text · B0103
Tanya תניא
The "written Torah of chasidut": the Baal Shem Tov's fire systematized into a psychology and service of the benoni — the striver who masters action if not feeling. As a link in this atlas it marks the chasidic line's arrival at textual permanence: an oral movement, twice removed from its founder, fixing itself in a book its author printed to keep the transmission uncorrupted.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- תניא
- Also known as
- Likkutei Amarim, Sefer shel Beinonim
- Era
- acharonim
II. When
- Traditional
- first printed 5557 AM (Slavita, 1796)
- Academic
- circulated in manuscript from c. 1792; printed 1796
- Duration
- ≈5 years
- Precision
- exact
IV. What
- Language
- Hebrew
- Redaction
- Written by R' Shneur Zalman of Liadi (Shneur Zalman of Liadi) after some twenty years of refinement; published by the author himself to stop corrupted manuscript copies — a chain-of-transmission problem solved by print.
- Structure
- Five parts, the core being Likkutei Amarim ("Sefer shel Beinonim"), 53 chapters; with Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah, Iggeret HaTeshuvah, Iggeret HaKodesh, and Kuntres Acharon.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter 1 opens from the oath administered to every soul before birth — "be righteous and do not be wicked; and even if the whole world tells you that you are righteous, be in your own eyes as if wicked" — and immediately sets the book's central inquiry into the benoni. | tradition | ★★★★★ | |
| The author published it (Slavita 1796) explicitly because manuscript copies "multiplied with many and strange errors" — his own stated chain-integrity rationale — and it became the foundational text of Chabad, studied daily in fixed cycles. | tradition external | ★★★★☆ |