reattaching the spark

The Baal Shem Tov. Perhaps the quintessential figure of modern Jewish history. Certainly the most fascinating. Before his time in the first half of the eighteenth century Jewish life was stuck up and constipated; none of the so-called Jewish humour that modern culture takes for granted today even existed. Life was fire and brimstone, misery and depression, all bundled together as a mark of piety and Jewish duty where themes of guilt, punishment and despair were predominant. Baal Shem Tov transformed Judaism through the use of joy as a device to repair the world, to break the exile and shatter limits. As a man of and for the people, he de-snobbed elitist Judaism, equivalent to a volcanic transformation…

It was a concept of panentheism , where the Baal Shem Tov gave a metaphysical conception of God an eminently practical significance. It was a counterweight against asceticism, rigidity and strict Talmudic viewpoints, the Law, as opposed to the emotions and the individual’s inner life. At this point, the paltry sum of tangible information about the Baal Shem Tov has been blended with legends of miracles and storytelling that its hard to tell the woods from the forest. A heresy to deny they could not have been done, but equally foolish to believe them.

Nevertheless, what is known is that his parents were elderly and poor and he ws orphaned at the age of five. At school, he was known by his frequent absences, found later in the woods enjoying the beauties of nature….

(see link at end)….The Baal Shem Tov lived in a world of magic. He knew the languages of the animals and trees. He could see from miles away when a person was in trouble, and when he acted out helping them, they were helped, miles away. He had “the charm for swift travel”; setting out on a journey with his disciples, he would tell Alexei the coachman to let go the reins and turn his back to the horses, and the horses would take the wagon wherever the Baal Shem Tov was needed, covering hundreds of miles in a day. Souls of people who had died would come to him for help, and he would help them. When he said the daily prayers, he could go into a trance for hours, moving through the palaces of heaven to argue with God and the angels to help the Jewish people more. …

…The Baal Shem Tov stands out from these other faith healers, though, by being deeply involved with nature. The stories about his early life show him wandering over the wild and vast Carpathian mountains for days at a time, finding God among the rocks and trees. He knew folk remedies such as how to heal an infection with mould [penicillin] or stop bleeding with the ashes of a frog. He could teach a disciple how to hear what the trees were saying. This kind of joy in nature unfortunately almost disappeared from later Hasidisim; it surfaces again in the teachings of Rebbe Nachman, a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, who taught that everyone should spend time alone every day in the forest or the fields, where all the plants and trees join in your prayers.

Being connected with nature, the Baal Shem Tov was connected with his own body too. He discouraged fasting and self-affliction; he prayed with shouting, dancing and singing, with his whole body. He and his followers drank and smoked [at a time when tobacco was purer than what is sold now, and before the health effects had been studied!] much more than their opponents thought was decent, using both drinking and pipe smoking to lift their spirits and even enter into trances. The Baal Shem Tov was not strict, but lenient and forgiving about Jewish law. There are many stories about the Baal Shem Tov in which he has a choice between strictness and mentshlichkeyt [human caring] and chooses mentshlichkeyt. He taught that by recognizing our own faults we can empathize with what others do wrong, and treat them with love. Besides being a healer and miracle worker, the Baal Shem Tov was a spiritual guide, teaching the ways of mentshlichkeyt and dveykus [attachment to God].

…The Baal Shem Tov was a master storyteller and he encouraged those around him to tell stories. He could heal a sick person by telling a story. People experienced miracles from telling stories about him. There is a famous story of an old man who had been a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov; he was too old and weak to stand. Someone asked him to tell a story about the Baal Shem Tov. He started to describe how the Baal Shem Tov prayed with leaping and dancing. As he told the story, he also got up and leaped and danced — and all his strength came back to him and stayed with him. Read More:http://www.kolel.org/tastytreats/mod6.1.html

The takeway is the emphasis on joy, to avoid despondency and depression. The radical emphasis on happiness brought its critics, who were inclined to see joy as something to be compartmentalized, or to be shown parsimoniously after spiritual accomplishment lest it should be banalized.

To the Baal Shem Tov, troubles, suffering, and all that is ugly and obscure in the world are visual and real artifacts of constrictions and repressions of light. That is, Evil exists only as a result of  pre-cosmic catastrophe, the shattering by which the spark  of good has fallen. Good has been severed from its origin, allowing its light to be distorted  and cloaked within a rough shell; the ugliness of this world is caused by a constriction of divine energy that vitalizes all things. The goal, or the cure then r

ns to re-attach the fallen spark to its original origins…( to be continued)…