the labyrinth was a mirrored illusion,and he saw his father sitting in the hall before him.

The mystery of grace cannot be interpreted.Between seeking and finding lies the tension of ahuman life, indeed the thousandfold return of the


anxious, wandering soul. And yet the flight of amoment is slower than the fulfilment. For God wishesto be sought, and how could he not wish to be found?

When the holy man brings ever new fire that theglowing embers on the altar of his soul may not beextinguished, God Himself says the sacrificialspeech.

God rules man as He ruled chaos at the time of theinfancy of the world. And as when the world beganto unfold and He saw that if it flowed further asunderit would no longer be able to return home to its roots,then he spoke, Enough!so it is that when the soulof man in its suffering rushes headlong, withoutdirection, and evil becomes so mighty in it that it sooncould no longer return home, then His compassionawakens, and he says, Enough!

But man too can say Enough! to the multiplicitywithin him. When he collects himself and becomesone, he draws near to the oneness of Godhe serveshis Lord. This is avoda.

It was said of one zaddik, With him, teaching andprayer and eating and sleeping are all one, and he canraise the soul to its root.

All action bound in one and the infinite lifeenclosed in every action: this is avoda. In all thedeeds of manspeaking and looking and listeningand going and remaining standing and lying downthe boundless is clothed.

From every deed an angel is born, a good angel ora bad one. But from half-hearted and confused deedswhich are without meaning or without power, angels


are born with twisted limbs or without a head or handsor feet.

When through all action the rays of the universalsun radiate and the light concentrates in every deed,this is service. But no special act is elected for thisservice. God wills that one serve Him in all ways.

There are two kinds of love: the love of a man forhis wife, which ought properly to express itself insecret and not where spectators are, for this love canonly fulfil itself in a place secluded from thecreatures; and the love for brothers and sisters andfor children, which needs no concealment. Similarly,there are two kinds of love for God: the love throughthe teaching and prayer and the fulfilment of thecommandmentsthis love ought properly to beconsummated in silence and not in public, in orderthat it may not tempt one to glory and prideand thelove in the time in which one mixes with thecreatures, when one speaks and hears, gives and takeswith them, and yet in the secret of ones heart onecleaves to God and does not cease to think of Him.And this is a higher rung than that, and of it it is said,Oh, that thou wert as my brother that sucked on thebreasts of my mother! When I should find theewithout I would kiss thee; yea, and none woulddespise me.

This is not to be understood, however, as if therewere in this kind of service a cleavage between theearthly and the heavenly deed. Rather each motionof the surrendered soul is a vessel of holiness and ofpower. It is told of one zaddik that he had so sanctifiedall his limbs that each step of his feet wed worlds to


one another. Man is a ladder, placed on earth andtouching heaven with its head. And all his gesturesand affairs and speaking leave traces in the higherworld.

Here the inner meaning of avoda is intimated,coming from the depths of the old Jewish secretteaching and illuminating the mystery of that dualityof ecstasy and service, of having and seeking.

God has fallen into duality through the createdworld and its deed: into the being of God, Elohim,which is withdrawn from the creatures, and thepresence of God, the Shekina, which dwells in things,wandering, straying, scattered. Only redemption willreunite the two in eternity. But it is given to the humanspirit, through its service, to be able to bring theShekina near to its source, to help it to enter it. Andin this moment of home-coming, before it must againdescend into the being of things, the whirlpool whichrushes through the life of the stars becomes silent,the torches of the great devastation are extinguished,the whip in the hand of fate drops down, the world-pain pauses and listens: the grace of graces hasappeared, blessing pours down out of infinity. Untilthe power of entanglement begins to drag down theShekina and all becomes as before.

That is the meaning of service. Only the prayer thattakes place for the sake of the Shekina truly lives.Through his need and his want he knows the wantof the Shekina, and he prays that the want of theShekina will be satisfied and that through him, thepraying man, the unification of God with His Shekinawill take place. Man should know that his suffering


comes from the suffering of the Shekina. He is oneof her limbs, and the stilling of her need is the onlytrue stilling of his. He does not think about thesatisfaction of his needs, neither the lower nor thehigher ones, that he might not be like him who cutsoff the eternal plants and causes separation. Ratherhe does all for or the sake of the want of the Shekina,and all will be resolved of itself, and his ownsuffering too will be stilled out of the stilling of thehigher roots. For all, above and below, is one unity.I am prayer, speaks the Shekina. A zaddik said,Men think they pray before God, but it is not so, forprayer itself is divinity.

In the narrow room of self no prayer can thrive.He who prays in suffering because of themelancholy which masters him and thinks that heprays in fear of God, or he who prays in joy becauseof the brightness of his mood and thinks he prays inlove of Godhis prayer is nothing at all. For this fearis only melancholy and this love is only empty joy.

It is told that the Baal-Shem once remainedstanding on the threshold of a house of prayer anddid not want to enter. He spoke in aversion, I cannotenter there. The house is full to the brim of teachingand prayer. And when his companions wereastonished, because it appeared to them that therecould be no greater praise than this, he explained tothem, During the day the people speak here wordswithout true devotion, without love and compassion,words that have no wings. They remain between thewalls, they squat on the floor, they grow layer bylayer like decaying leaves until the decay has packed


the house to over-flowing and there is no longer roomfor me in there.

Prayer may be held down in two different ways: ifit is spoken without inner intention and if the earlierdeeds of the praying man lie spread out like a heavycloud between him and heaven. The obstacle can onlybe overcome if the man grows upward into the sphereof ecstasy and purifies himself in its grace, or ifanother soul who is in ecstasy sets the fettered prayersfree and carries them upward along with his own.Thus it is told of one zaddik that he stood for a longtime silent and without movement during communalprayer and only then began himself to pray, just asthe tribe of Dan lay at the end of the camp and gathered all that was lost. His word became agarment to whose folds the prayers that were heldbelow would cling and be borne upward. This zaddikused to say of prayer, I bind myself with the wholeof Israel, with those who are greater than I thatthrough them my thoughts may ascend, and withthose who are lesser than I that they may be up-liftedthrough me.

But this is the mystery of community: not only dothe lower need the higher, but the higher also needthe lower. Here lies another distinction between thestate of ecstasy and the state of service. Hitlahavut isthe individual way and goal; a rope is stretched overthe abyss, tied to two slender trees shaken by thestorm: it is tread in solitude and dread by the foot ofthe venturer. Here there is no human community,neither in doubt nor in attainment. Service, however,is open to many souls in union. The souls bind


themselves to one another for greater unity andmight. There is a service that only the community canfulfil.

