Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

I
NTRODUCTION
 
1.
 
Habad’s relationship with time. 
The literature of contemporary Habad is infused with temporality: numerous 
references to the mythologised past of the movement on the one hand, and to the 
anticipated messianic future on the other. The last two Lubavitcher Rebbes are 
widely credited with inculcating in their followers the belief in the imminent arrival 
of the Messiah, and thus in the imminent end of teleological history.
1
Historical 
events, such as the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, the Six-Day 
War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union have been used by the proponents of 
Habad’s messianic worldview to prove the validity of their concept of history, while 
at the same time being employed by academic scholars to pin-point significant 
landmarks in Habad’s turn to acute messianism.
2
Messianic rituals centred around 
the figure of the now-absent Rebbe-Messiah, or the Brooklyn building that served as 
his headquarters, have been shaping a messianic consciousness that defies the 
apparent lack of any tangible evidence that the final redemption he promised has 
already materialised. These rituals have enabled the believers to rise above history, 
transcend time, and experience the world as being messianically redeemed.
3
Moreover, the active dissemination throughout the world of Habad’s messianic credo 
among Jews and non-Jews alike has spread this redemptive consciousness beyond 
the fluid boundaries of the Habad community itself.
4 
1
For comprehensive discussions of messianism in the doctrine of 20
th
century Habad, see Dahan, 
Dirah ba-tahtonim
; Elior, “The Lubavitch Messianic Resurgence”; Friedman and Heilman, 
The 
Rebbe
; Kraus, 
Ha-shevi'i
; Schwartz, 
Mahashevet Habad
; Wolfson, 
Open Secret
. 
2
On the impact of major 20
th
-century historical events on the Habad doctrine, see Elior, “The 
Lubavitch Messianic Resurgence”; Greenberg, “Menahem Mendel Schneerson”; Friedman and 
Heilman, 
The Rebbe
, 253; Loewenthal, “Habad, the Rebbe”; idem, “Contemporary Habad,”385-390. 
3
For Habad messianism as a state of consciousness, see Wolfson, 
Open Secret
, 164-5. 
4
This is particularly noteworthy in light of Joseph Dan's claim that while messianism was always an 
important component of Hasidism, the experience of messianic redemption was confined to the spatial 
boundaries of the hasidic court and perpetuated over time by the duration of each court’s particular 
dynastic leadership; in other words, the redemption was at hand for the Hasidim only as long as a 
particular dynasty lasted (see Dan, “Kefel ha-panim,” 306-09). Habad’s messianist (
meshihist
)
 
faction 
has managed to break both temporal and spatial constraints in two ways. On the one hand, it has 

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12 
In striking contrast to all this, the beginnings of Habad are generally viewed 
by scholars as being devoid of messianic tension. Scholem's definition of Hasidism 
as a movement that neutralized the messianic message of the Lurianic kabbalah in 
response to the Sabbatean eruption of heretical messianim,
5
steered scholars away 
from the historiosophical dimension of the early hasidic sources, on the assumption 
that if the hasidic masters were not oriented toward the messianic future but strove 
instead to enable their followers to cleave to God in the here-and-now, then the 
appropriate approach was to investigate Hasidism as an a-temporal doctrine. This 
approach seemed all the more applicable to the study of Habad, which has often been 
labelled the most intellectual or rational school of Hasidism, and is at times 
presented as an abstract “philosophy” even by its followers.
6
As a result, scholars 
immortalised the last Rebbe by propagating the belief that he did not die, and by introducing rituals 
perpetuating his virtual presence within the community; on the other hand, it has taken its message 
out to the non-Habad, non-hasidic, and even non-Jewish world. It is important to note, however, that 
some of the messianists practises (for example, the use of video recordings of the Rebbe's speeches, 
the dispatch of Habad emissaries to Jewish communities the world over, or the printing of hasidic 
materials throughout the world for the purely magical purpose of “purification of the air”) are not 
considered controversial at all within the non-messianist