Tales of the Hasidim

During the twentieth century, Martin Buber undertook the task of retelling the legends of the Ba'al Shem Tov. Although Buber's retelling of these Hasidic folktales has been beneficial in allowing the reader to focus on finding the seed of relevancy behind the historical context, they remain only one scholar's interpretation of the folktales and therefore, not a truly objective work.

In assessing these folktales we must ask ourselves if one should strive to preserve original intent at the cost of modern accessibility or whether one should allow an historical text to evolve and change with the times.

Although Buber certainly performed a service by bringing translations and interpretations of Hasidic tales to modern readers, the problem with these tales is that, when reading them, one is inclined to forget that Buber is projecting his own opinions on the historical reality of the folktales, an historical reality that others might interpret in a very different light. Without examining primary source documents, we might be inclined to accept all that Buber says as true.

Buber, in his translations, seems to intentionally manipulate these primary source documents, documents to which most of us have no access, in order to align them to his own beliefs regarding Hasidim. Thus, the spiritual message Buber reads into these folktales is far too closely tied to his own philosophy of religious anarchism and existentialism.

This raises great problems for those who are not aware of Buber's own biases as a scholar as well as misleading the more casual reader. Buber stressed the legends of Hasidim as our main source of understanding while greatly ignoring the large body of theoretical writings. He reasoned that the theoretical writings were "far too dependent on the older Kabbalistic literature to be regarded as genuinely Hasidic."

The legends and folktales presented in Tales of the Hasidim are certainly extremely interesting and do possess general human interest, however, if we truly want to know what they meant in their original context we would still have to revert to the primary sources which Buber pushes aside as merely secondary.

Despite Buber's obvious biases, he did endeavor to transform the Hasidic tradition from something stultifying to something rewarding, even if in doing so he ended up diluting parts of this tradition in order to make it more palatable to modern readers.

This presentation has, however, stood the test of time, and perhaps "standing the test of time" is really the greatest thing that can be asked for in terms of the transmission of a tradition. If we only keep in mind the fact that Buber's tales are interpretations only and are not necessarily representative of historical Hasidim, his folktales become interesting and charming not only to the literary community but also to anyone interested in studying a modern version of the Hasidic message.