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Updated: May 21, 2025
"For to that I can bear witness, seeing that I have stayed with him in a town where there is a congregation of Chassidim, which was in his hands as putty in the glazier's. For, you see, he travels from place to place to instruct his inferiors in the society. The elders of the congregations, venerable and learned men, trembled like spaniels before him.
Very soon I came into parts where the question of the Chassidim was alive and burning, and indeed into towns where it had a greater living interest than the quarrel of the amulets. And in these regions the rumor of the Baal Shem began to thicken. There was not a village of log-houses but buzzed with its own miracle.
By the force of enthusiasm for faith, it drew its adherents together into a firmly welded unit in contrast with Rabbinism, which sought the same goal by the aid of the formal law. Scenting danger, the rabbinical hierarchy declared war upon the Kabbala. Emden opposed Eibeschuetz, the Polish Sabbatians and Frankists were fought to the death, the Wilna Gaon organized a campaign against the Chassidim.
'Peace have I always, rejoined the cobbler cheerily. David looked at the happy dirty children; he had seen their like torn limb from limb. 'But have you thought of the danger of a pogrom? he said. 'I have heard whispers of it, said the cobbler. 'But we Chassidim have no fear. Our wonder-rabbi, who has power over all the spheres, will utter a word, and 'You must join a Self-Defence band.
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.
On Friday night I ate with an elder of the Chassidim, who heard of my interest in his order, but whom I could not get to understand that I was come to examine, not to accept unquestioningly.
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