The Baal-Shem told a parable: Some men stoodunder a very high tree. And one of the men had eyesto see. He saw that in the top of the tree stood a bird,glorious with genuine beauty. But the others did notsee it. And a great longing came over the man to reachthe bird and take it; and he could not go from therewithout the bird. But because of the height of the treethis was not in his power, and a ladder was not to behad. But because his longing was so over-poweringhe found a way. He took the men who stood aroundhim and placed them on top of one another, each onthe shoulder of a comrade. He, however, climbed tothe top so that he reached the bird and took it. Andalthough the men had helped him, they knew nothingof the bird and did not see it. But he, who knew it andsaw it, would not have been able to reach it withoutthem. If, moreover, the lowest of them had left hisplace, then those above would have fallen to the earth.And the Temple of the Messiah is called the birdsnest in the book Zohar.

But it is not as if only the zaddiks prayer isreceived by God or as if only this prayer is lovely inHis eyes. No prayer is stronger in grace andpenetrates in more direct flight through all the worldsof heaven than that of the simple man who does notknow anything to say and only knows to offer Godthe unbroken promptings of his heart. God receivesthem as a king receives the singing of a nightingalein his gardens at twilight, a singing that sounds


sweeter to him than the homage of the princes in histhrone-room. The Hasidic legend cannot give enoughexamples of the favour that shines on the undividedperson and of the power of his service. One of thesewe shall set down here.

A villager who year after year attended the prayer-house of the Baal-Shem in the days of awe had aboy who was dull in understanding and could noteven learn the shape of the letters, let aloneunderstand the holy words. The father did not takehim to the city on the days of awe, for he knewnothing. Still when he was thirteen years old and ofage to receive Gods law, the father took him withhim on the Day of Atonement that he might not eatsomething on the day of penance through lack ofknowledge and understanding. Now the boy had alittle whistle on which he always whistled during thetime when he sat in the field and pas tured the sheepand calves. He had brought it with him in his pocketwithout the fathers knowing it. The boy sat in theprayer-house during the holy hours and did not knowanything to say. But when the Mussaf prayer wasbegun, he spoke to his father, Father, I have mywhistle with me, and I wish to play on it. Then thefather was very disturbed and commanded him,Take care that you do not do so. And he had to holdhimself in. But when the Mincha prayer came, hespoke again, Father, allow me now to take mywhistle. When the father saw that his soul desiredto whistle, he became angry and asked him, Wheredo you keep it? and when the boy showed him theplace, he laid his hand on the pocket and held it over


it from then on to guard the whistle. But the Neilaprayer began, and the lights burned trembling in theevening, and the hearts burned like the lights,unexhausted by the long waiting. And through thehouse the eighteen benedictions strode once again,weary but erect. And the great confession returnedfor the last time and, before the evening descendedand God judged, lay yet once more before the ark ofthe Lord, its forehead on the floor and its handsextended. Then the boy could no longer suppress hisecstasy; he tore the whistle from his pocket and letits voice powerfully resound. All stood startled andbewildered. But the Baal-Shem raised himself abovethem and spoke, The judgement is suspended, andwrath is dispelled from the face of the earth.

Thus every service which proceeds from a simpleor a unified soul is sufficient and complete. But thereis a still higher one. For he who has ascended fromavoda to hitla havut and has submerged his will in itand receives his deed from it alone, has risen aboveevery separate service. Each zaddik has his specialway of serving. But when the zaddikim contemplatetheir root and attain to the Nothing, then they canserve God on all rungs. Thus one of them said, Istand before God as a messenger boy. For he hadattained to completion and to the Nothing so that heno longer possessed any special way. Rather hestood ready for all ways which God might show him,as a messenger boy stands ready for all that his masterwill command him. He who thus serves in perfectionhas conquered the primeval duality and has broughthitlahavut into the heart of avoda. He dwells in the


kingdom of life, and yet all walls have fallen, allboundary-stones are uprooted, all separation isdestroyed. He is the brother of the creatures and feelstheir glance as if it were his own, their step as if hisown feet walked, their blood as if it flowed throughhis own body. He is the son of God and lays his soulanxiously and securely in the great hand beside allthe heavens and earths and unknown worlds, andstands on the flood of the sea into which all histhoughts and the wanderings of all beings flow. Hemakes his body the throne of life and life the throneof the spirit and the spirit the throne of the soul andthe soul the throne of the light of Gods glory, andthe light streams round about him, and he sits in themidst of the light and trembles and rejoices.

KAVANA: INTENTION

Kavana is the mystery of a soul directed to a goal.Kavana is not will. It does not think of

transplanting an image into the world of actual things,of making fast ast a dream as an object so that it maybe at hand, to be experienced at ones conveniencein satiating recurrence. Nor does it desire to throwthe stone of action into the well of happening that itswaters may for awhile become troubled andastonished, only to return then to the deep commandof their existence, nor to lay a spark on the fuse thatruns through the succession of the generations, thata flame may jump from age to age until it isextinguished in one of them without sign or leave-taking. Not this is Kavanas meaning, that the horses


pulling the great wagon should feel one impulse moreor that one building more should be erected beneaththe overfull gaze of the stars. Kavana does not meanpurpose but goal.

But there are no goals, only the goal. There is onlyone goal that does not lie, that becomes entangled inno new way, only one into which all ways flow,before which no by-way can forever flee: redemption.

Kavana is a ray of Gods glory that dwells in eachman and means redemption.

This is redemption, that the Shekina shall returnhome from its exile. That all shells may withdrawfrom the Shekina and that it may purify itself andunite itself with its owner in perfect unity. As a signof this the Messiah will appear and make all beingsfree.

To many a Hasid it is, for the whole of his life, asif this must happen here and now. For he hears thevoices of becoming roaring in the gorges and feelseels the seed of eternity in the ground of time as if itwere in his blood. And so he can never thinkotherwise than that this moment and now this onewill be the chosen moment. And his imaginationcompels him ever more fervently, for ever morecommandingly speaks the voice and ever moredemandingly swells the seed.

It is told of one zaddik that he awaited redemptionwith such eagerness that when he heard a tumult inthe street, he was at once moved to ask what it wasand whether the messenger had not come; and eachtime that he went to sleep he commanded his servantto awaken him at the very moment when the


messenger came. For the coming of the redeemerwas so deeply implanted in his heart that it was aswhen a father awaits his only son from a distant landand stands on the watch-tower with longing in hiseyes and peers through all the windows, and whenone opens the door, hurries out to see whether his sonhas not come. Others, however, are aware of theprogress of the stride, see the place and hour of thepath and know the distance of the Coming One. Eachthing shows them the uncompleted state of the world,the need of existence speaks to them, and the breathof the winds bears bitterness to them. The world intheir eyes is like an unripe fruit. Inwardly theypartake in the glorythen they look outward: all liesin battle.

