Sonia Rozenblum was born to her parents, Menachem Mendel and Sheindal Gourarie (Gurary or Gourary) on the 29^th of Tammuz 5656 (July 1896) in the city of Kremenchug, Ukraine. Her father was one of three brothers, all successful businessman and devoted followers of the fifth Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn (henceforth the Rebbe Rashab).1 Members of the Gourarie family had been Chabad Chasidim of learning and stature since the movement was founded a century before by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi.2 Despite the privilege of wealth, the Gourarie’s in no way considered themselves exempt from the rigors of the Chabad path of serious intellectual commitment to the study of Torah, Chasidic texts and devotional prayer, and the renowned Chasid, Rabbi Yisroel Levin of Nevel, was hired to educate their children in the true Chasidic spirit.3 Apparently, Sonia was tutored alongside her younger brother, Shmaryahu, who would later become Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s son-in-law.4 As we shall see, the present letter indicates that by the time she was twenty, Sonia was intimately familiar with Chasidic texts in current circulation, and fully immersed in the intricate depths of Chabad thought.

Although many of the details of her early life remain undocumented, it is clear that in the collective memory of Chabad Chasidim Sonia is presented as a woman whose stature as a scholar and practitioner of Chasidic teachings far exceeded that of many dedicated Chasidim.5 It is said that she would listen to the discourses of the Rebbe Rashab, and enter into audiences (yechidus) with him to discuss aspects of her personal service to G‑d (avodah). Leaving Europe before the outbreak of the Second World War, she lived with her family in Tel Aviv, Israel where she passed away in 1974.6 Rabbi Yitzchak (Itchke) Ganzberg (1927-2006) lived in Tel Aviv during that period and described her in his memoirs: “Ha-Rabanit7 Sonia Rozenblum… would pray at great length, especially on the eve of Rosh Hashanah.8 She really knew a phenomenal amount of Chasidut… often she would be found studying one of the deep series [of Chasidic discourses] authored by the Rebbe Rashab.”9 It is said too, that her husband, Rabbi Chaim Yosef Rozenblum (1897-1974), would sometimes wait several hours for Sonia to finish her prayers before reciting Kiddush and beginning the meal on Shabbat day.

In attempting to gain insight into the degree to which Chasidic teaching and thought was a part of her inner world, it is instructive to cite a letter, addressed by Sonia to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (henceforth the Rebbe Rayatz) circa 1927. Her family’s wealth having been lost or expropriated in the aftermath of the communist takeover of Russia a decade earlier, she was now forced to make her living by the labor of her own hands. With her husband away in Moscow, she is said to have used a machine to sew clothing, in order to provide for herself and her family in Leningrad. Apparently, it was under these conditions that she addressed the following lines to Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak.10

“It is already many many years that I do not study Chassidic teachings for various reasons, and I have become very far from the entirety of that path. The general impression that remains in my mind and heart dwindles far quicker than the passing of time should dictate, and I am sunken and swallowed in the futilities of the world and its preoccupations… Although it is true that I have been involved in much nonsense and inconsequentiality, have I not only desired the truth, [that is,] to serve Him with all my heart and soul? How may it be that the soul which descended into the body, should not achieve its repair in this world?”11

Evidently the writer is a woman who places the devotional service of G‑d, cultivated through intense study and contemplation of Chabad Chasidic teachings, at the epicenter of her life. Rather than complaining of the indignities she has suffered, she expresses real concern for the deterioration of her spiritual situation. Certainly she had the practical skills, determination and enterprise to ensure that she and her children would survive in a difficult economic climate, but ultimately affairs of the soul remained uppermost in her mind.

* * *

Unfortunately the present letter, published in Igrot Kodesh of the Rebbe Rayatz Vol. 1 12 from a manuscript copy, has reached us in an incomplete state. We do not know the exact date or circumstances under which it was written. At the top of the manuscript an inscription reads “copied from a letter of the Rebbe Rayatz whose soul is in eden, written in the years 5670-5 [1910-15] approximately, to Sonia, may she live, Roz’[enblum]”. As we shall see, it is clear from the content of the letter that at the time of writing the Rebbe Rashab, who passed away in March 1920, was still alive. It is also unlikely that such correspondence would have been possible following the upheavals brought on by the First World War. We may, therefore, judge this estimation to be accurate.

