Hasidism was thus a plant the seeds of which had been sown by the various sects.  Like the former Hasidim, or even the Assideans of nearly two thousand years before, their latter-day namesakes rigidly adhered to the laws of Levitical purification, and, to a certain extent, led a communistic life.  In addition they accepted, in a modified form, certain customs and beliefs of the Catholic church that had been adopted by the followers of Frank.  The prayers to the saints (zaddikim), the conception of faith as the fountain of salvation, even the belief in a trinity consisting of the Godhead, the Shekinah, and the Holy Ghost, these and other exotic doctrines introduced by the Cabbala took root and grew in the vineyard of Hasidism.[10]

The founder of the sect has an interesting history.  In his childhood he gave no evidence of future greatness.  His education was of a low order, but his feeling heart and sympathetic soul won him the esteem of all that knew him.  The woods possessed the same charm for him as for Wordsworth or Whitman.  With the latter especially he seems to have much in common.  While a child, he absented himself frequently from the narrow and noisy heder, and spent the day in the quiet of the neighboring woods.  When he grew up, he accepted the menial position of a school usher.  His office was to go from house to house, arouse the sleeping children, dress them, and bring them to heder.  But the time soon came when humble and obscure Israel “revealed” himself to the world.  Owing to his tact and knowledge of human nature, combined with the conditions of the times, his teachings spread rapidly.  He was speedily crowned with the glory of a “good name” (Baal Shem Tob), and in the end he was immortalized.

From such a man we can expect only originality, not profundity.  Indeed, his whole life was a protest against the subtleties of the Talmudists and the ceremonies, meaningless to him, which they introduced into Judaism.  His object was to remove the petrified rabbinical restrictions (gezerot) and develop the emotional side of the Jew in their stead.  He was primarily a man of action, and had little love for the rabbis, their passivity, world-weariness, and pride of intellect.  It is said that when he “overheard the sounds of eager, loud discussions issuing from a rabbinical college, closing his ears with his hands, [he] declared that it was such disputants who delayed the redemption of Israel from captivity.”  Men like these, who study the Law for the sake of knowing, not of feeling, cannot claim any merit for it.  They deserve to be called “Jewish devils.”  Only he is worthy of reward who is virtuous rather than innocent, who does what he is afraid to do, who, as Jacob Joseph of Polonnoy puts it, “acquires evil thoughts and converts them into holy ones.”  No asceticism for him.  All kinds of human feelings deserve our respect, for it is not the body that feels but the soul, and the soul, “being a part of God on high, cannot possibly have an absolutely bad tendency.”  Men may not be heresy-hunters and fault-finders, for none is free from heresy and faults himself:  the face he brings to the mirror, he finds reflected in it.  Yea, even the followers of Abraham possess evil propensities, and noble qualities frequently belong to the disciples of Balaam himself.[11]