On the subject that I addressed in-depth in the post The Monstrosity of the Baal Shem Tov Alan Brill writes in the Ex- Hasidim and the Besht:
“The image of Besht as friend of the common man was created by Shimon Dubnow based on Renan’s Life of Jesus. The common folk needed a voice to be harnessed by Dubnow’s Yiddishist Folks party. IL Peretz also used this image with a healthy dose of Tolstoy mixed in. From Dubnow, the image of the Besht as friend of the common man was picked up by R. Yosef Yitzhak in his creative memoirs and stories, and then further used by Yisrael Yaakov Klapholtz. It was also picked up in 1930’s US by Levin and Shnitzer. They fill out the details of how the Besht was a proponent of education for girls, was a democrat, and a rationalist.”
This might be true as far as the introduction of Besht into the popular culture but the false Besht mythology certainly precedes Simon Dubnow or the Rayatz. In fact if you read Avrom Ber Gotlober already in those days the evil einikle Reb Boruch of Medzhibozh and the crazy Messiah wannabe einikle Reb Nachman benefited politically and economically from the myth. Fast forward to the contemporary of Simon Dubnow, the great Der Nister who described how the Besht myth was fully operational in his days. And then the deliberate lies by Martin Buber (see Adin Steinzalts as Martin Buber Impersonator) to introduce the fabrication into the pseudo salon culture. But then I think Dr. Brill writes to time the Besht myth as the defender of the *poor*, as opposed to what the “Tzaddikim” really were, the landlords facilitating the abuse and enslavement of the poor by he rich.
Now to the subject of Dr. Brill’s the post. This is a matter of great heartache for me. For both observant and anti-observant post orthodox and especially post chasidic the old mythology is still the only obsolete operating system that runs the hardware, even after they put on the new interface. I can’t describe how infuriating and sad is this fact (see From Post-Judaism to Post-Orthodoxy).
Further reading: