Marriage

In later years a wealthy man selected Shneur Zalman as a son-in-law and supported him, so that he could devote his undivided attention to the exclusive study of Torah.

Numerous tales of those years attest to the unquenchable thirst for knowledge of Rabbi Shneur Zalman. His sagacity and proficiency as a scholar won the admiration of everyone who came into contact with him.

At the age of twenty, this brilliant young man, with his wife’s consent, left his home and family to search for the fulfillment of a yearning in his soul. Despite all his knowledge, he felt that he was missing an element of Jewish religious experience which could not be captured in the solitude of the four walls of his own study.

Two centers of Jewish learning and leadership competed for his attention: Vilna, the main seat of Talmudic scholarship and the fortress of the opposition to the young yet rapidly growing Chassidic movement; and Meseritch, the seat of Rabbi Dovber, the famed Maggid of Meseritch, heir to the ideology of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov and to the leadership of the Chassidic movement.

From the very outset, Rabbi Shneur Zalman realized that the sober, rationalistic atmosphere of Vilna and its scholars, headed by the Gaon Rabbi Elijah, could not offer him that for which he was searching. Already an acclaimed Torah scholar, Rabbi Shneur Zalman felt that his need was not for Talmudic instruction but for guidance in the service of G-d (“avodah”). Therefore he decided to try Meseritch where a new world called. A world, it was said, that taught its people how to pray.

Full of hope and expectation, but with few material resources, he set out on the long journey. To pay his way the eminent scholar did any chores which came along, chopping wood and working in the fields. Yet he still had to make most of the long trek to Meseritch on foot.