The Master of the Good Name: A Novel of the 18Th Century

By Reina and John Menken

In the words of Elie Wiesel:
The man who left his mark on so many survivors of so many massacres in Central and Eastern Europe, the leader who not only made survival imperative but possible, the Master who gave to despairing communities, managedwe shall never know howto disappear without leaving the professional seekers even a fragment of valid autobiographical material. Obsessed by eternity, he neglected history and let himself be carried by legend.
Wiesel is talking about the Baal Shem Tov, The Master of the Good Name. Readers acquainted with Jewish history will have an idea who the Baal Shem Tov was. But the width of the spectrum of such ideas can be immeasurably wide. Equally wide is the range of emotions these ideas arouse.
Readers unacquainted with such a history may be able to read this book more easily as a novel, which it is.
What surrounds the stage of our action is, of course, the great world of history and a time of disruptions and new thinking.
Of great consequence is the transmission from China of the musical theory of equal temperament which forms the basis of almost all musical composition from the mid18th century to the music saturated present. This musical theory was received and then published in France by Mersenne in 1636; in 1722 it was being championed by Bach in his instructions to young musicians collected under the title, The Well Tempered Clavier. That year the Baal Shem Tov was probably earning his living digging clay and accompanying his labors with Carpathian shepherds tunes.
The story is told through the eyes of an invented student of his who becomes a physician in Prague.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466956360

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© Copyright 2012 Reina and John Menken.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

Printed in the United States of America.

isbn: 978-1-4669-5634-6 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-5635-3 (hc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-5636-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012916519

Trafford rev. 10/12/2012

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE:THE WEREWOLF

CHAPTER TWO:THE BRIDE

CHAPTER THREE:THE TAVERN

CHAPTER FOUR:THE BAAL SHEM TOV REVEALED

CHAPTER FIVE:TLUST

CHAPTER SIX:MEDZHIBOZH

CHAPTER SEVEN:THE ABIDING DWELLING

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER ONE:A PRELUDE: STRIFE

CHAPTER TWO:JONAH

CHAPTER THREE:SLUTSK

CHAPTER FOUR:STOLIN: WHERE A TREASURE WILL BE BURIED

CHAPTER FIVE:CROSSING

CHAPTER SIX:THE TEMPLE IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER SEVEN:WHAT THE BUILDERS REJECTED

CHAPTER EIGHT:SABBATH

CHAPTER NINE:RETURNING

CHAPTER TEN:THREE MOUNTAINS

The Master of the Good Name

A Novel of the Eighteenth Century

By Reina and John Menken

Introduction

In the words of Elie Wiesel:

The man who left his mark on so many survivors of so many massacres in Central and Eastern Europe, the leader who not only made survival imperative but possible, the Master who gave to despairing communities, managed—we shall never know how—to disappear without leaving the professional seekers even a fragment of valid autobiographical material. Obsessed by eternity, he neglected history and let himself be carried by legend.

Wiesel is talking about the Baal Shem Tov, the Master of the Good Name. Readers acquainted with Jewish history will have an idea who the Baal Shem Tov was. But the width of the spectrum of such ideas can be immeasurably wide. Equally wide is the range of emotions these ideas arouse.

Readers unacquainted with such a history may be able to read this book more easily as a novel, which it is.

All we know of the Baal Shem Tov are from legends, a few unattested letters, and accounts of disciples. Most collections of these legends begin with the story of the Werewolf and I feel impelled to begin with the same event.

On my desk I have a picture of his study house in Medzhibozh. The house had been preserved through the nineteenth century by his followers. My guess is that the photograph had been taken in the latter half of that century. I find myself constantly looking at it as a reminder that this story is about a person who actually existed. Born in a place the name of which we know, Okupy, but the location of which we are uncertain, his life is spent in places of little consequence even in the small Jewish world. Some say he was born in 1690, others say in 1700, and others insist on dates in between.

Surrounding the stage of our action is, of course, the great world of history, a time of disruptions and new thinking.

In England, the Royal Society is formed in 1662, and in France, the Academy of Science is founded in 1666. Milton writes Paradise Lost in 1667. Peter the Great becomes tsar of all the Russians in 1682 and reigns until 1725 when the Baal Shem Tov was a young man in the Tsar’s domain. Newton has published the Principia in 1688, and across the Atlantic in America, the Salem Witch trials take place in 1692.

