The great zaddikim (zaddik: the completely righteous one) of the Hasidic movement, whose acts and sayings are here retold by a noted modern Jewish scholar, were the last religious heroes of the Judaism of Eastern Europe. Through the sheer force of personal example, they were able to rescue the masses of Ashkenazim from the disillusionment created by the collapse of the Sabbatian Messianic movement of the 17th century and build a new confidence in religion as the full and sufficient expression of Jewish life.
The stories, anecdotes, and sayings below conclude the selections from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim which began in our last issue. Dr. Buber’s book, of which we have been able to give only the briefest glimpse, will be published in March of this year by Schocken Books of New York, and it is by Schocken’s permission that we publish these excerpts.
Tales of the Hasidim, of which Dr. Buber is in a real sense the author as well as the compiler, represents the latest fruits of his forty years’ work as student and interpreter of the Hasidic movement. It is to Martin Buber’s talent and industry that we owe much of our understanding of a precious phenomenon of the Jewish past.—Ed.
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The Baal Shem said: “I owe everything to the bath. To immerse oneself is better than to mortify the flesh. Mortifying the flesh weakens the strength you need for devotions and teaching, the bath of immersion heightens this strength.”
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It is told: When Rabbi Pinhas had become known, and more and more Hasidim came to him with their concerns, he was alarmed to see how much all this diverted him from the service of God and the study of the Torah. The only solution he could think of was that people must stop bringing their problems to him—and his prayer was granted. From that time on, he did not live with his fellow men—except when he prayed with the congregation—but kept himself apart and devoted himself solely to the service of his Lord.
When the Feast of Tabernacles approached, he had to let a non-Jew make his holiday booth, for the Jews refused to help him. Since he lacked the proper tools, he sent his wife to borrow them from a neighbor, but it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could get what was needed. When he was in the House of Study on the evening of the feast, he asked some wayfarers to dine with him, as he did every year, but he was so thoroughly hated far and wide that no one would accept his invitation and he had to go home alone. When he had said the words bidding the holy guests, the patriarchs, to enter the booth that evening, he saw our Father Abraham standing outside like someone who has come to a house he is accustomed to visit, and only just sees that it is not the house he thought, and pauses in surprise. “What wrong have I done?” Rabbi Pinhas cried.
“It is not my custom to enter a house where no wayfarers have come as guests,” our Father Abraham replied.
From then on, Rabbi Pinhas prayed he might find favor in the eyes of his fellow men, and again his prayer was granted.
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This is what Rabbi Aaron of Karlin said concerning the words in the Scriptures: “. . . a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven”—”If a man of Israel has himself firmly in hand, and stands solidly on the earth, then his head reaches up to heaven.”
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A Disciple tells: Once, when my teacher Rabbi Yehiel Mikhal was in his prayer room in Brody, he heard a man reciting the six hundred and thirteen commandments. He said jestingly: “Why are you reciting the commandments? They were given to do, not to recite!” I asked him what he meant by this, whether we are not supposed to teach and learn the commandments too. “In the case of every commandment,” he said, “we should try to discover how it can be done. Let us begin with the first of all commandments: ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ Why do you think two verbs are used here instead of one?” I was silent because I was ashamed to speak, but when he repeated his question, I said: “Rashi interprets it in this way: If it only said ‘be fruitful,’ we might think that one man should always beget only one child.” “But then,” he objected, “it would be enough to say merely: ‘multiply.’”
The son of Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol, who was also saying his prayers there, pointed out that in another passage, it is written: “And I will . . . make you fruitful and multiply you,” that here also two verbs were used.
“This too is difficult,” said Rabbi Mikhal and again put his question to me. I mentioned that Rashi refers the words “and will multiply you” to the upright posture which distinguishes man from animals.
