Talmudic scholarship--remarks a contemporary Lithuanian Jew, the subsequently famous philosopher Solomon Maimon--constitutes the principal object of education among us. Wealth, physical attractions, or endowments of any kind, though appreciated by the people, do not, in its estimation, compare with the dignity of a good Talmudist. The Talmudist has the first claim on all offices and honorary posts in the community. Whenever he appears at an assembly, all rise before him, and conduct him to the foremost place. He is the confidant, the counselor, the legislator, and the judge of the plain man.
Matters, however, were different in Podolia, Galicia, Volhynia, and in the whole southwestern region in general. Here the Jewish masses were much further removed from the sources of rabbinic learning, having emancipated themselves from the influence of the Talmudic scholar. While in Lithuania dry book-learning was inseparable from a godly life, in Podolia and Volhynia it failed to satisfy the religious cravings of the common man. The latter was in need of beliefs easier of understanding and making an appeal to the heart rather than to the mind. He found these beliefs in the Cabala, in mystic and Messianic doctrines, in Sabbatianism. He even let himself be carried away by teachings which ultimately proved heterodox and subversive of the spirit of Judaism. With the downfall of secret Sabbatianism, which had been utterly compromised by the Frankists, disappeared the last will-o'-the-wisp of Messianism, which had beckoned to the groping Jewish masses. It was necessary to fill the mental void thus created, and provide new food for the unsatisfied religious longings. This task was undertaken by the new _Hasidism_ ("Doctrine of Piety"), originated by Besht, a product of obscure Podolian Jewry.
Israel Baal-Shem-Tob (in abbreviated form BeSHT) was born about 1700 on the border line of Podolia and Wallachia of a poor Jewish family. Having lost his parents at an early age, he was cared for by some charitable townsmen of his, who sent him to a Jewish school, or heder, to study the Talmud. The heder-learning did not attract the boy, endowed as he was with an impressionable and dreamy disposition. Israel frequently played the truant, and was more than once discovered in the neighboring forest lost in thought. The boy was finally given up as a bad case, and expelled from school. At the age of twelve, Israel, confronted by the necessity of earning a livelihood, became a _behelfer_, an assistant teacher, and, a little later, obtained the post of a synagogue beadle. In his new dignity, Besht conducted himself rather oddly. In daytime he slept, or pretended to sleep, but at night, when all alone in the synagogue, he prayed fervently, or read soul-saving books. Those around him looked upon him as an eccentric or maniac. He nevertheless persisted in his course. He delved more and more deeply in the mysteries of the Practical Cabala, studied the "Ari manuscripts," which were circulated from hand to hand, and acquainted himself with the art of performing miracles by means of Cabalistic incantations.