Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

Mahashevet Habad
, 35-6. 
96
From the liturgy of the Morning service. 
97
LT 
Yom ha-kipurim
, 68c [Appendix 28]. 
98
Hillman, 
Igerot Ba‘al ha-Tanya
, 23. See also ibid., 228-9, for Rashaz’s Yiddish letter taking a 
similar stance. 
99
On 
ratso 
and 
shov
, derived from Ez 1:14: “And the living creatures ran and returned”, see Elior, 
“HaBaD,” 178-181; eadem, 
Paradoxical Ascent
, 30 and 127-134; Idel 
Hasidism
, 123; Schwartz, 
Mahashevet Habad
, 58 n. 109; Wolfson, 
Open Secret
, 145.

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54 
and return,” recurs throughout Rashaz’s teachings in reference either to the nature of 
divine service or, in theosophical terms, to the dynamics of the relations among 
various entities within the divine sphere. The rhythm of 
ratso va-shov
is comparable 
to that of a heartbeat, which continuously disperses and contracts the life force 
within a body.
100
From a broader perspective, Rashaz likens it also to the alternation 
of sleep and wakefulness: when a person is asleep, his life force departs from him, 
but when he wakes up and the life force returns, it is as if he was being created 
anew.
101
By contemplating the alternation of such contrasting phenomena as sleep 
and wakefulness, day and night, and so on, one can grasp the idea of the continuous 
creation. 
According to Rashaz, continuous creation is also an expression of faith in 
God’s providence. While gentiles
102
and heretics
103
do believe that God created the 
world, they maintain that His involvement with it ceased at the moment of the 
creation. The Jews, on the other hand, believe that God, as Rashaz puts it elsewhere, 
“brings life to everything, creates it out of nothing, and renews it, by his goodness, 
on every day and at every moment.”
104
In other words, the deistic view of divine 
providence attributed to gentiles and heretics is contrasted with Rashaz’s version of 
occasionalism,
105
whereby God is involved in every occurrence within reality by 
virtue of constantly recreating the world.
Notably, Rashaz attributes the contrast between these two beliefs, not to a 
divergence of theological approaches but rather to the difference between the gentile 
and the Jewish soul in terms of their respective relations to temporality. The gentile 
soul originates in the domain that lies beneath time, and therefore it is incapable of 
100
See for example TO 2c-d; MAHZ 
5565
, i, 126; 
5566
, i, 61; 
5568
, 543. See also Schwartz, 
Mahashevet Habad
, 58. 
101
See also LT 
Be-ha‘alotekha 
33a. This is related to the traditional belief that a person surrenders his 
or her soul to God at dusk and receives a new soul the next morning, when “he is made as a new 
creation” (
Shulhan ‘arukh Rabenu ha-Zaken
, Orah hayim, 1:4). 
102
Seder tefilot
, 303a-b. See also Foxbrunner, 
Habad
, 108, and the sources listed there. 
103
T2, 2:77a-b. See also Schneersohn, 
Sefer ha-hakirah
, 3b. 
104
LT 
Ba-midbar
1a [Appendix 29]. 
105
On the occasionalist features of Rashaz’s teachings and their sources in the teachings of Maggid of 
Mezeritch, see Schwartz, 
Mahashevet Habad
, 58, and 35 n. 27. 

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55 
perceiving those of God’s acts that transcend time; all that it is able to see is the 
natural order of things. By contrast, the Jewish soul stems from the transcendent 
domain of “supernal thought,” which lies above time. Accordingly, its perception 
transcends nature and allows it to recognize God’s acts that come into the world 
from above it.
106