Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who grew up in a strictly Orthodox Hasidic household in Poland, presents a version of the legend surrounding the 18th century founder of Hasidism known as the Baal Shem Tov. As Singer writes in his author's note, "This short book does not pretend to be a biography of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov by any means. So little is known about his life that no life story is possible. This work is nothing more than the writer's impressions or fantasies of Rabbi Israel's way of thinking, his emotions, his spiritual achievements and disappointments."