The “second period” of Hasidism, whose zaddikim (literally, “righteous ones”) came in the fourth and succeeding generations of the line that began with the Baal Shem Tov, produced the legends, tales, anecdotes, and sayings collected and edited by Martin Buber in the second volume of his Tales of the Hasidim, subtitled “The Later Masters.” A selection from the previous volume, containing similar material from the first three generations of the zaddik line, was presented in our pages in January and February 1947. The second volume, like the first, is being published (later this month) by Schocken Books in a translation by Olga Marx, and it is by Schocken’s permission that we print the selections below. (It should be noted that these selections to some extent obscure the character of Buber’s book, which is so arranged as to give a picture of the historical development of Hasidism and the individual personalities of its leaders.)
In his introduction to the second volume, Dr. Buber writes: “There is no doubt that the crude power characteristic of the outset of Hasidism lessened during this second epoch, which mainly occupies the first half of the nineteenth century, though certain of the exponents of Hasidism lived past that time. The main outlines of the first Hasidic tidings and struggles become complicated or blurred, and the sacred passion to bring heaven and earth closer to each other often gives place to the kind of organized religiosity we can trace in every great religious movement which persists past the generations of awakening and revolt. But at the same time comes a variety and abundance of new spiritual life which does not, it is true, deepen the basic ideas of Hasidism in any essential respect, but does expand the province in which these ideas can be realized and applies them to the problems of everyday life to a far greater extent than before. The form in which these ideas are expressed has less elemental vigor but often more brilliance. Aphorisms, parables, and symbolic fairy tales, which up to that time occurred only as the naive, witty, but unfinished improvisations of genius, achieve literary perfection.”
For some biographical facts about Dr. Buber the reader is referred to the note to his essay “The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible,” on page 327 of this issue—ED.
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Many heads of families of Berditchev complained to the rabbi of Rizhyn that their sons-in-law had left wives and children in order to become his disciples, and when they asked him to persuade the youths to return home, he told them about a young man who had lived in the days of the Great Maggid. He had quitted his father-in-law’s house to go to the maggid. They had fetched him back and he had pledged on a hand-clasp that he would stay at home. Yet shortly thereafter he was gone. Now his father-in-law got the rav of the town to declare that this broken promise was cause for divorce. The young man was thus deprived of all means of subsistence. Soon he fell ill and died.
When the zaddik had finished his story, he added: “And now, my good men, when the Messiah comes, the young man will hail his father-in-law before his court of justice. The father-in-law will quote the rav of the town, and the rav will quote a passage from the commentary on the Shulhan Arukh. Then the Messiah will ask the young man why after giving his hand on it that he would remain at home he broke his promise just the same, and the young man will say, ‘I just had to go to the rabbi!’ In the end the Messiah will pronounce judgment. To the father-in-law he will say: ‘You took the rav’s word as your authority and so you are justified.’ And to the rav he will say: ‘You took the law as your authority and so you are justified.’
“And then he will add: ‘But I have come for those who are not justified.’”
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It is written: “A Psalm of David,” and following: “. . . after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” This is how Rabbi Shalom expounded the verse: “David returned to God and said his psalm to him with the same passion with which he had gone to Bathsheba. That was why God forgave him on the instant.”
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Once the hasidim were seated together in all brotherliness, when Rabbi Israel joined them, his pipe in his hand. Because he was so friendly, they asked him: “Tell us, dear rabbi, how should we serve God?” He was surprised at the question and replied: “How should I know!” But then he went right on talking and told them this story:
There were two friends, and both were accused before the king of a crime. Since he loved them he wanted to show them mercy. He could not acquit them because even the king’s word cannot prevail over a law.
So he gave this verdict: A rope was to be stretched across a deep chasm and the two accused were to walk, one after the other; whoever reached the other side was to be granted his life. It was done as the king ordered, and the first of the friends got safely across. The other, still standing in the same spot, cried to him: “Tell me, my friend, how did you manage to cross that terrible chasm?” The first called back: “I don’t know anything but this: whenever I felt myself toppling over to one side, I leaned to the other.”
