METAPHYSICS OF DAVID BIRNBAUM
PHILOSOPHY OF DAVID BIRNBAUM
Jewish Encyclopedia Online, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/
view.jsp?artid=18&letter=B (accessed October 5, 2009)
BAAL SHEM TOV
(“The Besht”)
“The foundation-stone of Hasidism as laid by Besht is a strongly marked pantheistic conception of God. He declared the whole universe, mind and matter, to be a manifestation of the Divine Being; that this manifestation is not an emanation from God, as is the conception of the Kabbalah, for nothing can be separated from God: all things are rather forms in which He reveals Himself…”
As noted in Encyclopaedia Judaica on Baal Shem Tov {1997} [CD-ROM]
BASIC IDEAS OF HASIDISM
Creator and Universe
“‘The hasidic leader R. Menahem Mendel of Lubavich observes (Derekh Mitzvotekha (1911), 123) that the disciples of the Ba’al Shem Tov gave the “very profound” turn to the doctrine of the oneness of God so that it means not alone that He is unique, as the medieval thinkers said, but that He is all that is:…there is no other existence whatsoever apart from His existence, blessed be He. This is true unification…just as there was no existence apart from Him before the world was created so it is even now.” …as a corollary of hasidic pantheism (more correctly, panentheism)…’”
(author’s note: there are no extant writings of the Besht)
(see also Appendix F1: Hasidic v. Kabbalistic)