A Word from the Editor

The original Hebrew texts were intended to read like transcripts of oral presentations.

The translation only partly attempts to convert this structure into the more familiar essay style, while adding phrases where needed - to clarify obscurities and to maintain a free flow of ideas.

The original text and the [bracketed] additions are intended to be read as one interwoven continuum.

(Parentheses appear as used in the original.)

All the unbracketed footnotes were written by the Rebbe, of righteous memory, for the original Hebrew editions.

It is our hope that the publication of this translation will in some measure help this "seventh generation" to accomplish its task - of completing the historic process of drawing the Divine Presence back into this material world.

Sichos In English

Editor's Note:

In a tiny Australian townlet called Shepparton, which was to carry the seed of today's thriving empire of Chabad-Lubavitch activity that spans the entire continent, an elderly chassid woke up suddenly one Friday night.

This was my late grandfather, Reb Moishe Zalman Feiglin of blessed memory, a chassid who for decades had been bound with every thread of his noble soul to the Previous Rebbe, of saintly memory, even though during their time in this world they had never met.

As he was then recently widowed, his twelve-year-old grandson (the editor of this volume) slept in his house to keep him company.

On that Friday night he hurried anxiously into the dining-room, where I followed him, to discover what had woken him: a framed photograph of the Previous Rebbe, which for years had occupied pride of place on a sideboard at the head of the room, had fallen to the floor.

Pointing at the shattered glass he said quietly, "Something has happened!"

I did my best to reassure him that there must have been a draft or perhaps a tremor, but to no avail.

On Shabbos morning he shared his concern with our learned neighbor Reb Bezalel Wilschansky, the first of the Previous Rebbe's emissaries to Australia, who had come by as always to say Gut Shabbos, and to accompany my grandfather and my father of blessed memory to shul. He too sought to reassure my grandfather.

Now my zeide was a man who had never been known to be shocked out of his tranquil faith and equanimity. This Shabbos, the only time in my recollection, he could find no peace.

Finally, some time after Shabbos, the ominous telegram arrived from Brooklyn. The date of that Shabbos was the Tenth of 5710 (1950).

May his everlasting merit protect us.

U.K.