When the great zaddik Rabbi Menahem was inJerusalem, it happened that a foolish man climbedthe Mount of Olives and blew the shofar trumpet. Noone had seen him. A rumour spread among thepeople that this was the shofar blast which announcedthe redemption. When this came to the ears of therabbi, he opened a window and looked out into theair of the world. And he said at once, Here is norenewal.

This is the way of redemption: that all souls andall sparks of souls which have sprung from theprimeval soul and have sunk and become scatteredin all creatures at the time of the original darkeningof the world or through the guilt of the ages shouldconclude their wandering and return home purified.The Hasidim speak of this in the parable of the prince


who allows the meal to begin only when the last ofthe guests has entered.

All men are the abode of wandering souls. Thesedwell in many creatures and strive from form to formtoward perfection. But those which are not able topurify themselves are caught in the world ofconfusion and make their homes in lakes of water,in stones, in plants, in animals, awaiting theredeeming hour.

It is not only souls that are everywhere imprisonedbut also sparks of souls. No thing is without them.They live in all that is. Each form is their prison.

And this is the meaning and mission of kavana:that it is given to men to lift up the fallen and to freethe imprisoned. Not only to wait, not only to watchfor the Coming One: man can work toward theredemption of the world.

Just that is kavana: the mystery of the soul that isdirected to redeem the world.

It is told of some holy men that they imagined thatthey might bring about redemption by storm andforce. In this worldwhen they were so afire withthe grace of ecstasy that to them, who had evenembraced God, nothing appeared unattainable anylonger. Or in the coming worlda dying zaddik said,My friends have gone hence, intending to bring theMessiah, and have forgotten to do so in their rapture.But I shall not forget.

In reality, however, each can only be effective inhis domain. Each man has a sphere of being in spaceand time which is allotted to him to be redeemedthrough him. Places which are heavy with unraised


sparks and in which souls are fettered wait for theman who will come to them with the word offreedom. When a Hasid cannot pray in one place andgoes to another, then the first place demands of him,Why would you not speak the holy words over me?And if there is evil in me, then it is for you to redeemme. But also all journeys have secret destinations ofwhich the traveller is unaware.

It was said of some zaddikim that they had ahelping power over the wandering souls. At all times,but especially when they stood in prayer, thewanderers of eternity appeared imploring beforethem, wishing to receive salvation from their hands.But they also knew how to find the voiceless amongthe banished in the exile of a tired body or in thedarkness of the elements and to upraise them.

This help is an awesome venture, set down in themidst of threatening dangers, which only the holyman can enter upon without going under. He whohas a soul may let himself down into the chasm,bound fast to the rim above through his thoughts, asthrough a strong rope, and will return. But he whoonly has life or only life and spirit, he who has notyet attained the rung of thought, for him the bond willnot hold and he will fall into the depths.

But if it is only those blessed ones who can plungetranquilly into the darkness in order to aid a soulwhich is abandoned to the whirlpool of wandering,it is not denied to even the least of persons to raisethe lost sparks from their imprisonment and sendthem home.


The sparks are to be found everywhere. They aresuspended in things as in sealed-off springs; theystoop in the creatures as in walled-up caves; theyinhale darkness and they exhale dread; they wait. Andthose that dwell in space flit hither and thither aroundthe movements of the world like light-madbutterflies, looking to see which of them they mightenter in order to be redeemed through them. They allwait expectantly for freedom.

The spark in a stone or a plant or another creatureis like a complete figure which sits in the middle ofthe thing as in a block, so that its hands and feetcannot stretch themselves and the head lies on theknees. He who is able to lift the holy spark leads thisfigure into freedom, and no setting free of captivesis greater than this. It is as when a kings son isrescued from captivity and brought to his father.

But the liberation does not take place throughformulae of exorcism or through any kind ofprescribed and special action. All this grows out ofthe ground of otherness, which is not the ground ofkavana. No leap from the everyday into themiraculous is required. With every action man canwork on the figure of the Shekina that it may stepforth out of its concealment. It is not the matter ofthe action, but only its dedication that is decisive. Justthat which you do in the uniformity ormity ofrecurrence or in the disposition of events, just thisanswer of the acting person to the manifold demandsof the hour, an answer acquired through practice orwon through inspiration, just this continuity of theliving stream leadswhen accomplished in


dedicationto redemption. He who prays and singsin holiness, eats and speaks in holiness, in holinesstakes the prescribed ritual bath and in holiness ismindful of his business, through him the fallen allensparks are raised and the fallen allen worldsredeemed and renewed.

Around each manenclosed within the widesphere of his activityis laid a natural circle of thingswhich, before all, he is called to set free. These arethe creatures and objects that are spoken of as thepossessions of this individual: his animals and hiswalls, his garden and his meadow, his tools and hisfood. In so far as he cultivates and enjoys them inholiness, he frees their souls. For this reason a manmust always be compassionate toward his tools andall his possessions.

But also in the soul itself there appear those thatneed liberation. Most of these are sparks which havefallen through the guilt of this soul in one of its earlierlives. They are the alien, disturbing thoughts thatoften come to man in prayer. When man stands inprayer and desires to join himself to Eternity, and thealien thoughts come and descend on him, these areholy sparks that have sunken and that wish to beraised and redeemed by him; and the sparks belongto him, they are kindred to the roots of his soul: it ishis own powers that he must redeem. He redeemsthem when he restores each troubled thought to itspure source, allows each impulse intent on aparticular thing to flow into the divine creativeimpulse, allows everything alien to be submerged inthe inalienable divine.


This is the kavana of receiving: that one redeemthe sparks in the surrounding things and the sparksthat draw near out of the invisible. But there is yetanother kavana, the kavana of giving. It bears no straysoul-rays in helpful hands; it binds worlds to oneanother and rules over the mysteries, it pours itselfinto the thirsty distance, it gives itself to infinity. Butit too has no need of miraculous deeds. Its path iscreation, and the word before all other forms ofcreation.

