Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

The Wisdom of the 
Zohar
; effectively, Hallamish harmonises Rashaz’s teachings and reduces them to a 
systematic, albeit highly sophisticated, exposition of theosophical insights, while 
largely disregarding their experiential and communal aspects. 
A similar attitude to Rashaz and Habad was adopted by other Israeli scholars. 
Tishby’s influence is clearly recognisable in the work of another of his students, 
Yoram Jacobson, who researched Rashaz’s doctrine of creation.
27
Rachel Elior’s 
books 
The Paradoxical Ascent to God 
(about Rashaz’s mystical doctrine) and 
Torat 
ha-Elohut ba-dor ha-sheni shel Hasidut Habad
(about the theology of Rashaz’s 
immediate successors), similarly follow the structure of Hallamish’s thesis. They 
uncover in the early Habad teachings a dialectical theology based on the duality of 
the true reality of the divine Naught [
ayin
] and its antithesis, material Being [
yesh
], 
which is merely an illusion. Elior skilfully portrays early Habad as a community of 
acosmistic mystics, but she entirely overlooks the worldly dimension of the early 
Habad doctrine, and takes no account of the fact that it became highly attractive to 
many ordinary businessmen and householders, who – while being fully engaged in 
mundane activities, which would hardly make them “acosmistic” – considered 
themselves to be Rashaz’s followers.
28
Two recent books dealing more broadly with the transmission of ideas 
across the seven generations of Habad leaders, Dov Schwartz’s 
Mahashevet Habad
and his student Avraham Gottlieb’s 
Sekhaltanut
, further explored the theoretical 
dimension of the Habad doctrine. Gottlieb’s book surveys the attitudes of subsequent 
Habad leaders to Maimonides, and attempts to harmonise Habad’s mysticism with 
Maimonides’ rationalism. Dov Schwartz’s book is the first academic overview of 
Habad thought from its inception to the death of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, and 
even beyond, as it considers the messianic controversy surrounding Menahem 
Mendel Schneerson, and the influence of Habad on religious Zionism in Israel. 
Unlike other scholarly accounts of the movement, it emphasises the continuity of 
27
Jacobson, “Torat ha-beri’ah.” 
28
This point was already made by Loewenthal in his review of Elior’s 
Paradoxical Ascent
(“The 
Paradox of Habad,” 72). For a forthright critique of Elior’s perpective on Habad as an acosmistic 
doctrine, see Jacobson, “Bi-mevokhei ha-‘ayin.’” 

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21 
Habad thought, and the centrality of Rashaz’s concept of creation to all its 
subsequent developments. It also reviews those of Rashaz’s 
ma’amarim
that only 
recently became available to scholars and have not been considered in any previous 
studies of Habad. However, while the book provides a unique perspective on Habad 
thought from its beginning to the present, it chooses to limit its scope to “a number 
of subjects, which reflect the Habad approach and the theology it developed,”
29
but it 
does not touch on the practical and mundane aspects of the Habad path. 
Even Elliot Wolfson’s recent work on the last Lubavitcher Rebbe (
Open 
Secret
), which made numerous references to the teachings of Rashaz, is still confined 
to the conceptual framework of philosophy, albeit post-modern in essence. 
Nevertheless, it contains many refreshing insights into the messianic concept of 
Menahem Mendel Schneerson and its sources in the teachings of Rashaz. It also 
tackles several questions that have hardly been touched upon by previous 
scholarship, including the role of gentiles in Habad’s messianic doctrine, or the 
redemption as a transformation of consciousness rather than of the world. 
Another approach, which was to some extent developed in opposition to the 
philosophical perspective, emerged from a socio-historical outlook on Habad. This 
approach, represented first and foremost by Immanuel Etkes, focuses primarily on 
Rashaz’s life and the nature of his role as leader. Etkes’ recent book, 
Ba’al ha-
Tanya
, consolidates his many years of research on Habad. He reconstructs Rashaz’s 
gradual ascent to leadership and highlights the unique features of his function in this 
role; he analyses Rashaz’s conflicts with the 
mitnagdim 
as well as with his 
opponents within the hasidic movement, and he examines critically the accounts of 
his imprisonment by the tsarist authorities, his involvement in Napoleon’s war in 
Russia, and the rivalry over the succession to the leadership of the Habad movement 
after his death. Only a small proportion of the book is devoted to Rashaz’s doctrine, 
and it focuses predominantly on the 
Tanya
. 
The socio-historically-oriented scholarship on Habad relies, to a great extent, 
on Yehushua Mondshine, who has edited and published many Habad documents, 
letters, teachings, and bibliographical data. His 
Migdal ‘oz
, 
Masa’ Berditshov
, 
Ha-
29
Schwartz, 
Mahashevet Habad
, 12. 

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22 
masa’ ha-aharon
, 
Ha-ma’asar ha-rishon,
Likutei amarim-Tanya
and 
Sifrei ha-
halakhah 
are indispensable sources for Rashaz’s life and the history of Habad in his 
day. 
Three other scholars have attempted to avoid too rigid an adherence to either 
the strictly philosophical framework or the purely historiographical approach to 
Habad. Rather than reading an onto-theological system into Rashaz’s teachings, 
Roman Foxbrunner in his 
Habad: the Hasidism of R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady
presents them as expressions of Rashaz’s religious worldview, claiming that 
Rashaz’s goal was to inspire, not to form a speculative system of thought.
30
He 
argues that Rashaz’s 
ma’amarim
, delivered over the course of some twenty years, 
contain numerous dynamic and changing ideas adapted from earlier midrashic, 
halakhic, philosophical and mystical sources, and should not be seen as an internally 
coherent body of thought. Even though Foxbrunner does not force Rashaz’s ideas 
into a systematic mould, nevertheless, like Hallamish, he falls into the trap of onto-
theologising when he devotes parts of his work to the exposition of Rashaz’s 
‘ontology’ or his ‘metaphysics’. Moreover, his attempt to provide the reader with 
access to Rashaz’s personal worldview is partisan, as his notion of Rashaz’s 
personality is based to a great extent on quasi-historical traditions published by the 
sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe. 
The second author who has endeavoured to go beyond the socio-
historical/philosophical dichotomy is Naftali Loewenthal. In his book on the 
emergence of the Habad School, he proposes what he calls “the third perspective on 
Hasidism,” considering the movement in general, and the Habad School in 
particular, as a struggle to communicate mystical ideas to a broader Jewish public by 
making them relevant to everyday life. In doing so, Loewenthal successfully shows 
the teachings of Rashaz and his successors to be a living tradition, experienced by its 
adherents both individually and communally, rather than a rigid system of 
interrelated abstract ideas. 
The third example is Leah Ornet’s 
Ratso va-shov
, which explores the mutual 
relation of mysticism and ethics in Rashaz’s teachings. Comparing them with a 
30
See Foxbrunner, 
Habad
, 196. 

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23 
narrowly selected set of Hindu and Christian sources, Ornet shows the close 
connection between ethical action and mystical ideals, whereby the former 
preconditions the latter, and the latter serve as a source of inspiration for the former.
Finally the recent doctoral dissertation of Yossef Stamler, titled “Sekhel, 
filosofyah ve-emunah be-haguto shel Rabi Shneur Zalman mi-Ladi,” focuses on a 
very specific aspect of Rashaz’s teachings, and on the way in which they have been 
interpreted since the time of Simon Dubnow. The dissertation convincingly 
deconstructs the common misconception that Rashaz is a “philosopher” or even a 
“rationalist,” and reinstates the idea of faith that is not rational in the centre of the 
Habad worship.