The Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidic Judaism, d May 22 1760. He proclaimed a mysticism of the everyday. Within each task and moment there is a spark of the divine. It falls to each person to discover and fulfill the potential holiness imbedded within ordinary existence.
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As he lay dying, surrounded by his family and followers, he said, “I am not worried at all for I know that I am leaving through one door and entering through another door.”
He spoke of prayer as a window to heaven and called the entire world a prayer house. Thus, “A man needs no fixed place to say his prayers, no synagogues; among the trees of the forest, everywhere one can pray.”
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