Based on its content, we can assume that it may well have been written in response to a letter similar to the one cited above, in which Sonia may have expressed regret at what she perceived to be an insufficient involvement in the study, assimilation and application of Chasidic teachings on her part. In the opening lines of this letter, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (1880-1950) seems to be either empathising with her or admonishing her for her own self-criticism and misplaced dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction, he argues, might stem from what he labels an “emotional” characteristic, which lays at the epicenter of the dissatisfied individual’s personality (the Hebrew term used to describe such an individual is “baal midot”). The remainder of the letter is devoted to a lengthy description of the nature of this deep-set inclination to dissatisfaction, and its association with a personality type that is essentially marked by an “emotional” element . The precise connotation of the word “emotional” as used in this context is actually very different from its usual meaning. Indeed, this point is itself the central issue that the Rayatz attempts to articulate.

It quickly becomes clear that the initially reproving tone is addressed to an individual whose intelectual capacity and depth is deeply respected by the writer. Indeed, the forthright manner, as well as the mixed usage of Hebrew and Yiddish (a more personal and intuitive mode of expression, often used in Chasidic discourses to articulate ideas of particular subtlety), reveals something of the deep nature of their pedagogical relationship, and the honesty and openness that existed between the two.

As previously indicated, the essentially “emotional” character described is not “emotional” in the usual sense of the word. As Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak hastens to forewarn, such an individual might have “great understanding and very very great breadth of mind, [the ability] to understand something with great depth and wonderful sensitivity, their analysis of a conception will be subtle, sometimes pure and true, [achieving] a very intimate and clear feeling for the subtlety of the idea. Nevertheless, the essential nature [of the individual] is emotional.”

In order to better articulate his point, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak asserts that, “what we refer to as emotion and intellect, are mere [borrowed] descriptions [applied to the experience] of intelligence and excitement of the heart…” In other words, we describe the cognitive experience as being “intellectual” and the impassioned experience as “emotional”. While these are, admittedly, correct applications of these terms, such applications “separate and restrict the nature of intellect and emotion” in a form that does not reflect their “essential nature” and “pure truth”. In their truest sense, the descriptions “intellectual” and “emotional” refer to conceptual abstractions, which may be seen as the definitive essence of the human experiences to which they are normally applied.

* * *

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak proceeds to illustrate how a conceptually limited form may nevertheless be a valid reflection of its abstracted source, incorporating certain properties of its source but in a more defined format, which renders it ultimately incomparable to its quintessential prototype. The illustration he provides itself points to the cognitive depths, which he evidently assumed the addressee to have attained: Having heard a concept articulated in a “sharp and short” format, the individual may be able to repeat the idea, but is not yet able to appreciate what it truly means.

The concept’s ultimate depth can only be assimilated “via very lengthy explanation (which stands in opposition to the aspect of synopsis, for it is understood that as each concept is developed with lengthy explanations and illustrations, one’s ability to swiftly encapsulate the idea diminishes).” Only later, “after the concept has dwelt in the understanding mind for a long while, as required in accord with the capacity and nature of the intellectual (the recipient), and the matter has become etched on their inquisitive heart – from all this will the abstract be compounded.”

The “abstract” referred to here is not simply the formulation of the concept in a “sharp and short” format, but rather a cognitive experience of profound depth, the manifestation of the concept “in its essential purity, with lightening abstraction and tremendous potency… [such that] the concept is lucid and one is animated by it… one is no longer involved in the specifics of the concept, but rather one is carried by the ultimate consequence (it’s essential aspect and abstraction) into an entirely new world, to the world of pleasure and animation… As the life of the soul animates man, that he lives without calculated knowledge of how or what that life is but only knows with utter clarity that he is alive, enthralled with the delight of the pleasantness and sweetness of the aspect of life… similarly, the intellectual is animated by the essential cognizance, without knowledge of specifics and aspects that can be delineated.”

The lucidity and animation are themselves not to be confused with actual cognizance of the essentiality of the concept. These are, rather, experiences that result from the assimilation of that essentiality. “Nevertheless, this consequential revelation is loftier than other revelations, in that it is a consequence [i.e. directly related to the assimilation of the essence]…” This being the case, “one is able to reckon, directly and by deduction, the nature of the essence of such a consequence… It is not the purity of the essence at all, that we should say that this is it. It is [rather] a description, the limited purity of the essence, one of the forms that result from the essence… which are revealed [from it]. Nevertheless both its limitation and its revelation13 are from the essence, and they have in them an essential potency.”