From time immemorial speech was for the Jewishmystic a rare and awe-inspiring thing. Acharacteristic theory of letters existed which dealtwith them as with the elements of the world and withtheir intermixture as with the inwardness of reality.The word is an abyss through which the speakerstrides. One should speak words as if the heavenswere opened in them. And as if it were not so thatyou take the word in your mouth, but rather as if youentered into the word. He who knows the secretmelody that bears the inner into the outer, who knowsthe holy song that merges the lonely, shy letters intothe singing of the spheres, he is full of the power ofGod, and it is as if he created heaven and earth andall worlds anew. He does not find his sphere beforehim as does the freer of souls, he extends it from thefirmament to the silent depths. But he also workstoward redemption. For in each sign are the three:world, soul, and divinity. They rise and join and unitethemselves, and they become the word, and the wordsunite themselves in God in genuine unity, since a manhas set his soul in them, and worlds unite themselves


and ascend, and the great rapture is born. Thus theacting person prepares the final oneness of all things.

And as avoda flowed into hitlahavut, the basicprinciple of Hasidic life, so here too kavana flowsinto hitlahavut. For creating means to be created: thedivine moves and overcomes us. And to be createdis ecstasy: only he who sinks into the Nothing of theUnconditioned receives the forming hand of thespirit. This is portrayed in parable. It is not given toanything in the world to be reborn and to attain to anew form unless it comes first to the Nothing, that isto the form of the in between. No creature can existin it, it is the power before creation and is calledchaos. Thus the perishing of the egg into the chickand thus the seed, which does not sprout before it hasgone down into the earth and decayed. And this iscalled wisdom, that is, a thought without revelation.And so it is: if man desires that a new creation comeout of him, then he must come with all his potentialityto the state of nothing, and then God brings forth inhim a new creation, and he is like a fountain that doesnot run dry and a stream that does not becomeexhausted.

Thus the will of the Hasidic teaching of kavana istwo-fold: that enjoyment, the internalizing of thatwhich is without, should take place in holiness andthat creation, the externalizing of that which iswithin, should take place in holiness. Through holycreation and through holy enjoyment the redemptionof the world is accomplished.


SHIFLUT: HUMILITY

God never does the same thing twice, said RabbiNachman of Bratzlav.

That which exists is unique, and it happens butonce. New and without a past, it emerges from theflood of returnings, takes place, and plunges backinto it, unrepeatable. Each thing reappears at anothertime, but each transformed. And the throws and fallsthat rule over the great world-creations, and the waterand fire which shape the form of the earth, and themixings and unmixings which brew the life of theliving, and the spirit of man with all its trial-and-errorrelation to the yielding abundance of the possibleall of these together cannot create an identical thingnor bring back one of the things that have been sealedas belonging to the past. It is because things happenbut once that the individual partakes in eternity. Forthe individual with his inextinguishable uniquenessis engraved in the heart of the all and lies for ever inthe lap of the timeless as he who is constituted thusand not otherwise.

Uniqueness is the essential good of man that isgiven to him to unfold. And just this is the meaningof the return, that his uniqueness may become everpurer and more complete; and that in each new lifethe one who has returned may stand in ever moreuntroubled and undisturbed incomparability. Forpure uniqueness and pure perfection are one, and hewho has become so entirely individual that nootherness any longer has power over him or place inhim has completed the journey and is redeemed andrests in God.


Every man shall know and consider that in hisqualities he is unique in the world and that none likehim ever lived, for had there ever before been someone like him, then he would not have needed to exist.But each is in truth a new thing in the world, and heshall make perfect his special quality, for it is becauseit is not perfect that the coming of the Messiahtarries.

Only in his own way and not in any other can theone who strives perfect himself. He who lays holdof the rung of his companion and lets go of his ownrung, through him neither the one nor the other willbe realized. Many acted like Rabbi Simeon ben Yohaiand in their hands it did not turn out well, for theywere not of the same nature as he but only acted asthey saw him act out of his nature.

But as man seeks God in lonely fervour and yetthere is a high service that only the community canfulfil, and as man accomplishes enormous thingswith his everyday actions, yet does not do so alonebut needs for such action the world and the things init, so the uniqueness of man proves itself in his lifewith others. For the more unique a man really is, somuch the more can he give to the other and so muchthe more will he give him. And this is his one sorrow,that his giving is limited by the one who takes. Forthe bestower is on the side of mercy and the receiveris on the side of rigour. And so it is with each thing.As when one pours out of a large vessel into a goblet:the vessel pours from out of its fullness, but the gobletlimits the gift.


The individual sees God and embraces Him. Theindividual redeems the fallen worlds. And yet theindividual is not a whole, but a part. And the purerand more perfect he is, so much the more intimatelydoes he know that he is a part and so much the moreactively there stirs in him the community ofexistence. That is the mystery of humility.

Every man has a light over him, and when thesouls of two men meet, the two lights join each otherand from them there goes forth one light. And this iscalled generation. To feel the universal generationas a sea and oneself as a wave, that is the mystery ofhumility.

But it is not humility when one lowers himselftoo much and forgets that man can bring down anoverflowing blessing on all the world through hiswords and his actions. This is called impurehumility. The greatest evil is when you forget thatyou are the son of a king. He is truly humble whofeels the other as himself and himself in the other.

Haughtiness means to contrast oneself with others.The haughty man is not he who knows himself, buthe who compares himself with others. No man canpresume too much if he stands on his own groundsince all the heavens are open to him and all theworlds devoted to him. The man who presumes toomuch is the man who contrasts himself with others,who sees himself as higher than the humblest ofthings, who rules with measure and weights andpronounces judgement.


If Messiah should come today, a zaddik said,and say, You are better than the others, then Iwould say to him, You are not Messiah.

The soul of the haughty lives without product andessence; it flutters and toils and is not blessed. Thethoughts whose real intent is not what is thought butthemselves and their brilliance are shadows. Thedeed which has in mind not the goal but dominancehas no body, only surface, no existence, onlyappearance. He who measures and weighs becomesempty and unreal like measure and weight. In himwho is full of himself there is no room for God.

It is told of one disciple that he went into seclusionand cut himself off from the things of the world inorder to cling solely to the teaching and the service,and he sat alone fasting from Sabbath to Sabbath andlearning and praying. But his mind, beyond allconscious purpose, was filled with pride in his action;it shone before his eyes and his fingers burned to layit on his forehead like the diadem of the anointed.And so all his work fell to the lot of the other side,and the divine had no share in it. But his heart drovehim ever more strongly so that he did not perceivehis sinking while the demons already played with hisacts, and he imagined himself wholly possessed byGod. Then it happened once that he leaned outsideof himself and became aware of the mute andalienated things around him: Then understandinggripped him and he beheld his deeds piled up at thefeet of a gigantic idol, and he beheld himself in thereeling emptiness, abandoned to the nameless. Thismuch is told and nothing more.