Perhaps of greater consequence to our present time is the transmission from China of the musical theory of equal temperament which forms the basis of almost all musical compositions from the mid-eighteenth century to the music-saturated present. This musical theory was received and then published in France by Mersenne in 1636; in 1722, it was being championed by Bach in his instructions to young musicians collected under the title The Well-Tempered Clavier. That year, the Baal Shem Tov was probably earning his living digging clay and accompanying his labors with Carpathian shepherd’s tunes.

Wars of religion tore at Europe through much of this period. And the consequence of the wars was an increase in the misery of all marginal peoples, particularly the Jews who suffered terrible massacres during the seventeenth century. So it is within this mosaic of a world theatre that the figure of a barely visible person walks across the stage in a remote corner.

I tell this person’s story through the eyes of a fictional ed student of his who becomes a physician in Prague.

A physician is as unlikely a narrator as he is the appropriate one to present my perspective in this novel. He is an unlikely narrator because in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, very few, if any, Jews became physicians in Eastern Europe. Although medicine had been an honorable profession for Jews in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by the century of this novel, it is considered too secular a pursuit and a gentile science.

He is a natural narrator because the novel is written from the point of view that the work of the Baal Shem Tov was intended to be a bridge between worlds of human life that had become fragmented and separated. It is reasonable to make this assertion because legend and all testimony suggest he was a practicing Kabbalist. A hundred years before his time, another rabbi who is an invisible presence in this novel, the great Rabbi Loew of Prague, whom legend credits with making a golem, demonstrated that unity and unification were the essential goals of Kabbalah through his work on the three dimensions of space and the three dimensions of time. The Baal Shem Tov was more interested in applying the tradition to heal human relations and to bring about a restoration of innate human heartedness and dignity.

It is important to mention that the Baal Shem Tov is considered the founder of modern-day Hasidism. For most readers, this conjures an image of black hats and long black coats as depicted in media images. It is also important for the reader to realize that at the time of this novel, the Hasidim dressed no differently than other Jews of the time. What distinguished them in those days was an inner dimension that expressed itself in a much more exuberant practice of their faith.

Acknowledgements

It would be useful if I quote a letter written to me by my Rabbi of many years ago. I had tried to translate the first page of Rav Kook’s Orot ha Kodesh into English.

I am somewhat ambivalent about your ‘nonformal’ way of studying Hebrew. But then so are you. I tend to believe that Rabbi Kook’s works are much too abstruse even for a proficient student of Hebrew. In your case, with your mystic bent, you are likely to construct an entire system—beautiful perhaps—but not that of Rabbi Kook.

This was true then and is now. So let us say that this novel is inspired by the Baal Shem Tov but does not assume to be him. Similarly the presentation of Roma and Calusari are merely inspired by my studies.

Many elements went into the making of this book. Some persons whose works were helpful to me may regret it, and I ask their pardon if they wished they had been overlooked. Since most have gone yonder, that reckoning will have to be deferred.

Someone important to me who is not of the Jewish tradition but whose formulation of an aim, and whose expression of interest in my work in 1973 must be mentioned, is Sir Sarvapelli Radhakrishnan. The aim he articulated was the need for fellowship of the spirit of all traditions and the demand to recognize the respectability of all traditions.

A statement of his which was broadcast on the Kiev, USSR, radio on 25 June 1956, superbly describes this view:

Religion, again, correctly interpreted, gives value and dignity to the individual. When the Hindus speak of the in-dwelling divine, antar-atma, the Buddhists of the possibility of rising to the stature of the Buddha, when the Jews affirm that the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, when the Christians proclaim that ‘the Kingdom of God is within you,’ ‘know ye not that ye are the temple of God and the spirit of God dwelleth in you,’ when the Prophet of Islam tells us that God is nearer to us than the very artery of our neck, they all in different ways indicate that the divine is not an external despot, a sort of Sultan in the sky but is the inward principle of self, the inner light, antar-jyoti. We are the sparks of the divine and it is for us to be co-creators with God, to battle with circumstances, to overcome evil and inequity and raise quality of human living.

Now, to the matter of sources:

The Wisdom of the Zohar, by Lachower and Tishby, translated by David Goldstein.

The Circle of the Baal Shem Tov, by A. Heschel.

Lithuanian Hasidism, by Wolf Zeev Rabinowitsch.

Lubavitcher Rabbi’s Memoirs, by Rabbi Joseph I. Schneersohn, English rendition by Nissan Mindel.

The Great Rabbi Loew of Prague, by Frederic Thieberger.

