It is now many years since I first saw the Baal Shem, and as many
since I laid him in his grave, yet every word he spake to me is
treasured up in my heart as gold, yea, as fine gold. But the hand of
age is heavy upon me, and lest I may not live to complete even this
briefer story, I shall set down here but the rough impression of his
doctrine left in my mind, hoping to devote a separate volume to these
conversations with my divine Master. And this is the more necessary,
as I said, since every day the delusions and impostures of those who
use his name multiply and grow ranker. Even in his own day, the
Master's doctrine was already, as you will have seen, sufficiently
distorted by souls smaller than his own, and by the refraction of
distance--for how should a true image of him pass from town to town,
by forest and mountain, throughout all that vast empire? The Master's
life alone made clear to me what I had failed to gather from his
followers. Just as their delirious dancings and shrieks and spasms
were abortive attempts to produce his prayer-ecstasy, so in all things
did they but caricature him. But now that he is dead, and these
extravagances are no longer to be checked by his living example, so
monstrous are the deeds wrought and the things taught in his name,
that though the Chassidim he founded are become--despite every
persecution by the orthodox Jews, despite the scourging of their
bodies and the setting of them in the stocks, despite the
excommunication of our order and the closing of our synagogues, and
the burning of our books--a mighty sect throughout the length and the
breadth of Central Europe, yet have I little pleasure in them, little
joy in the spread of the teaching to which I devoted my life. And
sometimes--now that my Master's face no longer shines consolingly
upon me, save in dream and memory--I dare to wonder if the world is
better for his having lived. And indeed at times I find myself
sympathizing with our chief persecutor, the saintly and learned Wilna
Gaon.
And first, since there are now, alas! followers of his who in their
perverted straining after simplicity of existence wander about naked
in the streets, and even attend to the wants of nature in public, let
me testify that though the Master considered the body and all its
functions holy, yet did he give no countenance to such exaggerations;
and though in his love for the sun and the water and bodily purity--to
him a celestial symbol--he often bathed in retired streams, yet was he
ever clad becomingly in public; and though he regarded not money, yet
did he, when necessary, strive to earn it by work, not lolling about
smoking and vaunting his Perfection, pretending to be meditating upon
God, while others span and toiled for him.
For in his work too, my Master lived in the hourly presence of God;
and of the patriarchs and the prophets, the great men of Israel, the
Tanaim and the Amoraim, and all who had sought to bring God's Kingdom
upon earth, that God and Creation, Heaven and Earth, might be at one,
and the Messiah might come and the divine peace fall upon all the
world. And when he prayed and wept for the sins of his people, his
spirit ascended to the celestial spheres and held converse with the
holy ones, but this did not puff him up with vanity as it doth those
who profess to-day to make soul-ascensions, an experience of which I
for my own part, alas! have never yet been deemed worthy. For when he
returned to earth the Baal Shem conducted himself always like a simple
man who had never left his native hamlet, whereas these heavenly
travellers feign to despise this lower world, nay, some in their
conceit and arrogance lose their wits and give out that they have
already been translated and are no longer mortal. My Master did,
indeed, hope to be translated in his lifetime like Elijah, for he once
said to me, weeping--'twas after we returned from his wife's
funeral--"Now that my wife is dead I shall die too. Such a saint might
have carried me with her to Heaven. She followed me unquestioningly
into the woods, lived without society, summer and winter, endured pain
and labor for me, and but for her faith in me I should have achieved
naught." No man reverenced womankind more than the Master; in this, as
in so much, his life became a model to mine, and his dear daughter
profited by the lesson her father had taught me. We err grievously in
disesteeming our women: they should be our comrades not our slaves,
and our soul-ascensions--to speak figuratively--should be made in
their loving companionship.
My Master believed that the breath of God vivified the universe,
renewing daily the work of creation, and that hence the world of
everyday was as inspired as the Torah, the one throwing light on the
other. The written Law must be interpreted in every age in accordance
with the ruling attribute of God--for God governs in every age by a
different attribute, sometimes by His Love, sometimes by His Power,
sometimes by His Beauty. "It is not the number of ordinances that we
obey that brings us into union with God," said the Master; "one
commandment fulfilled in and through love of Him is as effective as
all." But this did not mean that the other commandments were to be
disregarded, as some have deduced; nor that one commandment should be
made the centre of life, as has been done by others. For, though the
Zaddik, who gave his life to helping his neighbor's or his enemy's ass
lying under its burden, as enjoined in Exodus xxiii. 5, was not
unworthy of admiration--indeed he was my own disciple, and desired
thus to commemorate the circumstances of my first meeting with the
Baal Shem,--yet he who made it his speciality never to tell the
smallest falsehood was led into greater sin. For when his fame was so
bruited that it reached even the Government officers, they, suspecting
the Jews of the town of smuggling, said they would withdraw the charge
if the Saint would declare his brethren innocent. Whereupon he prayed
to God to save him from his dilemma by sending him death, and lo! when
the men came to fetch him to the law-court, they found him dead. But a
true follower of the Master should have been willing to testify for
truth's sake even against his brethren, and in my humble judgment his
death was not a deliverance, but a punishment from on high.
