Aaron Zeilingold

Aaron Zeilingold was a chronicler of major Hasidic figures, whose hagiographical work Me’orot ha-gedolim (Lights of the Greats, 1911) has often been drawn upon for anthologies of Hasidic stories directed to broader readerships. A Karliner Hasid himself, Zeilingold spent the first half of his life in what is today Belarus, but moved to Kiev in 1875 and later to Warsaw. Zeilingold was never a religious professional; he worked in a number of commercial endeavors but without success. Finally, he opened a bookstore and became a publisher soon after, a common combination in the turn of the century Jewish book world. His anthology comprised fifty-five stories on ten major figures in the Hasidic movement, with a particular focus on masters linked to his own Karlin-Stolin Hasidic tradition. While largely unattributed, the collected tales offer an illuminating representation of oral tradition from within the Hasidic environment of the mid- to late nineteenth century, as the traditionalist movement confronted the encroaching modern world.