The Baal Shem Tov

The teaching

Taught from his letter of 1746 and the sayings his pupils printed in his name, above all in the Toledot Yaakov Yosef.

No place empty of Him

The Baal Shem Tov teaches that God fills all the worlds and that there is no place empty of Him, so that every place, every hour and every deed can become a way to God: prayer and study, and also work, eating and talk. From this follow the teachings his heirs carried on: the raising of the holy sparks hidden in things, devekut, the cleaving of the mind to God, joy as the mood of all service, and prayer said with fire. The branch on the Hasidim, among the mystics, teaches that whole path as his heirs taught it; what follows is what was handed down from him by name.

The ascent of the soul

In his letter to his brother-in-law he tells how, at the New Year of 1746, he made an ascent of the soul, as he knew how to do, and saw wonders he had not seen before. He rose from level to level until he entered the palace of the Messiah, where the Messiah studies Torah with the sages and the righteous, and he asked: when will the master come? The answer was that it would be when his teaching became known and revealed in the world, when his springs had spread outward, and others too could perform the unifications and ascents that he performed; then the power of the husks would end, and it would be a time of grace and deliverance. He was astonished, the letter says, and grieved at how long that would be.

The answer became the charge of the movement: the teaching is not to be kept by a few but spread outward, like springs, to the many.

Worlds, souls and divinity in every letter

In the same letter he gives a rule for prayer and study. With every word that leaves the lips, he writes, intend a unification, for in every letter there are worlds, souls and divinity; the letters rise and join and unite with one another, the letters become a word, and the words are joined in true union with God. The one who prays is to bind his own soul to them at every stage, so that the words of the prayer are not only said but entered.

From the same root comes his saying that where a person's thought is, there the whole person is. One who stands in prayer with his mind in the market is in the market, and one who works in the market with his mind on God is with God.

The strange thought

His boldest teaching concerns the thoughts that come unbidden in prayer, of desire, pride or anger, which he calls strange thoughts. They are not to be driven off in fear, he teaches, because they come to be mended: each holds a fallen spark of something holy. A love fallen to an unworthy object is a spark of the love of God; a fear of some person or thing is a spark of the fear of Heaven. The one who prays recognises the root of the thought, lifts the love or the fear back to its source and turns it towards God, and the thought that came to distract becomes part of the prayer.

His heirs kept this for the strong. Those not yet settled in prayer, they taught, should simply return their attention to the words and not wrestle with whatever comes.

The walls that are not there

He teaches the hiddenness of God with a parable his pupils record. A king built about his palace walls, towers and rivers, all of them illusion, and at every gate he set out treasures. Some who came to see the king took the first treasure and went home; others went further and were stopped by the next wall. But the king's son, who wanted only his father, would not be held by gifts, and when he pressed against the walls he found they were not there at all, and walked straight to the king. The barriers between a person and God, the parable teaches, are real only to one who does not know that God fills them.

The music the deaf man cannot hear

His grandson Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov records another parable in his name. A musician played so sweetly that all who heard him began to dance. A deaf man came by, saw the people leaping and turning, and thought them out of their minds, because he could not hear the music. So those who serve God in joy look like fools to those who cannot hear what moves them.

Against sadness and fasting

He sets himself against the heavy piety of his day. When his pupil Jacob Joseph wrote that he meant to fast and afflict himself, the Baal Shem Tov forbade it in a letter: such a way leads to black bile and gloom, he wrote, and the divine presence does not rest where there is sadness, only where there is the joy of doing what is commanded. The body is not to be broken but used in God's service. Fasting and austerity are therefore no part of the path as he taught it, and anyone drawn to them for long is better guided by a teacher and a doctor than by zeal.

The Testament gathered under his name gives the same counsel for the mind. One who has done wrong should feel it briefly, turn back and return to joy, for the evil inclination wants above all to make him sad, since sadness stops his service. And he should seek an evenness of soul, so that praise and blame are alike to him and he serves God the same in both.