Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

2. Exile and redemption. 
2.1 The exile 
qua
 creation. 
The view that the redemption is no longer historically determined but inheres in the 
first act of creation has implications for the idea of exile. Traditionally associated 
with the times when the Jewish people were forced out of the Land of Israel, exile 
gains a much broader, metaphysical scope, which parallels the metaphysical aspect 
of the redemption. As the redemption concludes the act of creation by revealing the 
presence of godliness throughout the creation, so the exile reveals the withdrawal of 
godliness from it. The exile is, therefore, first and foremost the exile of God, an idea 
that occurs already in the classical rabbinic sources, where God’s presence is said to 
have been exiled to Edom and Babylonia together with Israel.
25
In Rashaz’s 
teachings, however, the divine presence was exiled into the world in the process of 
creation, and it accompanies Israel only inasmuch as Israel are the major force 
driving the process of redemption.
26
Rashaz writes: 
However, that which does not surrender itself to God but is a separate thing 
in its own right does not receive its vitality from the holiness of God, [that 
is,] from the inner essence and substance of holiness itself, but rather from its 
hind-side, as it were, [from which] it descends, level by level, with the 
emanation of the worlds through myriads of gradations, by way of cause and 
24
The distinction between these two in Rashaz’s teachings will be discussed in section 1 of the next 
chapter. 
25
See 
b
Megilah 29a: “R. Shimon ben Yohai says: come and see how beloved the children of Israel 
are before the Holy One, blessed is He! For wherever they were exiled, the 
Shekhinah
was with them. 
When they were exiled to Egypt, the 
Shekhinah
was with them […]. When they were exiled to 
Babylonia, the 
Shekhinah 
was with them” [Appendix 5]; for the use of this expression in Rashaz's 
lore, see, for example, T1, 17:23a, T4, 4:105b, 21:133b, 25:140a; TO 5a, 11a, 38a, 51a, 100b 119a; 
LT 
Matot
, 83d, 
Mas’ei 
88b, 
Tetse 
35d, 
Shabat shuvah
67c, 
Shir ha-shirim
35b. 
26
See note 21 above. 

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72 
effect and innumerable contractions, until the [creative] Light and [its] 
vitality are so dimmed through repeated diminutions that they can be 
compressed and manifested as a state of exile, as it were, within that separate 
thing, giving it vitality and existence 
ex-nihilo
, so that it does not revert to 
nothingness and ceases to exist, as before it was created.
27
In this excerpt from 
Tanya 
Rashaz refers to the creation of separate entities in terms 
of the coming into being of those things that he had earlier described as the most 
remote from the divine unity, things whose purpose was to enable the divine 
kingship to be displayed at the end of days. Here, however, he chooses to emphasize 
the existential bond that connects them with the divine even in their pre-redemptive 
state: they are created and sustained by the divine vitality, which has been 
diminished through numerous contractions in the course of emanating from the 
pleroma right down to the lower worlds they inhabit. The descent and limitation of 
the divine vitality to the point where it gives life to apparently separate beings is, in 
fact, the exile of the Divine presence, the 
Shekhinah
. The exile of the 
Shekhinah
is, 
therefore, identical with the creation of separate beings