Chapter 234 - The Printing of the Book "Likkutei Torah".

00:01 One of the most important works printed in the history of the Jewish people—at least in the history of Chassidus—is Torah Or and Likkutei Torah. They are two volumes that are really one work. Here is the story. At the rabbinical conference in Petersburg in 5603, which we have already discussed at length, the Tzemach Tzedek protested vigorously against the decree forbidding the printing of books of Kabbalah and Chassidus. Even when the Minister of the Interior punished him with imprisonment for his protest, he did not stop protesting the decree. Five years later, in 5608, 1848, the decree was repealed. The Tzemach Tzedek then printed Likkutei Torah, containing maamarim of the Alter Rebbe together with the Tzemach Tzedek’s own notes, on Vayikra, Bamidbar, Devarim, and Shir Hashirim. It was the second part of Torah Or, which covered Bereishis and Shemos. In this foundational work of Chabad Chassidus, the inner essence of the Baal Shem Tov’s approach—its two foundations of knowing the Creator and Ahavas Yisroel—is revealed and explained philosophically. In one of his letters, the Frierdiker Rebbe tells us the following about the Tzemach Tzedek’s printing of the Alter Rebbe’s Torah Or and Likkutei Torah. By the time the Tzemach Tzedek was ten years old, he was already accustomed to writing neatly, with clear, shining letters, and so quickly that he could write a page of thirty-five lines in five or six moments. He had a fixed schedule of about three hours of writing every day, and he would make up the time missed on Shabbos and Yom Tov after Shabbos and after Yom Tov. The Tzemach Tzedek’s son, Rabbi Yisroel Noach, once complained to his father that the teacher, Reb Gershon, was placing too heavy a burden on the students. The Tzemach Tzedek said to him, “You call that a burden? It does not come close to the burden I placed on myself from the age of nine onward, strictly keeping to my scheduled times for study and writing.”

02:21 In 5561, 1801, when the Alter Rebbe was arrested for the second time, the Tzemach Tzedek began collecting and copying the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim. According to what the Tzemach Tzedek told his son, the Rebbe Maharash, from the day after Sukkos of 5561, when the Alter Rebbe was taken to Petersburg for the second time, of course, until his return home in the summer of that year, the Tzemach Tzedek already had more than 1,100 bogens. Let me remind you that one bogen is eight pages. In other words, we are talking about 8,800 pages of maamarim of Chassidus that the Tzemach Tzedek copied from the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim. And from 5562, 1802, until 5573, when the Alter Rebbe fled from Napoleon, his copies, together with his own transcripts of maamarim he had heard, amounted to more than 10,000 bogens. We are talking about 80,000 written pages. The Tzemach Tzedek was wonderfully organized and had a fixed time for each particular subject of study. From 5564 onward, he set aside a special time to study the Alter Rebbe’s discourses, adding notes and references from the teachings of our Sages and the Zohar, as well as explanations based on works of Kabbalah and Jewish philosophy. It has already been related that the Tzemach Tzedek listed three things in whose merit he succeeded in 5603—and we are talking about the rabbinical conference we have discussed so much recently. The Tzemach Tzedek listed three things in whose merit he succeeded there. One was the merit of the 32,000 hours he had toiled over the Alter Rebbe’s discourses over thirty years, from 5564 to 5594, twenty hours a week. In 5592—that is 1832—two copyists worked… No, not 1832. Wait. Yes. They worked on copying the Alter Rebbe’s discourses as the Tzemach Tzedek had arranged them, in the order of the weekly parshiyos, the festivals, and Shir Hashirim.

05:14 The Tzemach Tzedek’s notes and comments on the discourses were copied into separate volumes, and all of this took about three years. In 5594, the Mitteler Rebbe’s son-in-law, the chossid Reb Aharon, who was the Tzemach Tzedek’s brother-in-law and relative by marriage, took the initiative to print these maamarim. With the Tzemach Tzedek’s agreement and assistance, he printed them under the title Torah Or. Torah Or, as the Tzemach Tzedek arranged it, contains the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim in two parts. The first part has maamarim on Bereishis and Shemos, Chanukah and Purim; under Parshas Yisro, maamarim for Shavuos; and under Parshas Vayakhel, a maamar for Pesach. The second part has maamarim on Vayikra, Bamidbar, and Devarim, and for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Shabbos Shuvah, Sukkos, Shemini Atzeres, Simchas Torah, and Shir Hashirim. So there are two volumes here. The Tzemach Tzedek prepared the wording of their title pages, and it was sent to the printing house of the chossid Reb Shabsai in Kopust. In 5591, 1831, there was a man named Wolf Tugendhold, who apparently hated the chassidim and the Jews. He spoke to Russia’s Minister of Education in strong opposition to the chassidim and their books. In 5593, 1833, two Jews, Leib Markel and Yaakov Bernstein, denounced the chassidim to the Minister of the Interior, claiming that their approach ran counter to Torah and to humanity, and that Chassidus posed a danger not only to the Jewish people but also to the Russian Empire. These two informers, Leib Markel and Yaakov Bernstein, proposed: A. To inspect all Jewish books and order any works of Chassidus found among them to be burned. B. To close all Hebrew printing houses in the country and leave only three, in Zhitomir, Brisk, and Shklov. C. To appoint an expert censor at those three presses who would not permit books of Chassidus to be printed. On the basis of this denunciation, the Minister of the Interior began investigating the printing of Jewish books in general and books of

