FROM the very beginnings of hasidism enormous claims were made by the hasidim on behalf of the great masters, the zaddikim, who were seen as spiritual supermen endowed with the holy spirit, possessing a degree of sanctity unparalleled in many an age and with the power to work extraordinary miracles. The Baal Shem Tov came to be seen as a unique personality who came into the world to teach a new ‘way’ that amounted to a new revelation of God's truth. (Whether this ‘way’ is really original is beside the point since the hasidim themselves certainly saw it as such.) Even the torot of the later zaddikim were seen as fresh revelations hitherto undisclosed. These claims, as opponents of the movement were not slow to point out, were in flat contradiction to what had become virtually a dogma long before the rise of hasidism: that each successive generation after the revelation at Sinai exhibits further decline. This idea, implied in a number of rabbinic texts, was known to the hasidim, as it was to most learned Jews, but the problem became especially acute once the talmudic rabbis came to be viewed as infallible teachers who constituted the final court of appeal for all matters concerning the Jewish religion.

One of the rabbinic texts (Ber. 20a) refers specifically to miracle-working:

The passage concludes with a story illustrating the readiness for self-sacrifice on the part of a saint belonging to an earlier generation.