But the humble man has the drawing power. Aslong as a man sees himself above and before others,he has a limit, and God cannot pour His holinessinto him, for God is without limit. But when a manrests in himself as in the nothing, he is not limited byany other thing, he is limitless and God pours Hisglory into him.

The humility which is meant here is no willed andpractised virtue. It is nothing but an inner being,feeling, and expressing. Nowhere in it is there acompulsion, nowhere a self-humbling, a self-restraining, a self-resolve. It is indivisible as theglance of a child and simple as a childs speech.

The humble man lives in each being and knowseach beings manner and virtue. Since no one is tohim the other, he knows from within that nonelacks some hidden value; knows that there is no manwho does not have his hour. For him, the colours ofthe world do not blend with one another, rather eachsoul stands before him in the majesty of its particularexistence. In each man there is a priceless treasurethat is in no other. Therefore, one shall honour eachman for the hidden value that only he and none of hiscomrades has.

God does not look on the evil side, said onezaddik; how should I dare to do so?

He who lives in others according to the mystery ofhumility can condemn no one. He who passessentence on a man has passed it on himself.

He who separates himself from the sinner departsin guilt. But the saint can suffer for the sins of a manas for his own. Only living with the other is justice.


Living with the other as a form of knowing isjustice. Living with the other as a form of being islove. For that feeling that is called love among men,the feeling of being near and of wishing to be near afew, is nothing other than a recollection from aheavenly life: Those who sat next to one another inParadise and were neighbours and relatives, they arealso near to one another in this world. But in truthlove is all-comprehensive and sustaining and isextended to all the living without selection anddistinction. How can you say of me that I am aleader of the generation, said a zaddik, when I stillfeel in myself a stronger love for those near me andfor my seed than for all men? That this attitude alsoextends to animals is shown by the accounts of RabbiWolf who could never shout at a horse, of RabbiMoshe Leib, who gave drink to the neglected calvesat the market, of Rabbi Susya who could not see acage, and the wretchedness of the bird and itsanxiety to fly in the air of the world and to be a freewanderer in accordance with its nature, withoutopening it. But it is not only the beings to whom theshort-sighted gaze of the crowd accords the name ofliving who are embraced by the love of the lovingman: There is no thing in the world in which thereis not life, and each has received from his life theform in which it stands before your eyes. And lo, thislife is the life of God.

Thus it is held that the love of the living is love ofGod, and it is higher than any other service. A masterasked one of his disciples, You know that two forcescannot occupy the human mind at the same time. If


then you rise from.your couch to-morrow and twoways are before you: the love of God and the love ofman, which should come first? I do not know, thelatter answered. Then spoke the master, It is writtenin the prayer-book that is in the hands of the people,Before you pray, say the words, Love thy companionas one like thyself. Do you think that the venerableones commanded that without purpose? If some onesays to you that he has love for God but has no lovefor the living, he speaks falsely and pretends thatwhich is impossible.

Therefore, when one has departed from God, thelove of a man is his only salvation. When a fathercomplained to the Baal-Shem, My son is estrangedfrom Godwhat shall I do? he replied, Love himmore.

This is one of the primary Hasidic words: to lovemore. Its roots sink deep and stretch out far. He whohas understood this can learn to understand Judaismanew. There is a great moving force therein.

A great moving force and yet again only a lostsound. It is a lost sound, when somewherein thatdark windowless roomand at some timein thosedays without the power of messagethe lips of anameless, soon-to-be-forgotten man, of the zaddikRabbi Rafael, form these words, If a man sees thathis companion hates him, he shall love him the more.For the community of the living is the carriage ofGods majesty, and where there is a rent in thecarriage, one must fill it, and where there is so littlelove that the joining comes apart, one must love moreon ones own side to overcome the lack.


Once before a journey this Rabbi Rafael called toa disciple that he should sit beside him in the carriage.I fear I shall make it too crowded for you, the latterresponded. But the rabbi now spoke in an exaltedvoice, So we shall love each other more: then therewill be room enough for us.

They may stand here as a witness, the symbol andthe reality, separate and yet one and inseparable, thecarriage of the Shekina and the carriage of the friends.

Love lives in a kingdom greater than the kingdomof the individual and speaks out of a knowing deeperthan the knowing of the individual. It exists in realitybetween the creatures, that is, it exists in God. Lifecovered and guar anteed by life, life pouring itselfinto life, thus first do you behold the soul of the world.What the one is wanting, the other makes up for. Ifone loves too little, the other will love more.

Things help one another. But helping means to dowhat one does for its own sake and with a collectedwill. As he who loves more does not preach love tothe other, but himself loves and, in a certain sense,does not concern himself about the other, so thehelping man, in a certain sense, does not concernhimself about the other, but does what he does out ofhimself with the thought of helping. That means thatthe essential thing that takes place between beingsdoes not take place through their intercourse, butthrough the seemingly isolated, seeminglyunconcerned, seemingly unconnected action thateach of them performs. This is said in parable, If aman sings and cannot lift his voice and another comesto help him and begins to sing, then this one too can


now lift his voice. And that is the secret of co-operation.

To help one another is no task, but a matter ofcourse, the reality on which the life together of theHasidim is founded. Help is no virtue, but an arteryof existence. That is the new meaning of the oldJewish saying that good deeds save one from death.It is commanded that the helping person not thinkabout the others who could assist him, about God andman. He must not think of himself as a partial powerthat needs only contribute, rather each must answerand be responsible for the whole. And one thingmore, and this is again nothing other than anexpression of the mystery of shiflut: not to help outof pity, that is, out of a sharp, quick pain which onewishes to expel, but out of love, that is, out of livingwith the other. He who pities does not live with thesuffering of the sufferer, he does not bear it in hisheart as one bears the life of a tree with all its drinkingin and shooting forth and with the dream of its rootsand the craving of its trunk and the thousand journeysof its branches, or as one bears the life of an animalwith all its gliding, stretching, and grasping and allthe joy of its sinews and its joints and the dull tensionof its brain. He does not bear in his heart this specialessence, the suffering of the other; rather he receivesfrom the most external features of this suffering asharp, quick pain, unbridgeably dissimilar to theoriginal pain of the sufferer. And it is thus that he ismoved. But the helper must live with the other, andonly help that arises out of living with the other canstand before ore the eyes of God. Thus it is told of


one zaddik that when a poor person had excited hispity, he provided first for all his pressing need, butthen, when he looked inward and perceived that thewound of pity was healed, he plunged with great,restful, and devoted love into the life and needs ofthe other, took hold of them as if they were his ownlife and needs and began in reality to help.

