Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah

Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov · compiled by Rabbi Shimon Menachem Mendel of Gavartchov · Lodz, 1938

The Baal Shem Tov wrote no sefer. What he taught was written down by the disciples who heard it, and lay scattered through their works for two hundred years. This sefer gathers it back together and sets it in the order every Jew already keeps — parashah by parashah, week by week, through the whole Chumash, the Five Megillos and the festivals.

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Why it should be brought to light

The Baal Shem Tov on your parashah. Gathered from the disciples who heard him, and arranged on the weeks of the year.

Rabbi Shimon Menachem Mendel of Gavartchov spent his life on one task: to find every teaching of the Baal Shem Tov preserved in the sefarim of his talmidim and of the tzaddikim who followed, and to set each one beside the verse it explains. He drew on the Toldos Yaakov Yosef, Ben Poras Yosef, Tzafnas Paneach and Kesones Passim of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polnoye — the disciple who wrote down what he heard — on the Degel Machaneh Ephraim of the Baal Shem Tov's own grandson, on the Or Torah and Likkutei Amarim of the Maggid of Mezeritch, on Likkutim Yekarim and the Tzavaas HaRivash, and on the sefarim of the tzaddikim down to his own day. The result was printed in Lodz in 1938, on the eve of the destruction of that world.

It has never been opened in English. And it is the piece the English reader is missing: Kesser Shem Tov gives the Baal Shem Tov's teachings as teachings, and Or Torah gives the Maggid on the Chumash — both now in print from this house. This sefer gives the Baal Shem Tov himself on the parashah of the week, so that the reader who learns the sedrah can hear what he said about it.

Printed with it, in the same 1938 volume, is the compiler's own apparatus — Mekor Mayim Chayim — which traces each teaching to the sefer it was taken from and argues out the hard places. That apparatus becomes this edition's footnotes, so a reader can always see where a teaching came from and how it was understood.

וכל אשר יקרא לו האדם נפש חיה הוא שמו

The verse on the sefer's shaar

Gathered from the holy sefarim of his disciples and of the tzaddikim of the generations that followed, arranged according to the order of the weekly parshiyos, the Five Megillos, and the festivals.

From the title page of the Lodz edition

The edition

Every teaching, fully opened. The vocalized Hebrew, its translation, the elucidation, and the compiler's own notes.

Fully vocalized Hebrew

The public-domain text of the Lodz 1938 edition, vocalized word by word — and checked so that stripping the nikud reproduces the printed text exactly.

Interlinear translation

The bold Hebrew phrase, then its faithful English, then a running elucidation that fills in what the Hebrew leaves unsaid — read straight through, in one line of thought.

Mekor Mayim Chayim as footnotes

The compiler's own apparatus from the same volume, carried along beneath the text: where the teaching is printed, who recorded it, and how the difficult places resolve.

“The Main Idea” at the foot

One to three plain sentences closing each teaching — the point, not the machinery — for the reader who has learned it late at night and wants to hold on to it.

Sources named at every turn

Each teaching carries the sefer it was drawn from, and the verses, Gemaros and Midrashim behind it are traced and cited.

Indexed for use

An Index of Subjects and an Index of Sources, so the sefer answers a question as well as it reads a parashah.

See it inside

Open the sefer. Parashas Ki Seitzei, complete, exactly as it will print.

The sample is a whole parashah — all twenty-four teachings of Ki Seitzei across 32 pages, with the silver title plate, the vocalized Hebrew, the interlinear translation and elucidation, the Mekor Mayim Chayim footnotes, “The Main Idea” at the foot of each teaching, and both indexes. Nothing is abridged: what you read is the page as it will be printed.

Open the sample PDF