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Chassidic philosophy and Moshiach

Question:


What is the point of studying Chassidic philosophy?  Are we able to understand such lofty concepts?

Answer:

A Chassid once asked the Tzemach Tzedek (the third Rebbe of Chabad):  "What is the point of exerting ourselves in the study of Chassidus, which deals with abstractions that no mortal mind can fully grasp?  After all, when Moshiach comes even those who did not study Chassidus will know G-d, as it is written, ‘For they will all know me.’”

The Tzemach Tzedek replied:  "A person listening to a conversation conducted on the other side of a wall does not grasp it all; he only grasps its general drift.  But later, when the conversation is repeated to him in all its detail, he understands everything that he had heard previously.  Every moment or two he thinks, 'Aha!  Now I understand all those connections and details!'

"Here, too," explained the Tzemach Tzedek, "it is true that someone who studies Chassidus grasps only part of the subject.  But when Moshiach will teach it in the Time to Come, that man will be able to look back and say, 'Aha...!'

"And not only that, but someone hearing those teachings for the second time will understand them much more deeply than someone who will then hear them for the first time.  As the above-quoted verse says, 'For they will all know Me, from their smallest to their greatest' - and it is obvious that the understanding of a young child cannot be compared to that of an adult."

(From Exile to Redemption, p. 83, Yirmiyahu 31:33)
 

 


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