“For it is exceedingly near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it” –Tanya.
This verse (Deuteronomy 30:14) is the motto of the entire book.
More than an epigraph, a pertinent quote to decorate the beginning of the book, it is the book’s very heart, the central theme that runs as a thread through every chapter and every page.
The verse expresses the Tanya’s fundamental optimism: the premise that the realization of Torah’s program for life is possible to achieve, and not only possible but near at hand, not only the realization but also the closeness to the divine.
Anyone can, “with his mouth and his heart,” generate within himself the loftiest emotions and experiences, remaking his soul along a new path.
—Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz