A Personal Quest for the Baal Shem Tov

Rabbi Burt Jacobson

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978-1-958972-63-2
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November 2024

A rabbi’s lifelong journey to discover the source and inspiration of Hasidism.

As a student of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s at Jewish Theological Seminary sixty years ago, Burt Jacobson was moved to devote his life to the study of Israel Baal Shem Tov—the founder of Hasidism. Heschel considered the Baal Shem the greatest Jewish teacher and communal leader of the last 1,000 years. Living in the Presence: A Personal Quest for the Baal Shem Tov is a wide-ranging portrait, revealing numerous facets of the Baal Shem Tov’s biography and revolutionary thought previously unknown. Through his knowledge of the world’s wisdom traditions, and personal journey, Rabbi Jacobson is able to place the Baal Shem in the company of the great world spiritual teachers. He reveals the Baal Shem’s vision as an ecstatic mystical encounter that opened to the transcendent unity of existence. It was this that inspired his love and compassion for all creation, especially for the people he met. His disciples testified that their experience of these truths transformed how they understood their own identities as manifestations of the Divine, altered how they lived as spiritual leaders of their communities, and laid the foundations for Hasidism as a movement.

Throughout his book Jacobson presents and evaluates insights of historians and scholars, but it is also filled with personal stories about Jacobson’s own struggle with his Jewish identity and his encounter with the Baal Shem as his spiritual teacher. Both a tour de force and a labor of love, this book will quickly become the most essential work on the subject ever published in English.

Rabbi Burt Jacobson was a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he studied with Abraham Joshua Heschel, and was mentored in Kabbalah and Hasidism by Rabbi Arthur Green. After moving to California in the early 1970’s, Jacobson joined with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and others in founding the Jewish Renewal movement, helping to reintroduce Jewish spirituality and mysticism in the U.S. and throughout the world.

In 1984, Jacobson founded Kehilla Community Synagogue in Berkeley, which presently has a membership of 560 families. One of his tasks at Kehilla was the creation of new Jewish liturgy that was both universal and non-patriarchal. Out of this work he co-edited with Rabbi Leila Berner Or Chadash: New Paths for Shabbat Morning, the first liturgy for the Jewish Renewal movement, published by P’nai Or Religious Fellowship. Rabbi Burt was also instrumental in designing the curriculum for the Rabbinic Training Program of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal.

Jacobson has been a student of the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, for fifty years. He lives in El Sobrante, California with his wife, Rabbi Diane Elliot.

“The Judaism we practice today is, in so many ways, sourced in the theological revolution of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidus. Now, Rabbi Burt Jacobson leads us into the profound psycho-spiritual teachings of the Baal Shem, which are centered in the love of God, and shows us how they can become the communal and personal animating principles of our lives. Such brilliant scholarship and depth of soul!” —Rabbi Wayne Dosick, PhD, author of Living Judaism and Radical Loving

“Burt has striven his entire life to hand over the legacy of Hasidism and of my father to generations to come. Let us listen to his voice in the pages of this book so that we may be enriched by our Hasidic inheritance and offer that heritage as a great fire of passionate devotion to God, to one another, to our fragile earth to generations to come.” —Susannah Heschel, Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College

“Rabbi Burt Jacobson has given us the work of a lifetime—a treasury of stories, practices, and scholarship—bringing to life a Tzadik with the power to awaken our capacity for direct mystical experience. Living in the Presence is an important book for all spiritual seekers bearing much needed medicine for our troubled modern souls.” —Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, PhD, author of Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma

“We step into the Besht’s transformative presence. Rabbi Burt brings us with him on a journey of deep reflection. Though based on a lifetime of dedication to his subject and meticulous scholarship, this is not an academic book but a practical one that speaks to the relevance of the Besht’s wisdom to issues that have always been central to the spiritual quest—the meaning of suffering and trauma, the lessons of justice and injustice, and the path to communion with the divine.” —Kenneth Cohen, author of Honoring the Medicine: The Essential Guide to Native American Healing

“A masterpiece of profound insight, powerful love, and intimate longing. Rabbi Jacobson has opened us to a vast stream of timeless Wisdom, illuminated by his own deeply personal journey into Mystery and ultimate meaning. I am so grateful to Burt for his penetrating honesty, and for connecting me to this lineage of Love.” —Rabbi Shefa Gold, author of Torah Journeys: The Inner Path to the Promised Land

“This unique memoir recounts the author’s lifelong search for truth, healing, and spiritual awakening. Jacobson shares his intimate struggles with faith and how he eventually found a way to integrate his universal aspirations as a child of the Sixties with the radical wisdom teachings of Hasidism. This is not just another book on Kabbalah and Hasidism, but a masterpiece crafted over many decades of deep contemplation of the mystical teachings and life of the author’s spirit guide, the Baal Shem Tov.” —Estelle Frankel, psychotherapist, spiritual director, and teacher of Jewish mysticism; author of Sacred Therapy and The Wisdom of Not Knowing

“This deeply profound and personal work transcends genres—memoir, history, mystery, theology, text study, spiritual practice—and is an indispensable guidebook for those looking to find modern meaning in ancestral wisdom.” —Zvika Krieger, spiritual leader, Chochmat HaLev; former director of responsible innovation, Facebook/Meta

“Burt Jacobson has had front-row seats if not leadership positions in the hottest epicenters of American neo-Hasidism, from Heschel’s classrooms to Havurat Shalom, from the House of Love and Prayer to the Aquarian Minyan and, ultimately, his own revolutionary Kehilla Community Synagogue. At once personal memoir, mystical meditation, and scholarly exploration, Living in the Presence illuminates what it can mean to cultivate a relationship with a Rebbe from the past and thereby deepen one’s connections to beings in the present.” —Sam S.B. Shonkoff, Taube Family Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, Graduate Theological Union

“Living in the Presence is a great gift to every spiritual seeker.” –Rabbi Edward Feld, author of The Book of Revolutions

“This book will be essential for anyone interested in Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, and the dynamics of the Hasidic movement. Living in the Presence is about teachers, questing, reverence, justice, and peace. It is difficult not to catch the zeal the author brings to his pursuit of understanding and personal meaning.” –SpiritualityandPractice.com

“Given Jacobson’s lifelong career as a spiritual leader and rabbi, it is not surprising that the book ends with a practical guide that offers readers advice on how to apply the teachings of Ba’al Shem Tov to their own lives. At over 600 pages, this is not a light read, though its accessible writing style welcomes readers at all stages of their spiritual journeys. The work includes hundreds of endnotes—scholars will be impressed by Jacobson’s research, which is informed by more than a half-century of study.” —Kirkus Review