“All of this”, explains Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, may be transposed to the issue of emotion and intellect: The ultimate prototype of these faculties, “their pure essentiality”, cannot be judged by their limited form as generally experienced and described. “The manifest experiences of animated cognition or aroused passion of the heart, do not dictate their definition by limited description.” On the contrary, in the light of our earlier statement (here repeated) that even individuals described as “emotional” are “deep in understanding and broad in comprehension”, such a judgment is “twisted and very much mistaken”. By the same token, those described as “intellectual” are also “mighty of heart and tremendously excitable, so that each of the two types is not lacking any of the required moral faculties of intellect or emotion (by virtue of which one is called human). And nevertheless, they are two types, completely separated by a dividing partition between them.”

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak defines “this deep14 partition” between the quintessential intellectual and emotional characteristics, as relating to the “chush”, a word that is usually translated as “sense”, and which here refers to a deeply subtle orientation. The labels “intellectual” and “emotional” do not describe the active, or manifest, character type of the individual, but a less discernible orientation, which is far deeper seated.

* * *

This brings us to the passage in which Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, finely points to the core of the issue, the essential distinction between an “intellectual” orientation and an “emotional” orientation. However, what is most striking about this passage is its obscurity, or better put; his reliance on Sonia’s familiarity with a specific text, and on her ability to deduce his intended meaning based thereon.

“One of the related descriptions, with which and through which, the nature of such orientations in general, and those of intellect and emotion specifically, may be understood to one who contemplates and pays correct attention to that which is said and noted (a kind of letter or statement that my father the holy Rebbe, may he live for many good years, distributed to the students of Tomchei Temimim, may they live, after Sukkot 1906).” Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak cites the opening words of that letter, and in parenthesis includes a cryptic synopsis, before concluding, “From there is the well of life for one who is fitting and meritorious to understand this matter…”

Nowhere in that letter is there any explicit mention of the difference between the abstract emotional and intellectual orientations, to which subject Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak immediately returns. We are left to study the cited text and ascertain its conceptual relevance by a process of deduction.

This “letter or statement” has been identified15 as the text printed in Sefer Hasichot Torat Shalom,16 a collection of transcripts of the Rebbe Rashab’s spoken word, pages 75-8. As has been noted, this text was addressed to the students of the Yeshiva, Tomchei Temimim. Specifically, it came in response to a threat to the authority of the Yeshiva’s faculty.17 The Rebbe had wished to address the students personally, on Simchat Torah, but was too weak to do so. Instead he transcribed his intended words, calling on the students to understand and implement the proper regard due to the faculty specifically, and elder Chasidim in general.

Without entering into all the complexities involved, the central point made is that there are two forms of cognitive orientation, the one being essential and the other being received (mashpia and mekabel). A student might ultimately attain deeper insight than his or her master, but the student cannot achieve anything without the master’s instruction and guidance. Ultimately, the student does not own the object of study, and always remains a recipient. The student might shine brighter, but the light comes from the master. In order for the student to receive and benefit from the master, he or she must put aside something of the self and make space for the other. One cannot overly assert one’s own faculties, but must instead attempt to assimilate the pedagogic transmission propagated by the master. The master on the other hand entirely owns the object of study. Indeed, it is so wholly integrated with his or her own self, that the master’s pedagogic output carries an essential brilliance, an undiluted authenticity, which can perhaps better be equated with the self-expression of an artist, than with a discipline studied by a scholar. Most individuals retain the cognitive orientation of a recipient, few – no matter how bright – achieve the orientation of a master.

It is here that Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak picks up, applying the label “emotional” to one possessed of the cognitive orientation of a recipient. Such individuals, he asserts, “have a second-nature to be constantly deficient, unsure of their opinions, inquiring and asking ‘why?’” An essential characteristic of the emotionally orientated is that “something is missing, and nothing can quench their thirst”. This is not because they have amassed less knowledge than the master, on the contrary, they might have gained more and understood it better. But nevertheless, they are “constantly thirsty and yearning… for in truth not for this that one has attained did one yearn… one’s yearning is not directed at a particular object, for if it was then when one achieves, one’s thirst will be quenched, and one will rejoice for it.” It is clear, therefore, that such an individual feels unfulfilled, “because the nature of longing is embedded deep within”.

