The Tale of a Rabbi and His Only Son

Nachman of Bratslav

1815

Once there was a rabbi who had no children. Finally, he had an only son. He raised him and married him off. The son used to sit in an attic room and study in the manner of rich men and he always studied and prayed. The son had already performed a commandment by which he reached the aspect of “the small light.” And yet he felt that there was some…

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Creator Bio

Nachman of Bratslav

1772–1810

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (or Breslov) was the great-grandson of the Ba‘al Shem Tov. As a young man, Nachman felt drawn to commune with God and reveled in the outdoors; his religious identity and antipathy toward other Hasidic leaders strengthened after his visit to the Land of Israel in 1798–1799. In 1802, he moved to Bratslav in Ukraine and attracted followers to a new, introspective form of Hasidism. He later settled in the town of Uman, leaving no successor after his death to lead Bratslav Hasidism. Rabbi Nathan Sternhartz, his disciple and amanuensis, published Nachman’s teachings. Nachman’s most significant writings are his Sipure ma’asiyot, fantasy tales with kabbalistic and folkloristic elements; and his Likute MoHaRaN, an anthology of his homiletic teachings.

Related Guide

Folk Tales and Fiction, 1750–1880

The “return to history” of Jews in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and engagement between Jews and their majority cultures offered new models for imaginative writing beyond those within their ancestral traditions.