PART ONE
Before anything else we will address the question of the relationship of the Messiah to the Ein Sof, the Infinite-Eternal Divine One.
When the question of this relationship was raised in a dialogue with Yehoshua he said,
Is it not written in your Torah, I said, You are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; do you say of him, of him whom the Father has sanctified, and sent into the world, You blasphemy; because I said, I am the Son of God?
When the question of this relationship was raised in a dialogue with Yehoshua he said,
Is it not written in your Torah, I said, You are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; do you say of him, of him whom the Father has sanctified, and sent into the world, You blasphemy; because I said, I am the Son of God?
If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I do, though you do not believe me, believe the works: that you may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.
In chapter 1 of the Tanya we read:
ונפש השנית בישראל היא חלק אלו-ה ממעל ממש
"The second, uniquely Jewish, soul is truly 'a part of G-d above...'”
On the face of it, this can sound like a form of pantheism, but is it? Yehoshua, when he discussed these things with certain Judeans appears to have insisted upon the understanding of the passage from the Psalms that would teach us that those to whom he spoke were "a part of G-d", that is to say that they were elohim.