In Sara’s Tents, by Walter Starkie.

The Calus; Symbolic Transformation in Romanian Ritual, by Gail Kligman.

In Praise of the Baal Shem Tov, by Ben-Amos and Mintze.

The Gypsies, by Jan Yoors.

Uniqueness, Gypsies and Jews, by Ian Hancock.

Ararat (an Armenian journal), an article by Ian Hancock about Armenian loan words in Romani.

The Embers and the Stars, by Erazim Kohak.

Tales of the Hasidim (The Early Masters), by Martin Buber.

Thirteen Petalled Rose, by Adin Steinsaltz.

Otherwise than Being, by Emmanuel Levinas, translation by Alphonso Lingis.

The Encyclopedia Brittanica Atlas, 1984.

Tales of Rabbah bar-bar Hannah, by J. D. Eisenstein.

Tales of Rabbah bar-bar Hannah, by Rabbi Elijah Kramer, the Gaon of Vilna (Wilnius).

The Book of Jonah from Aderes Eliyahu, by Rabbi Elijah Kramer, the Gaon of Vilna (Wilnius).

Rabbi Moses Nachmanides (Ramban):

Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, Rabbi Azriel and Nachmanides Two Views of the Fall of Man, by Bezalel Safran, Harvard Theological Review.

Nine Gates to the Chassidic Mysteries, by Jiri Langer.

In the Garden of Hasidism, by Eliezer Steinmann.

Torah Ummada, by Norman Lamm.

The Holocaust and the Halakha, by Irving Rosenbaum.

Nefesh Hahayyim, by Chaim of Volozhin, translated as L’ame de la Vie, by Benjamin Gross, English translation of Portico I by Susana Guillaume

To the work in general of Karl Jaspers for the value of the mind’s foundering as a source of thought.

As a Driven Leaf, by Milton Steinberg

The Book of Job, a New Commentary, by N. H. Tur-Sinai (H. Torczyner), Kryath-Sepher Ltd.

MeAm Lopez, by Yaakov Culi and Yitzchak Magriso, translated by Aryeh Kaplan

Anchor Bible Psalms, by M. H. Dahood S. J.

Commentary on Exodus, by Umberto Cassuto, translator, Israel Abrahams

A pivotal idea grew from a meeting in Chicago with Mr. Yee Chen of Kansas City, Missouri.

Love, Accusative and Dativ, Reflections on Leviticus 19:18, by Paul Mendes-Flohr.

Song of Songs, A New Translation and Commentary, Anchor Bible, by Marvin H. Pope.

A certain problem in the story I was able to solve with an insight gleaned from Robert Mayer’s book, A Scripture of the Ancient Tantra Collection: The Phur-pa bcu-gnyis.

A Story of the Jewish Museum in Prague, by Hana Volavkova, translated by K. E. Lichtenecker, Prague, Czechoslovakia. Thanks to Mary Navratil, who gave this to us as a gift.

Honoring God Through Architecture, by Olgivanna Lloyd Wright from Alive Magazine, Archdiocese of Phoenix, Arizona, June 1972.

Science and Civilisation in Ancient China, by Joseph Needhan F. R. S., Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought.

T’ai Chi Ch’uan Wu Style, by Sophia Delza.

The Art of Making Dances, by Doris Humphrey.

Many ideas regarding Shamanism, dance, and theater came through personal communications from Eleanor King over a number of years. She studied and worked in the cultures of Greece, North Africa, Bali, Japan, and South Korea.

Guide to the Perplexed, by Rabbi Moses Maimonides, Translator, Sholomo Pines.

The Way of the Faithful, the translator preferred anonymity but credited Mrs. Sarella Chaim Sandler for sponsoring his effort.

Jewish Liturgy, by A. Z. Idelsohn.

Jewish Music, by A. Z. Idelsohn.

My Prayer, by Nissan Mindel.

The World of Rav Kook’s Thought, a publication of conference proceedings on the fiftieth anniversary of Rav Kook’s death.

Souls on Fire, Elie Wiesel.

Kabbalah, by Dr. Alexander Safran.

Israel in Time and Space, by Dr. Alexander Safran.

Wisdom of Kabbalah, by Dr. Alexander Safran.

The Bible and Meditation, by Aryeh Kaplan.

En Jacob, by Rabbi Jacob Ibn Chabib, translated into English by Rabbi S. H. Glick.

