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The Patriarchs Walked Israel's Crossroads at Night

In a dream the dead Baal Shem Tov tells his son that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob walk the roads to learn Israel's troubles before libels strike.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Three Weeks Until the Arrests
  2. Angels on the Right, Demons on the Left
  3. Rain That Held a Man Inside Judgment
  4. A Map Made of Roads and Rain

Rabbi Tzvi dreamed his father, the Baal Shem Tov, already dead and already troubled. Debt pressed the living son the way a wet coat presses a traveler. He asked who had told the dead father about a money matter that should have stayed among the living. Those who walk at the crossroads, his father answered, as if the night roads of Israel were a post office for the dead.

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They were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Patriarchs walked the roads of Israel to learn the people's troubles and carry them to the graves of the tzaddikim (the righteous). The father could not stay to comfort. He had to go annul libels from bandits. The dream ended with motion, not advice. A dead tzaddik still had work on the roads.

Three Weeks Until the Arrests

Three weeks later, at Passover, Jews in Sede Lavan were arrested under a libel. The festival table and the prison cell sat in the same season. On the seventh day of the festival the rabbi led prayer with joy and said the Shekhinah (God's indwelling presence) had rested during the Song. The decree would be canceled. The prisoners came out, blinking into light that still smelled of matzah and fear.

Then about five hundred bandits attacked the villages and pressed against the fortress of Krasniye. The defenders were almost out of powder when soldiers arrived with cannon and the bandits fled. The dream had shown a hidden patrol: Patriarchs at the crossroads, dead tzaddikim at their graves, and a father already moving before danger arrived in the open. What looked like luck to the walls looked like prior work to anyone who had heard the dream.

Angels on the Right, Demons on the Left

The Baal Shem Tov read Jacob's escort as a living order that had not ended with the book of Genesis. Angels walked on Jacob's right, demons on his left. The same escort, the stories say, walked before him on the roads of Podolia and Volhynia. He would not use the angels because they were holy. He would not use the demons because they lied. An escort is not the same as a tool.

Then a widow's lease was threatened. A man was going before the lord to take it from her, and the Baal Shem Tov sent a demon to stop his mouth. The command was narrow: block him, but do not harm him. The demon let the man speak until the lease was signed. Only afterward, on a bridge, did it strike. The Baal Shem Tov ran after it and forced it to leave the man alive. The demon defended itself with the letter of the command. That is why he did not trust them. A force that obeys the words and betrays the intent is worse than open hostility.

Rain That Held a Man Inside Judgment

Rabbi Gershon wanted the Land of Israel, and the Baal Shem Tov told him to watch that desire carefully. Whenever the longing rose sharp and sudden, it meant a city was under judgment and Ha-Satan (the Accuser) was trying to pull him away before he could pray for it. Holy homesickness can be bait. On the road he passed through Sharigrad. He wanted to leave at once, but the horses needed fodder. Then rain began, and the rain held him there through the week like a soft jail with no bars.

By Thursday he understood. If Heaven wanted him there for Shabbat, let the rain stop. It stopped immediately. He spent Shabbat praying for the city. The Baal Shem Tov later laughed because he had seen what happened. The decree could no longer be erased completely, because the heavenly proclamation had already been spoken aloud. But it had been delayed and softened. The city would not burn at once. Judgment would arrive in pieces, with years of mercy stretched between them. Rain had bought time that pure flight would have spent.

A Map Made of Roads and Rain

Crossroads, escorts, and weather were not scenery. They were how heaven moved help and delay through a landscape full of libels, leases, and doomed towns. The Patriarchs gathered trouble. Angels and demons pressed from both sides of a walking man. Rain locked a traveler inside a city that still had one Shabbat of prayer left in it. The living who only watched walls and markets missed the earlier patrol.

Rabbi Tzvi woke from the dream of his father and found that the night roads of Israel were already crowded with names older than any bandit band. Debt still pressed him. Danger still moved. But the map under the map had been drawn: fathers at the crossroads, a motherless widow's lease guarded by a force he refused to trust, and rain that knew when a city still needed a guest who could pray.

Baal Shem TovPatriarchsProtectionShekhinahHasidism
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Shivchei HaBesht 133Shivchei HaBesht

Translation of the source text.Shivchei HaBesht, Kopyst 1815 + JewishMythology.com faithful English Beta translation · Public Domain

I heard from the rabbi of the holy community of Polonnoye that two years before the flight, R. Tzvi, son of the Baal Shem Tov, saw his father in a dream, that he had great distress in that he was a debtor to the lords and had nothing with which to pay. He asked his father, Did you know of my distress? He said, I knew. He said, Who informed you? He said, Those who walk upon the crossroads informed me. He asked, Who are those who walk upon the crossroads? He said, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they walk upon the crossroads to know the troubles of Israel, and they go and inform upon the graves of the righteous. And they informed me of your distress, but there is no time to speak with you, for I must go to nullify the libels of bandits, who are called Haidamaks. And the dream was about three weeks before Passover, and on that festival of Passover a libel was made in the holy community of Sde Lavan, and several men were seized, and they sent by a messenger to the rabbi that he should pray for them; and on the seventh of Passover he said that he went down before the ark in great joy, and at the time of the table my father-in-law heard from him, and he said, It seems to me that the Shekhinah rested at the time of the saying of the Song, and I am confident in the Lord, blessed be He, that the decree will be nullified, and so it was.

