Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

yesh
] would be accomplished. And this is why, according to the Sages, ‘the entire Torah was 
compared to the 
tefilin
’ [
b
Kidushin 35a], for with regard to the 
tefilin
, when one writes ‘One’ [
ehad
] 
on a material parchment that derives from the husk of 
nogah
and is a being unto itself, it is 
incorporated in the category of naught [
ayin
], as it becomes a vessel for the divinity that rests upon it 
by way of ‘One’ etc. And this applies to all the commandments of the Torah” [Appendix 26]. 
147
See T1, 37:47a-b; TO 16c, 55d, 65b-c, 66a, 117c; LT 
Tsav
13b-c, 
Tazri’a 
20d, 
Sukot 
78d. See also 
LT 
Emor 
38c. Rashaz refers to the talmudic idea that: “As long as the Temple stood, the altar atoned 
for Israel, but now man’s table atones for him” [
b
Berakhot 55a]. He compares eating food to offering 
sacrifices: just as the purpose of the latter was to purify the soul of the sacrificial animal and re-unite 
it with its source, which lies above the breaking of the vessels, so eating – so long as it is 
accompanied by the appropriate blessing and intention – purifies the inanimate, vegetative and 
animate [
domem
, 
tsomeah
and 
hai
] elements concealed within food. See also 
Seder tefilot 
69c, 203a, 
and 101a-c, discussed in Jacobs, “Eating as an Act of Worship,” 163-64, where every meal is 
considered a war between the holy and the unholy, an idea based on the fact that the Hebrew words 
“bread” [
lehem
] and “war” [
milhamah
] share the same root. Rashaz also associates the talmudic 
prohibition on the eating of meat by an ignoramus [
‘am ha-arets
, 
b
Pesahim 49b]
 
with purifications: 
red meat that stems from 
Gevurot
(for the association of the colour red with 
Gevurah
, see Hallamish, 
Introduction
, 146) is too closely related to the external forces to be purified by an ignoramus; only a 
scholar [
talmid hakham
] equipped with wisdom [
hokhmah
] is fit to purify it, according to the saying 
that ascribes purifying powers to the attribute of 
Wisdom 
(“through Hokhmah they are purified [
be-
hokhmah itbereru
, based on 
Z
ii, 254b]). See LT 
Be-ha’alotekha 
31c-33b. A variation on this motif 
can be found in LT 
Berakhah
97d, where the inability of the ignoramus to elevate the meat results 
from the fact that he possesses only “hidden love” [
ahavah mesuteret
], as opposed to the scholar, 
whose love is ecstatic and powerful “like coals of fire” [
rishfei esh
]. Elsewhere (LT 
Tsav 
8a, 
Balak 
72b, 
Pinhas 
79d) the prohibition on eating before prayer is explained in terms of the obligation to let 
the soul spread throughout the entire body during prayer, as only then would the food consumed by 
the body provide energy for the soul rather than the 
sitra ahara.
Finally, Rashaz identifies eating with 
blessing as a realisation of 
dirah ba-tahtonim
, for it enables the light of the 
Ein Sof
contained in the 
vitality of food to dwell in man. See LT 
Naso 
26b. For a general discussion of the mystical dimension 
of eating in Hasidism, see Jacobs, “Eating as an Act of Worship,” and idem, “The Uplifting of 
Sparks,” 117-121. 

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108 
accumulation of multiple such individual transformations. Altogether, the six 
hundred thousand souls of Israel correspond to the same number of particles of 
divine vitality (sparks) present in the world: when Israel have performed all the 
commandments, their animal souls and bodies, together with the lower worlds they 
inhabit, will be divinized by the light of