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Moshe Leib’s father was bitterly opposed to the hasidic way. When he learned that Moshe Leib had left the house without his knowledge and gone to Rabbi Shmelke’s House of Study in Nikolsburg, he flew into a rage. He cut a vicious rod and kept it in his room against his son’s return. Whenever he saw a more suitable twig on a tree, he cut a new rod which he thought would be more effective and threw the old one away. Time passed and many rods were exchanged. In the course of a thorough house-cleaning a servant once took the rod up to the attic.
Soon afterward Moshe Leib asked his teacher’s leave to absent himself for a short while and went home. When he saw his father jump at sight of him and start on a furious search, he went straight up to the attic, fetched the rod, and laid it down in front of the old man. The latter gazed into the grave and loving face of his son and was won over.
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The rabbi of Sasov once traveled about trying to collect money to ransom persons in the debtors’ prison, but he did not succeed in getting together the sum he needed. Then he regretted having wasted time he might have spent studying and praying, and resolved that henceforth he would stay home. On the same day he heard that a Jew who had stolen an article of clothing had been soundly beaten and put in jail. Rabbi Moshe Leib interceded with the judge and gained the thief’s release.
When the zaddik went to fetch the thief from jail, he warned him: “Remember the beating they gave you and don’t ever do anything like that again!”
“Why not?” said the thief. “If you don’t succeed the first time, you may succeed the next.”
“If that’s the case,” said the rabbi to himself, “then I must keep trying at my job, too.”
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One midnight when Rabbi Moshe Leib was absorbed in the mystic teachings, he heard a knock at his window. A drunken peasant stood outside and asked to be let in and given a bed for the night. For a moment the zaddik’s heart was full of anger and he said to himself: “How can a drunk have the insolence to ask to be let in, and what business has he in this house!” But then he said silently in his heart: “And what business has he in God’s world? But if God gets along with him, can I reject him?” He opened the door at once, and prepared a bed.
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The rabbi of Sasov once gave the last money he had in his pocket to a man of ill repute. His disciples threw it up to him. He answered them: “Shall I be more finicky than God, who gave it to me?”
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Rabbi Moshe Leib told this story:
How to love men is something I learned from a peasant. He was sitting in an inn along with other peasants, drinking. For a long time he was as silent as all the rest, but when he was moved by the wine, he asked one of the men seated beside him: ‘Tell me, do you love me or don’t you love me?’ The other replied: ‘I love you very much.’ But the first peasant replied: ‘You say that you love me, but you do not know what I need. If you really loved me, you would know.’ The other had not a word to say to this, and the peasant who had put the question fell silent again.
But I understood. To know the needs of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow—that is the true love of men.
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On the eve of the Day of Atonement, when the time had come to say Kol Nidre, all the hasidim were gathered together in the House of Prayer waiting for the rabbi. But time passed and he did not come. Then one of the women of the congregation said to herself: “I guess it will be quite a while before they begin, and I was in such a hurry and my child is alone in the house. I’ll just run home and look after it to make sure it hasn’t awakened. I can be back in a few minutes.”
She ran home and listened at the door. Everything was quiet. Softly she turned the knob and put her head into the room—and there stood the rabbi holding her child in his arms. He had heard the child crying on his way to the House of Prayer, and had played with it and sung to it until it fell asleep.
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The rabbi of Rizhyn related:
Once when the holy Baal Shem Tov wanted to save the life of a sick boy he was very much attached to, he ordered a candle made of pure wax, carried it to the woods, fastened it to a tree, and lit it. Then he pronounced a long prayer. The candle burned all night. When morning came, the boy was well.
