Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

4. Conclusions.
Study of the sources presented in this chapter shows that Rashaz’s concept of time 
derives from various philosophical, midrashicic, and kabbalistic sources. Time is 
created and finite, and. its finitude places it in opposition to its infinite creator. 
Consequently, no temporal features can be ascribed to God or to anything that 
preceded the creation. Indeed, Rashaz and his Habad successors resort to the notion 
of the ‘order of time,’ which – according to the Sages – had measured the course of 
cosmic events before our world was created, but which Rashaz understands as the 
proto-temporal order of concatenation of the ten 
sefirot 
in the World of Emanation, 
which itself remains above time. 
Rashaz pays much attention to the process of the transition from an infinite 
and supra-temporal God to a finite and temporal reality. He proposes several 
explanations for this process, based on kabbalistic concepts such as the triad of 
“world, year, soul,” the dynamics of the divine names, or the mystical concepts of 
Torah and commandments that bind the temporal to the supra-temporal. He locates 
the source of time
 
in 
Malkhut
of the World of Emanation, namely, the final 
sefirah 
of the world that is united with God. 
137
LT 
Hukat
64d-65a. 
138
The connection between time and space is evident in the sources quoted in this chapter, for 
example the discussion of the triad “world, year, soul,” where two of the three characteristics present 
in every creation are time and space, or the description of 
Malkhut
as a source of both time and space. 
The affinity between these two notions may also be surmised from the fact that Rashaz often resorts 
to the language of temporal units when he illustrates the spatial limits of the lower worlds, which, he 
claims, measure “from the earth to the firmament the distance of five hundred years.” See for example 
T1, 43:61b, 48:67a; T2, 7:84a, 10:88a; TO 64a-c; LT 
Nitsavim
47b, based on 
b
Hagigah 13a. See also 
Wolfson, 
Alef, Mem, Tau
, 56, where he quotes the Maharal of Prague’s statement that “time and place 
are one matter.” 

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For Rashaz, time is the 
ratso va-shov 
pulse of the divine life force engaged in 
the process of continuous creation. This concept derives from two main ideas: 
Rashaz’s occasionalist view of reality as being continuously nullified and re-created 
by the flow of the divine life force on the one hand, and the philosophical idea of 
time as the measure of movement, on the other hand. He merges these two concepts 
by presenting time as a measure of the divine influx’s movement between expansion 
and contraction. The idea that time is nullified with every ascent of the divine force 
and substantiated again with each of its descents yields the concept of the division of 
time in the hierarchy of the worlds.

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