Nothing new under the sun ... Kabbalah Centre, London, 1780

On Shavuot night I gave a session on 'a murky corner of Jewish History' - an account of a colourful character known as 'The Baal Shem of London' - R' Shmuel Falk, who arrived in London in about 1748, and died there in 1782. While there have been occasional articles about him over the years, Michal Oron, a professor at Tel Aviv U, her curiosity piqued a few years back by a casual reference to him by Gershom Scholem, has published a very interesting book which also publishes parts of his diary, his will, and the diary of his 'shammas'. From it emerges a picture of an engaging charlatan, alchemist, writer of 'kamayot' ( = amulets) and spells, who was also apparently a teacher of kabbalah to eminent European nobility, for whom a visit to the 'Kabbalist of London' became a de rigeur excursion on the 'Grand Tour'. In this capacity he has a series of honourable mentions in the history of Freemasonry. Falk was also a teacher of the celebrated Swedish mystic Swedenborg, and some maintain that Falk's influence may be traced in the ideas of the poets William Blake and W. B. Yeats. Prof. Oron notes that despite the list of titles of kabbalistic commentaries in his personal library, there is no evidence whatsoever that he ever read any of them, and she hazards a guess that they may have been for show!
Despite the fact that I was careful to indicate on the shul bulletin that this was a talk about a not-too-kosher character, part of the (very large - 100 +) audience clearly came expecting to hear about an unknown Hasidic tzaddik who chopped wood for old ladies on Kol Nidrei night and lived alife of maasim tovim .... instead they heard about a character who was one part Philip Berg, one part Shmuley Boteach, and one part Uri Geller. Plus ca change ......

• FURTHER INTERESTING NOTE: The portrait of Samuel Falk [which if I could work out how to do it, I would post here] was painted by the Anglo-American portraitist, J. S. Copley, who also painted several other prominent Freemasons. An engraving derived from the painting has often been reproduced - wrongly - as a likeness of the 'real' Baal Shem, ie the Besht, founder of Hasidism. Check your sukkah-decoration 'Portraits of Gedolim' posters!
  
  The book can be ordered from Israel via the very efficient service of www.booksinternational.com . I didn't link to them because you can't link to individual pages on their site. I find them the cheapest and best for getting books from Israel. However, their description of the book is misleading.