He who lives with others in this way realizes withhis deed the truth that all souls are one; for each is aspark from the primordial soul, and the whole of theprimordial soul is in each.

Thus lives the humble man, who is the loving manand the helper: mixing with all and untouched by all,devoted to the multitude and collected in hisuniqueness, fulfilling on the rocky summits ofsolitude the bond with the infinite and in the valleyof life the bond with the earthly, flowering out of deepdevotion and withdrawn from all desire of thedesiring. He knows that all is in God and greets Hismessengers as trusted friends. He has no fear of thebefore and the after, of the above and the below, ofthis world and the world to come. He is at home andnever can be cast out. The earth cannot help but behis cradle, and heaven cannot help but be his mirrorand his echo.


38

The Werewolf

When death overtook the old Rabbi Eliezer, the fatherof the child Israel, he surrendered to it, without astruggle, the soul which had grown weary duringmany earthly years of wandering and affliction andlonged for the fire-spring of renewal. But his dimeyes still sought again and again the fair head of theboy; and when the hour of deliverance appeared, hetook him once again in his arms and held with ferventforce this light of his last days, that had risen so latefor him and his ageing wife. He gave him apenetrating look as if he wished to summon up thestill-slumbering spirit behind the brow and he spoke,

My child, the Adversary will confront you in thebeginning, at the turning, and at the fulfilment; in theshadow of a dream and in living flesh. He is the abyssover which you must fly. There will be times whenyou will descend into his last concealment like a flashof lightning, and he will disperse before your powerlike a thin cloud; and there will be times when he willsurround you with vapours of thick darkness, and youwill have to stand your ground alone. But those andthese times will disappear, and you will be victor inyour soul. For know that your soul is an ore that no

one can crush and only God can melt. Therefore, fearnot the Adversary.

The child read with astonished eyes the wordsfrom the withered mouth. The words sank in andremained.

When Rabbi Eliezer had passed away, the piouspeople of the community took on themselves the careof the boy out of the love that they had had for hisfather. And when it was time, they sent him to school.But he did not like the noisy and confined place; heescaped again and again into the forest where hedelighted in the trees and the animals and movedfamiliarly in the green woodland without the leastfear of night and weather. When they brought himback with sharp reprimands, he kept still for as muchas several days under the monotonous sing-song ofthe teacher; but then he slipped off as softly as a catand threw himself into the forest. After awhile themen who took care of him decided that they hadlooked after him enough; besides this, their troubleover the wild creature was completely wasted. Sothey let him go, and he remained unchecked in thewilds and grew up under the speechless modes of thecreatures.

When he was twelve, he hired himself out as helperto the teacher to lead the boys from their houses toschool and home again. Then the people in the dulllittle town saw a remarkable transformation takeplace. Day by day Israel led a singing procession ofchildren through the streets to school, and later ledthem home again by a wide detour through meadowand forest. The boys no longer hung their wan, heavy


heads as before. They shouted merrily and carriedflowers and green branches in their hands. In theirhearts burned devotion. So great was the soaringflame that it broke through the thick smoke of miseryand confusion that presses down on the earth andflamed into heaven. And behold, there shone forthabove a resplendent reflection.

But the Adversary swelled up with disquietude andhatred and ascended unto heaven. Here hecomplained about that which was beginning to takeplace below and which threatened to cheat him of hiswork. He demanded that he be allowed to descendand measure his strength against the prematuremessenger, and his request was granted.

So he descended and mingled with the creaturesof the earth. He moved among them, listened to them,tested and weighed, but for a long time heencountered no one who might serve the purpose ofhis venture. At last, in the forest in which Israel hadspent the days of his childhood, the Adversary founda charcoal burner, a shy, unsociable fellow whoavoided other men. This man was at times compelledto change at night into a werewolf that swept downfrom afar and rushed around the homesteads,sometimes falling upon an animal and striking terrorinto a late wanderer, yet never harming any humanbeing. His simple heart writhed under the bittercompulsion; trembling and resisting, he lay hiddenin a thicket when the mania overtook him and hecould not subdue it. It was thus that the Adversaryfound him sleeping one night, already in theconvulsions of the approaching transformation, and

THE WEREWOLF 41

deemed him suitable for his instrument. He thrust hishand into the mans breast, took out his heart and hidit in the earth. Then he sank into the creature his own,a heart out of the heart of darkness.

As Israel led the singing children at sunrise in awide arc around the little town, the werewolf burstout of the still night-bound forest and rushed inamong the troop with foaming mouth and lividmisshapenness. The children ran in all directions,some fell senseless to the earth, others clung wailingto their leader. The animal disappeared meanwhileand no calamity took place. Israel collected andcomforted the little ones; still the incident broughtsevere confusion and alarm to the city, especiallysince several of the children fell into a high fever fromfright, burning in anxious dreams and moaning in thedarkened rooms. No mother permitted her child onthe streets any longer, and no one knew what to do.

Then the word of his dying father came back to theyoung Israel and now for the first time took onmeaning. So he trudged from house to house andswore to the despairing parents that they might againentrust the small ones to him, for he was certain thathe could protect them from the monster. None wasable to withstand him.

He gathered the children around him and spoke tothem as to the grown-ups, indeed more powerfullystill, and their souls opened wide to him. He led themagain at an early hour to the meadow, bid them waitfor him there, and went alone to the forest. As he drewnear, the animal burst forth; it stood in front of thetrees and grew before his eyes into the heavens, so


that it covered the forest with its body and the fieldwith its claws, and the bloody drivel from its mouthflowed around the rising sun. Israel did not give way,for the word of his father was with him. It seemed tohim as if he were going farther and farther and wereentering into the body of the werewolf. There was nohalt or hindrance to his step until he came to the dark,glowing heart, from whose mournful mirror allbeings of the world were reflected, discoloured by aburning hatred. He grasped the heart and closed hisfingers tight around it. Then he felt it throb, saw dropsrun down and sensed the infinite suffering that waswithin it from the beginning. He laid it gently on theearth, which at once swallowed it, found himselfalone at the edge of the forest, breathed freely onceagain, and returned to the children.

On the way they saw the charcoal burner lyingdead at the edge of the forest. Those who came acrosshim were astonished by the great peacefulness of hiscountenance and no longer understood the fear of himthat they had experienced, for in death he appearedlike a great, clumsy child.

