The development and relative prosperity of Podolia during the Besht's lifetime is partially illustrated by the circumstances in the three Podolian locales with which his life is most closely associated: his reported childhood home and perhaps even his birthplace, Okopy; his later residence, Tluste; and the place where he spent most of his public career, Miȩdzybóż.

The Okopy mentioned in Shivhei Ha-Besht as the Besht's early hometown was probably Okop Góry Swiȩty Trojcy (Hill Fortification of the Holy Trinity). This position just north of the Moldavian border, some three miles from the city of Kamieniec Podolski, was founded in 1691 as a forward military base from which Jan Sobieski's forces could conduct reconnaissance and raid the Turks occupying the city. By the time the Poles regained Kamieniec Podolski in 1699, Okopy had become a civilian settlement, owned by the Wojewoda of Kiev, Marcin Katski, who received a charter for the town in June 1700. The charter specified that in the town, officially called Swiȩty Trojcy (Holy Trinity), there would be a weekly market and two commercial fairs annually.

Okopy owed its existence to the Polish recapture and resettlement of Podolia. Like dozens of similar new, small commercial centers, it must have attracted a complement of commercially inclined Jews, although as late as the 1764 census the Jewish population of Okopy and vicinity was listed as only 230. The Ba'al Shem Tov's parents were probably among those Jews who were drawn to the newly established town when its Jewish community was presumably even smaller. The Besht was apparently born around the time the small town made the transition from army base to civilian settlement.

According to traditions reported in Shivhei Ha-Besht, the Besht worked in Tluste as a melamed (elementary teacher) and there underwent his original revelation and early experiences as a ba'al shem healer. On two of the surviving letters he signed, the Besht himself indicated Tluste as his home or place of origin. Tluste was a minor commercial center, founded originally in the mid-sixteenth century. The 1764 census listed 355 Jews resident in it and its associated villages. Its participation in the wave of development in early eighteenth-century Podolia is symbolized by the new Catholic church built there in 1717.