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The Magician Lifted the Baal Shem Tov's Wagon

On the mill bridge a magician hoists the Baal Shem Tov's wagon into air, while on another road he names a thief's forest nights stop by stop.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. A Man Who Feels Opposition
  2. Ordinary Power Finishes the Work
  3. A Wagon That Should Have Been Too Large to Steal
  4. The Thief at the Meal
The Magician Lifted the Baal Shem Tov's Wagon Click for full size

A Man Who Feels Opposition

The Jews of Medzhybizh wanted the cleric gone. He held power in the city, and the stories remember him as a magician who could feel when someone set will against him the way a skin feels weather before rain. At first the Baal Shem Tov held back. Open pressure would only sharpen the man's sense, like poking a wasp nest for the pleasure of noise. When the trouble became unbearable, the Baal Shem Tov began quietly, intention folded into prayer rather than into public curse. The cleric sensed it anyway. Power that lives by vigilance sleeps lightly.

Conflict that starts in the mind does not stay there. On the bridge near the mill the Baal Shem Tov's wagon rolled with horses and the ordinary freight of travel: bundles, a driver, the creak of wood that has known mud. Water moved under the planks. The magician lifted wagon and horses into the air as if timber and muscle were paper, a public humiliation meant to prove who owned the town's fear. Hooves hung where sky should not hold them. The Baal Shem Tov held the wagon and set it back onto the planks. Boards received weight again. Hooves found timber. No long speech is recorded for that second, only force meeting force over water while mill gears kept their indifferent turning.

Ordinary Power Finishes the Work

The end came without a second aerial contest. Spectacle is expensive. Decrees are cheaper and last longer. The city lord seized the cleric's property, ordered him to repay Jews who had claims against him, and drove him out poor. The magician left in a broken wagon, after failing to keep the one that carried the Baal Shem Tov suspended like a threat. Heaven's champion did not need to chase him down the road with more miracles. Debt and decree did what floating horses could not finish. The man who had lifted a wagon left town unable to lift his own fortunes.

Neighbors watched the departure the way people watch a storm leave: relieved, still half expecting a return gust. None came. The bridge kept its planks. The mill kept grinding. Stories of the airborne wagon settled into the kind of memory that children demand on long winter nights.

A Wagon That Should Have Been Too Large to Steal

Another wagon, another road, a quieter theft. A merchant left cloth merchandise outside because the cart looked too large to steal, a calculation based on bulk rather than on human appetite. By morning it was gone. Tracks mixed with other tracks. The merchant's throat filled with the sour taste of trusting size. The Baal Shem Tov received the letter while standing by a mezuzah (a small parchment scroll in its case) on his way to a circumcision, one hand already on the doorpost of a different mitzvah (a commandment). Near the city he saw the wagon approaching from another road and sent Rabbi Tzvi the scribe to confront the man who had it.

Rabbi Tzvi hesitated. The man was praying like someone simple and upright, lips moving with the cadence of a person who has nothing to hide. Later he ate breakfast like anyone else, bread and whatever the road offered. Suspicion felt rude. Good manners almost became an accomplice. The Baal Shem Tov sent him back with a hidden map spoken into the air: three days in the forest, the places the thief slept, each stop on the road to Drozhne, the nights under trees, the hours when he thought no eye could reach him. Detail by detail the road was named until the thief's face changed color and his prayer-face fell away like a mask with weak glue.

The Thief at the Meal

The thief broke. He returned the wagon and then came to the circumcision meal as a poor man, as if poverty could rewrite the morning. His question cut clean across the celebration: if the Baal Shem Tov could see the routes of thieves, why look at low things at all? Why spend holy sight on cloth and axles when heaven has larger files? The Baal Shem Tov answered with Torah until Minchah and did not finish. The teaching outlasted the afternoon. Tables were cleared. Blessings were said. The answer was not a boast about surveillance. It was a refusal to treat stolen cloth as too small for a teacher who also sets wagons back on bridges.

Two wagons, one lifted by malice, one taken by greed. In both stories the Baal Shem Tov refuses to let motion be rewritten by force that pretends to be destiny. Air cannot keep what planks reclaim. A forest map cannot stay secret when a mouth that knows roads decides to speak. Between magician and thief stands the same refusal: the world will not be stolen in pieces while he is awake enough to name the pieces.

After both wagons were settled, one back on planks and one back with its owner, Medzhybizh told the stories as a pair. Children asked which was greater, the flying cart or the forest map. Elders refused the contest. Sight that reclaims what malice lifts and sight that reclaims what greed steals are the same sight aimed at different thieves. The Baal Shem Tov did not need the town to rank his hours. He needed the town to stop bleeding wagons.

