Hasidism Preserved

...even after his death the communities of the others made war upon his own and would know no peace...

...We do not belong at all to the present world, and therefore the world cannot tolerate us.' It did not occur to him to retaliate for their enmity...

...Even Plato needed djrect knowledge of Socrates in person rather than hearsay reports of his conversation...

...But you need have no fear that my wisdom might ever befall you so that you would have to live like me...

...He himself was not surprised at the strife...

...After separate adventures in which the clever man is brought very low indeed in the world while the simple man is entrusted by his king with the greatest responsibilities of state, the two confront each other again and, after some conversation, the simple man speaks to his friend again sadly and still without malice: "So, do you still continue, then, to live in your subtleties and not see life...

...They have carved out a man for themselves and contend with him.' Indeed, he regarded their rage as a blessing: 'All words of slander and all fury of enmity against the genuine and the silent are like stones that are thrown against him, and out of them he builds his house.'" Of the stories themselves, the one which comes through to me most impressively is entitled "The Clever Man and the Simple Man...

...Brandeis University The most effective instruction has always been by word of mouth...

...In doing so, he has taken a free attitude toward his sources—an attitude which he justifies in a prefatory note: "The tales have been preserved for us in the notes of a disciple, notes that have obviously deformed and distorted the original narrative beyond measure...

...How far the masters of oral wisdom would have recognized themselves in Bu-ber's version, however, remains a question...

...He has devoted his talents in this book to a reconstruction of what Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav (1772-1810)—the great-grandson of the founder of Hasidism, the celebrated Baal-Shem-Tov—must really have said...

...The most celebrated teachers—Socrates, the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Jeremiah—left disciples rather than written records...

...Martin Buber feels, for example, that the great men of Hasi-dism (a revivifying movement among Polish and Ukrainian Jewry in the 18th and 19th centuries) were unlucky in the transcribers whom they found...

...This story tells us what the Hasidic movement was about as well as any single story could, and it helps to account both for the increasing influence it exerted for a time as well as for its ultimate decline later on...

...It is, in fact, in these introductory sections that he succeeds in giving us, through a few telling episodes and quotations, the most vivid impressions of his subject: "Shortly after [Rabbi Nachman's] return [from Palestine], he settled in Bratzlav...

...Whether Buber would have pleased his subjects any better, I don't know...

...The difficulty to some extent inheres in the setting down of all word-of-mouth teachings...

...Buber not only tells us the tales of Rabbi Nachman, but he supplies us with a whole historical commentary on the origins of the Hasidic movement, the needs which it arose to fulfil, and the opposition which it provoked...

...The case of Plato and Socrates—that is to say, the coincidence of oral excellence and literary genius—is unique...

...it is as much as we can ask of them if they supply strong enough hints to our imagination of what the original master must have been like...

...At its worst, this attitude degenerated into anti-intellectualism, but at its best it was not unlike the attitude of Shakespeare as it is expressed in hi3 66th sonnet where, listing the abuses of the world, he notes how often "simple truth [is] miscall'd simplicity...

...But there are some who would contest this...

...I have not translated these tales, but retold them with full freedom, yet out of Rabbi Nach-man's spirit as it is present in me...

...But he who accepts in his heart the reality that a man dies every day, for every day he must deliver to death a piece of himself, how shall he still be able to pass his days in strife?' He never wearied of finding good in his adversaries and justifying them...

...As they lie before us, they appear confused, verbose and ignoble in form...

...We are tempted to believe that the teacher makes the disciples he deserves, and that the pre-eminence of the pupil points to the greatness of his master...

...If one regrets sometimes the primitive vigor which has been glossed over in the smooth-flowing sentences, one also feels that something of the original has survived its transition into a new idiom and that it may thus have access to an audience which could not otherwise have reached it...

...Am I then he whom they hate?' he asks...

...The simple man in this story, seeing his friend's confusion and un-happiness, says to him without malice: "Perhaps you would be happier if, like me, you had been placed in the world innocent and with little understanding...

...That is why Plato in the Phaedrus regards the discovery of the art of writing as a calamity...

...But the clever man replies to that: "Good friend, it might after all fall to my portion that sickness should overtake me and destroy my understanding so that I should become like you...

...The disciples were for the most part literate rather than literary...

...The complaint sounds familiar to anyone who has ever tried honestly to report an interview...

...It is from the disciples that we get the scriptures, and therefore the impression which these most remarkable personages make upon us is by a kind of reflected light...

...for such a thing cannot happen now or ever...

...The quality that is emphasized here is the simplicity not of idiocy but of grandeur...

...Buber himself tells us that the Baal-Shem-Tov, glancing through what purported to be a transcript of some of his talks, cried in dismay: "There is not one word here that I have spoken...

...The whole earth is full of strife, every country and every city and every house...

...Professor of Horizon...

...How should they not contend with us?' he often said...

...You asserted once that it would be easier for you to decline into my simplicity than for me to rise to your cleverness...

...This method of spiritual collaboration certainly has its risks...

...But already before he came there, some zaddikim who hated him on account of his views had kindled a furious fight against him that continued until the end of his life and engendered wild hostilities...

...Yet the preservation of the meaning of such an important manifestation of the religious spirit as Hasidism is valuable however it is achieved...

...No, you will never receive the grace of simplicity...

...Buber has sometimes succumbed to the risks of his method, yet he has deserved well of his people and of the world for the care which he has lavished upon his presentations of the thoughts of the Hasidic masters over the past half century...

...It is in line with the Hasidic movement's emphasis upon character rather than intellect, upon kindness rather than mere cleverness...