Movement in ḥasidism founded by Shneur Zalman of Lyady (1745-1813). Shneur Zalman claimed that he obtained his basic ideas from Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech, and from the latter's son, Abraham "the Angel," but he gave systematic form to the original ideas and drew out their full implications in a manner unprecedented in Ḥasidism. Ḥabad is virtually a new movement within Ḥasidism, and so it is regarded by itself as well as by Ḥasidim of other groups, who tend to dub the Ḥabad approach "philosophy," i.e., mere intellectual playing with concepts and thus almost a betrayal of the warm, intimate, and emotional approach of Israel Ba'Al Shem Tov. Ḥabad theory is expounded in Shneur Zalman's Tanya and Likkuté Torah; in the works of his son, Dov Baer (1773-1827), and of his disciple, Aaron ben Moses of Starosielce (1766-1828); and in the many writings of successive Ḥabad thinkers. Although there were a number of Ḥabad branches, the central dynasty was that of Dov Baer's descendants, who settled in Lubavich, with the result that "Ḥabad" and "Lubavich" are nowadays interchangeable terms.
The term Ḥabad is an acronym of Ḥokhmah, Binah, Da'at---"Wisdom," "Understanding," and "Knowledge." These are kabbalistic designations for the higher Sefirot (emanations) in the Godhead, representing the operations of the Divine mind, as it were, in contradistinction to the lower Sefirot, which represent the Divine emotional processes in creation. Since man is created in God's image, the emanative or "Sefirotic" processes are, as in a mirror, in his own being. Just as, in the realm of emanation, the emotional processes come after (and as a result of) the intellectual processes, so man's religious emotions should stem from his profound contemplation of the Divine. If he tries to reverse the process, putting his religious feelings in the center, the result will be a distortion of true worship. When he succeeded his father to the Ḥabad leadership, Dov Baer wrote the Kuntres ha-Hitpa'alut ("Tract on Ecstasy") for his followers, in which he advised them how to distinguish between genuine ecstasy in worship, the fruit of severe contemplation, and the spurious ecstasy that is no more than an artificial whipping up of emotionalism.
Ḥabad thought seeks also to deepen the panentheistic or acosmic tendencies in Ḥasidism. Drawing on the kabbalistic doctrine of
For Ḥabad, the Ḥasidic idea of bittuI ha-yesh---negation of existence or "annihilation of that which is"---means two things. Firstly, the reference is to the material universe which, from the human point of view, is substantial ("that which is") but which, from the Divine point of view, is as nothing. The chorus of the seraphim proclaiming, "The whole earth is full of His glory" (Isa. 6:5), is taken literally by Ḥabad to mean that ultimately there is no world at all, only the Divine vitality. Elijah the Gaon of Vilna and his fellow Mitnaggedim understood the verse as an allusion only to Divine providence. To say, as the Ḥabad thinkers did, that God is actually present in the material was, for the Gaon and his followers, rank heresy.
Secondly, bittul ha-yesh refers to the loss of individual selfhood in God, the transcendence of man's grasping ego. A further radical extension of this in Ḥabad thought involves the idea that deep in the recesses of the Jewish psyche there is literally a portion of the En Sof, so that---through transcendence of the ego---the true self, the Divine spark in the soul, is awakened, and like meets like. This is one of the very few instances in Jewish mystical thought of the unio mystica. To this day, some "Ḥabadniks" spend an hour or more reciting the Shema, singing softly to themselves, lost and totally absorbed in the Divine, to which they restore in their minds all the upper and lower worlds.
With the arrival of Joseph Isaac Schneersohn in the United States in 1940 and after Menahem Mendel Schneersohn succeeded him as the Lubavicher Rebbe in 1950, Ḥabad became a worldwide outreaching movement under the motto of "Uforatzto"---"And you shall break forth" (Gen. 28:14)--- establishing 2,400 Ḥabad centers in over 50 countries by its own count. Operating out of its headquarters in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, it dispatched thousands of emissaries to the streets, campuses, and Jewish communities to spread the message of Ḥabad, featuring such innovations as the Mitzvah Tank with tefillin and Sabbath kits for the wayward Jew and sophisticated cable and satellite hookups to broadcast the Rebbe's famous talks at his farbrengen gatherings. Despite the absence of a successor to the childless Rebbe after his death in 1994, and despite the controversy surrounding the Messianic Movement that sprang up around him, Ḥabad continues to flourish, numbering an estimated 200,000 followers around the world.
