According to Hasidic lore, the various ways in which men learn to perfect themselves are the "rungs" on the ladder leading to the realm of heaven. It is said: "No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each and every one the highest stands open. Here it is only your personal choice that decides.".

The tales and aphorisms retold here by Martin Buber belong to the teachings of Hasidism, the mystical movement that swept Eastern European Jewry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fanciful and sober by turn, these sayings never swerve from their basic purpose: to arouse in man an awareness of his condition and to show him the way to the righteous life.

In Martin Buber they have an ideal editor and interpreter. The relation is reciprocal, for Buber's own religious philosophy owes much to Hasidism, through its emphasis on joyful worship and its belief that "there is no rung of being on which we cannot find the holiness of God everywhere and at all times."