For on the last days of Passover they came out from the imprisonment and the libel was completely nullified. And after Passover there were bandits, and they fell upon several villages, and afterward they gathered until they were about five hundred bandits. And at night they fell upon the city of Krasne and lingered through the day, and the whole city fled to the fortress and fought from the fortress. The gunpowder in the fortress was almost finished, and the bandits found three women and took wagons with straw, and the women drove the wagons with the straw and they pushed behind the wagons and ran to burn the fortress. And there was a camp of Poland standing near the city of Toviriv, and at that time those Poles came with a great firearm, which is called a cannon, and all the robbers fled, and not one of them remained, and there was from them peace for all the days of the summer.

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Shivchei HaBesht 157Shivchei HaBesht

Translation of the source text.Shivchei HaBesht, Kopyst 1815 + JewishMythology.com faithful English Beta translation · Public Domain

I was once in the holy community of Tulchin with a man named Rabbi David. At that time there was a match between the Hasid Rabbi Baruch and the Hasid Rabbi Yosef, son of Rabbi Yehiel Michel, may his memory be for blessing. Rabbi David heard from Rabbi Yosef in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, on the verse "He sent angels before him" (Genesis 32:4): these are the angels that walk before him. Before Jacob, angels always walked on his right and demons on his left, and so too before the Baal Shem Tov.

He did not want to make use of the angels, because they were holy. He also did not want to make use of the demons, because they are liars.

Once there was a widow in a village, and a certain man wanted to take the lease from her. The Baal Shem Tov sent a demon to close the man's mouth before the lord so that he would not be able to speak, but he commanded the demon not to harm him.

The demon allowed the man to speak until the lease was made. Afterward, when the man was on a bridge, the demon harmed him. The Baal Shem Tov ran there and decreed that the demon should leave him and not harm him. The demon answered, "I listened as you commanded me."

The narrator says that he does not know the full end of the matter, but it appears that the man stood healthy.

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Shivchei HaBesht 23Shivchei HaBesht

Translation of the source text.Shivchei HaBesht, Kopyst 1815 + JewishMythology.com faithful English Beta translation · Public Domain

And honor to his only son, the outstanding rabbinic man, the beloved honorable Rabbi Shimshon, and to his son, my beloved Rabbi Hertz, may his lamp shine, and to all of them in general and in particular.

I heard from the rabbi of our community, Rabbi Gedaliah, of blessed memory, that several times the rabbi desired to travel to the Land of Israel, and the Baal Shem Tov told him not to travel. He said to him, "Let this sign be in your hand: every time a desire falls upon you to travel to the Land of Israel, know faithfully that there are judgments on the city, may the Merciful One save us, and Ha-Satan is distracting you so that you will not pray for the city. Therefore, when a desire for the Land of Israel falls upon you, pray for the city."

Once the rabbi traveled to the Baal Shem Tov for Shabbat and had to pass through the city of Sharigrad. There was great anger against the city, and he did not want to stand in the city. But because he had to give fodder to the horses, he had to stop. He did not get up from the wagon, and said, "When they eat, we will immediately travel and go."

When they entered the house, it began to rain greatly, so that they could not travel. The rain did not stop, and he had to sleep there against his will. In the morning too the rain did not stop; it went on and grew stronger until Thursday. When he saw that the rains were not stopping, the rabbi said, "Master of the universe, perhaps it is pleasing to You that I stay here for Shabbat?" The rains would then stop, and so it was: they stopped immediately.

He prayed the whole Shabbat for the city. The Baal Shem Tov saw that he had spent Shabbat in the holy community of Sharigrad, and knew that he had acted well, though he was angry at the city. He laughed and said to the people of his inner circle, "See, the rabbi of the holy community of Rashkov spent Shabbat in the holy community of Sharigrad," and he laughed again.

After Shabbat, when the rabbi came to the Baal Shem Tov, he greeted him, and the Baal Shem Tov laughed. The rabbi said to the Baal Shem Tov, "My master, what is the laughter?" He said to him, "You were the whole holy Shabbat in Sharigrad." He answered, "Yes, that is the matter," and he yearned before him like an only son. He told him that he had been forced to spend Shabbat there because of the rains.

Then the Baal Shem Tov answered him, "Do you think the preacher was lying, Heaven forbid? It is true that he heard the heavenly proclamation. What angered me at him was that he brought the words of the proclamation out of his mouth. If he had not brought the words of the proclamation out of his mouth, I would have canceled the decree from the city entirely on that Shabbat. Now I only accomplished that they were given an extension: it would not burn all at once, but one entrance at one time and another entrance at another time, until the whole city would burn."

And so it was: it burned several times. Those against whom murder had been decreed were killed in the holy community of Uman at the time of the flight, may the Merciful One save us. Those against whom death by plague had been decreed died in the plague that came two years after the flight. They were given a great extension of time, about twenty years or more. I know this because he was head of the court in the holy community of Nemirov for sixteen years before the flight, apart from the time he was in Rashkov, which was several years before this event.

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