הרב שניאור זלמן מליאדי

Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi (18 Elul 5505/1745–24 Tevet 5573/1812), known for all generations as the Alter Rebbe and the Baal HaTanya, was the founder and first Rebbe of Chabad chassidut. He was born in Liozna in White Russia to Rav Baruch, whose family traced itself to the Maharal of Prague. His gifts showed early: by eight he had written a commentary on the Torah built on Rashi, the Ramban, and the Ibn Ezra, and at eleven his teacher, Rav Yissachar Ber of Lubavitch, sent him home — the boy no longer needed one. At fifteen he married Sterna, daughter of Yehuda Leib Segal of Vitebsk, sat and learned, and became a master of the Arizal’s Kabbalah.

At about twenty he weighed whether to travel to Vilna or to Mezritch, and chose Mezritch — to receive from the Maggid a path in the avodah of tefillah. He became the youngest of the Maggid’s talmidim; the Maggid set his son, Rav Avraham HaMalach, as his chavruta, three hours a day in nigleh and three in chassidut. At the Maggid’s own instruction he began, in 5530/1770, to compose a new arrangement of halachah with its reasons — the Shulchan Aruch HaRav. In 5527/1767 he was appointed Maggid of Liozna. He traveled with Rav Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk to Vilna to lay the case for chassidut before the Vilna Gaon, who would not receive them, and he set out with Rav Menachem Mendel’s aliyah to Eretz Yisrael in 5537/1777 — but at the border town of Mohilev the chassidim prevailed on him to remain in Russia. There he became a trustee of the fund for the settlements in Eretz Yisrael — from 5546/1786, at Rav Menachem Mendel’s word, its sole director and the leader of the chassidim of White Russia — and founded the Colel Chabad charity in 5548/1788.

His Likutei Amarim — the Tanya — is the foundation sefer of Chabad, a systematic guide for the ordinary Jew to serve Hashem in heart, speech, and deed. He called his path Chabad, for Chochmah, Binah, and Daat: the mind rules the heart, and through hitbonenut in the inner Torah, explained in terms the intellect can hold, a person turns his emotions themselves to avodat Hashem — toward making this lowest world a dwelling for Him. In 5559/1798 informers denounced him to the czarist government and he was imprisoned in the Petropavlovsk fortress in Petersburg; his release on 19 Kislev is kept in Chabad as the Chag HaGeulah. Denounced again in 5561/1800, he was again freed, and settled in Liadi, where he sat eleven years. In 5570/1810 a fire in Liadi consumed his manuscripts; of the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, written on all four chalakim, only about a third survived in the hands of copyists — most of Orach Chaim with portions of Yoreh Deah and Choshen Mishpat.

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 5572/1812, the Alter Rebbe set himself openly against him and for the Czar — he said that though French rule might bring Yidden material relief, it would endanger their yiddishkeit — and fled Liadi with the retreating Russian army. Making for Kremenchug, the family reached the village of Pena near Kursk, where he was niftar on Motzaei Shabbat, 24 Tevet 5573; he was brought to Haditch in the Poltava region, where an ohel stands over his kever. Beside the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch HaRav he left the Siddur he arranged according to Nusach HaAri, and his maamarim on the parshiyot and moadim, gathered in Torah Or and Likutei Torah. His son Rav Dov Ber — named for the Maggid — succeeded him and settled in the town of Lubavitch, from which the chassidut took its name.