Every Jew stems from his own distinctive soul-root; every soul-root is nurtured by its own spiritual nutrients. Who, then, can aspire to nourish them all? Only the bearer of a neshamah klalis, only the saintly bearer of a soul that is connected and attuned to all the other souls of his generation, can nourish them all.
And so it is that in this volume too, as in its predecessors, something precious awaits every soul: erudition for the scholar; stimulation for the thinker; chronicles for the chassidic historian; encouragement for the weary toiler; and solace for the troubled spirit.
The Tenth of Shvat this year (5750) marks forty years (1950-1990) since the passing of the author of Likkutei Dibburim. And yet, as one reads (for example) his fearless warnings on the occasional ailments of Jewish leadership — its secularization, its defeatism, its stance of convenient compromise — one has the uncanny sensation that the Rebbe Rayatz is speaking not to the Otvotzk of the ‘thirties or to the New York of the ‘forties, but to the world we face today.
In this very real and palpable sense, this work enables us to appreciate the dictum of our Sages: “No man fathoms the full depth of his Rebbe’s teachings until the passage of forty years.”1 Of late we have heard this teaching time and again from the mouth of the Rebbe Shlita. Today, after forty years of his leadership לאורך ימים ושנים טובות, we can understand it in more senses than one.
As with the preceding volumes in this classic series, this volume too was translated and annotated by Uri Kaploun, and prepared for publication by Rabbi Yonah Avtzon.
Sichos In English
Yud Beis Tammuz, 5750 (1990)