As has already been noted this letter has not reached us in a complete state, but

As the letter has reached us, it’s final section concludes with a wonderful description of the joys experienced by the “intellectually” orientated intellectual (baal mochin) upon the attainment of knowledge, and lost to the “emotionally” orientated intellectual (baal midot) who is ever plagued by a frustratingly unquenchable thirst. As has been noted, the letter did not reach us in a complete state, and it reasonable to believe that Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak would have continued to provide some description of the obvious merits of having such a thirst for knowledge, and / or some kind of advice as to how one might overcome its negative side effects, and so achieve maximum success. As it is, we can only inform such speculations by turning to other source that discuss similar concepts.18

Certainly this letter warrants further study, there is much to be discussed on the broader issues of educational authority and dynamics. What this letter might tell us about differences between male and female intellectual orientations, also bears consideration.19 Most importantly, the present letter and its content sheds light on an issue that has been largely overlooked. Here we have clear evidence that long before there was any institutionalized infrastructure for the education of women, there were individuals who engaged in such studies informally. Far from being barred from intellectual inquiry, the efforts of such women were encouraged and their accomplishments acknowledged. I would argue, however, that before such studies became formalized the intellectual efforts of such women where an organic product of the religious and social atmosphere in which they grew up, rather than part of a wider process of modernization. Although Sonia might have been unique even if she where a man, and also benefited from the close relationship that her family enjoyed with that of the Rebbe Rashab, it is unlikely that her case was completely anomalous. In my estimation, her individual experience points to a broader phenomenon.20

Book Review

Sefer Ha-Maftechot Le-Sichot KodeshSefer Ha-Maftechot Le-Sichot Kodesh (5695-5752)

A Comprehensive Index to the Spoken Word of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe (Hebrew)

By Rabbi Michael A. Seligson

1600 pp. Rabbi Michael A. Seligson / Kehot Publication Society. $49.95.

On theRebbe.org you can listen to some 2,000 hours (that’s about eighty full days of listening time) of the recorded talks of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, delivered between the years 1951 and 1992. Indeed, it was the spoken word that was the Rebbe’s chief medium of leadership and instruction. This audio collection, however, actually represents a very small fraction of the Rebbe’s verbal output, as the vast majority of his public talks were delivered on Shabbat and Jewish Festivals when such recordings are prohibited by Jewish law. On an average Shabbat the Rebbe might easily talk for six to eight hours, and for much of the Rebbe’s leadership these talks where transcribed from memory by a group known as chozrim, Hebrew for repeaters, who were distinguished by their ability to accurately memorize the several hours of verbal output, repeating and transcribing it upon the conclusion of the holy day.

These transcripts have been published in a variety of different collections spanning different years, the Torat Menachem series of Hebrew transcripts (adapted from the spoken Yiddish) is incomplete, but to-date it includes more than eighty volumes. The thirty nine volumes of Lekutei Sichot contain the Rebbe’s teachings as distilled and redacted by a team of scholars, and meticulously edited by the Rebbe personally for publication. In addition to these works, the present index references a broad range of more minor publications, recording not only the Rebbe’s public talks, but also private conversations held with individuals and subsequently transcribed by people who were present or from audio recordings. The introduction includes a general listing of publications used, which includes some forty individual titles. Many of these titles represent several volumes.

Untill now this vast corpus of diverse output has presented a basic methodological problem for scholars. This is by no means an organised body of literature, with specific subjects addressed in logical sequence. What the Rebbe might speak about on a particular occasion could depend on a wide verity of factors, some - like the significance of the date in the Jewish calender, or current events - predictable, others - the intricacies of a Talmudic controversy, or the abstract depths of some point of Kabbalistic theosophy - less so. In addition there are many topics that the Rebbe addressed on multiple occasions. In the words of Elliot Wolfson, one of the few scholars to deal with the Rebbe’s thought comprehensively, “Working on the Rebbe has proven a burdensome undertaking… mostly due to the sheer wealth of material generated by the recording of virtually every word he offered publicly… The duplication of themes across several decades presents a distinctive problem… each reoccurrence is unique.” (Open Secret, xiv)

A new index, published by Kehot Publication Society, and the work of Chabad Scholar and author, Rabbi Michoel A. Seligson, fills a very large gap. The volume, measuring 8.5 by 11 inches and several inches thick, contains sixteen hundred pages, each spanned by three columns of dense print. It is overwhelming in its scope, but nevertheless easy to navigate.

The first 1,260 pages of Seligson’s index cover some 3,000 individual topic entries. The references to discussions of Abraham, the first of the Jewish Patriarchs, for example, fill more than nine columns of compact text. Other entries of particular length include a range of diverse topics, many of which are easily anticipated, Physicality/Spirituality, Unity of the Jewish People, Exile, The Yom Kippur War, The Giving of the Torah, Body/Soul, Who is a Jew, Redemption, Education – an entry which runs to sixteen pages, and Elul (a month in the Jewish Calendar). Randomly, I came across an entry for Coffee, and another for Melody that fills no less than twenty pages.

