Article: Besht Kept Secret: A Radical Take on the Ba'al Shem Tov

David Biale
Forward
08-02-1996
Besht Kept Secret: A Radical Take on the Ba'al Shem Tov.

According to the conventional opinion, the Ba'al Shem Tov was a virtually illiterate preacher who fought the rabbinic establishment by emphasizing joy and prayer over study. He founded a movement of the economically oppressed and marginalized by creating the new institution of the tzaddik and his court. From Martin Buber to contemporary advocates of Jewish renewal, this image of the Ba'al Shem Tov as religious and social revolutionary has served to legitimate their own attempts to overturn what they perceived as a fossilized religious establishment and create a new form of popular Judaism.

But what if the ...

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