Introduction

If you are seeking a book that will provide immediate inspiration, make you feel good, and guide you on an easy path to self-improvement and spirituality, you have found the wrong book.

The Tanya provides a candid picture of the human condition that you may find at times disturbing, certainly uncomfortable. It demands hard work, fierce uphill battles, and, at times, even brutal self-honesty. It tells you that whatever comes easy is an illusion and that repeated failure goes with the territory. The joy, love, and awe it promises are all bittersweet, and you are warned that your journey, though epic, is not guaranteed to get easier as it progresses.

So why would you want to read – or rather, study – such a book?

Because it is real, because it is honest, and because whatever you will accomplish through its guidance will truly belong to you.

And because, in the Tanya, you are guided by a man who believes in you just as he believes in G‑d. Rabbi Schneur Zalman holds your hand along each step of the path, helping you pull yourself up from the inevitable pitfalls, and guiding you along your hike to the highest heights. He is frank and up-front because he believes you can take it, that you can rise above it, and that you can succeed.

Rabbi Shmuel of Lubavitch, a great-grandson to Rabbi Schneur Zalman who carried on his dynasty, once said that if his great-grandfather had not demanded that his disciples be people of truth, genuine in all they do, he would have gained 50,000 more of them.1HaYom Yom, 10 Menachem-Av; Likutei Diburim, rev. ed., vol. 1, p. 86.

If you are willing to stare truth in the eye and wish to become a person of truth, if you are ready to put in the work and feel strong enough to come face to face with your strengths and failures, if you believe in yourself enough that you can take a sledgehammer to your outer shell to break through to the divine spark hidden within you, continue here.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman was faced with a quandary. Tens of thousands of Jews were flocking to him, each seeking guidance in their particular spiritual path. To address each seeker individually was beyond the limitations of time and space.

To address them in large assemblies was not a solution. True guidance is a private affair. The oneness of one soul meets the oneness of the other, essence meeting essence.

The solution was to write a book, and to inject the very core of his soul within that book. This way, each individual could read at his or her own pace. That would be their private, soul-to-soul meeting with Rabbi Schneur Zalman.2Torat Shalom, p. 56.

“But then,” wrote Rabbi Schneur Zalman in a letter to his disciples (later printed as the author’s preface), “not everyone is privileged to find their place in Torah.”

He solved that, too. As he wrote, he knew his people well. And so, he included every piece of wisdom they would ever need in this small book.

What about us today?

Chassidim have a tradition: Rabbi Schneur Zalman saw every soul that would peer into his book for spiritual guidance until the end of days and he made sure to include all that each one would need. The guidance you seek is there, as is the wisdom, the inspiration – all that you need for your particular journey.3Likutei Biurim B’Sefer HaTanya, vol. 1, p. 9.

But it is written in words you do not always understand. Where will you find the tools and the guidance to uncover their true meaning?

Rabbi Schneur Zalman handed this job over to his chassidim. Those who received from their teachers the knowledge and the tools to interpret and apply these teachings – they must not “place their hands over their mouths and feign humility, heaven forbid!” Rather, they are charged with the job of illuminating the text for every reader.

In other words, Rabbi Schneur Zalman would have been pleased if every Tanya came with a pocket inside its cover carrying a chasid to guide you.

The Translation

This is the simple premise of our work here: That the author’s priority is that he be understood by every reader, regardless of that reader’s context, knowledge, or baggage.

A literal translation cannot accomplish that. So we have opted to follow the ancient tradition of targum, whereby words and even complete sentences are added, the order may be changed, and long sentences are broken into smaller ones – all for the sake of making clear the intent of the author for the reader.4See the correspondence from Rambam to the medieval Judaic translator, R. Shmuel ibn Tibbon, Igrot HaRambam (Jerusalem: Hotzaat Shilat, 1995), p. 532.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, upon first reading Tanya, exclaimed, “How did he fit such a big G‑d into such a small book!”5Sefer HaToldot – Admur Hazaken, vol. 4, p. 1205; see Sichot Kodesh 5739, vol. 1, p. 651. And that is exactly what Rabbi Schneur Zalman intended – a small book you or any Jew could carry around, dive into every morning, peer into once and again during the day, and thereby carry a great big G‑d with you wherever you go.