Separate listings of names of organizations, places and individuals cover an additional 150 pages. The section indexing names of individuals includes rabbanic names as diverse as Rabbi Israel Abuchatzira – the Baba Sali, Rabbi Elijah – the Gaon of Vilna, Rabbi Moses Isurlis – famed as the RaMA, Rabbi Chaim Vital, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, Miamonides, Rabbi Moshe Alshech, and Rabbi Sadi’ah Gaon, alongside Israeli politicians such as Menachem Begin, Yitzchak Shamir and Zalman Shazar (listed under Rubachov – his Russian surname), and Chasidic greats, such as Rabbi DovBer – the Maggid of Mezritch, Rabbi Hillel of Paritch, Rabbi Chaim Halbershtam – the Tzanser Rebbe, Rabbi Zushe of Anipoli, Rabbi Yoel Tietelbaum – the Satmer Rebbe, and Rabbi Nachman of Breslav.

The remaining couple of hundred pages are devoted to the tens of thousands of references to the twenty-four books of the bible, the sixty-three tractates of the Talmud, and other important Rabbinic texts including Midrash, Zohar, Maimonides, the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law), and also the vast corpus of published Chasidic texts.

This is truly an encyclopedic work, encapsulating decades of prolific and highly varied output into a single highly organized volume. Such a volume is of great value to anyone interested in studying any aspect of the Rebbe’s thought, leadership or persona. Seligson’s work embodies a huge step that will significantly further the cause of informed scholarship, and stands as testimony to the two decades he spent researching and indexing this huge body of literature. We may be confident that the time he devoted to this work will be well repaid in the many hours it will save for scholars, and that this index will serve as a catalyst for ever more fruitful efforts in an area of research in which interest only seems to grow.

A Lecture by Rabbi Yoel Kahn in Anticipation of Upcoming Centennial of Epic “Ayin Beis” Discourses

On the festival of Shavuot 1912 the fifth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn, began an epic series of discourses that would become famed for its concise, detailed and original treatment of many of the fundamentals whose complex theological depths grace the Jewish mystical canon. Known in Chabad simply as “Ayin Beis” after the Hebrew letters that signify the year in which its recital began, for nearly a century this series of discourses has gathered a reputation as being something of an enigma, a closed book to all but the most advanced scholars of Chasidic thought. This is also one of the longest sequences in the vast corpus of Chabad Chasidic literature; for four successive years Rabbi Sholom DovBer delivered a discourse as often as once a week. Adding to the length of this series is its final portion, which was never delivered verbally, and exists only in transcript.

The following anecdote is indicative of the deep spiritual and intellectual commitment that Ayin Beis embodied for its author:

“Once the Previous Rebbe [Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn] saw his father [Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn] sitting on the sofa, completely immersed in thought. His eyes were open, but he was utterly unaware of his surroundings, like one who is in another world. So much so, that when he came to himself he did not know what day it was or where he was etc… (beyond the limitations of body, time and space). Later Rabbi Sholom DovBer told him that at that time he was engrossed in Chasidic concepts of extraordinary depth, which would become the foundation for the series known as Ayin Beis.”1

To a Chabad Chasid, the themes explicated in such discourses carry all the spiritual significance of a window onto the divine. The particularly intense concentration of the most esoteric concepts, and the fact that until 1977 these discourses remained unpublished (available until then only in mimeograph), has combined to add a mystic dimension to the obscurity surrounding a text that was described by the seventh Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as “great and wondrous compared to other [similar] series’ [of Chasidic Discourses]”.2 When he ultimately called for its publication, he voiced concern that even then the time was not ripe for such a lofty revelation, and stipulated that its publication must be a responsibility born by the public collectively, rather than by a single individual.3

In the decades since its publication, its reputation for complex depth and its mystic significance has only increased. Indeed, the very words “Ayin Beis” have come to carry the allure of the unknown and the impenetrable. While its three volumes are a prominent feature of every Chabad library, few have had the resolve to take on the challenge it represents, and rarely does it figure on the curriculum of a Chabad Yeshiva.

Now, as the hundredth anniversary of the initial delivery of Ayin Beis approaches, history is being made.

