Martin Buber

Sabbatian revolution had stirred the Polish Jew in the innermost core of his being, its end had shaken the very foundations of all that was his world, and now he asked passionately for leadership, he craved for a man who would take him under his wings, give certainty to his bewildered soul, order and form to an existence which had become chaotic, and who would, above all, enable him again both to believe and to live.

The hasidic conception of the Torah is a further development of the traditional belief that God wishes to use man in the conquest of the world which he has created. God wills to make it truly into his own world, his own dominion, but only through the act of man.

this is not meant one single, messianic act, but the deeds of the everyday, which prepare for the messianic fulfilment. A harmony of all functions is here substituted for the eschatological fever of the crisis, and this harmony does not simply mean health, it means rather healing. The “mizvoth,” the commandments, mark the sphere of the things which are already expressly given over to man for hallowing. Hasidism developed the late kabbalistic teaching of the divine sparks that have fallen into things and which can be “lifted up” by man.

order to understand the particular significance of the zaddik, as distinct for instance from that of the Russian staretz as he has been presented with the transforming fidelity of a great poet, by Dostoevski, it is necessary to remember the fundamental difference between the historical conceptions of Judaism and Christianity

For he whose every work is for God, he begets himself in the renewal of the light in his soul.”

This is what it means, ‘be not bad with yourself’; what is meant is that you spend your time sitting alone with yourself and do not go out among the people; be not bad through loneliness.”

factual existence of a human being can itself be a symbol or a sacrament.

But no symbol, in no timeless height, can in any other way become and become again reality than by becoming incarnate in such a living and dying human existence.

everything desires to become a sacrament.

impossible, says Hasidism, to have truly essential intercourse with God when there is no essential intercourse with men.