Shneur Zalman of Liady
Founder of the Habad school of Hasidism.
By Rabbi Louis Jacobs
Reprinted with
permission from The Jewish Religion: A
Companion, published by Oxford
University Press.
Shneur Zalman of Liady (1745-1813) was a Hasidic master and
the founder of the Habad school in Hasidism. Shneur Zalman (the name Shneur probably
comes from "Seņor," suggesting
that the family came originally from Spain) was born in the Belorussian town of
Liozno, near Vitebsk. He married at an early age and, with the approval of his young
wife but against the wishes of both his father and father-in-law who were
suspicious of the new trends, he resolved to journey to Dov Baer of Mezhirech, disciple
of the Baal Shem Tov and organizer of the Hasidic movement, in order to learn,
as he said, how to pray. In this he was typical of those learned young men who
required a more inward and mystical approach.
Victory of Hasidism
Dov Baer arranged for his son, "Abraham the Angel,"
as he was called because of his
ascetic life, to introduce Shneur Zalman into the mysteries of the Kabbalah
while Shneur Zalman would teach the Talmud to Abraham. From all accounts and
from his own testimony, Shneur Zalman's Hasidic philosophy owes much to the ideas
of Dov Baer as mediated through the "Angel." Dov Baer encouraged
Shneur Zalman to compile a new Shulhan Arukh, a code of Jewish law that
would take into account the latest opinions. This work, published in 1814, is known
as Shulhan Arukh Ha-Rav, "The
Rabbi's Shulhan Arukh" and, written with great clarity in a fine
Hebrew style, is now a major source for practical decisions even among Rabbis
remote from Hasidism.
When Dov Baer died in 1772, Shneur Zalman became a Hasidic
master in his own right. He and an older colleague, Menahem Mendel of Vitbesk,
awakened the suspicions of the Mitnagdim led by Elijah, Gaon of Vilna. The two
Hasidic leaders sought an audience with the Gaon of Vilna to persuade him that Hasidic
views were in no way heretical, but the Gaon refused to see them. Shneur Zalman's teaching and activity were brought,
by the Mitnagdim, to the attention of the Russian government, alert to any
movement smacking of rebellion, and in 1778 he was arrested, on a trumped-up
charge, and imprisoned in the fortress in St. Petersburg. All charges were
eventually dropped and Shneur Zalman was released on 19 Kislev. Habad Hasidism,
and other Hasidic groups, saw Shneur Zalman's release as the divinely
sanctioned victory of Hasidism over its opponents. To this day Habad Hasidim
celebrate 19 Kislev as a minor festival.
After his release Shneur Zalman settled in Liady. Shneur
Zalman, unlike some other Hasidic masters, wished to see the Czarist forces
prevail of Napoleon's army. In a letter to one of his followers, Shneur Zalman
expressed his fears that if Napoleon were to be victorious the spiritual
conditions of Russian Jewry would deteriorate, even though they would enjoy
considerable material benefits. When Napoleon's army advanced on Moscow,Shneur Zalman fled to
the Ukraine but died on the way. Shneur Zalman was succeeded by his son, Dov
Baer of Lubavitch. Habad Hasidim refer to Shneur Zalman as the Alter Rebbe ("the
Old Rebbe"). An often reproduced portrait of Shneur Zalman (painted, it is
said, during his imprisonment) shows him to have been, if such can be assessed
from a painting, a profound thinker and holy man, a picture amply supported by
his writings.
The Tanya
Shneur Zalman's Tanya
(so-called after its opening word in Aramaic, Tanya, "it was taught") is a systematic treatment of
Kabbalistic and Hasidic themes in the Habad interpretation. The work, in its
complete form, was published in Shklov in 1814 since when it has gone into
numerous editions. Lubavitch Hasidim often place their copy of the Tanya in the bag in which they keep their
tallit and treat the work with a veneration that appears to the non-Hasid to be
bordering on bizarre.
The first section of the Tanya
deals with the psychology of the religious life. Here the Talmudic division
of persons into the righteous, the wicked, and those in between is given a
novel interpretation. The righteous man (tzaddik)
has "killed" his evil inclination, yetzer ha-ra. He belongs in the ranks of the saints who are no
longer tempted by earthly desires. The "in-between" (benoni) is not simply an average person,
neither over-righteous nor very wicked, but is the man who does not wittingly
commit any sin yet is engaged throughout his life in the struggle between his
good and evil inclination. The reason why such struggle is unavoidable for every
Jew other than the tzaddik is because
a Jew has two souls: the "animal soul," the basic life-force which
sustains the body, and the "divine soul," conceived of as a mystical
divine spark in the Jewish soul, a portion of the En Sof hidden deep in recesses
of the psyche. The animal soul drags a man down, the divine soul pulls him
upwards towards God. Only Jews, the descendants of the righteous patriarchs,
have a divine soul. This and other features of Shneur Zalman's particularism
have been attacked by modern writers but his followers have defended his views,
presenting them in a less stark and offensive manner.
The second section of the Tanya deals with mystical theology.
Here Shneur Zalman puts forward his acosmic philosophy, according to which the
whole universe is "in" God and creatures only appear to enjoy
independent existence, just as, Shneur Zalman says, the rays of the sun can be
seen and experienced as real on earth but in the sun itself the rays vanish
into nothingness. According to Shneur Zalman, improvement of the character
cannot be achieved by any direct onslaught on the emotions but only by
reflection on the tremendous idea that all is in God. It is when the Jew
reflects on the Kabbalistic teaching that the whole universe and man within it
are part of a great chain of being reaching back to and included in the En Sof,
that his emotions are bestirred and the character refined. As Shneur Zalman
puts it, it is the intellect that influences the emotions, not the other way
round.
Because of the emphasis it places on intellectual
perception, Habad is often referred to as the intellectual branch of Hasidism. In
fact, Habad is, in a certain sense, a separate movement, differing in important
respects from the highly emotionally charged thoughts and practices of other
Hasidic groupings. Yet all Hasidism, to whichever Rebbe they owe their
allegiance, accept Shneur Zalman as one of Hasidism's pioneering spirits.
Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs
was the founding rabbi of the New London Synagogue and is Goldsmid Visiting
Professor at University College London and Visiting Professor at Lancaster
University. His books include
Jewish Prayer, We Have Reason to
Believe, Principles of the Jewish
Faith, and A Jewish Theology.
(c) Louis Jacobs,
1995. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of
this material may be stored, transmitted, retransmitted, lent, or reproduced in
any form or medium without the permission of Oxford University Press.
