Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

 
7. Conclusions. 
The precept of setting time for Torah study constitutes an integral part of Rashaz’s 
project of making hasidic spirituality accessible to “intermediate” men, a project that 
attracted many people to Habad during his lifetime and beyond. This precept, which 
occupied a secondary place in the halakhic tradition as a means of preserving study 
146
On Menahem Mendel as one of three most important sources of inspiration for Rashaz, see Etkes, 
Ba‘al ha-Tanya
, 42. 
147
On Rashaz’s role in collecting donations for the Hasidim in the Land of Israel, see ibid., 122-42. 
148
On the role of the “collectors for the sake of the Land of Israel” [
ha-gaba’im de-Erets Yisra’el
] in 
enforcing the “Liozna Ordinances” in Habad communities, see Etkes, 
Ba‘al ha-Tanya
, 99 
149
Schneerson, 
Igerot kodesh
, xiv, 30-31; idem, 
Likutei sihot
, xxiii, 443. 

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within the daily schedule of working men, was employed by Rashaz to form a new 
spiritual paradigm, in which the routine religious praxis was invested with mystical 
meaning. Rashaz saw setting time for Torah study as an ideal for the majority of his 
community, and restricted full-time study to a presumably narrow scholarly elite. 
The many remarks in his mystical sermons touching on the requirement to set times 
for study show that not only did he ascribe equal value to this method as to full-time 
study, but also that he invested study at set times with particular importance because 
of its perceived role in both the individual and the cosmic dimensions of repentance. 
In some sermons, Torah study at set times by the masses is presented as a 
complement to the full-time study of the elite: while the elite draws down the divine 
light by fulfilling the ideal of full-time study, ordinary men reflect it by purifying the 
lower world when they comply with the halakhic requirement to study at set times. 
In other sermons, Rashaz makes study at set times an alternative means of achieving 
comparable effects to those achieved by the elite, as both scholars and ordinary 
people play a part in the construction of God’s sanctuary by means of their study. 
Moreover, even simpletons could do so by fulfilling the minimum halakhic 
requirement of reciting no more than one chapter of the Torah during the morning 
and the evening prayers. To underscore the value of this method of study, in some 
places Rashaz presents Torah study at set times as superior to full-time study, 
because it brings the wisdom of Torah out of the intellectual ivory tower of 
scholarship into the sphere of materiality and corporeality. This mode of study, 
which enables the ordinary person to detach himself from mundane affairs and to 
turn instead toward the divine words of Torah, generates more divine delight and 
produces a more intense state of ecstasy than the static study of the full-time scholar 
who is permanently engrossed in holiness. 
The instruction that Torah study at set times should follow prayer is of 
paramount importance. What was traditionally seen as a means of encouraging 
ordinary people to study before leaving the synagogue after prayer to resume 
mundane work, is incorporated by Rashaz into the dynamics of 
ratso va-shov
: while 
prayer is identified with the 
ratso 
mode of worship at the preparatory stage, in which 
one effaces one’s subjectivity in ecstatic prayer, study is identified with the 
shov 
mode, where the divine light clothed in the Torah descends into the world.

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These two sequential modes of worship have special significance in the 
personal quest for eternity. Prayer, whose timing is determined arbitrarily by Jewish 
law, grants the worshipper an instantaneous release from the bonds of past, present, 
and future, but this transcendental experience of ecstatic prayer is ephemeral, as it 
depends on the corporeal powers of love and fear. Paradoxically, it is Torah study 
whose times are set by the worshipper himself that ultimately allows him to 
transcend temporality by drawing down the eternal Torah into the temporal world. 
Rashaz's concept of setting times for Torah study allows for a better 
understanding of the ideology that lay behind his unique style of hasidic leadership. 
It highlights one of the tools that helped him build and sustain a decentralised 
network of Habad communities, whose members could remain his Hasidim in the 
full sense of the word even without frequent visits to his court, engagement in 
lengthy ecstatic prayer, or full-time dedication to study. It freed his Hasidim from the 
need to resort to activities that put their livelihood at risk. The mystical 
reinterpretation of the halakhic precept of setting time for Torah study helped Rashaz 
to reinvent Hasidism as a movement open to broad circles of independent 
businessmen and householders. This ideology may well have played a part in 
shaping Habad’s inclusivist vision of mysticism in the twentieth century, but the 
question of doctrinal continuity and change in the history and ideology of Habad still 
awaits further research. 

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