Tales of the Hasidim is Martin Buber's two-volume compilation of Hasidic stories, first published by Schocken Books in English in 1947. Volume One, The Early Masters, gathers tales from the Baal Shem Tov — founder of the Hasidic movement — through his disciples and the school of the Great Maggid of Mezeritch. Volume Two, The Later Masters, continues through the Hasidic teachers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Buber spent four decades collecting these brief, often cryptic narratives — most one to three paragraphs — and rendering them in literary prose, translated into English by Olga Marx. A combined edition with a foreword by Chaim Potok has been in print from Schocken since 1991.
The tales are organised by teacher: each section opens with a brief biographical note on the rebbe in question and then presents the stories attached to that figure, ranging from parables and sayings to encounters with disciples and opponents and moments of prayer or silence. Buber's premise, stated in the introduction, is that the tale — not doctrine — is the primary vehicle of Hasidic teaching, and that the rebbe's life, taken together, is itself a kind of text.
Reception
Widely treated as the standard English-language introduction to the Hasidic storytelling tradition since its 1947 publication. The principal scholarly objection has been sustained by Gershom Scholem and later by Moshe Katz and Rivka Schatz-Uffenheimer: that Buber's retellings import his own dialogical philosophy — particularly the I-Thou framework of his 1923 book — into source material that does not carry those categories, and that his characterisation of Hasidism as a this-worldly mysticism understates its kabbalistic eschatology. Buber's position, stated in his 1963 response to Scholem, was that his concern was the oral tradition and its living spirit, not textual philology. The debate is unresolved and remains a reference point in twentieth-century Jewish scholarship. Outside the academic dispute, the books have been read by Christian theologians and are recommended across Jewish denominational lines as introductory texts.
Frequently asked
What is Tales of the Hasidim about?
It is Martin Buber's compilation of brief stories attached to particular Hasidic rebbes, from the Baal Shem Tov in the eighteenth century to the later masters of the nineteenth. Each section presents one teacher with a short biographical note and the tales told about him — accounts of his approach to prayer, his disciples, and his encounters with ordinary people.
What is the Buber-Scholem debate that surrounds this book?
Gershom Scholem argued that Buber's retellings import his own existentialist and dialogical philosophy into source material that does not contain those categories, and that Buber mischaracterises Hasidism by downplaying its kabbalistic roots. Buber maintained that he was rendering the living spirit of the oral tradition rather than producing a philological edition. The dispute, which began in the 1920s, is unresolved.
How does this book relate to Buber's other work on Hasidism?
Buber wrote about Hasidism across seven volumes over six decades. The Legend of the Baal-Shem (1908) was the earliest and most literary in form; Tales of the Hasidim (1947) reflects a later, more disciplined approach that stays closer to the source tradition. His philosophical work I and Thou (1923) and his Hasidic anthologies developed in parallel and influenced each other.