שבחי הבעש״ט · Shivchei ha-Besht

The collected miracle stories of the Baal Shem Tov — visions, healings, journeys of the soul, a failed attempt to reach the Land of Israel — assembled by Dov Ber ben Shmuel, son-in-law of the Besht's scribe.

⚠ Hagiography, and the principal source, and both facts have to be held at once. Modern scholarship reads it against Polish tax and communal records, which show a man employed by the community of Miedzyboz as a ba'al shem — a real, documented, ordinary-enough position — which is a useful corrective in both directions.