Chapter 1

note 79 Joseph ben R. A., Mifalot tsadikim heḥadash, 9–10, contains a story that was recorded in the communal register, regarding a high official who saved a rabbi. A tale appears in the same book (§5, fo. 4a) ‘from a reputable person who looked in the book Hakhnasat oreḥim in the Vienna library’. See also Ben Ze'ev, son of R.A.Y., Devarim yekarim, 4: ‘An awesome story copied from an ancient manuscript’. [Isaac Dov Baer ben Tsevi Hirsch], Kahal ḥasidim heḥadash (Lvov edn), §105, contains a story that R. Levi Isaac saw in ‘the communal register of Vilna’. M. H. Landau, Ma'amar mordekhai (bound together with Margolioth, Kevutsat ya'akov), includes (p. 6) a story about the Ba'al Shem Tov's study with R. Abraham Zak of Sharigod [Shargorod], and their gilui eliyahu, from ‘the communal register of Sharigrod’.

note 90 See also the introd. to Yellin, Derekh tsadikim: ‘For, indeed, such matters, many of which come by word of mouth, are not free, at times, from an error in some detail.’ For a more strongly worded formulation of this, see ibid. 23: ‘[The stories] were copied from one person to another innumerable times, and what is corrupt in them exceeds that which stands [i.e. is unaltered], due to the many mistakes and change and exchange that they suffered when copied from one person to another.’ Particularly sharp internal criticism is voiced by R. Hayim of Sanz (Zimetbaum, Darkhei ḥayim, introd. 4): ‘If a hasid says, “I saw with my own eyes”—then he might have heard, and when a hasid says that he heard— then this undoubtedly never happened!’ The anonymous compilers of Ma'asiyot vesiḥot tsadikim and Joseph ben R.A. (Mifalot tsadikim heḥadash) apologize in their introductions for the lack of chronological order in their respective collections of stories.

Chapter 2

note 2 See Bodek, Mifalot hatstadikim, §21, fo. 16b; Brandwein, Degel maḥaneh yehudah, §84. See also A. M. Rabinowitz, Keter hayehudi, 54: while smoking his pipe on Saturday nights, after the departure of the sabbath, the tsadik R. Nehemiah of Bychawa would read the thoughts of all those gathered, doing so ‘by the spirit of divine inspiration’.