Customer Reviews

Tales of the Hasidim: Book One: The Early Masters and Book Two: The Later Masters (v. 1-2)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

One of the major phases of Jewish literature is that produced by Hasidim, a sect founded in the eighteenth century by Israel ben Eliezer, also known as the Ba'al Shem Tov of Besht. After his death in 1760, one of his disciples compiled a collection of legends and folktales that had become associated with him.

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.

Martin Buber was one of the great humanists of the modern era and his extraction and retelling of a small part of the Hasidic corpus is a great poetic and ethical achievement. Readers should keep in mind, though, that in this book Buber was using traditional Ashkenazic pietism to represent a more cosmopolitan and higher reality. When he composed this book, there was every reason to believe that the Hasidim who survived the genocide perpetrated by National Socialism would fall prey to Communism or, more slowly, to secular education and one or another form of democracy. Hence sentimentality led Buber to transfigure Khasiduth into something as etherialized as Platonism or his ally Paul Tillich's Protestantism.
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.

This edition of "Tales of the Hasidim" comprises two volumes of Martin Buber's original work; the first one dedicated to the early masters and the second one to the later masters. It is incredible extensive and exhaustive (there are over 600 tales). No wonder it took the author 40 years to gather all the tales! Buber states on the introduction to this work that the tales included only represents one-tenth of the material in existence! This collection of tales is certainly an interesting source of inspiration for the readers who are embedded in Hassidism or might be a valuable source of information for those who wish to do research on this area; otherwise, the reader will most probably not be able to cope with the magnitude of this worl. Give some thought to it before making a decision.

I used to own this book over 20 years ago, and because I have been doing some work on chassidic stories based on those I have heard and read in primary sources, I purchased this work. I was surprised at how accurate the stories were, and how they have been close to the original. The only problem is that because of the age of the book, he translates many words that today are just transliterated with a glossary. For example, he uses 'son of the commandments' for 'bar mitzvah'. There are a number of cases where this problem of translation does effect the understanding of the story. However in general it is a good work.

This work has great historical importance. Buber more than any other person conveyed to the general Western even Christian culture something of the feeling and taste of 'Hasidism'. This movement which has its origins with the teachings of Israel Baal- Shem Tov ( 1700- 1760) came at a critical time in the history of the Jewish people and infused in it new spirit and hope. Buber who came from a scholarly Galician background and the discovery of the world of Hasidism opened up to him personally a whole new way of thinking and feeling about Judaism.
He is such a great writer and storyteller that he makes these tales which in themselves are moving come alive doubly.
A historic, classic collection which is also a literary treasure.

Chassidic tales - the stories of Chassidic rabbis - is the subject of scholarly study. Papers, books, and dissertations are written on the subject. Scholars identify all kinds of issues and debate them with fervor.
Why, they ask, were these stories told and why were they written down? Does the story teller's intent for the tales of the early days of the Chassidic movement differ with the intent of those that were written later? Are there stages of development in intent, in style, in how the rabbi is perceived? Do some tales, such as those of Nachman of Braslav, stand outside of any characterization of any other group of stories? How does mysticism play in these stories?
Martin Buber (1878-1965), who gathered and published this collection, was a brilliant scholar, philosopher, Bible translator, the author of the famous "I Thou" philosophy. He was the first and arguably the best of the people who collected the Chassidic stories.
Buber began to publish Chassidic tales as early as 1906. The stories in this edition were published in English for the first time in 1947. The book is a classic. It is a book of very well told tales that any scholar concerned about the history of Chassidic stories must deal with. And, what is more, much more, the book offers its readers truly pleasing, easy to read, and instructive stories, small vignettes that will surprise and delight and entertain them, Jew and non-Jew, believer and non-believer.

As someone who has taught Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) classes, I had to choose carefully what texts to recommend to my students.

"Tales of the Hasidim" was always one of the first books that I suggested that they read.

Filled with stories of the holy people of the 18th century Hasidic movement of Eastern Europe, it is a painless introduction to Jewish mysticism, ritual, prayer, and meditation. Each short tale -- most less than a page long -- contains a profound spiritual insight, under the appearance of a simple incident.

The book is not just for introductory students of Jewish mysticism. I count it as one of the most valuable books in my Jewish bookshelf. I have re-read it many times.

I have never opened the book without soon encountering an inspiring spiritual anecdote that lifted my spirits and drew me closer to Judaism.

If I could give it six stars, I would.

In translating and publishing Hasidic tales in early twentieth century Germany, Buber was attempting to present Hasidism as an untapped repository of the authentic Ashkenazic Jewish folk legacy, a bulwark against secularism. His Hasidic leaders were folk heroes who had uplifted the downtrodden and revitalized Jewish culture. He hoped that his stylized renditions of Hasidic tales, which are much more gritty in their orignal forms, would spawn a Jewish national renaissance. When sifting through tale collections, he privileged episodes that portrayed their protagonists in revolt against the elite. His Tales of the Hasidim achieved such wide currency that their portrayal was for many years accepted as historical. While we can sympathize with Buber's mission to forge a modern Jewish culture out of what appeared to be authentic Jewish folkways, much in the way that the Grimm brothers employed fairytales, Buber's neo-romantic Hasidism is historically speaking, quite distorted. Recently, more realistic and ideologically neutral studies of Hasidism have appeared which seek to capture the movement's lived experience. See, for example, "Men of Silk", by Glenn Dynner or "The Regal Way", by David Assaf.

One of the most concise and valuable books ever committed to writing.

Full of extremely compact yet deeply valuable wisdom like the following 3 examples:

The Bold Faced and the Shame Faced
==================================

Our Sages say: "The bold faced go to hell, the shame faced to paradise."

Rabbi Zusya, God's fool, expounded these words as follows.

"Whoever is bold in his holiness, may descend to hell in order to raise
what is base. He may roam about in the alleys and market-places and
need not fear evil. But he who is shame-faced, who lacks boldness,
must keep to the heights of paradise, to studying and praying. He
must beware of coming into contact with evil."

The Truth
=========

The Baal Shem said: "What does it mean, when people say that the Truth
goes over the whole world ? It means that Truth is driven out
of one place after another, and must wander on and on."

The Wicked & the Righteous
==========================

The Rabbi of Lublin said: "I love the wicked man who knows he is wicked more
then the righteous man who knows he righteous. But concerning the wicked
who consider themselves righteous, it said: 'They do not turn even on the threshold of Hell.'
For they think they are being sent to Hell to redeem the souls of others !!!"