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Important popular collection of stories and tales about the Ba’al Shem Tov and his disciples compiled primarily from the earlier Likuttei Amarim. The Ba'al Shem Tov (Besht, R. Israel Ben Eliezer Ba'al Shem Tov (c. 1700–1760) was a charismatic founder and first leader of Hasidism in Eastern Europe. Through oral traditions handed down by his pupils (R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye and others) as well as through the legendary tales about his life and behavior, he became Hasidism's first teacher and its exemplary saint. These tales are also the main source for his biography. It is related that the Ba'al Shem Tov was born in Okop, a small town in Podolia, to poor and elderly parents in hard times aggravated by wars in the region. Orphaned as a child, he later eked out a living first as an assistant (behelfer) in a heder and later as a watchman at a synagogue. At Yazlovets, near Buchnach, where he was working as behelfer, he met and became friendly with young R. Meir b. Zevi Hirsch Margolioth, later a famous talmudic scholar; The Ba'al Shem Tov was considered by R. Meir both as colleague and teacher. According to tradition, in his 20s Israel went into hiding in the Carpathian Mountains in preparation for his future tasks. (He was accompanied by his second wife, Hannah, the first having died shortly after their marriage.) There he lived for several years, first as a digger of clay, which his wife sold in town; later he helped his wife in keeping an inn. In about 1730 he settled in Tluste. Israel had one son, Zevi, and a daughter, Adel. His grandchildren were R. Moses Hayyim Ephraim of Sudylkow and R. Baruch of Medzibezh; R. Nahman of Bratslav was his great-grandson.
In the mid-1730s – hasidic tradition fixes it on his 36th birthday – R. Israel revealed himself as a healer and leader. The circles of R. Israel's followers and admirers widened rapidly. Many people were drawn by his magnetism and the widespread reports of his miracles, and several groups of Hasidim which had been formed earlier came under his influence and accepted his leadership and teaching to a greater or lesser degree. Tradition hints that some of the members of these hasidic circles were at first repelled by Israel's activity as miracle healer, as a ba'al shem, although Israel himself was proud of this work, as demonstrated by his signature "Israel Ba'al Shem of Tlust." R. Israel and his followers were conscious of his mission as a leader of his people. Many of his dreams and visions, much of what was revealed to him from on high, are related to the actual problems and sufferings of the Jews in his generation. Teaching the importance of charity, he himself gave much, and he helped in ransoming captives and prisoners, a pressing problem in his time. He taught that devotional joy was the proper attitude of the Jew in every moment of his life and in particular in prayer, exemplifying this through his own attitude to life and through his own mode of prayer. His admirers told especially about the light and fire that they imagined emanating from his person, and about his fiery way of reciting his prayers. Opposing too much fasting, he advised against preaching through harsh admonition. Even more than his teachings, his idealized personality became the inspiration for the life, leadership, and aspirations of the Hasidim up to the present day. It is typical of hasidic appreciation of the personality of its ideal figure that tales related by R. Jacob Joseph of Polonnoye state that Israel's particular teacher in heaven was Ahijah the Shilonite, the prophet of the overthrow of a misguided establishment and of a new kingdom in Israel. Whether partly true or wholly legendary, the hasidic tale that in his youth Israel miraculously came by "compositions containing secrets and mysteries of the Torah, divine and practical Kabbalah" which had belonged to Adam Ba'al Shem expresses the awareness that the theoretical roots of Israel's teachings lay in the Kabbalah; the story also indicates the hasidic conviction that his appearance and influence were a mystery and a miracle.
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