“But what has it to do with upright posture?” asked the rabbi. I did not know what to say. He said: “This is the way Rabbi Mendel of Primishlan expounded the verse in the Mishnah: ‘He who rides the ass shall dismount and pray,’ that is, ‘he who masters the animal within him, need not suppress it, since—in an eternal prayer—he is devoted and consecrated to God in all that he does, and has become freed of his body.’ Thus man can perform bodily acts in this world. He can cohabit, and though—seen from the outside—his movements may be those of an animal, within he is free as an angel, for in what he does, he is devoted and consecrated to God. And this is what is meant by the commandment: ‘Be fruitful,’ not like animals—but ‘multiply,’ and that means be more than they! Do not walk bent over, but upright, and cling to God as the bough clings to the root, and consecrate your cohabitation to him. This is the will of God, not only to make us fruitful, but to multiply our powers.”
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Once, on the Day of Atonement, the Rabbi of Berditchev was praying in the synagogue of Lwow. In the middle of the Additional Prayer, he suddenly stopped, and the people heard him say in Polish, in a threatening voice: “I’ll show you. . . .”
During the evening meal, the son of the Rabbi of Lwow said to him of Berditchev: “I shall not take the liberty of criticizing your manner of praying. But may I ask you one thing: How could you interrupt your prayer, and with Polish words at that?”
The rabbi of Berditchev replied: “I managed to down my other enemies, but this was the only way I could get the better of the prince-demon of Poland.”
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Every year on the Day of Atonement a woman came to Berditchev to pray with the congregation of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak. Once she was delayed, and when she reached the House of Prayer night had already fallen. The woman was vexed and sorrowful for she was certain the Evening Service must be over. But the rabbi had not even begun. He had waited for the woman to come—and his astonished congregation with him. When she grew aware that he had not yet recited “All Vows,” she was filled with great joy and said to God: “Lord of the world, what shall I wish you in return for the good you have vouchsafed me! I wish you may have as much joy of your children as you have just now granted me!”
Then—even while she was speaking—an hour replete with the grace of God came upon the world.
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Rabbi Levi Yitzhak once came to an inn where many merchants were stopping on the way to market their wares. The place was far from Berditchev, and so no one knew the zaddik. In the early morning the guests wanted to pray, but since there was only a single pair of phylacteries in the whole house, one after another put them on and rattled off his prayer and handed them on to the next. When they had all prayed, the rabbi called the young men to him, saying that he wanted to ask them something. When they had come close, he looked gravely into their faces and said: “Ma-ma-ma, va-va-va.”
“What do you mean?” cried the young men, but he only repeated the same meaningless syllables. Then they took him for a fool.
But now he said: “How is it you do not understand this language which you yourselves have just used in speaking to God?”
For a moment the young men were taken aback and stood silent. Then one of them said: “Have you never seen a child in the cradle, who does not yet know how to put sounds together into words? Have you not heard him make babbling sounds, such as ‘ma-ma-ma, va-va-va?’ All the sages and scholars in the world cannot understand him, but the moment his mother comes, she knows exactly what he means.”
When the rabbi heard this answer, he began to dance for joy. And from that time on, whenever on the Days of Awe he spoke to God in his own fashion in the midst of prayer, he never failed to tell this answer to him.
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Rabbi Levi Yitzhak discovered that the girls who kneaded the dough for the unleavened bread drudged from early morning until late at night. Then he cried aloud to the congregation gathered in the House of Prayer: ‘Those who hate Israel accuse us of baking the unleavened bread with the blood of Christians. But no, we bake it with the blood of Jews!”
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At the close of the Day of Atonement, the Rabbi of Berditchev said to one of his Hasidim: “I know what you prayed for this day! On the eve, you begged God to give you the thousand rubles which you need in order to live and usually earn in the course of a year, all at once, at the beginning of the year, so that the toil and trouble of business may not distract you from learning and prayer. But in the morning you thought better of it and decided that if you had the thousand rubles all at once, you would probably launch a new and bigger business enterprise which would probably take up even more of your time. And so you begged to receive half the amount every half year. And before the Closing Prayer, this too seemed precarious to you, and you expressed the wish for quarterly installments so you might learn and pray quite undisturbed. But what makes you think that your learning and praying is needed in Heaven? Perhaps what is needed there is that you toil and rack your brains.”
