Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

ha-yom mamash
], as it is written: “Which I am 
commanding thee this day” [Ex 34:11], namely every day when we recite
 
the 
Shema’
. And this is why they said: “Every day [these words] will be in your 
eyes as new,”
119
and the meaning is that the “I” [
anokhi
] is the one who 
“commands thee,” and is in the nature of the general encompassment [
sovev 
ha-kelali
], namely he is completely above time […] And the sages said that 
“He who sits and reads and learns, the Holy One blessed be He sits and reads 
and learns in front of him,”
120
that is to say, even if a man reads in time and 
the Holy One blessed be He is above time [...], the Holy One blessed be He 
sits and learns in front of him, from above time to the dimension of time, and 
because of that, He said: “Which I command thee this day,” as verily in the 
time of the Giving of Torah [
matan Torah
], which was above time.
121
A dichotomy of the corporeal and the spiritual is inscribed into the hasidic 
metaphysics of light: Torah study is bound to the light of 
Ein Sof
, the surrounding 
light that shines equally everywhere and is above time, as opposed to the light that 
the deepness of the subject” it is enough for a scholar to memorize merely the Pentateuch and the 
Seder kodashin
from the Talmud. 
117
LT 
Re’eh
23b. 
118
On eternal Torah, see for example: LT 
Ba-midbar
13a-b, 
Balak
68b. 
119
Pesikta zutarta
Va-ethanan, 69; Rashi to Dt
 
26:16; Bahya bar Asher, 
Midrash Rabenu Bahya
, 
Devarim 6:10; see also 
Pesikta de-Rav Kahana
, Ba-hodesh ha-shelishi, pis. 12:138-139, 107a. 
120
Tana de-vei Eliyahu
, ch. 18, 51a. 
121
MAHZ 
5570
, 10 [Appendix 12]. See also LT 
Shir ha-shirim
42a-b, 
Matot
82a-b. 

---

198 
fills all the worlds and is bound to time.
122
For this reason, the words of Torah are 
not subject to the passage of time, but are always perceived as new. Every time 
someone recites the words of Torah it is as if he has just received them from God: 
“Each interpretative gesture is a re-enactment of the revelatory experience, albeit 
from its unique vantage point, each moment a novel replication of the past.”
123
Even 
though study by man is bound to time, the words of Torah are not; hence studying 
the Torah brings down the eternity and unity into the world of temporality and 
multiplicity, whereas in the case of prayer, the situation is opposite: one reaches out 
of temporality into the moment of infinity in an ecstatic gesture of unity with the 
oneness of the divine. 
The relation between prayer and study, described above in terms of the 
mutual relation between two types of divine light (
sovev 
and 
memale
), is depicted in 
sefirotic terminology as a correlation of 
Malkhut 
and 
Ze‘ir anpin
:
124
Contemplation in prayer […] is in the nature of 
ratso
, the elevation of 
Nukba
, 
and is called “temporal life” [
hayei sha‘ah
], for time is in 
Malkhut
, and when 
one elevates it from the state of being [
yesh
] it is called “temporal life.” The 
main thing, however, is “eternal life” [
hayei ‘olam
], namely that 
Ze‘ir anpin
should become specifically world [