REVIEW / BOOK
THE MASTER OF THE GOOD NAME
Author: By Christina Robb Globe Staff
Date: Friday, September 26, 1980
Page: ?????
Section: LIVING
REACHES OF HEAVEN, by Isaac Bashevis Singer, illustrated with 23 etchings
by Ira Moskowitz. Farrar Straus Giroux. 95 pp. $15.
Herein the Yiddish fabulist tells the miraculous story of Israel of Okup,
the Jewish orphan born into the tattered and squire-torn Poland of the year
1700 who became the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. And as a gift
to those of us who can't read Yiddish, he has composed it in English, a rare
occurrence in his long writing career.
Rabbi Israel fathered the Hasidic movement that revived and inspired
Jewish devotion just in time to save it from being devoured by the European
Enlightenment. Though his own body and breath were the medium of his immense
spirituality, and he wrote nothing down, scores of legends grew up around him.
Singer molds these legends into an account with all the concision, fantasy,
bedtime-story archaism and intimacy that won him the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
The Baal Shem Tov combined a precocious grasp of the esoteric mysteries of
cabbala, Jewish mystical scripture, with a complete dedication to the
ordinary, unscholarly Jews whom the Polish rabbis of the time had abandoned to
spiritual crazes like the antinomian madness that surrounded the false messiah
Sabbatai Zvi. Singer tells the stories of Europe, and of Poland, and of Polish
Jewry, while he tells his version of this Jewish saint's life.
Through interpreters like Martin Buber and Elie Wiesel, the Baal Shem
Tov's influence on all religions in the 20th century matches his enormous
influence on Jewish devotional practice in his own age. Because of his respect
and affection for the folklore of Hasidism - legends of devils and angels,
dibbuks and other ghostly possessors, metempsychosis and reincarnation -
Singer's imaginative and laconic reconstruction is probably truer to the
ethnic spirit of the Baal Shem's world. And the tone is perfect:
"Jewishness had to be renewed, inspired with love and the glee of
expectation . . .
"Although he was no toper, God forbid, he took a glass of aquavit . . .
"The greatest trick during the worst of it, when the waters reach to the
very throat and everything seems ominous, is to revive one's strength, praise
the Almighty, pray with fervor, sing, dance and not lose one's confidence . .
.. If you could introduce joy into the day, the hour, you would show Satan the
back of your hand."
The original printing of this book, and its illustrations filled with
Chagall-like animals and birds and Hasidic angels and devils, went for $1500.
It's a joy and a bargain.
ROBB ;09/24,11:07 DRISC;09/27,10: B07989140
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