Had, moreover, the Saint practised the Humility--which my Master put as
the first of the three cardinal virtues--he would not have deemed it so
fatal to tell a lie once; for who can doubt there was in him more
spiritual pride in his own record than pure love of truth? And had he
practised the second of the three cardinal virtues--Cheerfulness--he
would have known that God can redeem a man even from the sin of lying.
And had he practised the third--Enkindlement--he would never have
narrowed himself to one commandment, and that a negative one--not to
lie. For where there is a living flame in the heart, it spreads to all
the members.
"Service is its own reward, its own joy," said the Baal Shem. "No man
should bend his mind on _not_ doing sin: his day should be too full of
joyous service." The Messianic Age would be, my Master taught, when
every man did what was right and just of mere natural impulse, not
even remembering that he was doing right, still less being uplifted on
that account, for no man is proud because he walks or sleeps. Then
would Righteousness be incarnate in the world, and the devil finally
defeated, and every man would be able to make celestial unions and
soul-ascensions.
Many sufferings did the Baal Shem endure in the years that I was with
him. Penury and persecution were often his portion, and how his wife's
death wounded him I have already intimated. But it was the revival of
the Sabbatian heresy by Jacob Frank that caused him the severest
perturbation. This Frank, who was by turns a Turk, a Jew, and a
Catholic, played the rôle of successor of Zevi, as Messiah, ordered
his followers to address him as the Holy Lord, and, later, paraded his
beautiful daughter, Eve, as the female Godhead. Much of what my
grandfather had told me of the first Pretender was repeated, save that
as the first had made alliance with the Mohammedans, so the second
coquetted with the Christians. Hence those public disputations,
fostered by the Christians, in which the Frankists did battle with the
Talmudists, and being accredited the victors, exulted in seeing the
sacred books of the Rabbis confiscated. When a thousand copies of the
Talmud were thrown into a great pit at Kammieniec, and burned by the
hangman, the Baal Shem shed tears, and joined in the fast-day for the
burning of the Torah. For despite his detestation of the devil's
knots, he held that the Talmud represented the oral law which
expressed the continuous inspiration of the leaders of Israel, and
that to rely on the Bible alone was to worship the mummy of religion.
Nor did he grieve less over the verbal tournament of the Talmudists
and Frankists in the Cathedral of Lemberg, when the Polish nobility
and burghers bought entrance tickets at high prices. "The devil, not
God, is served by religious disputations," said the Master. And when
at last the Frankists were baptized in their thousands, and their
Messiah in pompous Turkish robes paraded the town in a chariot drawn
by six horses, and surrounded by Turkish guards, the Baal Shem was
more pleased than grieved at this ending. When these Jewish Catholics,
however, came to grief, and, on the incarceration of Frank by the
Polish Inquisition, were reduced to asking alms at church-doors, the
Baal Shem was alone in refusing to taunt them for still gazing
longingly towards "the gate of Rome," as they mystically called the
convent of Czenstochow, in which Frank lay imprisoned. And when their
enemies said they had met with their desert, the Baal Shem said:
"There is no sphere in Heaven where the soul remains a shorter time
than in the sphere of merit, there is none where it abides longer than
in the sphere of love." Much also in these troublous times did the
Baal Shem suffer from his sympathy with the sufferings of Poland, in
its fratricidal war, when the Cossacks hung up together a nobleman, a
Jew, a monk, and a dog, with the inscription: "All are equal."
Although these Cossacks, and later on the Turks, who, in the guise of
friends of Poland, turned the Southern provinces into deserts, rather
helped than hindered the cause of his followers by diverting their
persecutors, the Baal Shem palpitated with pity for all--dogs, monks,
noblemen, and Jews. But, howsoever he suffered, the serene cheerful
faith on which these were but dark shadows, never ceased altogether to
shine in his face. Even on his death-bed his three cardinal virtues
were not absent. For no man could face the Angel of Death more
cheerfully, or anticipate more glowingly the absorption into the
Divine, and as for Humility, "O Vanity! vanity!" were his dying words;
"even in this hour of death thou darest approach me with thy
temptations. 'Bethink thee, Israel, what a grand funeral procession
will be thine because thou hast been so wise and good,' O Vanity,
vanity, beshrew thee."
Now although I was his son-in-law, and was with him in this last
hour, it is known of all men that not I, but Rabbi Baer, was appointed
by him to be his successor. For although my acquaintance with the Baal
Shem did not tend to increase my admiration for his chief disciple, I
never expressed my full mind on the subject to the Master, for he had
early enjoined on me that the obverse side of the virtue of Humility
is to think highly of one's fellow-man. "He who loves the Father, God,
will also love the children."