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Rabbi Levi Yitzhak’s second name was Derbarmdiger, “Merciful,” and by this name, which was, however, not his father’s, he was known to the authorities and inscribed in their books. And this was how it happened. The king issued a decree that everyone must add to his name a second name, and since the Jews were slow to obey, the Sheriff of Berditchev went from house to house to enforce the new law. When he crossed Rabbi Levi Yitzhak’s threshold and mumbled his question by rote, the zaddik looked at him as one human being looks at another—and ignoring the question—said: “Endeavor to imitate the quality of God. As he is merciful, so you too shall be merciful.” But the sheriff only pulled out his list and noted down: “First name, Levi Yitzhak; second name, Merciful.”
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Avery learned man who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev—one of those who boasted of being enlightened—looked him up in order to debate with him, as he was in the habit of doing with others, and refute his old-fashioned proofs for the truth of his faith. When he entered the zaddik’s room, he saw him walking up and down, a book in his hand, immersed in ecstatic thought. The rabbi took no notice of his visitor. After a time, however, he stopped, gave him a brief glance, and said: “But perhaps it is true after all!”
In vain did the learned man try to rally his self-confidence. His knees shook, for the zaddik was terrible to behold, and his simple words were terrible to hear. But now Rabbi Levi Yitzhak turned to him and calmly addressed him: “My son, the great Torah scholars with whom you debated wasted their words on you. When you left them you only laughed at what they had said. They could not set God and his kingdom on the table before you, and I cannot do this either. But, my son, only think! Perhaps it is true. Perhaps it is true after all!” The enlightened man made the utmost effort to reply, but the terrible “perhaps” beat on his ears again and again and broke down his resistance.
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Zusya once asked his brother, wise Rabbi Elimelekh: “Dear brother, in the Scriptures we read that the souls of all men were comprised in Adam. So we too must have been present when he ate the apple. I do not understand how I could have let him eat it! And how could you have let him eat it?”
Elimelekh replied: “We had to, just as all had to. For had he not eaten, the poison of the snake would have remained within him in all eternity. He would always have thought: ‘All I need do is eat of this tree, and I shall be as God—all I need do is eat of this tree, and I shall be as God.’”
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Whenever Zusya met a Jewish boy, he blessed him with the words: “Be healthy and strong as a goy.”
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Zusya was once a guest in the house of the Rabbi of Neskhizh. Shortly after midnight, the host heard sounds coming from his guest’s room, so he went to the door and listened. Zusya was running back and forth in the room, saying: “Lord of the world, I love you! But what is there for me to do? I can’t do anything.” And then he started running back and forth again, repeating the same thing, until suddenly he bethought himself and cried: “Why, I know how to whistle, so I shall whistle something for you.” But when he began to whistle, the Rabbi of Neskhizh grew frightened.
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This is Rabbi Zusya’s comment on the passage in the Sayings of the Fathers: “He who commits one transgression has got himself one accuser.” “Every sin begets an accusing angel. But I have never seen a complete angel spring from the sin of a devout man of Israel. Sometimes he lacks a head, sometimes his body is crippled. For when a man of Israel believes in God, believes in him even while he is sinning, his heart aches, and what he does, he does not do with all his will, and so the angel never emerges complete.”
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Rabbi Zusya once passed a meadow where a swineherd in the midst of his flock was playing a song on a willow-flute. He came close and listened until he had learned it and could take it away with him. In this way, the song of David, the shepherd boy, was freed from its long captivity.
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When Rabbi Elimelekh said the Prayer of Sanctification on the Sabbath, he occasionally took out his watch and looked at it. For in that hour, his soul threatened to dissolve in bliss, and so he looked at his watch in order to steady himself in time and the world.
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A man once asked the rav in jest: “Will the Messiah be a Hasid or a mitnaged?” He answered: “I think, a mitnaged, for if he were a Hasid, the mitnagdim would not believe in him, but the hasidim will believe in him no matter what he is.”
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It is told: When Rabbi Shelomo drank tea or coffee, it was his custom to take a piece of sugar and hold it in his hand the entire time he was drinking. Once his son asked him: “Father, why do you do that? If you need sugar, put it in your mouth, but if you do not need it, why hold it in your hand?”
