Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov

A healer, amulet-writer and teacher in Podolia, on the far south-eastern edge of Polish Jewry, who wrote almost nothing. Everything attributed to him comes through students, chiefly Jacob Joseph of Polnoye, and through a collection of tales printed fifty-four years after his death. He held no rabbinic post and led no yeshiva.

The founder of the largest revival movement in Jewish history, and the evidential problem is at the centre of him rather than at the edge. There is no autograph text. What we have is a portrait drawn by devoted students and a hagiography, and the movement's own scholars know it — which is why the interesting question is not “what did he really say” but what did a generation of extraordinary people find it necessary to attribute to him.