n
the vineyard of Hasidism.[10]

The founder of the sect has an interesting history. In his childhood he
gave no evidence of future greatness. His education was of a low order,
but his feeling heart and sympathetic soul won him the esteem of all
that knew him. The woods possessed the same charm for him as for
Wordsworth or Whitman. With the latter especially he seems to have much
in common. While a child, he absented himself frequently from the narrow
and noisy heder, and spent the day in the quiet of the neighboring
woods. When he grew up, he accepted the menial position of a school
usher. His office was to go from house to house, arouse the sleeping
children, dress them, and bring them to heder. But the time soon came
when humble and obscure Israel "revealed" himself to the world. Owing to
his tact and knowledge of human nature, combined with the conditions of
the times, his teachings spread rapidly. He was speedily crowned with
the glory of a "good name" (Baal Shem Tob), and in the end he was
immortalized.

From such a man we can expect only originality, not profundity. Indeed,
his whole life was a protest against the subtleties of the Talmudists
and the ceremonies, meaningless to him, which they introduced into
Judaism. His object was to remove the petrified rabbinical restrictions
(gezerot) and develop the emotional side of the Jew in their stead. He
was primarily a man of action, and had little love for the rabbis, their
passivity, world-weariness, and pride of intellect. It is said that when
he "overheard the sounds of eager, loud discussions issuing from a
rabbinical college, closing his ears with his hands, [he] declared that
it was such disputants who delayed the redemption of Israel from
captivity." Men like these, who study the Law for the sake of knowing,
not of feeling, cannot claim any merit for it. They deserve to be called
"Jewish devils." Only he is worthy of reward who is virtuous rather than
innocent, who does what he is afraid to do, who, as Jacob Joseph of
Polonnoy puts it, "acquires evil thoughts and converts them into holy
ones." No asceticism for him. All kinds of human feelings deserve our
respect, for it is not the body that feels but the soul, and the soul,
"being a part of God on high, cannot possibly have an absolutely bad
tendency." Men may not be heresy-hunters and fault-finders, for none is
free from heresy and faults himself: the face he brings to the mirror,
he finds reflected in it.