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The transcript begins mid-sentence and describes a figure who escorted children to school. He had no official position, was not a rabbi, and was not known as a scholar. He meditated and had a charismatic personality, and he was able to enlist a group of disciples who took his ideas and spread them throughout the Jewish world of Eastern Europe. His ideas of intense prayer, joy, communal living, caring for the other, and elevating the poor all became the foundation stones of the Hasidic movement. As mentioned, all of this was within Judaism before the Baal Shem Tov, but he changed the emphasis.
In his lifetime, which is still a mystery to us in terms of how he could have been so successful, he did not live long. He died in his 50s and had no public platform from which to advance his ideas. His ideas swept the Jewish world and became the foundation of the largest group of Orthodox Jews numerically outside of the Sephardic world, and certainly the largest group of the Ashkenazic world, for the next two centuries. All of this was created by someone who had no great standing in the Jewish world, but God has his messengers, and he was enormously successful. Looking back almost three centuries and seeing what was accomplished, one has to stand in awe of the achievement of this one person.
Thank you for watching. I'm Barl Wine. For more on Jewish history, go to jewishhistorydotorg.