Photos: Discovery of the Reshimos

By COLlive reporter

A set of photos, released now for the first time, shows the deliberations of a group of key Chabad figures over the publication of the Rebbe’s notebooks that were discovered after Gimmel Tammuz 5744.

The Rebbe called them Reshimos and recorded in them his novel insights and other notes in all the fields of Torah. They accompanied him in all his travels in the years 5688 to 5710 (1928-1950).

In these hundreds of pages, written with extreme concision in a small and crowded hand, are insights and collections of sources in all areas of the Torah; the legal and non-legal passages of the Talmud, ethics and homiletics, customs and practices, stories, lessons in the service of the Creator, and more.

The entries in these journals date between the years 1928, the year of the Rebbe’s marriage, and 1950, the year of his father-in-law’s passing, which was followed by his assumption of the leadership of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

Three such notebooks, and one more on Tanya, came to light about a month after the Rebbe’s passing, when they were discovered in a drawer in his room at Lubavitch World Headquarters – 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, NY.

At the time, Agudas Chassidei Chabad International, the umbrella organization of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, convened a series of meetings from 2-4 Iyar 5755 (1995) to discuss the exciting and rare finding.

The group first met at the Rebbe’s Ohel where they prayed for guidance and then met in the basement floor at a nearby home on Francis Lewis Blvd. They discussions continued at 770 Eastern Parkway.

Leading it were Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, Chairman of Agudas Chassidei Chabad International, and Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, Chairman of Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch and the Machne Israel Development Fund.

Invited Mashpiim were the head choizer Rabbi Yoel Kahan, Rabbi Elimelech Zweibel OBM of Morristown, Rabbi Shlomo Zarchi of the 770 Yeshiva, Rabbi Zalman Gopin of Kfar Chabad, Rabbi Zusha Alperovitz of Kiryat Gat and Rabbi Mendel Gordon of London.

Authors and publishers present were Rabbi Berel Levine – Director of the Agudas Chassidei Chabad Library; Rabbi Yosef B. Friedman – Director of Kehot Publication Society; Rabbi Dovid Feldman, Rabbi Chaim Shaul Bruk and Rabbi Yisroel Shimon Kalmenson of Lahak; Rabbi Aharon Chitrik and Rabbi Eliyahu Matusof of the Chabad Research Center-Maareches Otzar Hachasidim; Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Havlin – Director of Heichal Menachem publishers in Jerusalem.

Also present were Rabbi Yosef Weinberg, author of “Lessons in Tanya”; Rabbi Dovid Raskin, Chairman of Lubavitch Youth Organization (“Tzach”) in New York; Rabbi Moshe Herson, Head Shliach of New Jersey; and Rabbi Leibel Kaplan OBM, Head Shliach of Tzfas; and others.

The group’s concluded that it is the Rebbe’s holy wish to have these Reshimos printed and published for the benefit and study of the public.

Over the next five years, excepts from these notebooks were prepared for publication by a team of scholars, providing tens of thousands of thirsting Chassidim with a weekly infusion of “new” teaching and insight from the Rebbe.

Aside from the tremendous scholastic and historical value of these notes in their own right, they also provide a unique perspective on the entire body of the Rebbe’s teachings.

In them, one can find the seeds of many a concept which the Rebbe subsequently developed in the decades to come and made available in the 300,000 pages of transcribed talks, essays and letters that issued from his lips and pen in the years 1950 to 1994.

LINKS:
+ Purchase the 3 volume set at Kehot
+ Read exerps in English on Chabad.org