ADULTERY is viewed in the hasidic story as a grave sin that brings down harsh punishment on the community at large. An act of adultery was considered to be the cause of the plague that raged in Krakow during the time of R. Moses Isserles, when ‘one of the wealthy men of the city [was] engaging in licentious behaviour with two women, each of whom was married to someone in the city’; in another instance an epidemic broke out because of a man who was having a sexual relationship with a married woman. The hasidic tsadik appears in these tales as the voice of moral authority, calling those who have gone astray back to the straight and narrow; among the manifestations of his greatness is his ability to reveal adulterers.

In some stories of adultery and other sexual misconduct the woman is portrayed as being the sinner; in others, the blame falls on the man. Many include the motifs of seduction, on the one hand, and of withstanding temptation, on the other. There is a predominant tendency, however, to paint the woman in a negative light. The few stories telling of women who withstood temptation are greatly outnumbered by the accounts of those who could not resist, or even initiated the seduction. The latter include women who came to despise their married life and deserted their husbands. In such instances the tsadik helps the betrayed husbands, just as he comes to the assistance of agunot.

Once a certain man, whose wife had deserted him several years previously, came to his honoured holiness [R. Menahem Mendel of Lubavitch] and desired to receive from his honoured holiness permission to take another wife. His honoured holiness told him: ‘We shall examine this matter. Perhaps you will not need this permission. For, in truth, it is not common that a wife deserts her husband. If so, then she undoubtedly was wanton and belongs in a house of prostitution; perhaps you will find her there!’ The man asked him [sceptically]: ‘Shall I search all the houses of prostitution in the land?’ He replied: ‘None the less, check once. Now, the large city of Vitebsk is close by, perhaps you shall find her there?