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sarah_who_reads's review
5.0
One of my New Year's resolutions was to finally finish this book in 2016. Tales of the Hasidim is Martin Buber's fastidious compilation of oral tradition about every Hasidic master he could find that lived in Eastern Europe during the 18th century. It me took so long because it's written kind of like an encyclopedia, with 700 pages of one-paragraph stories. Given that I am not terribly familiar with Eastern European names and places (many of which don't even exist anymore because they were totally destroyed in the Holocaust or the pogroms before that), I even had to check sometimes to see if proper names were people, places, or organizations. The stories themselves are full of wisdom, as one would expect from a bunch of teachers, and I am glad I made the effort to finish them. I also did learn a lot about all the destroyed towns and villages in Poland, for example, and the irony and sadness there was not lost on me, given where I currently live. All in all, even if it did take ten years to make it all the way through, I'm glad I read this. #nevergiveup #endofanera
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