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Telling the epic tale of the Baal Shem Tov
Boston Sunday Globe
November 5, 1995
by Ann Hall
Doug Lipman's life changed the day he told a story to his class of emotionally disturbed children.
"I was trying a million things to connect with these children," he recalled. "They had fought me on everything. Then one day I told them a story, and they all sat there quietly with their best story-listening faces on. I've been following that magical energy ever since."
Today, the Winchester resident is considered one of New England's foremost storytellers with a repertoire including everything from Jewish mystical tales, autobiographical pieces and historical yarns for adults to stories geared to children and their families. When he's not performing, he coaches other storytellers and is a frequent workshop leader and keynote speaker at their local and national conferences.
On two upcoming Saturdays...Lipman will be presenting one of his favorite stories in 8 p.m. performances at Brandeis University in Waltham. It is the epic tale of the Baal Shem Tov, a spiritual adventure packed with humor, joy and pathos.
As the story goes, the Baal Shem Tov went to a place in the forest, said a prayer and built a fire and the world was uplifted. Through succeeding generations, pieces of the mythic ritual were lost until only the story remained.
Lipman's version takes two hours, with an intermission, and is in two parts: how the Baal Shem Tov acquired his knowledge and what happened in succeeding generations.
He first heard a short version of part two at a storyteller's conference in 1983 from a man who had heard it in a barbershop in Miami Beach. "It was not a story I imagined I would ever tell," Lipman said. "But it got under my skin."
Over the years, Lipman's tale grew to 40 minutes. Then he became intrigued with how the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic movement, gained his mystical knowledge in the first place. Lipman combed Hasidic literature to find out more about his life, pulling out stories that might fit in with what he already knew.
The result, he said, touches not only on Jewish mysticism, but also on universal wisdom and the timeless struggle to change the world.
"It gives the audience a sense of finally getting around to the things we really are about," Lipman said. "It's so easy to get distracted, but we hunger to think big, to be big."
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This page was last updated on October 12, 2004
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