When he had emptied his cup, the rabbi gave the piece of sugar he had been holding to his son and said: “Taste it.” The son put it in his mouth and was very much astonished, for there was no sweetness at all left in it.
Later, when the son told this story, he said: “A man, in whom everything is unified, can taste with his hand as if with his tongue.”
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The cities of Pinsk and Karlin lie close to each other, the one on the north, the other on the south bank of a river. When Rabbi Shelomo was a poor young man who taught little children in Karlin, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, the later Rabbi of Berditchev, was the Rav of Pinsk. One day he told his servant to go to Karlin and look for a man by the name of Shelomo, son of Yuta. He was to ask him to come to Pinsk. The servant inquired around for a long time. Finally, at the edge of the town, in a ramshackle little house, he found the melammed Shelomo and gave him his message. “I shall get there in time,” said Rabbi Shelomo.
When he crossed Rabbi Levi Yitzhak’s threshold a few hours later, the rav rose and said “Blessed be he that comes,” and drew up a chair for his guest himself. For an hour they sat opposite each other, with glowing faces, with intense eyes—in silence. Then they rose and laughed aloud. “What can they be laughing about?” thought the servant who had been listening at the door. And Rabbi Shelomo made his farewells.
But the Hasidim said that through the meeting of these two, the exile, which had been threatening the Jews of that region, had been averted, and that this was the cause of their joyful laughter.
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Rabbi Shelomo was on a journey in the company of one of his disciples. On the way, they stopped at an inn and sat down at a table. Then the rabbi gave orders to warm mead for him, for he liked his mead warm. In the meantime, soldiers arrived, and when they saw Jews sitting at the table, they told them to get up in loud, angry tones. “Is the mead warm yet?” the rabbi asked the man who served drinks. At that the soldiers struck the table with their fists and shouted: “Off with you, or else. . . !” The rabbi only said: “Isn’t it warm yet?” The leader of the soldiers drew his sword from the scabbard and put the blade to the maggid’s throat. “Because, you know, it mustn’t get really hot!” said Rabbi Shelomo. Then the soldiers left the inn.
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When the rabbi was already living in Ludmir, the Russians put down a revolt of the Poles in that region and pursued the defeated rebels right into the town. The Russian commander gave his men permission to loot at will for two hours. It was the day before the Feast of the Revelation which, in that year, fell on a Sabbath. The Jews were gathered in the House of Prayer. Rabbi Shelomo was praying, and in such ecstasy that he heard and saw nothing that went on around him. Just then a tall cossack came limping along, went up to the window, looked in, and pointed his gun. In a ringing voice, the rabbi was saying the words, “for thine, O Lord, is the kingdom,” when his little grandson, who was standing beside him, timidly tugged at his coat, and he awoke from his ecstasy. But the bullet had already struck him in the side. “Why did you fetch me down?” he asked. When they brought him to his house and laid him down, he had them open the Book of Splendor at a certain passage and prop it up in front of him while they bound up his wound. It stayed there, open, before his eyes until the following Wednesday, when he died.
Now, it is said that the name of that limping cossack was Armilus. And that is the name of the fiend who, according to the old tradition, is to kill the Messiah, son of Joseph.
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A woman came to Rabbi Israel, the maggid of Koznitz, and told him, with many tears, that she had been married a dozen years and still had not borne a son. “What are you willing to do about it?” he asked her. She did not know what to say.
“My mother,” so the maggid told her, “was aging and still had no child. Then she heard that the holy Baal Shem was stopping over in Apt in the course of a journey. She hurried to his inn and begged him to pray she might bear a son. What are you willing to do about it?” he asked. ‘My husband is a poor bookbinder,’ she replied, ‘but I do have one fine thing that I shall give to the rabbi.’ She went home as fast as she could and fetched her good cape, her ‘Katinka,’ which was carefully stowed away in a chest. But when she returned to the inn with it, she heard that the Baal Shem had already left for Mezbizh. She immediately set out after him and since she had no money to ride, she walked from town to town with her ‘Katinka’ until she came to Mezbizh. The Baal Shem took the cape and hung it on the wall. ‘It is well,’ he said. My mother walked all the way back, from town to town, until she reached Apt. A year later, I was born.”