When my grandfather, the Great Maggid, who was the holy Baal Shem’s disciple, wanted to work a like cure, he no longer knew the secret meaning of the words on which he had to concentrate. He did as his master had done and called on his name. And his efforts met with success.
When Rabbi Moshe Leib, the disciple of the disciple of the Great Maggid, wanted to work a cure of this kind, he said: ‘We have no longer the power even to do what was done. But I shall relate the story of how it was done, and God will help.’ And his efforts met with success.
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Once Rabbi Bunam was asked: “Have you ever known a zaddik whose heart was broken and crushed and yet sound and whole?”
Rabbi Bunam replied: “Yes, I did know such a zaddik. It was Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov.”
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A respected woman once came to ask the advice of the rabbi of Apt. The instant he set eyes on her he shouted: “Adulteress! You sinned only a short while ago, and yet now you have the insolence to step into this pure house!” Then from the depths of her heart the woman replied: “The Lord of the world has patience with the wicked. He is in no hurry to make them pay their debts and he does not disclose their secret to any creature, lest they be ashamed to turn to him. Nor does he hide his face from them. But the rabbi of Apt sits there in his chair and cannot resist revealing at once what the Creator has covered.” From that time on the rabbi of Apt used to say: “No one ever got the better of me except once—and then it was a woman.”
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The rabbi of Apt said:
Every one of Israel is told to consider himself to be standing at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. For man there are past and future events, but not for God; day in, day out, he gives the Torah.
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Once when there was not a piece of bread in Rabbi Mendel’s house, his son ran to him crying and complained his hunger was so great he could bear it no longer.
“Your hunger is not so great as all that,” said his father. “For otherwise I should have something to quiet it.”
The boy slunk off without a word. But before he reached the door, the rabbi saw a small coin lying on the table.
“I wronged you,” he called out. “You are really very hungry indeed.”
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Rabbi Elimelekh’s servant once forgot a spoon for Rabbi Mendel who was a guest at Rabbi Elimelekh’s table. Everyone ate except Rabbi Mendel. The zaddik observed this and asked:
Why aren’t you eating?
“I have no spoon,” said his guest.
“Look,” said Rabbi Elimelekh, “one must know enough to ask for a spoon, and a plate too, if need be!”
Rabbi Mendel took the word of his teacher to heart. From that day on his fortunes were on the mend.
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Rabbi Mendel once boasted to his teacher Rabbi Elimelekh that evenings he saw the angel who rolls away the light before the darkness, and mornings the angel who rolls away the darkness before the light. “Yes,” said Rabbi Elimelekh, “in my youth I saw that too. Later on you don’t see those things any more.”
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When the rabbi of Rizhyn betrothed his grandson to the daughter of Rabbi Hirsh of Rymanov, before the writing of the marriage contract he said: “It is the custom in my family to recite our genealogy at the time of betrothal. And that is what I shall now do. My grandfather’s father was Rabbi Baer, my grandfather was Rabbi Abraham the Angel, and my father Rabbi Shalom Shakhna.” He had given merely the names of the Great Maggid, his son, and his grandson, without adding the usual honorary titles. Then he said to Rabbi Hirsh: “Now it is your turn to tell us from whom you are descended.”
Rabbi Hirsh replied: “My father and mother left this earth when I was ten years old, and so I did not know them well enough to be able to speak of them, but I have been told that they were upright and honest folk. When they died, my relatives apprenticed me to a tailor. I stayed with him for five years, and even though I was very young I worked well. I was careful not to ruin what was new, and to repair what was old.”
“The marriage is agreeable to both sides,” cried the rabbi of Rizhyn.
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The rabbi of Kobryn once looked at the I Heavens and cried: “Angel, little angel! It is no great trick to be an angel up there in the sky! You don’t have to eat and drink, beget children and earn money. Just you come down to earth and worry about eating and drinking, about raising children and earning money, and we shall see if you keep on being an angel. If you succeed, you may boast—but not now!”
