In the words of Elie Wiesel: The man who left his mark on so many survivors of so many massacres in Central and Eastern Europe, the leader who not only made survival imperative but possible, the Master who gave to despairing communities, managed-we shall never know how-to disappear without leaving the professional seekers even a fragment of valid autobiographical material. Obsessed by eternity, he neglected history and let himself be carried by legend". Wiesel is talking about the Baal Shem Tov, The Master of the Good Name. Readers acquainted with Jewish history will have an idea who the Baal Shem Tov was. But the width of the spectrum of such ideas can be immeasurably wide. Equally wide is the range of emotions these ideas arouse. Readers unacquainted with such a history may be able to read this book more easily as a novel, which it is. What surrounds the stage of our action is, of course, the great world of history and a time of disruptions and new thinking. Of great consequence is the transmission from China of the musical theory of equal temperament which forms the basis of almost all musical composition from the mid-18th century to the music saturated present. This musical theory was received and then published in France by Mersenne in 1636; in 1722 it was being championed by Bach in his instructions to young musicians collected under the title, The Well Tempered Clavier. That year the Baal Shem Tov was probably earning his living digging clay and accompanying his labors with Carpathian shepherd's tunes. The story is told through the eyes of an invented student of his who becomes a physician in Prague".

The Master of the Good Name

A Novel of the 18th CenturyBy Reina Menken John Menken

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Reina and John Menken
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-5634-6

Chapter One

The Werewolf

On that day we are a class of ten boys. Israel takes us through the woods to teach us about God. The 104th psalm, the first of the praises in the Book of Psalms, is our text along with all of nature. The light is stretched out like a curtain and all of life joins the song. It is autumn and the fields leading to the forest are brimming with bees gathering their nectar with cattle, mosquitoes, songs of finches and crows, and sharp spicy smells. Then we leave the fields and enter the woods. We fall silent and after a while even the birds can no longer be heard and the rustling of the drying autumn leaves in the wind has stopped. Israel seems alarmed and this frightens me. It feels like an icy chill has invaded me. We all stop. Everything stops. Absolutely everything stops. It's as though a slice is taken out of time and place and is left alone with no bearings. Then in front of us, the werewolf is there. It has dark face, white teeth, hair and scales everywhere, and the head too big for the body. It roars with a face of dread, eyes filled with hopelessness and doom, and we are all screaming and running. Israel ran as fast and faster because he was bigger than any of us.

None of us knew how we got home. The next period of time, I only remember sweats and fevers and unimaginable dreams.

Later, I was told by my parents that all of us in his class fell sick. I heard Israel spent almost the whole time talking to our families or walking in the fields thinking. Although he was just a few years older than we were and lived in the study house because his parents were dead, he was able to convince our parents, the senior teacher, and the town's rabbi to allow him to take us out into the woods again. He was trusted by everyone. He argued that it wasn't good for children to have a remembrance of such fear conquering them and giving them a sense of failure, and that it must be dispelled by going back to the woods again. He said the presence of God would help to vanquish the fear. They were able to see the rightness of this return journey.

So he got us together and willing to go out with him again, as terrified as we were to even leave our beds. Much later, I was able to see that it was a gift he had to get people to do what was good for them, even if they trembled to do it.

We set off from town very quietly, not horsing around and shouting as we usually did. Today, he carried with him a strange-looking stick and said he decided to teach us Psalm 76. And he invented a melody on the spot.

We leave the fields and all the boys fall quiet, and I know that I start to shake and probably the others do too. But I hear Israel's voice very thin, very faint, singing the melody. At times his voice seems so high and like a reed, and at other times so deep it is like a rumble that vibrates the ground although I could hardly hear it. It happens again.

All is stopped. The light coming through the branches has turned to darkness. I'm about to run but I hear the melody as he sings "In Salem also is set His tabernacle."

Before he can start the next line, IT is there roaring so loudly I cannot tell whether it is anguish or rage. Before anything else can happen—before we can run or even scream, Israel races forward three steps and strikes with his stick. I feel the blood moving again in my veins and hear the forest sounds and the trees' dry leaves rustling in the breeze. On the ground in front of us is this dead thing.

We gather around IT. It seems enormous—twice as long as any of us. It is completely covered in long hair, black and red from the chest downward, and from the chest to the face covered in plates of flesh and scales like an old lizard with its dead face staring up hairy and snouted and fanged like a wolf. A single trickle of blood from a crack in the skull tracks a jagged line across the face. After a few seconds, Israel bends down and closes the eyelids over eyes that are frozen in astonishment. Israel recites a couple of words we don't hear or don't understand. He doesn't let us stare but gathers us together and teaches us a song to sing as we march back.

It seemed the whole forest joined us in this song. He told us he learned it from his teacher. None of us thought to ask who the teacher was because we assumed that was a pretty ordinary thing and that the whole event was somehow part of school, and everyone had such experiences—it was just part of the education of a Jew. We all resumed eating and sleeping without fuss.

