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6 Reflections on Wiesel’s Hasidic Tales Steven T. Katz The hasidic tale is both a central aspect of the history and spirituality of Hasidism and a feature of modern efforts to reinterpret traditional Judaism for modern men and women. Within the world of Hasidism, from the earliest period of the movement, tales have been a central method of communicating hasidic teachings to the Jewish masses. R. Yaakov Yosef of Polnoyye, secretary to the founder of the movement, R. Israel Ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov, already tells us in his Toldot Yaakov Yo­ sef, the first hasidic book, published in 1781, twenty-­ one years after the death of the founder in 1760: “And there are yihudim in all material speech and stories, and also, as I heard from my master [the Baal Shem Tov], he engaged in yihudim between himself and ahotah dematronita [the Divine Presence] by means of material [or: mundane] stories, and he explained the reason. . . . This rabbi also said that by speaking with the masses he draws himself closer to ahotah dematronita, by means of material stories, and he explained the reason. . . . This rabbi also said that by speaking with the masses he draws himself closer to them, and draws them closer to the Torah and the commandments .” And further: “There are people who engage in prayer even when [seemingly] speaking of material matters with their fellows.”1 More generally, the tale was the vehicle by which the Hasidim extolled the virtues of their masters, the magically empowered, spiritual zaddikim, who were at the center of the new movement, and defended the new tradition against its many vocal critics. The miracle tales that abound in the earliest collections of hasidic tales, and especially the first such collection, the Shivchei Ha-­Besht, published in 1815 in Kapust, makes these two points repeatedly and with emphasis. And the many collections of hasidic tales that followed did much the same thing. In reading more modern hasidic tales, for example those by Martin Buber, Jiri Langer, Shmuel Y. Agnon, and Samuel A. Horodezky, there is always one overriding is59 60 | Steven T. Katz sue: do they capture and convey an authentic hasidic spirituality? And the same question must be asked of the hasidic tales sent out into the world through the work of Elie Wiesel. Here some brief biographical information will provide a good starting place to answer this essential question. Wiesel is the product of a hasidic home suffused with hasidic spirituality. His grandfather was a Hasid of the Viznitzer rebbe, and in his memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea, Wiesel describes him as follows: A devout follower of the Rabbi of Wizhnitz, he was the embodiment of Hasidic creative force and fervor. . . . A cultured and erudite man, an avid reader of the Bible and of the Rashi and Ramban commentaries, and especially of the work of Rabbi Hayyim ben Attar, my grandfather was fascinated with the Midrash, with the works of the Musar—­ a movement founded in Lithuania to foster the teaching of Jewish values and ethics—­ and with Hasidic literature. He maintained a perfect balance between his quest for the sacred and the exigencies of daily life. He was a whole being. . . . He told stories too. Stories of miracle-­ makers, of unhappy princes and just men in disguise. It is to him I owe everything I have written on Hasidic literature. The enchanting tales of Rebbe Nahman of Bratslav, the parables of the Rebbe of Kotzk, the sayings of the Rebbe of Rizhin, and the witticisms of the Rebbe of Ropshitz : he knew them all and he taught me to savor them. . . . I felt exhilarated, inspired , and enriched from moment to moment, from tale to tale. “I’ll never forget these stories,” I told him, and he answered, “That’s why I’m telling them to you. So they won’t be forgotten.”2 And Wiesel has not forgotten this commitment. In a series of substantial works he has attempted to recycle the tales he heard in his youth in Sighet to a non-­ hasidic, of­ten non-­ Jewish, audience, living after the Shoah, mainly in America and West­ ern Europe. Now, in light of this family background, I could give Wiesel’s hasidic tales quick approval and judge them authentic. After all, even a cursory reading of them ­ confirms that they include what everyone knows such tales are meant to include, namely: a great love of humankind; a profound affection for every...

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