The Baal Shem Tov Drove Off Death and Nearly Lost Both Worlds

Click for full size

Death Dancing Behind a Tax Collector

The man came about his mazal. It had gone bad the way weather goes bad, and he wanted the Baal Shem Tov to say a word over it and set it right. He stood with his hat in his hands. Behind him, where the wall met the doorframe, the Angel of Death was dancing.

The Baal Shem Tov said nothing about the dancing. He spoke about repentance instead, hard and plain, the way a man speaks when the roof is already burning. "Why should you go after the acquisitions of this world? It is better to repent and repair your ways."

The tax collector heard a price being named and reached for his purse. The Baal Shem Tov would not take a coin, and the man went out insulted, still worried about his mazal.

"Fool," the Baal Shem Tov said once the door had shut. "Today or tomorrow he will die, and he worries about his mazal."

Rabbi Gershon, his brother-in-law, turned on him. "Why did you bring bad words out of your mouth about an Israelite?"

"What can I do for you, since you are blind and did not see that the Angel of Death was going after him?"

A Melody in the Middle of Vidui

Rabbi Gershon let it go. The tax collector drove home. And Rabbi Jacob, another brother-in-law, lately widowed and traveling to marry again, took the same road, there being only the one.

He stopped in a village beside the tax collector's own, and the man laid out a fine meal for him. Rabbi Jacob would not eat the meat. They set dairy food at the far end of the table for him, and the tax collector made jokes about it until everyone went to bed.

In the dark the tax collector woke with his head splitting and cried loudly enough to wake the house. He asked for vidui, and nobody there knew how to lead a dying man through it. Rabbi Jacob, mocked four hours earlier over a plate of cheese, sat down beside him and said the words, and the tax collector answered after him in a melody, phrase by phrase, in tune, the way a man prays at the amud on a festival morning.

The wife stepped back from the bed. "Perhaps he has slept a little and it is easier for him." She looked again a few minutes later. He was dead.

Rabbi Jacob rode home and said it out loud in front of everyone. "In truth, we are blind."

The Proclamation on the Road to Khmelnik

Sight like that is not a thing a man can put down. On the road to Khmelnik a proclamation went out overhead, and the name in it belonged to Rabbi Yosef, a teacher of children in that town. He will die.

The townspeople met the Baal Shem Tov at the edge of the houses. Rabbi Yosef was burning with fever, they said, and they would pay whatever the healing cost. He refused, and gave no reason. He left them holding their coins and thinking whatever they would think about a man who walks into a town, learns their children's teacher is dying, and walks out again.

An Ointment for the Lice

A doctor arrived after the Baal Shem Tov had gone. He gave his medicines, the fever broke, and Rabbi Yosef sat up and got well. The Baal Shem Tov came back through Khmelnik while the doctor was still there, and they told him the news with some pleasure. He took it without a word.

He was standing in the room when Rabbi Yosef, scratching, asked the doctor for something against the lice that the long fever had left crawling in his scalp. The doctor mixed an ointment and handed it over. Rabbi Yosef rubbed it in with both hands, and it went into him, and he died.

Only then did the Baal Shem Tov tell them what he had heard on the road.

The Angel Over Rabbi Leibish's Bed

Twice he had watched a decree come down and kept his hands at his sides. The third time came during the Days of Awe, when Rabbi Leibish of Mezritch fell ill just before Rosh Hashanah. The Baal Shem Tov worked over him through both nights, the eve of the festival and the festival itself, and no sign of death showed on him at all. So he walked to the study house for prayer with an easy mind.

While he stood at prayer, Rabbi Leibish's mind clouded and his strength drained out of him. Men ran to the study house and stood there, unable to do the one thing they had come for, because nobody would shout at a man in the middle of the Rosh Hashanah prayers. Rabbi Isaac of Mezritch watched them whispering, gave up on decorum, and shouted across the room.

The Baal Shem Tov came out of the prayer like a man surfacing. "Why did they not tell me?"

He ran. The Angel of Death was standing over the bed, and the Baal Shem Tov rebuked it to its face and drove it out the way a householder throws a thief out of his kitchen. He took Rabbi Leibish by the hand, and the man recovered where he lay. He would not leave him there. He walked him to the study house and kept him through the day, because he did not trust the angel to stay outside the door he had just thrown it through.

Afterward he said what the hour had cost. Above, they wanted to push him out of this world and out of the World to Come. He had done it, he said, only because the thing came on him suddenly. No sign had shown on Rabbi Leibish beforehand, not one, and when the angel appeared over the bed with no warning, his heart grieved for him and his hands moved before heaven could tell him to hold them still.