1798 · arrested by the Tsar, released on 19 Kislev

Shneur Zalman is denounced to the imperial authorities by opponents within the Jewish community, arrested on suspicion of treason, and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. He is released on 19 Kislev, a date Chabad keeps to this day as the new year of Hasidism.

⚠ The quarrel had reached the point of denunciation to a hostile state, and that is the fact the movement's later self-image tends to soften. ⭐ And the festival that came out of it is doctrinally exact: what is celebrated is not a victory over opponents but the release of the teaching — the day the inner Torah was permitted to be spread.