Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism

Ḥabad messianism, which reached a climactic pitch in Schneerson, is a form of enlightened consciousness—a soterial recasting of the biblical mandate to know the name—that entails an illumination in space and time from the infinity that is beyond space and time and in virtue of which the spatial and temporal coordinates of the world are nullified in

In the first instance, the dispersion of Moses in every generation (itpashṭuta de-moshe be-khol dara we-dara) signifies the capability of every Jew to expand his or her consciousness (da‘at) to the point of being assimilated within the divine and to draw down the infinite light into the world.42 However, the righteous sages, the “eyes of the congre

the ultimate objective of esoteric learning is not to cultivate rational comprehension but to foster the obliteration of self,12 the modality of study involves the power of reason, and thus the term intellectual mysticism seems to me a fitting expression to characterize the orientation of the seventh Rebbe.