But, inasmuch as he abhorred profitless learning, and all study for
study's sake that does not lead to the infinite light, I did venture
to ask him why he had allowed Baer, the Scholar, to go about as his
lieutenant and found communities in his name.
"Because," he said with beautiful simplicity, "I saw that I had sinned
in making ignorance synonymous with virtue. There are good men even
among the learned--men whose hearts are uncorrupted by their brains.
Baer was such a one, and since he had great repute among the learned I
saw that the learned who would not listen to a simple man would listen
to him."
Now, before I say aught else on this point, let this saying of the
Master serve to rebuke his graceless followers who despise the learned
while they themselves have not even holiness, and who boast of their
ignorance as though it guaranteed illumination; but as to Rabbi Baer I
will boldly say that it would have been better for the world and the
Baal Shem's teachings had I been appointed to hand them down. For Baer
made of the Master's living impulse a code and a creed which grew
rigid and dead. And he organized his followers by external
signs--noisy praying, ablutions, white Sabbath robes, and so forth--so
that the spirit died and the symbols remained, and now of the tens of
thousands who call themselves Chassidim and pray the prayers and
perform the ceremonies and wear the robes, there are not ten that
have the faintest notion of the Master's teaching. For spirit is
volatile and flies away, but symbol is solid and is handed down
religiously from generation to generation. But the greatest abuse has
come from the doctrine of the Zaddik. Perhaps the logic of Baer is
sound, that if God, as the Master taught, is in all things, then is
there so much of Him in certain chosen men that they are themselves
divine. I do not doubt that the Master himself was akin to divinity,
for though he did not profess to perform miracles, pretending that
such healing as he wrought was by virtue of his knowledge of herbs and
simples, and saying jestingly that the Angel of Healing goes with the
good physician, nor ever admitting to me that he had done battle with
demons and magicians save figuratively; yet was there in him a strange
power, which is not given to men, of soothing and redeeming by his
mere touch, so that, laid upon the brow--as I can personally
testify--his hands would cure headache and drive out ill-humors. And I
will even believe that there was of this divinity in Rabbi Baer. But
whereas the Baal Shem veiled his divinity in his manhood, Baer strove
to veil his manhood in his divinity, and to eke out his power by arts
and policies, the better to influence men and govern them, and gain of
their gold for his further operations. Yet the lesson of his history
to me is, that if Truth is not great enough to prevail alone, she
shall not prevail by aid of cunning. For finally there will come men
who will manifest the cunning without the Truth. So at least it has
been here. First the Baal Shem, the pure Zaddik, then Rabbi Baer, the
worldly Zaddik, and then a host of Zaddikim, many of them having only
the outward show of Sainthood. For since our otherwise great sect is
split up into a thousand little sects, each boasting its own
Zaddik--superior to all the others, the only true Intermediary
between God and Man, the sole source of blessing and fount of
Grace--and each lodging him in a palace (to which they make
pilgrimages at the Festivals as of yore to the Temple) and paying him
tribute of gold and treasure; it is palpable that these sorry Saints
have themselves brought about these divisions for their greater glory
and profit. And I weep the more over this spoliation of my Chassidim,
because there is so much perverted goodness among them, so much
self-sacrifice for one another in distress, and such faithful
obedience to the Zaddik, who everywhere monopolizes the service and
the worship which should be given to God. Alas! that a movement which
began with such pure aspiration, which was to the souls of me and so
many other young students as the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land, that a doctrine which opened out to young Israel such spiritual
vistas and transcendent splendors of the Godhead, should end in such
delusions and distortions.
Woe is me! Is it always to be thus with Israel? Are we to struggle out
of one slough only to sink into another? But these doubts dishonor the
Master. Let me be humbler in judging others, cheerfuller in looking
out upon the future, more enkindling towards the young men who are
growing up around me, and who may yet pass on the torch of the Master.
For them let me recall the many souls he touched to purer flame; let
me tell them of those who gave up posts and dignities to spread his
gospel and endured hunger and scorn. And let me not forget to mention
Rabbi Lemuel, the lover of justice, who once when his wife set out for
the Judgment House in a cause against her maidservant set out with her
too.
"I need you not to speak for me," she said, in ill-humor; "I can plead
my own cause."
"Nay, it is not for thee I go to speak," he answered mildly; "it is
the cause of thy servant I go to plead--she who hath none to defend
her." And, bursting into tears, he repeated the verse of Job: "If I
did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they
contended with me, what shall I do when God riseth up?"
These and many such things, both of learned men and of simple, I hope
yet to chronicle for the youths of Israel. But above all let the
memory of the Master himself be to them a melody and a blessing: he
whose life taught me to understand that the greatest man is not he who
dwells in the purple, amid palaces and courtiers, hedged and guarded,
and magnified by illusive pomp, but he who, talking cheerfully with
his fellows in the market-place, humble as though he were
unworshipped, and poor as though he were unregarded, is divinely
enkindled, so that a light shines from him whereby men recognize the
visible presence of God.