“I too,” cried the woman, “will bring you a good cape of mine so that I may get a son.”
“That won’t work,” said the maggid. “You heard the story. My mother had no story to go by.”
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When Israel was seven years old, he studied in the Talmud School by day, but in the evening he went to the House of Study and studied on his own. The first night of Hanukah, his father did not permit him to go to the House of Study, for he suspected him of wanting to play a certain game, popular at this season, with the other boys. But since he had neither a book nor a candle at home, he promised his father to stay in the House of Study only as long as it took a three-penny candle to burn down. Now, either other candles were burning in the room, or the angels, who rejoiced in the studying of the boy, kept the three-penny candle miraculously alight—at any rate, the boy remained in the House of Study long after he was supposed to. When he finally came home, his father beat him until the blood came.
“And did you not tell your father that you were studying all that time?” they asked the maggid when he told the story many years after.
“I might have told him, of course,” he answered. “And my father would have believed me, for he knew that I never lied. But is it right to use the greatness of the Torah to save one’s own skin?”
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The rabbi of Koznitz said to God: “Lord of the world, I beg of you to redeem Israel. And if you do not want to do that, then redeem the goyim.”
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A Rich man once came to the maggid of Koznitz.
“What are you in the habit of eating?” the maggid asked.
“I am modest in my demands,” the rich man replied. “Bread and salt, and a drink of water are all I need.”
“What are you thinking of!” the rabbi reproved him. “You must eat roast meat and drink mead like all rich people.” And he did not let the man go until he had promised to do as he said. Later the Hasidim asked him the reason for this odd request.
“Not until he eats meat,” said the maggid, “will he realize that the poor man needs bread. As long as he himself eats bread, he will think the poor man can live on stones.”
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It is told that once, when the maggid of Koznitz was praying, Adam, the first man, came to him and said: “You have atoned for your share in my sin—now won’t you atone for my share in it, too?”
The Hasidim tell: When the soul of the Seer of Lublin was created, it was endowed with the power of gazing from one end of the world to the other. But when it saw the great mass of evil, it knew that it could not bear this burden and begged to be relieved of its gift. Then its power was limited to seeing everything within a radius of four miles.
In his youth, he kept his eyes closed for seven years, save during the hours of praying and learning, so that he might not see anything unseemly. This made his eyes weak and nearsighted.
When he looked at anyone’s forehead, or at his note of request, he saw to the root of his soul and beyond it to the first man. He saw whether that soul came from Abel or from Cain, saw how often, in its wanderings, it had assumed bodily shape, what had been destroyed or bettered in each incarnation, in what sin it had become entangled, and to what virtue it had ascended.
Once, when he was visiting Rabbi Mordecai of Neskhizh, they spoke of this power. The Rabbi of Lublin said: “The fact that I see in each what he has done lessens my love for Israel. And so, I beg you to do something to have this power taken from me.”
The Rabbi of Neskhizh replied: “The words in the Gemara hold for whatever Heaven decrees: ‘Our God gives, but he does not take back.’”
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In Lublin lived a great sinner. Whenever he wanted to talk to the rabbi, he readily consented and conversed with him as if with a man of integrity and one who was a close friend. Many of the Hasidim were annoyed at this, and one said to the other: “Is it possible that our rabbi, who has only to look once into a man’s face to know his life from first to last, to know the very origin of his soul, does not see that this fellow is a sinner? And if he does see it, that he considers him worthy to speak to and associate with?” Finally, they summoned up courage to go to the rabbi himself with their question. He answered them: “I know all about him as well as you. But you know how I love gayety and hate dejection. And this man is so great a sinner! Others repent the moment they have sinned, are sorry for a moment, and then return to their folly. But he knows no regrets and no doldrums, but lives in his happiness as in a tower. And it is the radiance of his happiness that overwhelms my heart.”