That is why it is important to us to keep the text of Tanya highly readable, in language that you speak, immediately accessible without need for further commentary and explanation. If something needs to be said for the text to be understood, we’ve included it in the text.

On the other hand, Tanya is a very precise work. The author would ponder for weeks over details such as a conjunctive “and” or a deceptively simple “etcetera.”6Likutei Sichot, vol. 4, p. 1212; Igrot Kodesh – Admur Moharayatz, vol. 17, pp. 74–75; see also Rabbi Aharon (Strasheler) Horowitz, Introduction to Avodat HaLevi. Whenever he cites a verse of Tanach or a talmudic statement, he means to uncover some new meaning there, to highlight something hiding there that perhaps has gone unnoticed for millennia. Nuance abounds, as do subtle inferences and gentle allusions.7See Likutei Sichot, vol. 5, pp. 294, 387; vol. 9, p. 117.

We can’t claim to have addressed each of these precise subtleties in our targum. We can say that we have tried, at least for those matters that concern the base level of understanding of the text. In many cases, we’ve filled in explicitly that which the author presumed his audience would know, but our audience may well not. We’ve provided connecting phrases and summaries as signposts along the way.

If you feel we dropped the ball at some point, or added something out of place, you may well be correct. Write to us.

The Guide

Yet Rabbi Schneur Zalman would not be satisfied if you understood for the sake of understanding. He was a guide much more than a teacher. His words have not hit their mark until they touch the heart of their reader, to be pumped from there into every limb and outward into everyday life. He provides the spirit, but the reader is meant to provide the meat and bones.8Likutei Diburim, rev. ed., vol. 4, p. 1125; Sefer HaSichot 5702, p. 83.

So we’ve also written a guide. Like any good guide, it’s meant to be unobtrusive. You can happily read the text of the chapter and entirely ignore the boxed text at the bottom of the page. But whenever you feel the need, perhaps on your second reading of the text, perhaps next year, you can glance down there and let us take your hand a little.

As with our targum, so with the guide: We’ve gone back and forth with various experts and pulled many volumes off the shelf searching for “What did the author mean?” and “What does he want from this?” We’ve discarded much more than we have included, often just because we don’t feel it’s critical for getting the message of the text – and therefore, it is likely distracting. We’ve attempted to reach into the diverse minds of a wide audience, asking, “What do they need to know to understand this?” and “What is going through their minds when they read this?”

Do we really know the answers? Of course not. Again, write to us if you perceive something crucial is missing or something unnecessary is distracting.

The Goal

In all these devices, our goal has been onefold: To get you alone in the room with an authentic guide of the human soul and allow you to hear the words he speaks to you in a lucid and luminous voice.

On Rosh Hashanah of 1746, the Baal Shem Tov made a journey of the spirit to the highest realms of the heavens. He entered into the chamber of the Mashiach, the soul awaiting to descend and lead the Jewish people out from their exile. He demanded, “When will the master come?”

The Mashiach replied, “When your wellsprings will spread to the outside.”9Ben Porat Yosef, p. 128a; Keter Shem Tov, rev. ed., pp. 4–5.

Fifty years later, when Rabbi Yehuda Leib HaKohen, one of the esteemed disciples of the Magid of Mezritch, first saw Tanya, he declared, “Yes! This is what the Mashiach meant with those words!”10Ramach Otiyot, sec. 218; see Beit Rebbe, rev. ed., p. 228.

This is the inspiration that has driven us to the labor of this work – to take these wellsprings and let them gush from within every heart that beats, every soul that walks the planet, as far as they may travel. Until the entire earth is flooded with this wisdom, as water covers the ocean floor.11Isaiah 11:9.