Living Torah Archives

One of the earliest Chasidic texts, Tzavoas Harivash, is a manual of insights and guidance culled from the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov and his successor, Rabbi Dovber of Mezritch. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, known as the Alter Rebbe, was their foremost student and the founder of Chabad, and is known for his seminal work, the Tanya.

The eighteenth of Elul marks the birth of two leaders that revolutionized the Jewish world. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Chasidic movement, and the Alter Rebbe, founder of Chabad. Yet if their teachings are so vital, why did they come so late in Jewish history?

For centuries, being engaged with Torah meant being of an exceptional mind and travelling to study under the tutelage of a rabbi and sage. However, the Baal Shem Tov, and the Rebbes who followed, showed us a different way. By traveling to and visiting many Jewish communities, they brought the beauty of Torah to those who otherwise didn’t know of it.

The Alter Rebbe assures us in Tanya that the efforts of those who follow in his ways, inspiring their fellow Jews to return to G-d, will have an “eternal” effect.

The 18th of Elul is the birthday of two “great luminaries,” the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe. From the moment of birth, a person’s mission begins. He becomes an active force in the lives of others, and day by day his ability to interact with the world increases. Those blessed with exceptional spiritual capacities immediately radiate holiness around them; they are destined to elevate the world to remarkable divine heights.

The mystical secrets of Torah were always studied by the Jewish people, but during most of Jewish history they were guarded and only accessible to a scholarly elite. In later generations these teachings were disseminated to a wider extent, but even then, they were only comprehensible to the initiated; the spiritual illumination of these teachings reached the outside world through those who studied them.