Rabbi Nachman of Breslov

Rabbi Nachman is the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov and one of the most psychologically searching figures in Hasidic thought. He teaches that doubt and spiritual emptiness are not obstacles to faith but part of its structure, and prescribes hitbodedut, unstructured personal talk with God in one's own words. His teaching is delivered largely through strange, dreamlike allegorical tales that resist single interpretation. He dies of tuberculosis at thirty-eight, and his followers never appoint a successor, making Breslov the only Hasidic movement that continues without a living rebbe.