17 - The Ba'al Shem Tov's Unsuccessful Pilgrimage to the Land of Israel

Summary

ALITTLE-KNOWN and mysterious chapter in the life story of the Ba'al Shem Tov is his unsuccessful pilgrimage to the Land of Israel. Some of the narrative sources tell the tale in detail; others are terse, casting light only on part of the attempted journey and its failure. Scholars have occasionally touched upon the subject, but so far no one has assembled the extant narrative material or compared its parallel formulations and different versions.

The various tales certainly do not add up to a historical documentation of the episode, although the perceptive historian will surely be able to discern the historical facts between the lines of legend. Sometimes, later publications preserve older oral traditions, and hence are more valuable than earlier ones. That the various storytellers, editors, and publishers have added to and deleted from the original content of the tales is quite likely, considering the sensitivity of the subject, namely, the failure of the Ba'al Shem Tov to achieve his intended aliyah (literally, ‘going up’, ‘ascent’: pilgrimage to the Land of Israel). In this connection we should note Abraham Ya'ari's comment that the 1815 Hebrew version of Shivḥei habesht deliberately conceals the failure of the attempt and makes no mention of the journey where some reference to it would have been expected.

Several motifs recur in the hasidic tales in connection with the Ba'al Shem Tov's pilgrimage. Some tales contain just one of them, others combine several. These motifs are:

(a) the motives for the journey;

(b) the preparations;

(c) the hardships encountered upon the journey and the stay in Istanbul;

(d) the spiritual crisis and the physical failures;

(e) the overcoming of these failures, the rescue from danger, and the return to spiritual heights;

(f) the Ba'al Shem Tov's return home;

(g) R. Nahman of Bratslav's pilgrimage.

There is no apparent reason to doubt that the Ba'al Shem Tov did indeed attempt to go to the Holy Land, or that he embarked upon the journey. In respect of his motives, the hasidic tale did not need to spell them out: the yearning for Zion had stirred the hearts of Jews throughout the ages, although few were able to turn the dream into reality.