08:15 Chassidus in particular. About three years passed in correspondence between him, the Minister of Education, and the governors of the provinces within the Pale of Settlement. Then, on Wednesday of Parshas Lech Lecha, 5 Marcheshvan 5597, 1837, the Minister of the Interior announced the royal decree. First, all Jewish books throughout Russia were to be inspected, and those deemed suspect were to be burned. Second, all Hebrew printing houses in Russia were to be closed, leaving only two: one in Vilna and the other in Zhitomir. In Teves 5597, all the Hebrew printing houses in Russia were closed, and only the press of the partners Romm and Typograph in Vilna remained. Among the presses closed was the one in Kopust, which had managed to print only the first part of Torah Or. Despite its efforts, the one remaining press in Vilna could not meet the needs of Russia’s Jewish communities even for ordinary books—Chumashim, siddurim, Selichos, machzorim, Haggados, Kinos, and Tehillim—much less for other books. The Russian government did permit a second press to operate in Zhitomir, but for various reasons it did not open for several years. Only in 5605, 1845, at a public auction held in Kyiv, did the Shapira brothers, the rabbis from Slavuta, manage to secure the lease for the Zhitomir press at a high price. In 5607 they received approval and began printing books, and people then began thinking about printing the second part of Torah Or. During the ten years from 5597 to 5607, the chassidim learned that the Tzemach Tzedek had notes and explanations on the Alter Rebbe’s maamarim that had been printed in Torah Or, and they asked him to include those explanations and notes in the second part. At first the Tzemach Tzedek refused to print them, but something then happened that led him to give his consent: that year marked eighteen years of the Tzemach Tzedek’s leadership, and he dreamed that his grandfather, the Alter Rebbe, came to visit him.

10:38 And he asked him to print his notes. Nevertheless, the Tzemach Tzedek kept the dream to himself until three of his sons also had the same dream and told their father about it. Only then did the Tzemach Tzedek agree to print his notes and explanations with the second part of Torah Or. In 5608—that is, 1838—it was printed in Zhitomir under the title Likkutei Torah. That is the year we’re talking about, 5608. Then the chossid known as the Rashbatz, Shmuel Betzalel, apparently, related that in 5609, 1839, they celebrated Lag BaOmer for the last time in the field near the Vav[?] River, with the Tzemach Tzedek in attendance. That year Lag BaOmer fell on a Thursday. On Wednesday, after Shacharis, all the young married men studying there, the yeshivah students, the guests who had arrived for Shabbos Parshas Acharei-Kedoshim and stayed until the celebration, and the guests who had come especially for Lag BaOmer went to the chossid Reb Shloime[?], at his invitation, to celebrate Lag BaOmer as they had done every year since the Tzemach Tzedek settled in Lubavitch in 5574. “That day was a joyous celebration for us,” Reb Shmuel Betzalel relates. “The elders, whose hair had turned gray, danced in their tallis katans. We young married men and yeshivah students danced like deer, our ears straining and our mouths open as we listened to the voices of the elder chassidim.” On Lag BaOmer itself, four hours after midday, the Tzemach Tzedek came and delivered a maamar of Chassidus beginning with the words, “To understand the concept of the Kesser, which is an intermediary between the Or Ein Sof of the Emanator and the emanated beings.” It was an explanation of the maamar he had already delivered on Shabbos Parshas Acharei-Kedoshim. The Tzemach Tzedek stayed there on Lag BaOmer for about three hours. Before leaving, he instructed them to sing the Alter Rebbe’s four-stanza niggun. The Tzemach Tzedek sat in deep deveikus, his eyes closed and tears on his cheeks. When they finished singing, he stood

13:08 to his full height and said, “May the merit of the one whose hilula we celebrate protect all our Jewish brethren, and the particular community—the Chabad chassidim.” When he finished speaking, a mighty cry of “Amen!” burst from all of us without any prompting. A slight smile crossed his holy face, and he said, “Amen, may it be so.” After the Tzemach Tzedek returned home, the elder chassidim gathered, with Reb Hillel of Paritch at their head. They reviewed the maamar of Chassidus the Tzemach Tzedek had delivered, wondered why he had instructed them to sing the Alter Rebbe’s niggun, and grew concerned. On Monday, after Parshas Emor, a fast rider arrived from Zhitomir with a letter from the printers. It said that on Monday the police and the secret police had come and questioned them about the printing of Likkutei Torah: how many copies had been printed and which cities they had been sent to. The police placed their seal on some 208 copies found at the printing house and ordered them to appear before the secret police in Kyiv on Wednesday. Word spread rapidly through the town, and the Tzemach Tzedek’s sons came to hear the precise details from the messenger, since within an hour the townspeople had managed to spread exaggerations and falsehoods. That evening we heard from a chossid, who related in the name of the Maharil, that the Tzemach Tzedek had told him and his brother Rabbi Schneur Zalman, “Bas dina, batal dina”—the judgment that had been issued was annulled. On Thursday evening another fast rider arrived from Kyiv carrying a letter from the wealthy Reb Dovber. It said that on Wednesday, when Rabbi Shapira, the Zhitomir printer, appeared before the secret police in Kyiv, they spoke harshly to him and arrested him. On Thursday morning he was brought before an investigator, and after questioning he was returned to his place of detention. That evening he was granted leave, and the next day, Friday, the secret police in Kyiv instructed the secret police in Zhitomir to remove the seals from the copies of Likkutei Torah. The matter was settled.