A Rabbi’s privilege and responsibility

This letter was addressed to an active communal Rabbi whose identity remains unknown.

B”H, 11 Shvat, 5703

Greetings and blessings,

This letter acknowledges receipt of your letter of Erev Rosh Chodesh Shvat and the accompanying check of five dollars for the five calendars. As you requested, we have also sent you 24 of our monthly publications in English for the month of Teves. The Shvat edition will be published for Tu B’Shvat.

We are pleased with your decision to endeavor to spread our publications and we extend our thanks. Certainly, in the near future, the great benefit it brings to every reader will be obvious.

We have just published Seder Berachos U’Tefilos (“A Compendium of Blessings and Prayers”) with a precise text and a carefully prepared English translation. Several have been sent to you for the different groups of youth over whom you have influence. The price is 15 cents per copy, for Talmudei Torah, 10 cents per copy.

The Torah states:1 “A man is [like] a tree of the field,” “the vineyard of the G-d of Hosts is the House of Israel.”2 The fruits are the children, who are like sons and daughters. How great is the responsibility of the leader, the gardener, to whom the Owner of the garden entrusted His garden! For this reason, our Sages referred3 to teaching children as “the work of G-d.”

How great is your merit to have been appointed by G-d as a keeper of His vineyard. We see that even the slightest improvement in a seed greatly increases the beauty and value of the tree which grows from it.

With the blessing “Immediately to teshuvah, immediately to Redemption,”

Chairman of the Executive Committee