But something about the way he said he learned "it" from his teacher haunted me. Did he mean the song? Did he mean how to use the strange-looking stick? Or even more than that? What occurred in those two trips in the woods stand forth as a singular event, something that was not part of a process but a breaking through process. My world was changed and though I did not yet realize it, my feet were set on a fresh path.

He brings boys to meet an evil thing that floods us with fear. He gets us to trust him enough to go out to meet that evil again and to walk through the forest of fear without running. And then, he unbinds the spell of fear by plainly and simply killing the thing.

This event remains alive to me always as a source of hope. I hold my relationship with Israel to be a major thread in the continuity of my life—sometimes appearing, sometimes vanishing within the weaving only to reappear somewhere else, a gentle touch of lightning.

A few months after the werewolf's death, Israel was removed as teacher's assistant and was given the job as watchman for the house of study. We boys missed him and probably never learned with such exuberance again. We wondered why this happened but forgot about it soon enough. Many people said that a gentile sorcerer was found dead the day after the incident. The elders thought it would be best for Israel to be occupied with more fitting tasks.

I used to see him sweeping up in the house of study. Usually as I passed, we would pause for a moment, then greet each other, and continue on our way. This became the pattern of our friendship for the rest of our lives. Sometimes there would be words between us and sometimes not. Sometimes I would ask for and receive advice. Often, he would tell me stories. And often he would tell me about himself.

Once as I was on my way to the study table, he said, "Ber, what is going to become of you?" My name is Dov Ber Teller. I just stared at him. That question had never entered my mind. He paused a moment to look into my eyes, then turned away and continued sweeping.

The next several days are like a dream. I found myself walking alone through the fields or sitting in the woods and thoughts were racing. The conclusion was that I did not want to spend the rest of my life in Okopy. When I realized that, I knew I had to tell Israel before talking to anyone. So after supper, I told my family I was going to the study house to learn for a few hours; and I instead went to find him.

It was a night that was very cold and since there were still a few men learning, Israel was keeping the fire glowing in the stove. I was so happy to see him. After these several terrible and tense days, just setting my eyes on him put my heart at ease. A light seemed to come from him, but it could simply have been the stove.

"Ber, it is not enough to simply want to leave Okopy. Who are you? What are you? What do you want to do?"

At first I couldn't tell him because it was impossible and almost, I thought, a sin to want something so above me, Dov Ber Teller, son of a bath attendant. I made all sorts of excuses and then finally I told him that I wanted to be a physician. He smiled slightly and said, "And so you shall be."

It must have been shortly after this that what the legends describe as the "Secret Book of Rabbi Adam" came into Israel's hands. I was invited to spend some time with relatives of my mother in Prague. This was perhaps three weeks after my conversation with Israel and I raced to tell him because it seemed the road was opening out for me toward my wish.

I was amazed to find him preparing to leave our little town. I had thought he would always be there I had pictured that as I advanced in the great world I could always be sure the stove in the study house of Okopy would be tended by Israel. He told me he was going to be a teacher, no longer an assistant, in the town of Brody.

Now as I'm writing this, there are manuscripts passing around of stories about the Baal Shem Tov. I must say that my own experiences with him while he lived, as well as what I have heard from those near him, are different in quality and feeling than the stories in those manuscripts. Reading them put me in such turmoil that I feel I must add to the record.

The Secret Book of Rabbi Adam, they say, was the beginning. The story goes that an unknown rabbi sent a mysterious book to a young watchman-attendant in a study house. This would have taken place when Israel was about fifteen around the time of the werewolf event, before Israel left for Brody. How did the book arrive and no one in Okopy know of it?

Throughout the lands where Jews were settled in those days, hidden mystics were always traveling, particularly the hidden ones. Wandering mystics were on the roads of warring kingdoms— Poland, Russia, Podolia-Ukraine, Lithuania, and Bohemia—where boundaries changed every few years. They might seem to be peddlers, merchants on the road, and journeyman-artisans, almost anyone except what they really were. But what were they?

There was so much confusion about the way to God. I do remember and recently confirmed that a stranger was buried in our cemetery just the week before I heard from my mother's relatives in Prague. There was a stir at the time and all of us young students were made to attend the burial so that the stranger would not be without honor, where he had no friends or relations. The gravestone, which I found when I returned to Okopy to confirm my memory, had no name on it but did have the letters K and Z, the abbreviation for kohen zedek or righteous priest. Who was he? He must have been the son of Rabbi Adam.

When I was studying medicine in Prague, perhaps ten years after the events I've described, I had a visit from Israel ben Eliezer. He was not yet famous. At the time, he and his wife were keeping an inn near Brody. He wanted to see how one of his first students was doing. He said he needed to see for himself and that a good understanding of my condition, both in the outer world and the inner, could help him decide about the future of his own life. He had taken a room at a lodging house nearby and we would spend some time together. I started to tell him about my situation. But he said no, I should let him see for himself how my life went here. He said it was important that he come to know my condition for himself.

