Nachman of Bratslav

(1772 - 1810)

The great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, as the founder of Hasidism is known, Nachman of Bratslav was born in 1772 in eastern Poland and began to gather a following as a teenager. He claimed he told stories beyond those in the Bible as a way to “show people their true face” and awaken them from ignorance. After Nachman’s death in 1810, a follower named Nathan Sternhartz purchased a printing press and began to publish the tales, preserving for posterity what had up to then been an oral tradition.