Terra Incognita

Timothy “Speed” Levitch has become something of a star thanks to the internet, Richard Linklater, and his own strange prowess as a tour guide. Today on Tablet, James Winchell reports on what makes him tick.

But what about the core of Mr. Levitch’s own soul, which clearly he has also been “re-writing” for decades? Where does his scholarly, yet freely associative, intuitively analogous and intensively inter-textual thought process take root? One surprising—or not so surprising—answer: Hasidism and tales about Israel Baal Shem Tov (1700-1760, by acronym the Besht), its founder.

Tour the rest of the narrative here.