The Besht: Magician, Mystic, and Leader

4 | The Besht as Mystic and Pioneer in Divine Worship

chapter four The Besht as Mystic and Pioneer in Divine Worship I t was his mystical experience, more than anything else, that was at the core of the Besht’s spiritual world. This experience was also what gave shape to the new form of spirituality that the Besht passed on to his students and to the members of his circle; in many respects it set the tone for the Hasidic movement in its first generations. In this chapter I shall attempt to reconstruct and characterize what might be termed “the Besht’s path as a mystic.” In the background to my discussion here lies the presumption that one ought not to approach the study of the Besht as though he were a philosophical figure. A philosopher is a person guided primarily by questions about ideas, whereas a mystic has longings and strivings for the mystical as his dominant concerns. To be sure, the Besht did deliver sermons in which philosophical views were expressed, yet these too were closely linked to the experiential dimension of his life. What is the connection between these two components, the ideas and the experience? It may be affirmed that the ideas the Besht expresses reflect his attempts to interpret the mystical experiences he underwent and to justify the methods he employed so as to attain them. Additionally , the Besht’s sermons, with the ideas implicit in them, served the further objective of communicating his path of divine worship to his fellow men. Even if one accepts the appraisal that the Besht’s philosophy is derived from his experience, and took the form of interpretations or rationalizations of it, it nevertheless is the case that once having articulated his personal experiences through intellectual constructs, such constructs would have at times served to guide and mold the contents of the experiences themselves. Indeed, we find that the mutual relations between the element of the intellectual and the element of the experiential in the life of the Besht are somewhat complex. For all that, the ideas the Besht advances do not stand on their own and they are to be evaluated in close proximity with the experiential component of his life. Thus my phrase, “the Besht’s path as a mystic,” refers at once to the experiential dimension of the Besht’s life, to his philosophical views, and to the mutual relations sustained between them.1 In seeking to reconstruct the Besht’s path as a mystic, we must first address the question of the nature and singularity of this path. How are we  etkes.qxp 11/23/2004 3:29 PM Page 113 to characterize the mystical experience that the Besht underwent? Can we point to general features that were especially typical of it? How did the Besht interpret his experience and what theosophical platform did he employ as a basis for his interpretations? In seeking to overcome the obstacles in the path of the mystic, did the Besht break new ground? What explanations did he put forward to justify the novelty of his approach? Alongside questions about the singular nature of the trail blazed by the Besht in spirituality and worship, a question also arises about the degree to which this path was original. Yet here again I must stress: the Besht was not a philosopher and author; he was, rather, a mystic and a spiritual leading light. Thus, certain restrictions or qualifications are to be applied to the assessment of the originality of his contributions. First, innovations in ideas are not to be considered in isolation from the dimension of personal experience. Second, the question is not whether a certain idea advanced by the Besht is new in some absolute sense, but whether it constituted a genuine innovation in the social and cultural milieu in which he lived and acted. Furthermore, the question is not whether each and every detail of the Besht’s path may be classified as novel, but whether innovation is discernible in the total assemblage. These qualifications are called for because the question guiding us here throughout is, Why did the Besht consider himself as someone who had been given the mission of passing on a novel form of worship and spirituality, and why was he indeed regarded as a pioneer in religion by his associates and his followers? Before I turn to a direct discussion of these questions, I shall survey the perspectives of some of the scholars that have dealt with the subject of...