414 A History of Judaism
him at once. I was told, however, that he could not speak to me at the time,
but that I was invited to his table on Sabbath along with the other stran-
gers who had come to visit him; that I should then have the happiness of
seeing the saintly man face to face and of hearing the sublimest teachings
out of his own mouth; that although this was a public audience, yet, on
account of the individual references which I should find made to myself, I
might regard it as a special interview. Accordingly on Sabbath I went to
this solemn meal, and found there a large number of respectable men who
had met here from various quarters. At length the great man appeared in
his awe- inspiring form, clothed in white satin. Even his shoes and snuffbox
were white, this being among the Cabbalists the colour of grace. He gave to
each newcomer his salaam, that is, his greeting. We sat down to table and
during the meal a solemn silence reigned. After the meal was over, the
superior struck up a solemn inspiriting melody, held his hand for some time
upon his brow, and then began to call out, ‘ Z—— of H——, M—— of
R——,’ and so on. Each newcomer was thus called by his own name and
the name of his residence, which excited no little astonishment. Each
recited, as he was called, some verse of the Holy Scriptures. Thereupon the
superior began to deliver a sermon for which the verses recited served as a
text, so that although they were disconnected verses taken from different
parts of the Holy Scriptures they were combined with as much skill as if
they had formed a single whole. What was still more extraordinary, every
one of the newcomers believed that he discovered, in that part of the ser-
mon which was founded on his verse, something that had special reference
to the facts of his own spiritual life. At this we were of course greatly
astonished. It was not long, however, before I began to qualify the high
opinion I had formed of this superior and the whole society ... The whole
society also displeased me not a little by their cynical spirit and the excess
of their merriment.^51Despite the jaundiced view of Maimon, Dov Ber was an inspiring teacher
whose students were to carry various versions of his distinctive mystical
teachings to much of eastern Europe, so that by the first decade of the
nineteenth century, when Europe was facing up to Napoleon, his form of
Judaism had taken deep root in the Ukraine, Belorussia and Galicia.
Dov Ber’s teachings, or at least the enthusiastic, ecstatic proselytizing
of his followers, had also provoked strong opposition by the time of his
death. In 1772 the first of a series of bans was issued against them by
rabbinic authorities led by the Vilna Gaon in Lithuania. But although
such bans succeeded in restricting the enthusiasm of Jews in Lithuania,