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In Roptchitz, the town where Rabbi Naftali lived, it was the custom for the rich people whose houses stood isolated or at the far end of the town to hire men to watch over their property by night. Late one evening Rabbi Naftali was skirting the woods which circled the city, and he met such a watchman walking up and down. “For whom are you working?” he asked. The man told him and then inquired in his turn: “And whom are you working. for, Rabbi?”
The words struck the zaddik like a shaft. “I am not working for anybody just yet,” he barely managed to say. Then he walked up and down beside the man for a long time. “Will you be my servant?” he finally asked. “I should like to,” the man replied, “but what would be my duties?”
“To remind me,” said Rabbi Naftali.
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Once on the Great Sabbath the rabbi of Roptchitz came home from the House of Prayer with weary steps. “What made you so tired?” asked his wife. “It was the sermon,” he replied. “I had to speak of the poor and their many needs for the coming Passover, for unleavened bread and wine and everything else is terribly high this year.”
“And what did you accomplish with your sermon?” his wife went on to ask.
“Half of what is necessary,” he answered. “You see, the poor are now ready to take. As for the other half, whether the rich are ready to give—I don’t know about that yet.”
The Yehudi’s wife often subjected him to long quarrelsome speeches. He always listened to what she had to say, but remained silent and accepted it cheerfully. Once however when her nagging was a good deal worse than usual, he answered her back. Later his disciple Rabbi Bunam asked him: “In what way is this ay different from others?” The Yehudi answered him: “I saw that her soul was about to leave her body or rage because I did not let her scolding annoy me. And so I said a trifling word, that she might feel that her words troubled me and draw strength from this feeling.”
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The rabbi of Zans used to tell this story About himself:
In my youth when I was fired with the love of God, I thought I would convert the whole world to God. But soon I discovered that it would be quite enough to convert the people who lived in my town, and I tried for a long time, but did not succeed. Then I realized that my program was still much too ambitious, and I concentrated on the persons in my own household. But I could not convert them either. Finally it dawned on me: I must work upon myself, so that I may give true service to God. But I did not accomplish even this.
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Shortly before his death Rabbi Hayyim said to a man who had come to visit him: “If I had nine true friends whose hearts were one with mine, we should each put a loaf in his knapsack and go out into the field together and walk in the field and pray and pray, until our prayers were granted and redemption came.”
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Rabbi Bunam was once walking outside the city with some of his disciples. He bent, picked up a speck of sand, looked at it, and put it back exactly where he had found it. “He who does not believe,” he said, “that God wants this bit of sand to lie in this particular place, does not believe at all.”
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Rabbi Yehezkel of Koznitz told a disciple of Rabbi Bunam: When your teacher was a pharmacist in Pzhysha we saw a great deal of each other. One time I would go to him, the next he would come to me. One evening when I entered his pharmacy I saw an instrument lying on a bench, the kind whose strings you pluck with your fingers. Just then a peasant woman came to have a prescription filled. With one hand Rabbi Bunam made up the medicine, with the other he fingered the strings. When the woman had left I said to him: “Rabbi Bunam, that is unholy conduct!” Said he: “Rabbi Yehezkel, you are no real hasid!”
I went home and in my heart I bore him a grudge. But that night my grandfather appeared to me, boxed my ears, and shouted: “Don’t spy on that man, he shines into all the halls of Heaven.”
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A man who pursued honors came to Rabbi Bunam and told him his father had appeared to him in a dream and said: “I herewith announce to you that you are destined to be a leader.” The zaddik accepted the story in silence. Soon afterward, the man returned and said that he had the same dream over again.
“I see,” said Rabbi Bunam, “that you are prepared to become a leader of men. If your father comes to you once more, answer him that you are ready to lead, but that he should also appear to the people whom you are supposed to lead.”
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Rabbi Bunam was asked: “What is meant by the expression ‘sacrificing to idols’? It is unthinkable that a man should really bring a sacrifice to idols!”
