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Tales of the Hasidim

A Must-Have Source Book for Storytellers
This classic source book has gone through numerous editions and reprints since it first came out back in the 1940's. The current Schocken edition, with both volumes together in one binding, is a very good deal -- I paid a whole lot more for my two-volume set three decades ago.

Although Buber himself was not a Hasid (he was an existentialist philosopher who developed an interest in Hasidism later in life), he does a good job of conveying the spirit of these stories. In my opinion, this collection is a must-have for anybody telling Hasidic stories.

The book is not so much a collection of "tales" in the sense of literary stories or fairy tales, as it is a collection of personal anecdotes about the lives of various Hasidic masters. Some of the tales are fully-developed narratives, but others are terse fragments that remind the reader of Zen koans, those "sound of one hand clapping" riddles which one can meditate upon for years before the great "Aha!" hits and you suddenly "get it."

My only complaint is that the English translation leaves much to be desired in many places, so that, if one is not already familiar with Hasidism, the point of some of the stories can easily be misunderstood. Part of this is due to Buber's original renditions into German, where his search for the right literary German word sometimes confused the Jewish meanings because there simply are no exact equivalents. (As, for example, rendering the verb "to mikveh" -- immerse oneself in a pool of water for ritual purification -- as "tauchen" (baptism).

Unfortunately, some of these types of linguistic errors got carried over into the English translation. I would really like to see a new translation done by a Hasid who knows modern English. But until then, this version remains an excellent sourcebook for traditional Hasidic tales. --Reviewer: Rabbi Yonassan Gershom from Minnesota, USA