Besht

Like the accounts of the Besht and his wife, and perhaps even more so, the stories indicate that Rabbi Simhah Bunem included his wife in both his spiritual world and his work in his pharmacy.

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women. 2009

For example, in Hitgalut ha-Zaddikim (Shlomo Gabriel Rosenthal, Warsaw: 1901) she is termed “his pure partner, the lady Hannah,” and the book also shows that the Besht included his wife in his spiritual world.

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women. 2009

Significantly, as well as being the first Hasidic book to become available in Yiddish, Shivhei ha-Besht, consisting of cycles of tales celebrating the saintly lives and extraordinary feats of the Besht and his associates, was also the first Hasidic book to belong to the hagiographical genre.

Hasidism. 2009

Yet this statistic applies only to Shivhei ha-Besht.

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women. 2009

More than fifty years separate the publication of Shivhei ha-Besht from that of hundreds of later collections of stories.

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women. 2009

The residual influence of the Sabbatean sectarians was still present in the immediate environment of the Besht and his associates.

Hasidism. 2009

While they may have constituted an element of the readership of Shivhei ha-Besht when it was first published at the beginning of the nineteenth century, they very likely represented a substantial segment of it by the 1860s and 1870s, when the second wave of Hasidic hagiography was beginning to flood the book market.

Hasidism. 2009

The translation of Hasidic books from Hebrew into Yiddish began relatively late in the development of the movement, with the publication of the Yiddish version of Shivhei ha-Besht (In Praise of the Besht) in 1815.

Hasidism. 2009

Moreover, following the appearance of Shivhei ha-Besht in both Hebrew and Yiddish, the publication of Hasidic hagiography was arrested for at least another fifty years, quite possibly on account of the uncertain status of the genre, which had attracted the critical attention and ridicule of the maskilim.

Hasidism. 2009

Shivhei ha-Besht (1815), the first published work of Hasidic literature, reflects the Hasidic experience of the eighteenth century.

Hasidic Hebrew Fiction: Portrayal of Women. 2009