On a Monday morning in late November, Rabbi Yoel Kahan, widely regarded as today’s foremost scholar of Chabad Chasidus, delivered the first in a series of lectures that will highlight and elucidate the key themes of Ayin Beis and the most innovative concepts explicated by Rabbi Sholom DovBer therein. At eight o’clock in the morning, approximately sixty rabbinical students packed into the small study hall on the ground floor of 770 Eastern Pkwy, the Brooklyn headquarters of the Chabad movement. Rabbi Yoel Kahn, a scholar who’s deeply lined face and grey beard attest to his eighty years, was surrounded by his students, all in their early to mid-twenties. Despite the disparity in age, there is an amazing sense of ease, tempered by respectful attentiveness and alert intelligence. Recording equipment, including a cordless microphone, clashes with the antiquated décor: colored window panes set in yellowing plaster walls, and the roughhewn wooden furniture, are bathed in the light of a bright chandelier.

One of the primary subjects of the lecture was the Kabbalistic concept of ohrot and keilim. In the second section of Tanya, Shar Ha-yichud Ve-ha’emunah, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi interprets the biblical statement, “the Lord He is God in heaven above and upon the earth below, there is none else”4 as negating not only the existence of another deity, but the existence of any other reality whatsoever. In Shar Ha-Yichud Ve’ha’emunah he seeks to provide a philosophical framework that will allow the rational mind to square that statement with our experience of a multiplicity of distinct realities.

We are apparently forced to conclude that the divergent forms experienced in the created realm are essentially a fallacy, only made real by our subjective experience. Rabbi Kahn, who often highlights the more practical theological implications of such mystical doctrines, presented this as a problem that touches on the very validity of mitzvot, the divinely mandated Commandments of the Torah. If physical reality is non-reality, then the act of placing physical tefillin on a physical head, or affixing a physical mezuzah, comprised of parchment and ink, on a physical door frame, may be misconstrued as a meaningless non-event.

Central to the philosophical framework of Rabbi Shneur Zalman is the Kabbalistic concept of ohrot and keilim. Ohr (ohrot in plural) means light, and represents the formless simplicity of the divine essence. White light, or colourless light, actually contains all the colors of the visible spectrum, but combines them in a singular manifestation of uncolored unity. Kli (Keilim in plural) means receptacle; when the undefined ray of pure light is shone through a colored glass, the glass filters out all colors in the spectrum accept for its own color, which shines through. When shone through a prism, all the colors of the spectrum, are manifest as distinct colors. This paradigm reflects the dualism of reality; in the act of creation the essential simplicity of infinite divinity is made manifest in the finite forms of physical reality. Just as the colored light is a limited revelation of its source, so each created form is a limited view onto divinity.5

Rabbi Kahan highlighted another illustration, which is used in Ayin Beis6 to further explicate the concept: Intellect as manifest within the human brain (i.e. the cognitive experience), even when utilized to comprehend limited aspects of physical reality, nevertheless retains the essentially formless quality of abstract intellect (i.e. it remains a cognitive experience), only that the abstract quality is now revealed (or applied) in a specific medium. The specific form of that medium in no way constricts or inhibits the essential quality of intellect; on the contrary, the intellect may be fully exercised whatever the medium. Similarly, the created realm, complete with its multiplicity of forms, which apparently conceals the manifestation of the singular simplicity of divinity, is actually itself a mode of divine revelation.

Ultimately, this can only be properly understood in light of two concepts that lie at the core of the Chasidic conception of divinity. Firstly, the essential core of divinity is ineffable - beyond any form of manifestation. This being the case, revelation and concealment must equally fail to faithfully express the true nature of G‑d’s being. Conversely, G‑d’s being is absolutely non-contingent (existing even when the term “existence”, in its usual sense, cannot be applied), this entails (somewhat paradoxically) that G‑d can choose to be manifest even in a form that obscures the apparency of divine existence. Indeed, it may be argued that in choosing to be manifest in the medium of concealment, the absolute non-contingency of G‑d’s essential being is actually more fully expressed than it is via the medium of revelation. In this sense, secrecy is more open than disclosure.7

Having cast the concealed disclosure of divinity embodied in physical reality as a fuller expression of G‑d’s non-contingent being, the divergent forms experienced in the created realm are understood to be, not a fallacy or misrepresentation, but a disclosure of G‑d’s ultimate reality. In the performance of a Mitzvah, the physical and spiritual realities coincide, and the very boundaries that define the physical as physical and the spiritual as spiritual are transcended. The performance of Mitzvot involves the specific use of physical objects because it is specifically in the physical realm that the ultimate non-contingency and ineffability of the divine essence is best affirmed.

