Chronicles of the Crusades

by Meyer Levin

Book Overview

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0880290374
• ISBN13: 9780880290371
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Dorset Press
• Length: 357 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Delightful tales

People who enjoy reading short stories that have an aura of myth, fairy tale, supernatural, and the other-world, and which have thought-provoking ideas that titillate the mind, will delight in reading the forty tales that Meyer Levin translates in this volume. There are 27 fables of the legendary, mysterious, wonder-worker Rabbi Israel, known as the Baal Shem Tov, "the Master of the Good Name," the founder of the Hassidic movement (1700-1760) and 13 of his great-grandson Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlaw (1772-1810). The word "Hassid" implies intense piety, ardor, fervor, ecstasy. The Hassid's piety does not lie in the scholarly study of the Bible or the Talmud, Baal Shem Tov taught, but in the simple joys of daily life, even in drinking a glass of vodka, if done with the right spirit. This is seen in the book's shortest tale: Once Rabbi Israel passed through a house of prayer. An old Jew sat there huddled over a book, reading in a hasty mumble, reading faster and faster, hour after hour. Rabbi Israel said, "He is so absorbed in his learning that he has forgotten there is a God over the world." Baal Shem Tov's disciples told stories of how he had the power to do miraculous deeds. He could fly from one end of the earth to another. He could foretell the future and heal the sick. His legends were written - one can say, invented - by many people over many years, during and after his death. The narratives of his great-grandson, in contrast, were composed by the man himself. While those of the first are obviously fables, those of the second are highly entertaining, but yet intensely meaningful parables. Both were composed for the masses, yet the tales have been enjoyed by people of every level of society. The stories are not rational. They are filled with magic, with demons, with speaking animals, with conceptions of the universe that are clearly untrue, with wishful but unrealistic thinking of the coming of the messiah, of ways to conquer The Evil One, of elevating The Soul, of divine intervention to aid those in need, of unrealistic comforts. Yet, despite the falsehoods and lack of sophistication, there are underlying truths.

Hassidic Faith which finds expression in retelling stories of Baal Shem Tov

"... storytelling and conversation, dialogue, lie at the heart of changing the current course of this world of action...changing the nature of our conversations, finding meaning and connection with one another, entering into true dialogue... " Natalie Shell Tales of Wise Men: Like the teaching stories of other religions, the parables of Jesus, the sayings of the desert fathers, stories of the Sufis, Hasidic tales may offer analytical insights into the nature of religious wisdom and emotional spirituality, its absolving techniques, consciousness-raising, and the experience of confronting the unexpected reality. Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters cannot be conveyed in words, but can only be conveyed through a direct personal encounter. As the Hasidic master Rabbi Jacob Yitzhak affirmed, "The way cannot be learned out of a book, or from hearsay, but can only be communicated from person to person." Such an experience, explains Fr. Benedict Viviano, requires a narrative means, "precisely the story of a living person. A Hasidic tale of a cripple who gets so carried away while telling a story that he begins to dance about and is cured. This transformation, is what Schillebeeckx describes theologically, in a pregnant phrase, 'a faith which finds expression in telling stories' and in life-giving, effective, 'telling' deeds." Hasidic Tales: Ha·sid or Has·sid also Chas·sid (KHä'sd) a member of a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century in eastern Europe by Baal Shem Tov that reacted against Talmudic learning and maintained that God's presence was in all of one's surroundings and that one should serve God in one's every deed and word. Numberless tales have been told and retold for generations since the days of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1700-1760). He and his disciples employed the story or anecdote to inspire their followers with the love of God and man. The rise of the popular pietistic-mystical movement, became a host of legends concerning the lives, wise sayings, and miracles of such tzaddiqim, or masters, as Israel ben Eliezer (1700-60), and other Jewish mystics. These, however, are anecdotes rather than formally structured stories and often borrow from non-Jewish sources. Dr. Alan Unterman, of the Jerusalem Academy of Jewish Studies, explain in his "Wisdom of the Jewish Mystics," the received yet ever-evolving tradition of mysticism stretching deep into the Jewish past. Hasidic sayings are drawn primarily from the great Hasidic masters of the eighteenth century onward, whose words are rooted in the life of the common man. Master of the Good Name: The tradition of Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name) mentioned that young Israel was different from other children. He would often go into fields, woods and mountains, spending many hours alone, speaking to G-d. Not having parents, it's not surprising he would go into nature to seek out his Father in Heaven. At an early age he was aware of Divine presence of G-d in