Translator Praises “Dear Rebbe” Book

By COLlive reporter

In a sweeping review of the book “Dear Rebbe” by Dovid Zaklikowski, Professor Curt Leviant calls the book, “A meticulously researched and continuously fascinating book.” Leviant, professor emeritus of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, translated four of Chaim Grade’s works.

Grade’s extensive correspondence with the Rebbe is featured at length in the book. Leviant highlights, an unusual note from Grade that is featured in the book, One page in the Chaim Grade section shows a photocopy of his handwritten Yiddish letter to the Rebbe: “To the dear Rebbe, who stands before my eyes and who also elevates my sparks that stumble blindly through the fog and are drawn to his light.”

The review, under the heading, “The Rebbe and his Famous Friends,” that appeared in the Canadian Jewish News says that the Rebbe was unique among Jewish leaders, because of “his influence, his breadth of knowledge, both Jewish and secular, his wide-ranging interests, his welcoming of all kinds of Jews, his ability to organize and his capacity for spreading Jewishness to all corners of the world.”

Dear Rebbe, in addition to Grade, examines the Rebbe’s correspondence with three additional major Jewish figures of the 20th century: sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, singer Jan Peerce, and philanthropists David Chase and Ronald Lauder. “Dear Rebbe, which includes lots of fascinating photographs, is a treasure of a book that will appeal to Jews of all types – for all of them are, in the view of the Rebbe, tayere yidn, precious Jews,” Leviant writes.

Leviant whose story with Grade and the Matzah the Rebbe sent him appears in the book, tells it over again in his review: “I first learned of his link to Chabad when I visited Grade years ago in the Bronx, a few days before Pesach. A moment after I came in, he showed me a white box. He proudly told me that the Rebbe’s personal shaliach (messenger) had sent him the box of shemurah matzah. Of the Rebbe, Grade said: ‘He seeks to bring heaven closer to earth and earth closer to heaven.’”

Dear Rebbe is available on HasidicArchives.comHasidicArchives.com or from Amazon Prime. It is also available here in bulk.