Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

Mahashevet Habad
, 277-280. On 
the development of this topic in the 
ma’amarim
of the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Shalom Dovber 
Schneersohn (1860-1920), see Wolfson, “Neqqudat ha-Reshimu,” 90-1. 
28
On the River of Fire, see section 2.1 below. 
29
See MAHZ 
5565
, i, 412-13. 
30
See chapter 2, section 3.3 above. 
31
LT 
Shelah 
46d. 
32
Ibid. 
33
According to Rashaz, the traditional blessing formula recited before performing a commandment 
(Blessed are thou, o Lord our God, king of the universe, who sanctified us with His commandments) 
hints at the delight derived from the commandments, wherein the word 
asher
(who) stems from 
ashrei
(happy are those). For the source of this interpretation, see 
Tikunei zohar
, xxx, 74b, xxxix, 79a. 

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124 
contracted in order to be integrated in materiality. The real source of all spiritual, 
inner delight is the supernal delight [
ta’anug ‘elyon
], which transcends the hierarchy 
of the emanated worlds and the contractions that accompanied the process of their 
unfolding. As such, it lies beyond any value-charged differentiation between 
spirituality and materiality, externality and internality: it concerns both spheres 
equally.
34
Thus, although within the unredeemed world, the soul achieves a higher 
level of delight after the death of the body, in the redeemed world the situation is 
reversed, and it is the body that grants the soul a higher level of delight. However, 
this reversal can be effected even in the present, unredeemed world, by means of the 
practical commandments, which bring the higher level of delight to realisation 
through the material objects utilised in their performance.
35
The redeemed bodies will be different from the bodies conceived and born 
before the resurrection. Following the resurrection, the body will become a suitable 
vessel for the infinite light, and the illumination it will receive would be similar to 
the one that a person receives at the moment of death. Accordingly, in the redeemed 
world, God will be perceived sensually by resurrected bodies which have become 
more subtle than their mortal counterparts, of whom God had said: “There shall no 
man see me, and live” [Ex 33:20]. The resurrected body will be rebuilt from its 
bones
36
and sustained by the divine light clothed in the dew of resurrection, in 
contrast to the mortal body, which is sustained by the divine life-force while being 
clothed in flesh.
37
There will therefore be no drinking and eating after the 
resurrection.
38
34
LT 
Shelah 
47c-d. 
35
Ibid. 
36
Based on the interpretation of Is 58:11 whereby God “will make fat thy bones.” 
37
MAHZ 
5566
, i, 420-421. See also LT 
Re’eh 
28a: “Thus in the future-to-come the body will be 
infinitely purer than the human body nowadays, for the body will be [made] entirely out of the bone 
that would remain for the time of the resurrection [see 
Bereshit rabah
, 28:3; 
Vayikra rabah
18:1], 
from which the body will be constructed as leaven in the dough [see Zi, 69a; Zii, 28b; 
Pirkei de-Rabi 
Eli’ezer 
ch. 34, 34a] by means of the dew that will be drawn from above” [Appendix 3]. 
38
See for example MAHZ 
5563
, i, 202; 
5569
, 42-45; LT 
Re’eh 
24a, 
Shir ha-shirim 
42b. The belief 
that the resurrected bodies will not need to eat and drink appears in 
b
Berakhot 17a. See also MAHZ 

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125 
The sublimation of the body constitutes only one element of the bigger 
picture, in which materiality is purified and the laws of nature, including mortality, 
are abolished. Purified materiality will be capable of receiving the divine world 
without obscuring it,
39
and as a result, the lights of