Moshe Idel on the Besht
Moshe Idel has a new article on the Besht. The following is from the Hartman Institute,
Idel reports the hasidic legend that the Besht’s father was taken away to a far country by bandits where, in parallels to the biblical Joseph, he became a viceroy and was given a wife he did not touch. Then, the legend reports, he returned to his original place, where his wife was still alive and then, even both were near 100, the Besht was born.
As Idel puts it: “This means that the parents of the Besht were inhabitants of a border region that has been described as part of Walachia (also known as Moldavia), a place they were not reported to have left.”
Therefore, Idel concludes, “the founder of Hasidism was born to a poor family that inhabited an unknown place on the Romanian part of the border with the Kingdrom of Poland…there is no extant evidence whatsoever that the Besht was born in Okopy.
A lot of research into the “Historical Ba’al Shem Tov” has been done by Moshe Rosman (see his Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov