By COLlive reporter
Thousands of personal letters – many of them written in blood and tears – asking the Rebbe and the Frierdiker Rebbe for blessings and advise have been brought to their grave sites and shredded to pieces on Sunday.
“These letters are definatly private and confidential,” said Rabbi Sholom Ber Schapiro of Crown Heights who holds the archive of his late father in law, Rabbi Dr. Nissan Mindel, a secretary for both Rebbes.
Schapiro who brought the letters to the Ohel in Cambria Heights, Queens, on Sunday, said they were written in various languages, such as Russian, Spanish, Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic and of course, English.
Some were written “from the time when the Frierdiker Rebbe was in Poland and then in America from 1940,” he said.
Schapiro had the responses the Rebbes have written to these letters retyped for an upcoming book he plans to publish as part of the series “The Letter and The Spirit.”
“The book will obviously publish the responses without the names” of the people, he noted.
For a while, Shapiro said he debated what should be done with the “panim,” as the letters to the Rebbe are called for chassidim, and now decided on leaving them at the resting place of the Rebbes, who chassidim and Jews from the world over come to pray.
At the Ohel, Shapiro read a few of the letters before he shredded them by hand.
He told COLlive.com that the ones that he read there were among the “very few of a public nature and those addressed to Rabbi Mindel.
Rabbi Dr. Nissan Mindel – A great Chosid someone we can all learn from!
Lets not make it seem like ‘he’ did anything wrong – he followed the Rebbe’s every request with extreme kavod!
You are right on the money
To #40 very insensitive
To #37 I guess you are a bored soul. It must be the same person commenting over and over again that these personal letters from private people should belong to the LIBRARY!! WHAT DOES THE LIBRARY HAVE TO DO WITH PEOPLES PRIVATE LETTERS WHICH THEY WROTE TO THE REBBE????? NOONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND (except, i guess, one individual who keeps on commenting) WILL BE SO FOOLISH AS TO SAY ,AND TRUTHFULLY BELIEVE, THAT PRIVATE LETTERS FROM PEOPLE TO THE REBBE ,SHOULD BELONG TO THE LIBRARY, OR IN ANY ONES HANDS!!! HOW SELFISH CAN ONE BE? HOW UNCARING AND UNFAIR… Read more »
anyone who wrote to the rebbe presumably believes that it would go where it should and end up where it should. so however the letter ends it is the rebbe’s will and bashert.
On his next trip to Heiditch. You see it’s an awsome responsibility…
SBS you are playing with fire. You know that the day the first volume of Letter & Spirit came out with the Kehot logo (without Kehot’s permission) that Nissan Mindel became deathly ill and never returned from the hospital. The Rebbe constantly took letters to the Ohel and tore them up, he didn’t need you to do this for him. They and all of the other letters which are in your possession were written, in other words given, to the Rebbe, not Nissan Mindel. Hei Teves set the president that the Rebbe’s considered all of these items as belonging to… Read more »
Is anyone aware of how a certain Failed One from Missouri got started? A certain magazine printed a letter that the Rebbe never wanted sent, and this Failed Schmendrick went ballistic because he was too full of himself to understand that the letter never was meant to be revealed and did not represent anything the Rebbe wanted to share.
We don’t need any more Failed thorns in our side. When the Rebbe did not want something shared, there was a very good reason for it and we cannot second-guess the Rebbe.
To #27 Why are people so thick? it was said over and over that THESE LETTERS THAT R’ SCHAPIRO PUT IN THE OHEL, ARE NOT RESPONSES FROM THE REBBE, THEY ARE PEOPLES PERSONAL LETTERS AND QUESTIONS WRTTEN TO THE REBBE!! DO YOU REALLY THNK THAT R’ SCHAPIRO OR ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WILL PLACE THE REBBES WORDS AND LETTERS IN THE OHEL????? ALSO TO #28 if you read the article and the comments, you will see that R’Schapiro did not read these personal letters, he took them to the ohel and tore them. why would one think that R’Shapiro… Read more »
to #33
you write:
“Rabbi Shalom Ber Schapiro carries an awesome responsibility to care for these matters”.
I would like to respond:
Rabbi Shalom Ber Schapiro’s responsibility is to return all the manuscripts to the Rebbe’s Library.
they are not his. Nor are they Rabbi Mindel’s!
Rabbi Shalom Ber Schapiro has no right to do anything with the manuscripts. They are NOT HIS to receive as inheritance from a secretary, and arey NOT HIS to decide, what to do with them. They belong in the Rebbe’s Library!
This wholsale misappropriation of private correspondence is just the tip of the iceberg……..The penny has finally dropped…………………….Do you all honestly believe this is all that has been misappropriated after gimmel tammuz?????? Where are all the gifts the rebbe recieved???? Where are all the personal objects used by the rebbe…His siddurim, seforim in his office and home,bechers, his watches, his hats, his kapoters, his kittels, his table and chairs,his plates and cutlery, tablecloths, his household property, furniture, who is accountable and whose children and grandchildren have received these from those who were given those priovilidges to serve the rebbe…….Who had the… Read more »
what if he had a batch of private letters to the alter rebbe would he also shred therm
How would you feel if a personal letter from your grandfather pouring out his soul before the Rebbe – be it sholom bayis, a tikun on something etc. etc – do you think its appropriate it should be kept by someone (or even in the library) it might fall in the wrong hands and your family will become very embarrassed by it. I think Rabbi Schapiro does the right thing, and I also hope Rabbis Groner, Klein, Krinsky and Simpson will take care to destroy the “Personal” letters of people so it should not fall in to unwanted hands. Remember… Read more »
1. those who know do not say and those who say do not know – this is clearly the case here. The llittle that we do know from the source , Rabbi Nissan Mindel – who was the only CHIEF SECRETARY (as stated in the official list in the back of our Siddur) and personal secretary who dealt with the letters of the Rabbeim, we wish to convey here, for the sake of truth. 2. the letters in question are those that were written by private individuals about private matters (& not answers of the Rebbe to these letters) –… Read more »
Shalom Ber said that Nissan Mindel, the Rebbe’s secretary, took letters written to the Rebbe and never gave them to him? It doesn’t sound right to me. Shalom Ber should own up to what he is doing and why.
the value and knowledge that can be leaened fron the letters
belong to all Chabad Chasidm ,it is long overdue to print them.Some of the leters are of historical narture,other are exztremly important to understanding the Rebbe,THet never shgould have been held back ,particuly when people to whom the letter was addressed to & lost the original &important results could occur from them even now!!!!
Rabbi Shapiro has refused to help in these really important issues.The achrayis ,in all casses or Rabi Shapipros
Saying that the paanim are mindels and shapiro because the Rebbe gave them to him to wrote ans answer, is like saying that the Rebbes sefer torah belongs to Rabbi Shusterman or Rabbi Dovid Raskin and all their sons in law and grandchildren!
Weather the action was right or wrong, what’s HIS shaychus to this???
I feel they belong in the ohel, but should NOT have been read by rabbi shapiro. He should have just torn them all, and dropped them in.
To No 14 They are still of historic value, and yes to some of the other comments, it would have been of great interest what troubled the chassidim before us, especially 60 years ago, without internet and television and all the garbage we have today; and therefore making the Rebbe’s responses something that we could learn from today more than ever! We have Igros today with responses and no names, imagine if they would have been matced (of course with no names)! And yes to No 24, the Rebbe READ our letters at the Ohel and then tore them up,… Read more »
I heard from rabbi Shapiro himself.
He said I didn’t know what to do I will have to wait for the Rebbe to read them ( some of them the Rebbe never read).
So now the Rebbe is reading them. If you believe that the life of a Tzadik is ruchni than this is place they should be. Historians have dead sea scrolls and Josephus to study. Not letters between chosid and Rebbe.
Lets hope that the requests made in these panim will now be answered in the fullest for them and there decendants, as they have been brought and placed where they belong, meaning where the Rebbe would bring them! “Azkir Al Hatzion”!
also take the paanim to the ohel and shred them there?
That’s right, they belong strictly to the Rebbe not Nissan Mindel or anyone else. Nissan Mindel had no right to take them. Just because you work on something (as the Rebbe’s secretary) doesn’t make it yours. They belong with all of the other letters which were written to the Rebbe, not torn up because someone is upset and in a fight with Kehot. Nissan Mindel once told me “I have a fortune in the basement”. He guarded those letters for many years. I thought that one day this fortune would become a fortune of knowledge for the Chassidim. Nissan Mindel… Read more »
In my opinion, Rabi Schapiro DID THE CORRECT AND MOST HONEST ACT!! these letters are letters that people wrote to to the Rebbe, Why on earth are people commenting that it should go to the library? or to any of the secretaries? for WHAT REASON???!!! Why should anybody from the library or even more so, any person,at all, wether it be secretary or not, , have any right to have personal letters that were written to the Rebbe?? When it was in Rabbi Mindels hands, The Rebbe had personally handed it to him, to do what had to be done,and… Read more »
Did he consult with Rabbonei Chabad and get a psak as to
whether he was permitted to destroy these letters? I think if
the Rebbe would have wanted them put on the Ohel, he would have instructed the Mazkirus to do so or would have
done so himself.
There must be a long-standing policy about this. Was he taking matters into his own hands?
#9 is 100 percent right!
these letters, and all the other Kesovim (Manuscripts) that Rabbi Mindel had, is not his or his relatives, they are the property of the Rebbe.
put them in the Rebbes library
What would the Rebbe say?
Were they his to destroy? I think they should have been
given to the Rebbe’s Secretariat! Just my not so humble
opinion.
Why not give it to the library let them decide what to do with them? something smells
dont these letters belong to Mazkirus. They are NOT a personal inheritance!!
Who says that he didn’t make copies?
Historical value gives no permission to breach the trust of privacy these people had when they sent those letters. Now, those people in the next world can only rely on the honesty of the living. This is DEFINITELY the right thing to have done. Left alone, these letters would eventually disintegrate. What would be the point? Let the be with the Rebbes to whom they were addressed, at the Ohel.
I hope someone was there to take the shredded pieces out and return them to their real place, the Rebbe’s library. And hopefully, one day the whole archive will return to it’s real place.
Who said he can do that?
And read them nonetheless!!!
they are priceless and historic….wholesale vandalism,. Who gave him the right to do this… chaval chaval….if the rebbeim kept them, then they should have been kept in a gnizah.
I don’t get it. Why did Rabbi Mindel have them, they were personal letters from real people, very private. What should have happened to them (i.e. What usually happened to kvitlech sent to the Rebbeim? I don’t know,) i don’t think it’s right these have been kept in some bag at Rabbi Shapiro’s home. Maybe in the library, maybe destroyed after the Rebbe & the Rebbe Rayatz read them. Having said that, it will be an amazing insight into the different issues facing Chassidim 60 years ago and the ways the Rebbeim responded. But the confidentiality seems to have been… Read more »
these letters belong in the Rebbe’s Library.
the only reason R’ mindel had the Letters was because he was Secretary.
after he passed away, it should of went to the library. not to his son-in-law. or other private hands!
Yshar koach for doing this now, but the real question we need to ask is why wasn’t it done 30 years ago? And how many people did see and read these letters until today? A pan to the Rebbe is one of the most personal notes a person will ever write in his or her life – even more than a diary. We should not take this lightly.
I agree with no 4 and no 5! They are historic and should never have been shredded!!!
He has no right to shred it
who gave him the right??
While I understand these were personal, they most definitely had a historical value for both historians and academics. It’s a shame they were shredded!
smart and considerate move
Some letters must have been written in French, right?
this is so inspirational! go schapiros!