He said: “I shall give you an example. When a devout and righteous man sits at table with others and would like to eat a little more but refrains because of what the people might think of him—that is sacrificing to idols.”
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Rabbi Bunam once said to Rabbi Mendel, his disciple: “If I am sentenced to hell—what shall I do?”
Mendel was silent.
After a while Rabbi Bunam said: “This is what I’ll do. Our sages say: ‘If a disciple is banished, his teachers are banished together with him.’ Well then, I shall say: ‘Bring me my teachers, the Seer of Lublin and the holy Yehudi!”’
Then Mendel answered: “This cannot of course come up as far as you are concerned,” he said, “but knowing it can be of great use to me.”
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A hasid came to the rabbi of Kotzk. “Rabbi,” he complained, “I keep brooding, and don’t seem to be able to stop.”
“What do you brood about?” asked the rabbi.
“I keep brooding about whether there really is a judgment and a judge.”
“What does it matter to you?”
“Rabbi! If there is no judgment and no judge, then what does all creation mean?”
“What does that matter to you?”
“Rabbi! If there is no judgment and no judge, then what do the words of the Torah mean?”
‘What does that matter to you?”
“Rabbi! ‘What does it matter to me?’ What does the rabbi think? What else could matter to me?”
“Well, if it matters to you as much as all that,” said the rabbi of Kotzk, “then you are a good Jew after all—and it is quite all right for a good Jew to brood: nothing can go wrong with him.”
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A man came to the rabbi of Kotzk and told him his trouble.
“People call me a bigot,” he said. ‘What kind of an infirmity are they ascribing to me? Why a bigot? Why not a pious man?”
“A bigot,” the rabbi answered him, “converts the main issue in piety into a side issue, and a side issue into the main issue.”
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The rabbi of Kotzk called to some of his hasidim: “What is all this talk of praying ‘earnestly’! What is the meaning of to pray ‘earnestly’?”
They did not understand what he had in mind.
“Is there anything at all,” he said, “that one ought not to do earnestly?”
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It is told in the Midrash:
The ministering angels once said to God:
“You have permitted Moses to write whatever he wants to, so there is nothing to prevent him from saying to Israel: ‘I have given you the Torah”’ God replied: “This he would not do, but if he did, he would still be keeping faith with me.”
Rabbi Yitzhak of Vorki’s disciples once asked him to interpret this. He answered by telling them a parable:
A merchant wanted to go on a journey. He took on an assistant and let him work in his shop. He himself spent most of his time in the adjoining room from where he could hear what was going on next door. During the first year he sometimes heard his assistant tell a customer: “The master cannot let this go for so low a price.” The merchant did not go on his journey. In the course of the second year he occasionally heard the voice next door say: “We cannot let it go for so low a price.” He postponed his journey. But in the third year he heard his assistant say: “I can’t let this go for so low a price.” It was then that he started on his journey.
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Once Rabbi Menahem Mendel spent an entire night in the company of his hasidim. No one spoke, but all were filled with great reverence and experienced great elation. Finally the rabbi said: “Well for the Jew who knows that the meaning of ‘One’ is one!”
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Soon after the death of a zaddik who was a friend of the rabbi of Vorki, one of his hasidim, who had been present at the death, came to Rabbi Mendel and told him about it.
“How was it?” asked Rabbi Mendel.
‘Very beautiful,” said the hasid. “It was as though he went from one room into the next.”
“From one room to the next?” said Rabbi Mendel. “No, from one corner into another comer.
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The rabbi of Ger told this story:
As a child I did not want to study grammar, for I thought it was just a subject like many others. But later I devoted myself to it because I realized that the secrets of the Torah depend upon it.
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Rabbi Hanokh said: “The other nations too believe that there are two worlds. They too say: ‘In the other world.’ The difference is this: They think that the two are separate and severed, but Israel professes that the two worlds are essentially one, and shall, indeed, become one.”
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