Proverbs, a new translation by Michael V. Fox

There was an important memorable lecture at the Northwestern University Law School on Superior Street in Chicago by Rosh Yeshiva Mordecai Gifter of Telshe in the late 1960s. He finished the lecture by demonstrating the value of Three as an organizing principle. So I would like to mention three as unlikely but very important elements in the making of this book:

1. In the late 1950s, I was a part of a small group of students in New York City who met in the apartment of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright in the Plaza Hotel. We met to practice the exercises and movements created by George I. Gurdjieff and to discuss philosophy. Sometimes a guest would be invited. On one occasion, we had a cantor come up. I remember the visit but not his name. At this time Mr. Wright was working on both the Guggenheim Museum and the Beth Sholom Synagogue. The cantor was demonstrating the earliest known melody of something or other, and then how it would be embellished and improved by the cantorial tradition. To us, the power and beauty of the oldest unimproved versions had the impact, as the Chinese would say, of conviction. This experience bore directly in the making of this book.

2. Another important event is how I encountered the book mentioned in the book list Nine Gates to the Chassidic Mysteries, by Jiri Langer. About twelve years after the above event, I was again living in New York City. On one of my visits to a wonderful Russian woman, one of my teachers, Mdm. Olga de Hartmann, in her Manhattan apartment, I had purchased directly from her hand a copy of the French edition of Notre vie Avec Gurdjieff. A conversation ensued, and she impulsively gave me her copy of Jiri Langer’s book as a gift. She had written on the page facing the front cover page numbers 23, 47, 110, 117, 128, 154-156, and 163 (I still have the book). She also scribbled indications of the subjects which those pages unpacked: identification, past-future-present, how to pray, the significance of Cain, and humanity’s magic sleep. This book, Jiri Langer’s, is very important to this text. I lifted practically verbatim Eisik’s trip to Prague from it.

3. As for the lucky third source, I will spare the reader the circumstance. It is the Georgian epic The Knight in the Panther’s Skin by Shota Rustaveli, translated by Venera Urushadze of Tblisi into blank verse hexameters.

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

The Werewolf

On that day we are a class of ten boys. Israel takes us through the woods to teach us about God. The 104th psalm, the first of the praises in the Book of Psalms, is our text along with all of nature. The light is stretched out like a curtain and all of life joins the song. It is autumn and the fields leading to the forest are brimming with bees gathering their nectar with cattle, mosquitoes, songs of finches and crows, and sharp spicy smells. Then we leave the fields and enter the woods. We fall silent and after a while even the birds can no longer be heard and the rustling of the drying autumn leaves in the wind has stopped. Israel seems alarmed and this frightens me. It feels like an icy chill has invaded me. We all stop. Everything stops. Absolutely everything stops. It’s as though a slice is taken out of time and place and is left alone with no bearings. Then in front of us, the werewolf is there. It has dark face, white teeth, hair and scales everywhere, and the head too big for the body. It roars with a face of dread, eyes filled with hopelessness and doom, and we are all screaming and running. Israel ran as fast and faster because he was bigger than any of us.

None of us knew how we got home. The next period of time, I only remember sweats and fevers and unimaginable dreams.

Later, I was told by my parents that all of us in his class fell sick. I heard Israel spent almost the whole time talking to our families or walking in the fields thinking. Although he was just a few years older than we were and lived in the study house because his parents were dead, he was able to convince our parents, the senior teacher, and the town’s rabbi to allow him to take us out into the woods again. He was trusted by everyone. He argued that it wasn’t good for children to have a remembrance of such fear conquering them and giving them a sense of failure, and that it must be dispelled by going back to the woods again. He said the presence of God would help to vanquish the fear. They were able to see the rightness of this return journey.

So he got us together and willing to go out with him again, as terrified as we were to even leave our beds. Much later, I was able to see that it was a gift he had to get people to do what was good for them, even if they trembled to do it.

We set off from town very quietly, not horsing around and shouting as we usually did. Today, he carried with him a strange-looking stick and said he decided to teach us Psalm 76. And he invented a melody on the spot.

We leave the fields and all the boys fall quiet, and I know that I start to shake and probably the others do too. But I hear Israel’s voice very thin, very faint, singing the melody. At times his voice seems so high and like a reed, and at other times so deep it is like a rumble that vibrates the ground although I could hardly hear it. It happens again.

All is stopped. The light coming through the branches has turned to darkness. I’m about to run but I hear the melody as he sings In Salem also is set His tabernacle.

Before he can