Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

 
[
ma’amarim
], 
include a large number of informal talks
 
[
sihot
], among them many that circulate in 
unedited form [
bilti mugah
],
10
thus giving much better access to the immediate 
Rapoport-Albert, “From Woman as Hasid,” where she shows that while kabbalisticaly-informed 
teachings on the female had always been part of Habad’s teachings, they were first applied to the 
change in the role of women within the Habad community only in the 20
th
century. However, scholars 
are divided on the question of continuity or change in Habad thought, especially with regard to the 
watershed of the Holocaust. Thus, for example, Elior (“The Lubavitch Resurgence,” 387) argues for 
change, whereas Wolfson (
Open Secret
, 23-24) and Schwartz (
Mahashevet Habad
, 12) see Habad’s 
thought as a continuity. 
6
HTT
 
3:2, 835a-b, see Loewenthal, “Women and the Dialectic,” 20*-21*. 
7
See Rapoport-Albert, “The Emergence,” 15*-16*. 
8
See above, Introduction, n. 17.
9
See Saperstein, 
Jewish Preaching
,
 
22-23, where he discusses this problem in the history of Jewish 
homiletics in general. On problems arising from the fact that hasidic homilies, spoken primarily in 
Yiddish, were transmitted in Hebrew translation, see Etkes, 
Ba‘al ha-Tanya, 
85; Gries, “The Hasidic 
Managing Editor,” 141-2; Loewenthal, 
Communicating
, 66-8. 
10
On the sources for the doctrines of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menahem Mendel Scheerson, see 
Roth, “Ha-korpus ha-sifruti ha-habadi”; Dahan, 
Dirah ba-tahtonim
, 35-9; Kohanzad 
The Messianic 
Doctrine
, 24-42; Wolfson, 
Open Secret
, 15-16.

---

209 
circumstances and topical issues that concerned him, including his perspective on 
women in Hasidism.
In the lack of direct evidence on Rashaz’s notion of the role of women in
society, scholars have sought to extract his view from indirect evidence, in the belief, 
explicitly expressed by Rivka Dvir-Goldberg, that in hasidic literature “woman […] 
is a subterranean spring, which greatly influences life and people, though not 
publicly but rather silently and beneath the surface.”
11
Moshe Rosman has raised the 
possibility that the arguably favourable attitude to women in 
Shivhei ha-Besht
may 
point to a more positive evaluation of women in early Habad, since the book was 
published by a Habad printer.
12
Habad tales seemingly support the claim that there 
always was a special attitude to women in Habad, by ascribing extraordinary 
intellectual and spiritual achievements to some female members of Rashaz’s family, 
but the evidence they provide is questionable. The Habad chronicler, H. M. Heilman, 
ascribed outstanding scholarship to Freida, Rashaz’s daughter,
13
yet even he cast 
doubt on the only hard proof which could corroborate this tradition, namely a 
scholarly letter traditionally attributed to Freida,
14
whose attribution to her has been 
convincingly refuted.
15
Additionally, from Heilman’s book, Shterna, Rashaz’s wife, 
emerged as a woman who not only initially facilitated Rashaz’s ascent to leadership, 
but who had also absorbed from him some of the spiritual powers typical of a 
tsadik
.
16
Here, however, not only may one argue that this characteristic is yet another 
link in the long chain of tradition, which “acknowledged certain women’s capacity to 
acquire scholarly or spiritual accomplishments by virtue of their intimate association 
11
Dvir-Goldberg, “Kolo shel ma