HASIDIC literature can be classified in two main categories, homiletic-speculative, usually originating in the sermons delivered by the hasidic teachers to the gatherings of the hasidim at the courts and containing ethical, kabbalistic, and hasidic teachings, and narrative, comprising numerous collections of tales. Although research has addressed itself to both categories, it seems to me that the tales, the more popular of the two genres, have not been given the scholarly attention they deserve. A number of important studies have appeared in recent years, but many questions remain unanswered. This chapter is an attempt to address three cardinal questions:

These questions are, of course, interconnected, and the answer to anyone of them will constitute a partial answer to the others.

The figure of the Baal Shem Tov (‘the Besht’, as he is known in Hebrew), the founder of hasidism, is crucial to the discussion throughout. His personality is inseparably connected with the emergence of the hasidic tale and its subsequent development.

One important fact that must be borne in mind is that the printed hasidic tale was preceded by an earlier stage of oral dissemination. This is attested to by allusions to and even the appearance of complete tales in other genres long before the emergence of the narrative literature of hasidism in print. For example, Ephraim of Sudylkow, a grandson of the Besht and the author of Degel maḥaneh Efrayim, refers to tales that his grandfather used to tell. Aaron Samuel Hakohen in his Kore merosh supplies the nucleus of a biographical tale about the Besht in his references to the Besht's visit to his father-in-law and to his ability to understand the song of birds. From other reports in various anthologies of speculative hasidic teaching it becomes clear that the Besht was indeed in the habit of telling stories, many of them about himself.