From that day on the boys forgot orgot theirsinging and began to resemble their fathers and theirfathers fathers. Growing up, they passed over theland with their heads bowed between their shouldersas their fathers had done.

THE WEREWOLF 43

44

The Prince of Fire

When Rabbi Adam, the man who knew the secretsof magic, was advanced in years, he was overcomeby anxiety concerning who should receive hiswritings after his death. In them was recorded theway to the power with which he at times had graspedthe machinery of fate. A son had, it is true, been bornto the master, but he was only his corporal heir. Thathad become painfully clear to the rabbi during longyears, and his will seemed to him divided and his artincomplete since they had not prevented this fromhappening. Once, in the summer of his strength, hehad clenched his fists all night against heaven andcontended with the Unnameable, who looked downon his whole daring game as on a boys impudentventure. Later his spirit softened; he arose night afternight in dreams and asked the question, To whom,O Lord, shall I leave the source of my might? Longhad he asked in vain, and the darkness of his dream remained wordless. But one night the answer came,You shall send it to Rabbi Israel, the son of Eliezer,who abides in the town of Okop, and you shall bestowit on him.

When in the days which followed he felt his earthlyend approaching, he called his son into the seclusionof his chamber and opened the chest which hid themystery-filled pages. Resisting the pain of bygonedays, which threatened to rise again at this unseemlyhour, he instructed his son, Bring them to Israel, theybelong to him. Regard it as a great favour if he showshimself ready to study with you, and remain humbleat all times, for you are only the messenger, chosento carry to the hero the sword that was forged for himby silent spirits through long ages beneath the earth.

After a short space of time the old man passedaway. When he had delivered his fathers mortalremains to the earth, the son arranged his earthlygoods and set out with the writings of the dead manon the journey to Okop. On the way he pondered,with many trepidations, how he must go aboutfinding this Israel who was destined to become hisfathers heir and his own refuge. When he reachedthe city the people met him with honours since hehad let them know that he was the son of the wonder-working man, and he found it easy to live amongthem with eyes open in order to seek the chosen one.But as he looked about, no possibility presented itselfto his inquiring mind other than the boy Israel, justfourteen years old, who performed small functionsin the prayer house. For although the boys actionsunder the eyes of all were as simple as those of otherboys his age, the seeker still divined that this youngchild concealed a secret grace from the curiosity ofthe world. He decided to get nearer to him. Heproceeded to the leader of the community and

46 THE PRINCE OF FIRE

requested of him a quiet room in the prayer house inwhich he might apply himself to the holy wisdom inpeace, and he asked that they might let him have theboy Israel as a servant. The leader and the others wereglad to do this and regarded it a great honour for theyoung boy to be associated with the son of the mightyman.

But the son now pretended to be absorbed in thecontents of the difficult books and not to notice whatwent on around him. The boy was glad of this, for hecould thus continue his practice of rising from hiscouch every night, when one supposed him deep insleep, and devoting himself to the Teaching. Soon,however, the young rabbi discovered this and onlyawaited the right moment to test him. One night,when the youth had thrown himself on his bed andimmediately fallen asleep, the other got up, took apage from the magic writings and laid it on his breast.Then he hurried back to his own resting-place andheld himself still. After about an hour he saw howthe boy first turned himself restlessly, then how, stillsteeped in slumber, he seized the page, and finallyhow, as if held by mighty hands, he buried himselfin the writings aided by the gleam of a small oil light.To the onlooker it was as if the room became brighterand larger while the boy read. Finally, Israel hid thepage in his clothes and again tumbled into his bed.

In the morning the rabbi called the boy to him anddisclosed to him his mission. I give to you a thingthat has only rarely lain in perishable hands, he said.For centuries it was submerged, then it arose againto endow a human spirit with the primal stream of

THE LEGEND OF THE BAAL-SHEM 47

power. My father was the last of that short series.Now, in accordance with his decision, it belongs toyou. When you linger over the writings, let my soulbe the air which absorbs your words.

It shall be as you say, Israel answered. Yet keepsilent that no one other than you and I may know ofthis thing.

The rabbi agreed. But in order that their secrecymight be assured, they decided to leave the prayerhouse and moved into a little house on the outskirtsof the town. The Jews of Okop deemed it anunexpected kindness that the son of Rabbi Adamshould take Israel under his protection and allow himto share in the Teaching, and since they had no otherexplanation, they ascribed it to the merit of his fatherather Eliezer.

Thus it came to pass that the two entered into asolitude before which the voices of the earth grewsilent.

The young Israel devoted himself entirely andwithout reserve to the wonderful writings andreceived their essence into himself. But the son ofRabbi Adam cultivated sharpness of mind. Hedesired to turn and weigh the strange knowledgewhich arose out of the old books and finally to tastethe might of the magic formulae. Deprived of thesethings, his soul contracted and looked forth miserablyout of his troubled eyes. The young Israel becameaware of this and said, What does your glance ask,my brother? What can you miss in these days?

Then the rabbi sighed and replied to him, Boy,would that my soul were as intact as yours! But what


enters you like honey and stills your spirit eats intome like lye on wounds. In me there come and godoubts which are never silent. There is only one whocan help me, and if you would you who now havepower over the wordlet us call him, the Prince ofthe Teaching.

The boy Israel was terrified. Do not break throughthe appointed time of our waiting, he cried. Thehour has not yet come.

Disappointed, the rabbi closed up within himself.His looks became squinted and yellow so that Israel,taking pity, overcame his own fear and bade the rabbiprepare himself in order that they might make readytogether for the venture.

In order to attain the kavana of the soul which wasneeded to compel the Guardian of the Teaching, itwas prescribed that one enjoy neither food nor drinkfrom Sabbath eve to Sabbath eve nor allow access toany earthly message, but rather spend the time incomplete seclusion. So they prepared the house andbarred up the doors and the windows. They immersedthemselves in the holy bath, and after that they fastedfrom Sabbath eve to Sabbath eve, and finally at theonset of the last night they stretched their souls to thehighest fervour, and Israel, with arms uplifted, calledout a spell in the darkness. But when he had finished,he fell to the ground and cried out, Woe, my brother!You have allowed an error to enter our kavana. Thusa heavenly judgement has gone forth, and already Isee how the Gurdians neighbour, the Prince of Fire,arises and poises himself for downward flight. If oureyelids sink to-night, we shall fall before him. There


is only one escape: that we remain awake and strugglewithout cease till morning. They threw themselvesdown and implored the spirit that they might not fallasleep. A soft glow surrounded the house, and fromit there arose enticements to rest. Toward morningthe rabbi lost the power of resistance, and he leanedhis head against the wall. The boy sought to arousehim, but the rabbis already stiffening arm raiseditself, and a stammer of black blasphemy broke forthfrom his mouth. Then the flame stabbed him in theheart, and he sank to the ground.


