This edition, bringing together Volumes One and Two of Buber's classic work, contains marvelous tales - terse, vigorous, often cryptic - of the Hasidic masters.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Literary, Not Historical, Merit:
In translating and publishing Hasidic tales in early twentieth century Germany, Buber was attempting to present Hasidism as an untapped repository of the authentic Ashkenazic Jewish folk legacy, a bulwark against secularism. His Hasidic leaders were folk heroes who had uplifted the downtrodden and revitalized Jewish culture. He hoped that his stylized renditions of Hasidic tales, which are much more gritty in their orignal forms, would spawn a Jewish national renaissance. When sifting through tale... more info
A pioneering work:
This work has great historical importance. Buber more than any other person conveyed to the general Western even Christian culture something of the feeling and taste of 'Hasidism'. This movement which has its origins with the teachings of Israel Baal- Shem Tov ( 1700- 1760) came at a critical time in the history of the Jewish people and infused in it new spirit and hope. Buber who came from a scholarly Galician background and the discovery of the world of Hasidism opened up to him personally a whole new way... more info
Khasiduth as metaphor:
Martin Buber was one of the great humanists of the modern era and his extraction and retelling of a small part of the Hasidic corpus is a great poetic and ethical achievement. Readers should keep in mind, though, that in this book Buber was using traditional Ashkenazic pietism to represent a more cosmopolitan and higher reality. When he composed this book, there was every reason to believe that the Hasidim who survived the genocide perpetrated by National Socialism would fall prey to Communism or, more... more info
Surprisingly good.:
I used to own this book over 20 years ago, and because I have been doing some work on chassidic stories based on those I have heard and read in primary sources, I purchased this work. I was surprised at how accurate the stories were, and how they have been close to the original. The only problem is that because of the age of the book, he translates many words that today are just transliterated with a glossary. For example, he uses 'son of the commandments' for 'bar mitzvah'. There are a number of cases... more info
