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Gentlemen, today is the seventh of Adar, the anniversary of the death of Moses our teacher, of blessed memory. We have gathered in…
Upon you, great ones, the rebbes of the Hasidim, who follow the path of the Ba‘al Shem Tov, and of whose glorious name they boast and by…
A sealed Torah was given to us; it is doubtless a Torah of Truth but it is disguised. Every day the Holy One, blessed be He, renews those who study it for its own sake and they find a new taste in it…
A copy of the letter from the perfect sage R. Samuel Norzi, of blessed memory, in which he seeks to permit, as per his opinion, the singers [in the synagogue] to…
Now it is not my intention to be a wiseacre when I show people that some rabbinic statements should not be taken literally. Belonging to this genre, is the story of Og uprooting a mountain the size of…
Kol sakhal (Voice of a Fool), a polemical work attacking rabbinic Judaism, has been the subject of many scholarly debates. To this day, its composition and aims remain shrouded in mystery. The author…
The yearning to modernize the yeshiva and give it the appearance of a seminary grew considerably in the hearts of our scholars; but, regretfully, they used whatever filth…
Our master, the holy rabbi, told a tale of the Ba‘al Shem Tov (may his memory be for a blessing to the life of the world to come!). There was once a matter involving great danger to the human life of…
There is a matter well known and widely publicized among all those who have come through the gates of our city, Constantinople [Istanbul], may God preserve it. . . . [I]t occurred about two years…
The Birth of the Ba‘al Shem Tov
One of the greatest phenomena, running like a thread throughout the spiritual history of the Jewish people, is mysticism, a remnant of ancient mythology, which could…