This new paperback edition brings together volumes one and two of Buber's classic work Takes of the Hasidim, with a new foreword by Chaim Potok. Martin Buber devoted forty years of his life to collecting and retelling the legends of Hasidim. "Nowhere in the last centuries," wrote Buber in Hasidim and Modern Man, "has the soul-force of Judaism so manifested itself as in Hasidim... Without an iota being altered in the law, in the ritual, in the traditional life-norms, the long-accustomed arose in a fresh light and meaning."
These marvelous tales—terse, vigorous, often cryptic—are the true texts of Hasidim. The hasidic masters, of whom these tales are told, are full-bodied personalities, yet their lives seem almost symbolic. Through them is expressed the intensity and holy joy whereby God becomes visible in everything.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
Language Notes
Original Language: German
From the Inside Flap
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Author
Customer Reviews
This classic source book has gone through numerous editions and reprints since it first came out back in the 1940's. The current Schocken edition, with both volumes together in one binding, is a very good deal -- I paid a whole lot more for my two-volume set three decades ago.
Although Buber himself was not a Hasid (he was an existentialist philosopher who developed an interest in Hasidism later in life), he does a good job of conveying the spirit of these stories. In my opinion, this collection is a must-have for anybody telling Hasidic stories.
The book is not so much a collection of "tales" in the sense of literary stories or fairy tales, as it is a collection of personal anecdotes about the lives of various Hasidic masters. Some of the tales are fully-developed narratives, but others are terse fragments that remind the reader of Zen koans, those "sound of one hand clapping" riddles which one can meditate upon for years before the great "Aha!" hits and you suddenly "get it."
My only complaint is that the English translation leaves much to be desired in many places, so that, if one is not already familiar with Hasidism, the point of some of the stories can easily be misunderstood. Part of this is due to Buber's original renditions into German, where his search for the right literary German word sometimes confused the Jewish meanings because there simply are no exact equivalents. (As, for example, rendering the verb "to mikveh" -- immerse oneself in a pool of water for ritual purification -- as "tauchen" (baptism).
Unfortunately, some of these types of linguistic errors got carried over into the English translation. I would really like to see a new translation done by a Hasid who knows modern English. But until then, this version remains an excellent sourcebook for traditional Hasidic tales.
During the twentieth century, Martin Buber undertook the task of retelling the legends of the Ba'al Shem Tov. Although Buber's retelling of these Hasidic folktales has been beneficial in allowing the reader to focus on finding the seed of relevancy behind the historical context, they remain only one scholar's interpretation of the folktales and therefore, not a truly objective work.
In assessing these folktales we must ask ourselves if one should strive to preserve original intent at the cost of modern accessibility or whether one should allow an historical text to evolve and change with the times.
Although Buber certainly performed a service by bringing translations and interpretations of Hasidic tales to modern readers, the problem with these tales is that, when reading them, one is inclined to forget that Buber is projecting his own opinions on the historical reality of the folktales, an historical reality that others might interpret in a very different light. Without examining primary source documents, we might be inclined to accept all that Buber says as true.
Buber, in his translations, seems to intentionally manipulate these primary source documents, documents to which most of us have no access, in order to align them to his own beliefs regarding Hasidim. Thus, the spiritual message Buber reads into these folktales is far too closely tied to his own philosophy of religious anarchism and existentialism.
This raises great problems for those who are not aware of Buber's own biases as a scholar as well as misleading the more casual reader. Buber stressed the legends of Hasidim as our main source of understanding while greatly ignoring the large body of theoretical writings. He reasoned that the theoretical writings were "far too dependent on the older Kabbalistic literature to be regarded as genuinely Hasidic."
The legends and folktales presented in Tales of the Hasidim are certainly extremely interesting and do possess general human interest, however, if we truly want to know what they meant in their original context we would still have to revert to the primary sources which Buber pushes aside as merely secondary.
Despite Buber's obvious biases, he did endeavor to transform the Hasidic tradition from something stultifying to something rewarding, even if in doing so he ended up diluting parts of this tradition in order to make it more palatable to modern readers.
This presentation has, however, stood the test of time, and perhaps "standing the test of time" is really the greatest thing that can be asked for in terms of the transmission of a tradition. If we only keep in mind the fact that Buber's tales are interpretations only and are not necessarily representative of historical Hasidim, his folktales become interesting and charming not only to the literary community but also to anyone interested in studying a modern version of the Hasidic message.
History has astonished us. Hasidic courts of one kind or another are common in America and Israel and may even be encountered in Europe. It is a reality, not just a historical memory.
This reality in its folkloric aspect may be found, at least for the Hebrewless reader, in Jerome Mintz' "Legends of the Hasidim : an introduction to Hasidic culture and oral tradition in the New World", published by the University of Chicago Press. Unlike Buber, Mintz is a professional folklorist and not only presents the tales in their veritable form but fully contextualizes them by informant, court, place and time, with other cultural information supplied as appropriate.
Readers of Mintz' book will experience Hasidic folklore in its present variety and become acquainted with the bigotry, ignorance, viciousness and pomposity found among the Hasidim just as they are in most living religions. Folklore, like religion, is not just a vehicle for a particular individual's view of the universe but an intimate part of some real sociology, lived by some real people in some real context. Mintz gives us a picture of Khasiduth which the great Buber in his goodness and humanity could not.
Full of extremely compact yet deeply valuable wisdom like the following 3 examples:
The... Read more
- Hasidism and Modern Man by Martin Buber on 5 pages
- Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism by Gershom Scholem on page 326, page 334, and page 340
- Studies in Judaism: First Series (Jewish Studies Classics 3) by Solomon Schechter on page 340
- The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism by Martin Buber in Front Matter
- Tales of Rabbi Nachman by Martin Buber in Back Matter
See all 16 books this book cites
- Mara's Stories: Glimmers in the Darkness by Gary Schmidt on 10 pages
- 39 Microlectures: In Proximity of Performance by Matthew Goulish on 8 pages
- Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue by Maurice S. Friedman on 6 pages
- The Oracle of Kabbalah: Mystical Teachings of the Hebrew Letters by Richard Seidman on 6 pages
- Miraculous Living: A Guided Journey in Kabbalah Through the Ten Gates of the Tree of Life by Shoni Labowitz on 4 pages
See all 100 books citing this book
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