The Revelation

On the farthest eastern slope of the Carpathians stooda dark, squat peasant ale-house. Its narrow frontgarden with the red beets exhaled the might of themountain, but on the back side the slanting openingsin the roof blinked across toward broad, yellow plainswhich lay in light.

The small inn was quite isolated. On market daysa few people did indeed come along the road, country-folk, Jewish traders out of the mountain villages, whospent an hour and drank to one anothers successfulbuying or selling; but otherwise only seldom did ahunter or traveller stop there. When a guest came hewas greeted by a slender, brown-eyed woman andinvited to sit down. Then the woman stepped outsideof the house, held her cupped hand over her mouthand called toward the cliffs in a clear voice, Israel!

In the foremost cliff, a stones throw from thehouse, was a grotto. Abundant sunlight lay beforethe entrance and heavy darkness on the floor. Alongthe sides paths ran upward into the darkness, to theheight and breadth of a man, as if during the hours ofnight some one entered here into the kingdom of theinner earth. The cavern was silent and shut off from

noises; but when the clear call of the woman cametoward it, then the air, like a faithful servant, carriedit to him for whom it was meant. Wherever he was,whether he lingered near the darkness at the floor ofthe cave or close to the entrance, he set out at the call,strode toward the yard, and stood at once before theguest in order to serve him. But a shudder grippedthe heart of the guest whom he approached. Even thepeasants and traders, who had known the man formany years, experienced each time afresh a feelingof awe before his glance, no matter how gentle hisgreeting and how careful his gestures.

He was thirty or more. The years had come to him,heavily laden with mystery, and they had passed by.He did not look back at them, he did not look forwardto the ones to come. Around him was waiting: thepeaks looked down on him and waited, the springsglanced up at him and waited; but he did not wait. Ofthese years nothing is told other than that he had longwandered in penury with his wife and later dwelt withher on the eastern slope of the mountains and servedthe guests. The cavern is still undestroyed; there youcan see the vaulted arch and the paths.

But one day the eye of the peak, the eye of thespring was revealed to the man. He recognized thathe stood in the midst of waiting. The earth burned hiscavern, the silence receded from the entrance, thewhispers from the walls; voices called him. Out ofthe arch there thundered a command, its echoresounded in the paths, the voices everywhere joinedinto one voice.

52 THE REVELATION

This morning was followed by a day, and the dayby many days; the command grew great above thehead of the man. He heard the step of the hourapproaching out of the distance.

There came another morning when all aroundbecame clear, and the knowledge came softly up tohim. The command grew silent. The Baal-Shemlooked out into the world.

On this morning Rabbi Naftali was driving towardthe plain. He had visited a friend to the south of themountain, and although he had been travelling a dayalready, he was still full of the conversation that hehad carried on with his friend. Rabbi Naftali thoughtof nothing other than this conversation. So the wagoncame to the small ale-house on the last slope. Thereall thoughts grew mute in Rabbi Naftali, and helooked up startled. When he now saw the house withthe bright front garden, he suddenly felt weary. Heclimbed from the wagon and entered the house. Thewoman greeted him, bade him sit down, and calledtoward the cliffs with her hand over her mouth,Israel! At once Rabbi Naftali saw the host approachwith long, firm strides and smiling bow to him. Heappeared to be a Jew, but he wore a peasants garb,the short sheepskin coat with the thick, vari-colouredbelt and the earth-coloured top-boots, and no cappressed down on his long, blond hair. This annoyedthe rabbi, and he was not altogether friendly whenhe gave him his order. The man preserved his smileand the humility of his bearing and served the rabbiso finely that it appeared almost strange howdelicately the large and obviously strong man moved.


When Rabbi Naftali had rested for awhile, hecalled, Israel, get the wagon ready for me, for I wishto travel on.

The host stepped out to fulfil the order, but in goinghe half turned and said with a smiling face, Six dayslead from the beginning to the Sabbathwhy shouldyou not remain six more days and keep the Sabbathwith me?

Then the rabbi rebuked him and bade him be silent,for frivolous talk was offensive to him. Israel keptstill and made the wagon ready.

When Rabbi Naftali now drove on, he could notsucceed in again recalling to his mind theconversation. While he nonetheless continued to tryand would not leave off, it happened that all thingsbecame confused before his eyes. A great whirlenveloped him, and he moved along in it, in the midstof confused and confusedly revolving things. Tillnow, however, the rabbi had never in his life regardedthe things around him; rather it had been enough forhim to tolerate their presence. Now the whirl forcedhim to look up, and he saw the things of the world,but dislodged from their places and lost in confusion.It seemed to him as if an abyss had opened up beneathhim, greedy to swallow up heaven and earth. Therabbi felt the whirl swell in his own heart, and heknew the darkness from within. But at the samemoment, he saw a gigantic man in sheepskin coat andearth-coloured top-boots stride up to the wagon. Theman walked light-footedly through the confusionand pushed its rushing circles gently to the side as aswimmer pushes the waves. Then he took the reins

54 THE REVELATION

and with a strong jerk turned the horses. The animalsat once galloped back the way that they had come,but with threefold speed so that in a short time theyagain stood at the village ale-house. Rabbi Naftalisanxiety and distress disappeared in an instanttogether with the confusion. He did not understandwhat had happened to him, but he did not question.He climbed down from the wagon and again steppedinto the front garden, in whose midst stood the tablenow prepared for a meal. The slender woman againgreeted him with a friendly and impassive face, againcalled toward the cliffs, and again the man of peasantappearance stood before him and bowed, nototherwise than at his first entrance.

For a long while the spell of the incomprehensiblewas on the soul of the rabbi. Yet hour after hour hesaw around him the things in their usual manner, atrest or in ordered activity. The host, moreover, busiedhimself giving fodder and drink to his horses, with anoble bearing, to be sure, but otherwise exactly asany small innkeeper of the land. As a result the rabbibegan to think over the occurrence, and now, asalways before this day, his thoughts were agai

Date post:	30-Dec-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	lykhanh
View:	215 times
Download:	2 times

The Legend of the Baal-Shem - Monoskop · Martin Buber titles available from Routledge: Between Man...

Documents