The opacity of created existence is affirmed to be no less than a different mode of divine revelation; ohr (uncolored unity) refracted through the prisms of the keilim (disparate forms). Physicality is made transparent to the ultimate reality that must transcend both disclosure and concealment, which can be neither and must be both.8

Abstract: Throughout the ages the Sages of the Jewish People have applied received exegetical principles within new contexts. Conceptual, geographic and temporal diversity have led to a multiplicity of apparently conflicting conclusions, all drawn within the internal framework of interpretative methodology prescribed by the Torah itself. But when we understand the Torah as a singularity that transcends the triadic configuration of past-present-future, then the apparently disparate elements of Torah interpretation can be re-framed as narrow windows representing different facets of an integral whole. With the opening of each new window, the quintessence of Torah further unfolds and emerges, and all past applications are further illuminated by the broadening view.

I have spent the later hours of the last several nights reading Prof. Elliot Wolfson’s intensely bold and thought provoking exposition of the unique brand of mystical rationalism espoused by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson – a work that carries the captivatingly paradoxical title, Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of [Rabbi] Menahem Mendel Schneerson. This is not an easy task, but it is certainly a rewarding one.

In Tanya, the Bible of Chabad Chasidic thought, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, known in Chabad as the Alter Rebbe, described the role of a Rebbe as being “to teach wisdom to the people, that they may know the greatness of G‑d”. Conversely, he writes, it is incumbent upon the people to invest “great and intense labor, doubled and redoubled,” in an attempt to truly assimilate those teachings.1 The Talmud (Avodah Zarah, 5b) cautions that even the most erudite student may spend forty years in study and not arrive at a complete understanding of his master’s thought. Certainly Wolfson has made the requisite effort to assimilate the Rebbe’s thought patterns,2 but at the same time there are undoubtedly important points of interpretation on which other scholars may disagree with him.3

My purpose here is not to review Wolfson’s work in its entirety, but rather to highlight a passage towards the end of the introductory chapter that I found particularly illuminating. Many scholars of the Rebbe’s work have struggled to understand what has been described as his “harmonistic” approach to the interpretation of Rabbinic texts penned by the greatest Jewish minds over the centuries. This is certainly not an approach that is unique to the Rebbe or even to Chabad in general, but in the Rebbe’s thought it is given such emphasis that it becomes impossible to ignore. Perhaps the best overview of the issue for our purposes, is the one offered by Dr. Jacob Gotlieb in his recent Rationalism In Hasidic Attire Habad`s Harmonistic Approach to Maimonides.

Gotlieb cites the treatment of Maimonides by Chabad thinkers as an example of what he considers to be their view of “the developmental nature of Jewish Belief, which is continuously revealed from generation to generation... According to this view... [the doctrine of Jewish] Belief is continuously clarified and revealed over the centuries by the famed Sages of Israel whose teachings become the inheritance of the community... Major currents in Jewish thought such as rational philosophy, the Kabbalah of the Zohar, the Kabbalah of the Arizal, and Chassidic teaching, do not reflect different views of the Jewish faith, but a [single] developing view... The "revelation" of Chassidic teaching does not require the rejection of Maimonides, but its inclusion within the [Chasidic] framework… The interpretive approach… of Chabad thinkers is therefore characterized by harmonistic interpretation, based on a developmental approach.”4

Although Gotlieb does adequately demonstrate the validity of his theory, he does not satisfactorily explain the theological basis for such a bold approach. We are left to wonder at the all too obvious historiographical issues that are apparently ignored. Paradoxically, this approach maintains that the entire corpus of Jewish thought in all its conceptual, geographic and temporal diversity, is but a homogeneous system of unchanging unity.

It is precisely on this issue that I was struck by the sweeping clarity that Wolfson provides. Commenting on the broader issue of historical context he writes, “Notwithstanding… the prudence of always taking the historical context into account, I would insist that the complex patterns of [Rabbi] Shneerson’s worldview need to be evaluated with a different conception of temporality in mind, a notion of time that calls into question the model of aligning events chronoscopically in a sequence stretched between before and after.”5 Using the oft repeated dictum, “There is no before or after in Scripture - ein mukdam u-me’uchar be-torah” (Jerusalem Talmud, Shekalim 6:I, 49d) as evidence of the use of atemporal forms of interpretation within the Rabbinic tradition, Wolfson points to a talk published on the 22^nd of Shvat 5752 (January 27^th 1992)6 where the Rebbe himself explained his view of the Torah’s essentially transcendent nature and the role that the Jewish people have in making it manifest.7

