Hidden Tzaddikim, The 36

Question: Who or what are the 36 holy people? I get the gist of such people being alive at one time, but are they still around? What is their purpose? Is it all a mystery? Response: Our holy books say that every generation actually has a minimum (there ...

The holy beggar's face was transformed. His eyes began to glow with a divine light, and his coarse features assumed a sublime grace...

When the man saw me he asked: "What is a small child doing all alone in the forest? Are you not afraid to be in the forest all by yourself?"

After completing the circumcision, as he dipped his finger in the wine to place a drop in the baby’s mouth, the Chatam Sofer called out: "When wine goes in, secrets come out." Seventy years were to pass before the significance of the great sage's words ...

Late one night, there was a knock on his door. On his threshold stood an old man with a long white beard and a countenance as radiant as the heavens

After many years as a member of the society of "hidden tzaddikim", living under the guise of an ignorant clay-digger, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov was instructed by his masters to reveal himself and begin to publicly disseminate his teachings. This he did ...

Late in the afternoon, the Rebbe emerged from his room and instructed that the circumcision commence. The only clue to his delay was the mysterious sentence that passed his lips, "Ay... the Polotzk burial society..."

The students of the Arizal discover a unique household

A tall thin man, wrapped in a black cloak, suddenly appeared at the open door. He looked silently around the room, walked to a corner and just stood there, staring at the Baal Shem Tov

“When I was a young man of twenty,” the Baal Shem Tov began his story, “shortly after being accepted in the society of hidden tzaddikim, several of us came to the city of Brody . . .”