this act of enclothing (hitlabbeshut), epitomized in the zoharic sentiment that God and Torah are one, is the kabbalistic way of articulating the theopoetic mystery of incarnation, the paradox of the delimitation of the limitless, the ideational underpinning of the hal-akhic basis for the mystical ideal of devequt, communion with and conjunction to

Both the “secret” and the “secret that is in the secret” relate to the ontological status of the soul, but the latter, in particular, underscores that the soul is embedded in the essence of divinity, which is to say, the soul is consubstantial with God.

the error of assuming that kabbalah and Ḥasidism are “one entity expressed in different forms.” In an effort to correct this miscalculation, he explained that the former is the study of esoteric matters by a limited group of people, the elect (yeḥidei segullah) of a given generation, whereas the latter is about publicizing these secrets to afford e

the religious philosophy that may be elicited from the body of his thought is not only conceptually sophisticated but daringly innovative.

Just as Jung equates the “inner experience of individuation” with what the mystics name “the experience of God”—the “smallest power” confronting the “greatest power,” the “smallest space” containing the “infinite”—so we can think of Schneerson becoming an “in-dividual,” that is, a “separate, indivisible unity or ‘whole,’”89 the individuated point t

From this ideational stance, cause and effect are completely reversible, and hence one can legitimately move through the present from past to future or from future to past.

the study of Ḥabad requires a hermeneutic based on a notion of time at odds with the linear conception under-girding this comment.

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.

the most secretive of secrets is the open secret, the secret that is so fully disclosed that it appears not to be a secret.