the Hasidic mode of life, says Buber in the present
volume. "Our chief source of knowledge of Hasidism is
its legends." These he has retold and commented on in
many works; yet it has also been necessary for him to
make explicit the place of Hasidism among world re-
ligions and its significance for the modern world. This
is the task which he has accomplished in the present
volume. Throughout a long lifetime Buber has been
convinced that Hasidism, more than any other teach-
ing, has the power to remind modern man of what he
is in danger of forgetting--"for what purpose we are on
earth." Although Buber is one of the greatest scholars
of Hasidism, his concern with it has not been merely
an academic one. If he has "carried it into the world
against its will," as he says in the Foreword to this vol-
ume, it is not for the sake of its cultural interest or even
its contribution as an example of a genuinely Jewish
mysticism, but "because of its truth and because of the
great need of the hour."

The Origin and Meaning of Hasidism is the second
volume of Martin Buber's two-volume comprehensive
interpretation, Hasidism and the Way of Man. The
more illustrative first volume-- Hasidism and Modern
Man ( Horizon Press, 1958)--is here completed by a
group of interpretative essays written over a period of
thirty years. The first three essays--"The Beginnings,"
"The Foundation Stone,"--and "Spinoza, Sabbatai Zvi,
and the Baal-Shem"--deal with the life and teaching of
the founder of Hasidism, Israel ben Eliezer, the Good
Master of the Name of God (Baal-Shem-Tov). They
bring out the significance of the Baal-Shem's teaching

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