Sefer Hasichos 5703 - English

Sefer HaSichos 5703 opens - a facsimile of the never-before-published original manuscript of the first page of the notes which one of the participants later made from memory of that farbrengen. That facsimile is seasoned with corrections and annotations that were liberally inserted in the unmistakable handwriting of the Rebbe, who at the time was seated next to the Rebbe Rayatz. Other highlights in this volume include the empowering response of the Rebbe Rayatz to the events of his time, at the peak of the Holocaust. Not that he endeavors to avert his gaze from the harsh reality of that era. On the contrary: "One's head is dulled, one's heart is bruised, one's spirit is battered." His response, however, is a bold call to arms, an impassioned plea to his chassidim to go out and challenge their brothers and sisters to ease the birth pangs of Mashiach by resisting the tsunami of assimilation that threatened their very survival as Jews, in the Land of the Free. One of the widely-respected bodies that the Rebbe Rayatz criticized outspokenly in this volume was Youth Aliyah, the project by which a thousand Polish-born refugee children, many of them orphans, were rescued by self-sacrificing fellow Jews and brought to the Holy Land via India and Teheran, but were then educated in institutions whose spirit was utterly alien to the observant homes in which they had been raised. Includes a new translation of the educators handbook "Klalei HaChinuch V'Hahadracha"