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Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov: Similar Roles but Different Outcomes

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Abstract

Jesus of Nazareth was the founder of Christianity while the Baal Shem Tov of Miedzyboz was the founder of Hasidism. There are striking similarities in the environment in which each proselytized, in the anti-ascetic message each presented, and how their message evolved after their deaths. This article will identify the reasons why ascetic behavior came to dominate Christian but not Hasidic thought and how this contrast might explain why immigrant Jews and not Irish Catholics came to dominate vaudeville at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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Notes

  1. Known as the Lost Sayings Gospel Q or the Lost Gospel Q, this lost book is thought to have provided the origin for many of Jesus’ sayings that are now found in the gospels of Luke and Matthew. For Q sayings, see Editorial Board (2001).

  2. Jesus’ attitude may well have reflected the Jewish legal principle of pikuachnefesh—that one must do whatever one can to preserve one’s life. See Maimonides’ interpretation of Deuteronomy 4:9 in Mishneh Torah Halakhot Rotzeach 11:4, as well as permission to break the fast on Yom Kippur if one has “ravenous hunger” in Talmudb Yoma 83a.

  3. The Didache, the earliest extant manuscript that sets out the governing principles of the Christian movement: guidelines for personal behavior and church structure.

  4. For claims that Paul used Stoic language, see Abraham J. Malherbe (2000). For claims that it was likely that he spent his youth in Taurus, see E.P. Sanders (2001: 8).

  5. The Maggid hoped that, after his death, the Hasidic leadership would pass to his son, called “the Angel,” who was reputed to be an extreme ascetic (Rapoport-Albert 1997).

  6. This bedroom behavior reflected the Maggid’s view on corporality. Author Ron Margolin (2005: vi-vii) pointed out, “In his teachings, the Maggid seeks to contract corporality by means of direct intension so that Divinity may pervade all human life, including thought, which he also perceives as material.”

  7. Rabbi Jacob Immanuel Schochet (1978: 65) noted and dismissed a 1758 letter from the Besht to the Maggid that stated, “You have taken for yourself a different way which, despite its [inherent] goodness, is not agreeable to me. … Come back to me and if possible explain to me so that I may understand.” Author Naftali Loewenthal (1990: 30) muted the split by claiming that, while not becoming one of his disciples, Jacob Joseph “conceded” that the Maggid was the new leader of the Hasidic movement.

  8. Heschel (1985: 12) noted, “Under the influence of the Besht, R. Pinhas abandoned the ways of self-mortification which he had followed from his youth and taught that one can worship heaven through eating.”

  9. Moshe Rosman (1996: 133) pointed out that the Besht, somewhat like the group around the Maggid, believed in the central role of the religious elite in providing “the spiritual victories” for “the regular people who went about their mundane lives.”

  10. As Moshe Rosman forcefully argues, published copies of Toledot Yaakov Yosef were “heavily edited versions of the author’s unsystematic notebooks, representing many years of haphazard jottings” (1996: 139).

  11. For a critical assessment of Biale, see Robert Cherry (2011).

  12. Sotah 9:12 and Tosefta Sotah 15:10-15; quoted in Friedman and Friedman (2014: 108).

  13. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan, as quoted in Diamond (2004: 32).

  14. Rather than referencing Rabbi Akiba or other rabbinic sages, Diamond instead referenced the 18th-century Talmudist the Vilna Gaon—Elijah ben Solomon Zalman.

  15. For an assessment of these Jansenist claims, see Robert Cherry, “Was Irish Catholicism Linked to Jansenism?” Doctrine & Life 64, no. 7 (September 2014): 13–28.

  16. See “Federation of Catholic Societies at New Orleans,” The Salt Lake Herald Republican (November 15, 1910) 1.http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058140/1910-11-15/ed-1/seq-1/;words=theatres+Catholics+Catholic. Quoted in Robert Cherry (2013).

  17. Kedushah (holiness) was a pietist ideal for the virtuous few, encouraging married men to limit to the minimum the frequency and modes of sexual intercourse with their wives in the manner Menachem Mendel of Kotzk prescribed to his students but never advocated for the broader Gur community he had founded. In the post-World War II period, however, the fourth Gerrer Rebbe, Yisrael Alter, inaugurated the Ordinance of Holiness, which “takes this ideal to extremes by imposing it on the community as a whole, thus turning what had been an elitist practice …into a universal norm and a banner of group identity” (B. Brown, 2013: 476).

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  1. Department of Economics, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Robert Cherry

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Cherry, R. Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov: Similar Roles but Different Outcomes. Cont Jewry 38, 107–126 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-017-9220-y

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