Tanya (Likkutei Amarim)

Tanya, also called Likkutei Amarim, is the foundational text of Chabad Hasidism, written by Shneur Zalman of Liady, the movement's founder, setting out his own system of Hasidic psychology and religious practice. As a primary text by the movement's own founder, it is the strongest possible source for what Chabad actually teaches in its own terms, since nothing stands between the reader and the founder's own formulation. It is not an independent or historical account, it does not describe how the movement developed after Zalman or how later generations of Chabad leadership interpreted or extended it. Read here as the doctrine's own foundational statement, not as a history of the movement, which draws on Tanya but needs separate scholarly sources for the movement's later development.