DAVID BIRNBAUM SUMMA METAPHYSICA
DAVID BIRNBAUM PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
BAAL SHEM TOV (founder of Hasidism)
(b. 1698, Sara, Ukraine; d. 1760, Medzhybizh, Ukraine)
(“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…”a
*a Jewish Encyclopedia Online, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/
view.jsp?artid=18&letter=B (accessed October 5, 2009)