The Medrash states that “the thought of the Jewish people came before everything else – machshavtan shel yisrael kadmah le’chol davar” (Bereishit Rabah, 1:4). Rabbi DovBer, the Maggid of Mezritch, interpreted this “thought” as being analogous to “the image of the son that is imprinted on the mind of the father” (Or Torah 2, 3). The image projected by the son onto his father’s mind is in some sense synonymous with the Torah, which is revealed by G‑d to the Jewish people who then study it, assimilate it and use their own intelligence and judgment to correctly reapply its principles within the new contexts constantly presented by the unfolding of history.8 The Rebbe used the Maggid’s paradigm to turn the regular hierarchy in which the father precedes the son, on its head. Here, it is the son’s own image (that is, the Torah as assimilated and reapplied by the Jewish people) that precedes, causes and defines, the image imprinted upon his father’s mind (i.e. the essence of the Torah as it (pre)exists within the G‑dhead). As the Maggid points out, being that for G‑d past and future are as one, in the Divine analog this can occur even before the Jewish people have been created. Wolfson calls this type of paradigm “a temporal configuration that is circular in its linearity and linear in its circularity.” In other words, the linear configuration of time has been subverted.

As the Rebbe goes on to explain, we are now forced to think of the Torah as essentially transcendent of time. Insofar as it does relate to time, all that will later be unpacked by the Sages of the Jewish people as they correctly apply its principles, must already be pre-included within its essence.

By default, manifestation entails a linear hierarchy in which the hidden precedes the manifest. In subverting that hierarchy we are forced to subvert the very concept of manifestation itself.9 If the linearity is to be made circular, it can only appear to remain linear from the perspective of its later manifestation within the linear paradigm of time. As it exists essentially, however, it must remain circular, and if it is to remain circular it cannot be manifest. In other words, the Torah cannot both proceed from G‑d to the Jewish people, and from the Jewish People to G‑d, unless their is no actual (manifest) procession. The very boundaries that define the Jewish People, the Torah and G‑d as three distinct identities standing in relation to one another, collapse into the essential core of ineffable Divinity, so that neither one precedes the other.10 We are forced to conclude that even as specific applications later to be unpacked by the Jewish people are already included within the transcendent essence of the Torah, their inclusion therein cannot be manifest in any way. The essence of the Torah exists rather, in a form that has no form – or, as the Rebbe terms it, as “concealment that does not exist – helem she’eino be-metziot”. This is not to say that it does not actually exist; on the contrary, this configuration denotes a form of existence so eternal and infinite that it cannot be limited by our conception of existence – even as it can no longer be said to “exist” in the regular sense of the word, it yet exists. Indeed, therein lays the true potency of its absolutely non-contingent existence.11

These are issues of deep abstraction, and as Wolfson points out (Introduction, n. 119) an entire monograph could be devoted to the concept of time as dealt with in the vast corpus of Chabad thought. Doubtless there are issues that require further clarification, but the limits of this essay require us to do no more than highlight the relevant point. The Torah as it exists in its highest form, within the G‑dhead from whence it unfolds, includes within it the entirety of all that will later be unpacked by the Jewish Sages who will study and correctly interpret it throughout the ages. As Wolfson phrases it, “New interpretations of Torah that come to light in the course of history preexisted in the infinite thought or wisdom of the Divine, the supernal Torah… that transcends the triadic division of time, the eternal present wherein past and future are indistinguishable as it is perpetually becoming what it has always never been.”

Having reframed the very nature of the Torah’s relationship with time, the difficulties posed by the harmonistic interpretive approach earlier described, simply dissolve. The entire corpus of Jewish thought with all the conceptual, geographic and temporal diversity of its specific applications, can indeed be seen as variant facets of the singular, eternally unchanging Torah, whose transcendent essence unfolds in a fragmented sequence of developmental interpretation.12

Specific applications of Torah interpretation must now be understand as contextualized windows onto a far greater truth. Each new application represents a new facet, broadening the collective view onto the greater whole. Like the manifold pieces of a mosaic, each application can be better understood when placed within the broader pattern. With the opening of each new window, the quintessence of Torah further unfolds and emerges, and all past applications are further illuminated by the broadening view.

For a more humorous but no less serious demonstration of how this harmonistic system of developmental interpretation may be re-imagined in the context of the Chanukah miracle see The Menorah Files, by Tzvi Freeman (based on Kuntras Mai Chanukah, compiled and edited by Rabbis Yoel Kahn and Dovid Olidort).