⚠ From God's side, the world is not there

The Alter Rebbe's most radical claim, in Shaar haYichud vehaEmunah: the creation is continuously spoken into being by the divine word, and from the standpoint of the source it makes no difference at all — as the light of the sun makes no difference to the sun. The world is not an illusion in the sense of being false; it is real to us and weightless to its source.

⚠⚠ This is why the mitnagdim used the word "heresy" and were not being hysterical. If the world adds nothing and takes nothing from God, in what sense is anything other? The charge is pantheism; the Chabad answer is that this is panENtheism — the world is in God, not identical with Him — and the distinction does real work, but it is fine work and it is being done in a book aimed at ordinary readers.

⭐ It is also, as philosophy, one of the boldest positions taken in Jewish thought since Maimonides, and it was published in Yiddish-speaking Belarus in 1796 by a man who also wrote a code of law.