Converse With Animals

All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to
speak OF God but also to speak
TO Him.
~ Martin Buber

All journeys
have secret destinations
of which the traveler is unaware.
~ Martin Buber, Legend of the Baal-Shem

“Israel ben Eliezer of Mezbizh (Miedzyboz), called the Baal Shem Tov (1700–1760), the founder of hasidism, was such a man. He first appears merely as one in a series of Baale Shem, of “Masters of the Name,” who knew a Name of God that had magic force, were able to invoke it, and with this art of theirs helped and healed the men who came to them—manifestations of a form of magic which was absorbed by religion. The actual basis for their work was their ability to perceive intrinsic connections between things, connections which lay beyond the bounds of time and space (apparent only to what we usually call intuition) and their peculiar strengthening and consolidating influence on the soul-center of their fellowmen, which enabled this center to regenerate the body and the whole of life—an influence of which the so-called “suggestive powers” are nothing but a distortion. Certain aspects of Israel ben Eliezer’s work constitute a continuation of the work of the Baale Shem, but with one marked difference which even expresses itself in the change of the epithet “Baal Shem” to “Baal Shem Tov.” This difference and what it signifies is unambiguously stressed in the legendary tradition.

In various versions we are told how either Rabbi Gershon, the Baal Shem’s brother-in-law, who first despised him as an ignorant man but later became his faithful disciple, or one of the descendants of the Baal Shem, went to a great rabbi who lived far away—in Palestine or in Germany—and he told him about Rabbi Israel Baal Shem. “Baal Shem?” said the rabbi questioningly. “I don’t know any such person.” And in the case of the Baal Shem’s brother-in-law, the rejection is more pronounced, for when Rabbi Gershon speaks of the Baal Shem as his teacher, he receives the reply: “Baal Shem? No, there is no teacher by that name.” But when Rabbi Gershon quickly rights his first words by giving the full name “Baal Shem Tov,” the rabbi he is visiting assumes an entirely different attitude. “Oh!” he exclaims. “The Baal Shem Tov! He, to be sure, is a very great teacher. Every morning I see him in the temple of paradise.”

The sage refuses to have anything to do with common miracle men, but the Baal Shem Tov—that is quite another matter, that is something new. The addition of one word altered the meaning and the character of the epithet. “Shem Tov” is the “Good Name.” The Baal Shem Tov, the possessor of the Good Name, is a man who, because he is as he is, gains the confidence of his fellowmen. “Baal Shem Tov” as a general designation, refers to a man in whom the people have confidence, the confident of the people. With this, the term ceases to designate a rather doubtful vocation and comes to apply to a reliable person and, at the same time, transforms what was, after all, a category of magic, into one religious in the truest sense of the word. For the term “Baal Shem Tov” signifies a man who lives with and for his fellowmen on the foundation of his relation to the divine.

There is a story that Rabbi Yitzhak of Drohobycz, one of the ascetic “hasidim” who first rebelled against the Baal Shem, was full of hostility for the innovator because he had heard that he gave people amulets containing slips of paper inscribed with secret names of God. On the occasion of a meeting, he asked the Baal Shem about it. He opened one of the amulets and showed the questioner that on the slip there was nothing but his own name and that of his mother, “Israel ben Sarah.” Here the amulet has completely lost its magical attributes. It is nothing but a sign and pledge of the personal bond between the helper and the one who is given help, a bond based on trust. The Baal Shem Tov helps those who trust him. He is able to help them because they trust him. The amulet is the permanent symbol of his direct influence at the given moment. It contains his name and thus represents him. And through this pledge of personal connection, the soul of the recipient is “lifted.” The power at work here is the union of the tellurian and spiritual within the Baal Shem and, proceeding from this union, the relationship between him and his hasidim which involves both domains. This sheds light on his attitude toward the “Men of Spirit” he wishes to win for the hasidic movement, and on the fact that most of them are willing to subject themselves to him.

According to one legendary version, for instance, the greatest of his disciples, the actual founder of the hasidic school of teaching: Rabbi Dov Baer, the Maggid (wandering preacher) of Mezritch (Miedzyrzecze), comes to him to be cured of his illness. His physical suffering is only eased, but he is healed of “teaching without soul.” This instance clearly demonstrates that Nature, at work in the person of the helper, guides the spirit, which has strayed too far from her, back into her domain, the only milieu in which the soul can thrive through ceaseless contact with her. And the “Great Maggid,” whose powers as thinker are far superior to those of the Baal Shem, bows to the infinitely rare and decisive phenomenon: the union of fire and light in a human being.

...same holds for another important exponent of hasidic teachings in the second generation, for Rabbi Jacob Joseph of Polnoye (Polonnoje). He was not an independent thinker, such as the Maggid, but well versed in the teachings, and thus enabled to receive and expound the teachings of the Baal Shem who drew him from his ascetic remoteness into a simple life with his fellowmen.

There are various versions of how the Baal Shem won him over, but they all have two traits in common: he does not reveal himself directly, but manifests himself through his particular manner of concealment, and he tells him stories (he always likes to tell stories) which stir the hearer just because of their primitive character and apparent lack of intellectual quality, and finally make him see and accept them as a reference to his own secret needs. Here again, in the telling of simple stories and parables which, however, evoke a strong personal application, the connection between spirit and nature becomes manifest, a union which makes it possible for images to serve as symbols, that is as spirit which assumes form in Nature herself. What both of these disciples have to say about the teachings of the Baal Shem, and about their association with him, is characteristic in the same sense: he taught the Maggid (among other things) how to understand the language of birds and trees, and—so the rabbi of Polnoye tells his son-in-law—it was his “holy custom” to converse with animals.

The Gaon of Vilna, the great opponent of hasidism, who was responsible for the ban pronounced upon it, the man who wished to proceed against the hasidim “as Elijah proceeded against the prophets of Baal,” accused the Baal Shem of “having led astray” the Maggid of Mezritch “through his magic arts.” What seemed magic was the union within a person of heavenly light and earthly fire, of spirit and nature. Whenever this union appears incarnate in human form, this person testifies—with the testimony of life—for the divine unity of spirit and nature, reveals this unity anew to the world of man which again and again becomes estranged from it, and evokes ecstatic joy. For true ecstasy hails neither from spirit nor from nature, but from the union of these two.”

~ Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim