הבעל שם טוב

The Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Yisrael ben Eliezer, is the man who taught the simple Jew that he too is precious to Heaven. In a broken generation, after the massacres of 1648-49 and persecutions, when scholarship belonged to the few and many felt left outside, a keeper of an inn and a teacher of children from the mountains arose and declared: God desires the heart, not only erudition.

He founded Chassidut, a movement that returned joy, cleaving to God, and prayer from the heart to the center of Jewish life. It was told of him that he would seclude himself in the Carpathian forests and pray in weeping and in joy, and that he saw holiness in everything, in a tree, in a stream, in a farmer reciting Psalms without knowing how to read. 'Nothing is empty of the Divine,' he taught, and every Jew, however simple, can cling to his Creator.

Tradition tells that he traveled from village to village, healing, blessing and drawing hearts near, and that his disciples, the 'Maggid of Mezritch' and after him all the chassidic dynasties, turned his message into a vast river that fills the Jewish world to this day. He wrote almost nothing, but his disciples carried his fire onward.

What do we learn from him? That love of Israel is not a slogan but a recognition that every soul is precious, even one that knows not a page of Talmud. The Baal Shem Tov teaches that inner service, joy and cleaving to God, is not lesser than scholarship but its sister, and that God is near to all who call upon Him in truth. He restored to an entire people the confidence that they are wanted.