| In all that is in the world dwell holy sparks, no thing is empty of them. In the actions of men also, indeed even in the sins that a man does, dwell holy sparks of the Glory of God.
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Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, or BeSHT ("Possessor of the Good Name" or "Master of the Divine Name") was born in the Ukraine in 1700 and died in Podolia in 1760. He was the founder of the Hassidic movement. Although on the one hand rebelling against dry orthodoxy, by teaching that God is best served and worshipped through singing and dancing, he also accepted the redemptive cosmology of Lurianic Kabbalah, and taught meditations involving the "raising of the sparks".
The BeSHT's Hassidism was also, to a large extent, a reaction to and legitimization of the Sabbatian events of 1665-1666. Like Sabbatai Zevi, the BeSHT's had clear antinomian tendencies which were, however, unlike those of Sabbatai, more acceptable to mainstream Judaism.
| Pray continually for God's Glory that it may be redeemed from its exile
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(Meditations on the Raising of the Sparks) by the Baal Shem Tov |
by the Baal_Shem_Tov. With commentary |
by Yakov Leib HaKohain |
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by the Baal Shem Tov. With commentary |
With commentary |
musings and meditations |
A follower, a generation removed, of the Baal Shem Tov was the eighteenth century Polish Kabbalist Rabbi Schnuer Zalman, founder of the Chabad (named after the first letter of the three "intellectual" sefirot Hokhmah, Binah, and Daat) or Lubavitcher (after the town of Lubavitch in Poland where it originated) sect of Hassidism. The Lubavichers presently constitute the largest surviving sect of Hassidism.
Baal-Shem-Tov - short bio
Instructions in Intercourse with God by The Baal Shem Tov (Martin Buber, Trans.). Horizon Press, 1958)
The Legend of the Baal-Shem by Martin Buber, transl. by Maurice Friedman
Founder of Hasidism : A Quest for the Historical Ba'Al Shem Tov by Moshe Rosman and Murray Jay Rosman
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