So for several days, an unlikely pair could be seen wandering the streets of the great city. Israel wore the clothes of a Russian peasant, the belted blouse, the hat, full pants and boots, and I, wore a city student's clothes. Neither of us followed the King's law of the yellow badge and other elements identifying ourselves as Jews. Israel wanted to see the beautiful city. I, although living here, had never seen it since I observed the rules and, as a Jew, could not go just anywhere. And I would never have taken such a risk, except that ever since the event of the werewolf, I was sure that if I were with Israel nothing really bad could happen to me. The danger of our situation added to the excitement. It was during this week that he told me about the Secret Book and his discovery of his path.

Whilst Israel was working as attendant at the house of study, a traveling watchmaker had rented lodgings at the edge of town, and while staying in Okopy, had spent a great deal of time at the study house. Israel had noticed him and concluded that he was one of the hidden mystics traveling on their inexplicable errands. But one night when everyone had left except the stranger, he was surprised to find a package on his workbench. He felt something about the package was extraordinary. It was as if an imperceptible light emanated from the wrapping. He went back into the main room where the stranger was praying by himself and waited until he was finished. He told me that he asked, "Has the gentleman perhaps made a mistake and left something of his on my table?"

And the man answered, "It is not mine, Israel ben Eliezer, it is yours. My father asked me to find you and give this to you when he died. It is a manuscript."

I know that in the narration, Israel is trying to simplify the event—as I would be doing if I said my school class met a monster in the woods and we were frightened. And now there are many versions of the event of the secret book. Over the next several days as we were walking and talking he would bring to the story a line here, a word there I add my version now to the others.

Rabbi Adam was born in Moravia during the Thirty Years War. As a young man, he had a series of dreams about the Great Rabbi Loew, namely Yehuda ben Bezalel, who had left a great legacy in Moravia before becoming identified with Prague. By coincidence, one of these dreams leads him to become attached to a group that is emigrating to Safed in the midst of the chaos unleashed by the wars. The primary person of this party, the remarkable Eva Kohen Bachrach, dies on the way in Sofia. Adam stays behind to tend the grave for the customary time, intending to continue the journey after a year. In those days, Sofia was populated with a patchwork of peoples—Turkish Muslims, Eastern and Western Christians, Protestants, Jews, and any other peoples that might be in the world. Strangely, he becomes friends with a Turk who had heard of an old hermit, a holy man who lived in a cave several days' journey from the city. No one knew what faith he practiced, but many farmers, herdsmen, and artisans in the villages around him relied on his wisdom and sanctity. The two adventurers decide to find the cave. But when they do find it, the man has vanished and on a makeshift table there is a book. Since it is in Hebrew, the Turkish companion insists that it belongs to Adam. In later years, Adam is certain that the Turk was Elijah. Apparently this was a great unknown manuscript of practical Kabbalah. Adam orders his life according to it, returns to his homeland, studies, and becomes a rabbi. In a dream, he is instructed to bequeath the manuscript not to his son, but to a young man in the town of Okopy who would be found working as an attendant in the study house—Israel, the son of Eliezer.

When Rabbi Adam dies, his son sets off on his mission with misgivings. To give these priceless manuscripts to a parentless fifteen-year-old boy who is the watchman and attendant for a study house seems absurd to him. After all, it is unlikely such a person exists. But he must do his best to fulfill his father's command before he can take the books for himself.

Imagine the look on Rabbi Adam's son when he found that there was an Israel ben Eliezer matching his father's description. I think the fact itself did as much as any quality he discovered in Israel, to convince him about the validity of the young man having been chosen. Most accounts of this event go on and on with special tests, various deceptions to discover truth and so forth, none of which did I get the sense of from Israel's occasional statements. Rabbi Adam's son was simply thunderstruck at the fact of it. It took him several days to recover from the shock. And he did not marry a girl from Okopy, as a popular version claims, to disguise his purposes there. No one was either interested in his purpose there and no one would have believed that Israel had any quality, except exceptional courage and foolhardiness. After several days, the rabbi's son recovered enough to give the manuscripts to Israel. But he did ask of Israel, as the legends aver, that they study together for some time and that they invite the angel Yophiel, the Prince of the Torah, to open the gates of knowledge. This inadvertently led to his death, as they say, before his time—if there is such a thing as a death before the time of it.

We were on The Stone Bridge when Israel described the events that led to the death of Rabbi Adam's son. He began by marveling at the bridge. It is a great structure. And he saw it in a unique way. For him, he said, sometimes the bridge appeared to be in motion and the great river, the Vltava, was still. It was something about the bridge, I think, that made him tell the story because we were talking about paths. Israel believed Jews had a special relation to pathways and to the connections between paths.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Master of the Good Nameby Reina Menken John Menken Copyright © 2012 by Reina and John Menken. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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