BA'AL SHEM TOV

( (Hebrew: Master of the Good Name), ) born c. 1700, , probably Tluste, Podolia, Pol. died 1760, Medzhibozh byname of Israel Ben Eliezer, acronym Besht charismatic founder (c. 1750) of Hasidism, a Jewish spiritual movement characterized by mysticism and opposition to secular studies and Jewish rationalism. He aroused controversy by mixing with ordinary people, renouncing mortification of the flesh, and insisting on the holiness of ordinary bodily existence. He was also responsible for divesting Kabbala (esoteric Jewish mysticism) of the rigid asceticism imposed on it by Isaac ben Solomon Luria in the 16th century. Sid Z. Leiman Additional reading Dov Baer, Shivh ha-Besht (1814), is the earliest collection of legends (in Hebrew) about the Ba'al Shem Tov. Dan Ben-Amos and Jerome R. Mintz (eds. and trans.), In Praise of Baal Shem Tov (1970), offers an English translation of Dov Baer's legends, based upon the 1814 edition. Meyer Levin, The Golden Mountain (1932); and Martin Buber, Die Legende des Baalschem (1932; The Legend of the Baal-Shem, 1955), retell with literary flair the legends of the Ba'al Shem Tov. Salomo Birnbaum, Leben und Worte des Baalschem (1920; The Life and Sayings of the Baal Shem, 1933), contains excerpts from the writings and teachings of the Ba'al Shem Tov.