Baal Shem TovMagicianWagonThiefMedzhybizhMiracleHasidimPower
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From the tradition

Sources

2 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 88Shivchei HaBesht

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

There was a cleric in Medzhybizh with the commissioner, and he caused much trouble to the Jews of the city. The people pressed the Baal Shem Tov very much to pray that he be driven out of the city. The Baal Shem Tov did not want to do it, because the cleric was a great magician, and he would sense it when the Baal Shem Tov began to oppose him.

Afterward the matter became very severe, and the people pressed him greatly. The Baal Shem Tov said, "I will begin quietly, and perhaps he will not feel it." Immediately the cleric felt it. Once the Baal Shem Tov was on a mountain, and the cleric was descending opposite him. The Baal Shem Tov said, "He will fall. If it had been the reverse, it would not have been good for me."

Afterward the city lord took from the cleric all his property and all his money. He also ordered him to repay every Jew who had a claim against him. The cleric became poor and was driven from the city in a broken wagon.

I also heard from Rabbi Leib that the cleric made sorcery against the Baal Shem Tov. Once the Baal Shem Tov was traveling on the bridge by the mill, and the cleric lifted the wagon and the horses. The Baal Shem Tov held the wagon and set it on the planks of the bridge. The people had to hire gentiles to take the horses and wagon out of that place.

The Baal Shem Tov said, "Since he knows this, he will certainly have a bad end." And so it happened.

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Shivchei HaBesht 89Shivchei HaBesht

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

I also heard from him, and afterward I heard from the rabbi of our community: once a shopkeeper in the city of Sede Lavan came from Breslau with a large wagon, with cloth merchandise, and arrived at night. He did not want to open the shop at night. He ordered the horses removed from the wagon and said in his heart, "Who can steal a wagon, that is, such a large wagon as this?" He left the large wagon outside with the merchandise.

Afterward a thief came and stole it. He harnessed other horses to that wagon and fled with the wagon and all the merchandise. In the morning they saw that the wagon with the merchandise had been stolen, and they began to run and search in all the streets and at the crossroads, but they did not find the thief and did not catch up to him.

The merchant sent a letter to the Baal Shem Tov. When the messenger came to the Baal Shem Tov, he found him standing by the mezuzah, about to travel to the holy community of Drozhne for a circumcision, because he had been honored with the mitzvah of circumcision. He received the letter from the messenger and said to him, "Wait until I return."

The messenger waited, and the Baal Shem Tov lodged on the road. In the morning he traveled to the city. When he came near the city, the Baal Shem Tov saw from far away that the wagon with the merchandise was also coming to the city on another road. He said to Rabbi Tzvi the scribe, "See and look at the wagon traveling with two horses." He said, "I see it." The messenger who had been sent to me said, "I came because of that wagon and the merchandise inside it, which were stolen."

The Baal Shem Tov said, "When we come to the city, ask about his lodging, and tell him to give you the wagon with the merchandise, because this is stolen property in your possession." When they came to the city, Rabbi Tzvi the scribe immediately went to his lodging. He saw that the man was standing and praying, and he could not bring himself to speak to him as he had been told, because he prayed like a simple and upright man.

The scribe came back to the Baal Shem Tov and answered him so. The Baal Shem Tov said to him, "Go at once, for he will immediately travel with the merchandise, and the wagon and the merchandise will be lost." He went a second time and found him eating his morning meal. He asked the innkeeper whether he had drunk much liquor, as thieves do. The innkeeper said that he had drunk only for two coins, as everyone does. He left him again and returned home empty-handed.

The Baal Shem Tov said to him, "Go and tell him all the signs: that he stood in the forest three days until all the runners who were searching had passed, and afterward he lodged in such-and-such a place. Tell him every lodging where he lodged until the city of Drozhne." The scribe went and told him all the signs. Then the thief's hands weakened, and he said, "It is true; that is the matter. Take the wagon with the merchandise." He commanded the innkeeper to guard the wagon and the merchandise.

When they came to eat at the circumcision, the thief said, "Now I am poor like the other poor people; I will go eat at that circumcision meal." When they ate and drank mead, the thief stood near the Baal Shem Tov and said, "I have a great difficulty against his honor. Since his honor knows and sees how thieves steal, and their places and lodgings, certainly you can see better things than these. Why should you look at low things? It is better to look at good things." The Baal Shem Tov gave a Torah teaching on this question until the afternoon prayer, and he did not finish that teaching.

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