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368 Excursus II karz' volume, a chapter inJoseph Dan's Ha-Sippur ha-ljasidi, published in popular format but containing serious and original readings, and the above-mentioned work by Elstein, which includes a structural analysis of The Lost Princess. While Joseph Weiss did not devote any single essay to the Tales as such, they are often referred to in his studies of Bratslav, and the above-mentioned works are all dependent on him in any number of ways. A most perceptive essay, often ignored by scholars, is that by I. Rabinowitz in his collection of critical essays Shorashim u-Megamot, p.163ff. Among recent non-academic works interpreting the Tales, mention should be made of several most perceptive essays by Adin Steinsaltz, formerly available in stenciland now beginning to appear in English in the journal Shefa. Steinsaltz has a profound knowledge of Hasidic thought and his readings of the tales, while not generally taking historical circumstance into account and making no mention of critical studies, are still worthy of serious attention. Another attempt in this vein is that of Yehudit Kook, Rabbi Nahman mi-Braslav: 'Iyyunim be-Sippuraw, written chiefly for inspirational purposes. For details on further studies, see the bibliographyby Elstein. On thequestion ofdidactic versus artistic readings, the battle-lines are drawn between Horodezky and Buber, both in favor ofvarious sorts of"messages" to be derived from the tales, and Dan, who debunks this approach altogether. The idea that the tales are products of Nahman 's tubercular fever originated with S.M. Dubnov, who completely failed to understand them in any other way. 2. To this day a passage from one of the tales is read and commented upon each week during the se'udah shelishit at the Bratslav Yeshivah in Jerusalem. There is a kind of hushed reverence about this moment that utterly convinces the properly attuned participant that he is in the presence of the sacred word. The most important printed Bratslav commentaries on the tales are those by Nathan (scattered through his Liqqufey Halakhot, but collected in the back of editions of the Sippurim since the edition of Lvov, 1902), Rimzey Ma'asiyot by Nahman of Cheryn, also published along with standard editions of the tales, and the collected comments of Abraham Hazan, published as ljokhmah u-Tevunah. Further discussions of the tales within Bratslav sources may be traced through the references in N. Z. Koenig's PittulJey ljotam, p.107ff. For the non-canonical tales, attention should be paid to Sippurim Nifla'im (published togetherwith Kokhvey'Or) and Sippurim ljadashim . 3. Buber's German translation first appeared in 1906 and was reprinted several times thereafter. This rendition took great liberties with the original text, a matter for which Buber later expressed regret. The Buber version (which included only six of the tales) was rendered into Englishby Maurice Friedman, first published in 1956. An earlier and somewhat less distorting English translation had been done by the novelist Meyer Levin, published in 1932 under the title The Golden Mountain and later reprinted as Classic Hasidic Tales. These are now superseded by the new English translation by Arnold Band, published by the Paulist Press in 1978. This translation remains extremely close to the Hebrew and Yiddish and does much to reproduce the oral quality of the tales. Band's introduction and notes appeared too late for consideration in this study. 4. I thus partially side with Buber in this aspect of his well-known debate with Gershom Scholem over the importance of the tales in Hasidism. True, the homiletic classics of the movement appeared much earlier in printed form. Given that The Tales 369 fact, however, it is shocking how little these books are quoted by other Hasidic authors in the heyday of the movement. The Toledot was already published in 1780: why is it that this work is never quoted by the many Hasidic authors-including Nahman, LeviYizhak, and others-who published around the tum of the nineteenth century? An argument to the effect that direct quotation from recent works was contrary to Hasidic style will be difficult to defend: surely no such hesitation was evinced with regard to so "new" a work as Hayyim Ibn 'Attar's 'Or ha-Ifayyim. Of course the fact that a work is not quoted directly does not mean it had no influence-but neither does the fact of its publication in itself indicate the contrary. The oral traditions of Hasidism were very strong, and tales were widely told and...

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