Newfound Recording Offers Clarity to Rebbe’s 1968 Exposition

Working from a previously unexamined audio recording of a discourse delivered 40 years ago by the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, the group charged with publishing his talks has committed itself to release a revised transcript of the work.

The discourse, delivered just after the Shabbat of the 10th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat in 1968, examined the 18th chapter of the last discourse prepared by the Sixth Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory. His passing on that date in 1950 saw his son-in-law, the Rebbe, assume the leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch.

For the next 42 years on the date of his father-in-law's passing, the Rebbe would deliver a discourse expounding on one of the 20 chapters of the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe's last work. Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidim continue to learn those chapters in 20-year cycles. On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of people studied the 1968 discourse, which explains the influence of will and intellect on a person's attributes and actions, and states that every individual has the responsibility to create a dwelling place for G‑dliness in this physical world.

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Before the recent discovery of a reel-to-reel recording of the Chasidic gathering in which the Rebbe delivered the discourse, scholars and transcribers only had access to a scratchy audiotape. Earlier this week, 79,000 copies of the discourse, based on a transcription of the original tape, were published.

"The recording of the talk from the year 1968," said Rabbi Chaim Shaul Brook, who works with a team of scholars publishing previously inaccessible teachings of the Rebbe, "is very unclear and difficult to decipher."

"We've been working to create a clear copy of every available address given by the Rebbe," said Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin, director of Jewish Educational Media (JEM), which recently released all of the available audio recordings of the Rebbe to the public. When JEM learned of the recording by Rabbi Sholom Yisroel Hodakov, who plugged a reel-to-reel tape recorder directly into the Rebbe's microphone that day in 1968, they approached him about loaning the recording to its "Living Archive Restoration Project." The group is now working on preserving the find.

"We can suddenly hear every word," exclaimed Brook. "In the near future, the talk will be transcribed from new and republished."

Those who listen regularly to the recordings praised the entire preservation effort.

"A few days ago, I tried listening to the old 1968 recording," said Rabbi Yossie Nemes, co-director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Metairie, La. "The restored version is so much better. The moment has suddenly come to life."

Click here to listen to both the original and recently discovered recordings.