In the spring of 1987, Chabad scholar and librarian Rabbi Sholom Ber Levin, today the director of the Central Chabad-Lubavitch Research Library, sat down at his desk to write an introduction to the first volume of Igrot Kodesh, the collected correspondence of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. This first volume assembled the whole of the Rebbe’s correspondence written between 1928 and 1944—but there was a catch.
“This volume includes only those letters written in Hebrew or Yiddish (or the occasional one in French),” he wrote, “correspondences written in English will be published, with G‑d’s help, in distinct volumes.”1
Thirty-nine years later, the canonical collection of the Rebbe’s Hebrew and Yiddish correspondence today runs well over 30 volumes, with years of material yet to be published. And yet, the letters the Rebbe wrote and dictated in the English language, which forms the vast bulk of his correspondence with American Jewry, have never been comprehensively prepared for print, until now.
Today, on 3 Tammuz, marking the 32nd anniversary of the Rebbe’s passing, Kehot Publishing Society—the publishing arm of the Chabad movement—announced the forthcoming publication of the first volume of “Igros Kodesh - The English Letters.” Published by Kehot, the project is being directed, edited, and prepared for publication by the editorial team of Sichos in English (SIE), and will be available to purchase after the Tishrei holiday season.
“Over the course of his leadership, the Rebbe engaged in one of the most extraordinary correspondences in Jewish history,” says Rabbi Shmuly Avtzon, director of Sichos in English. “He received thousands of letters, from scholars and skeptics, statesmen and lay people, refugees and philanthropists, rabbis and college freshmen, grieving parents and nervous brides and he answered them all.”
It was a new world, an English-speaking world, and though the Rebbe could communicate in a host of languages, an overwhelming number of his responses were written in a clear and concise English.
Every letter published in the upcoming book was reproduced from an original letter or a secretarial carbon copy preserved in the archives. The Rebbe generally dictated his English correspondence to his secretary, Rabbi Dr. Nissan Mindel, who prepared the majority of these letters. The drafts were then submitted to the Rebbe for review and revision. Once the Rebbe’s edits had been incorporated, two final copies were prepared: one was sent to the recipient, while the other was retained for the archives. There, another of the Rebbe’s secretaries, Rabbi Sholom Mendel Simpson, organized and preserved the correspondence, making possible its publication decades later.
“Two copies were made of every letter the Rebbe sent,” Avtzon says. “One was put in the mail, and one was kept in the archives. This is the first collection of the Rebbe’s English letters to work from the secretariat’s archive of carbon copies.” As a result, about 170 of the 214 letters in the forthcoming The English Letters: Volume II have never before been published.
For decades, Rabbi Simpson played a key role in maintaining the overwhelming flow of questions and requests for blessings and advice that flowed in and out of the Rebbe’s office at Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway. Succeeding his father, who served as a member of the secretariat of the Sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, Simpson served for decades in this capacity. His tasks included typing Hebrew and Yiddish correspondence based on dictation and notes the Rebbe would provide. Many of these letters were compiled by him for publication in the multi-volume Igrot Kodesh, a project in which he was actively involved. Simpson passed away in 2019 at the age of 90.
Some of the Rebbe’s English-language correspondence have circulated over the years, shared by the recipients, as well as correspondence translated into English from the Hebrew volumes, but never has this comprehensive collection been published until now. This effort represents a major undertaking for Chabad’s ongoing work to publish the Rebbe’s prodigious Torah output.
Rabbi Avtzon expects the work to produce some 50 volumes, with more than 10,000 letters, over the coming decades.
“There are between ten to 15,000 letters we aim to publish,” he says. The forthcoming series presents, not only the letters themselves, but meticulously researched background context to assist the reader in appreciating their content. When possible, appendices include recipients’ replies and other relevant documents. Notably, privacy concerns were taken into careful consideration, and as per the Rebbe’s past guidance to Rabbi Simpson, particular personal details have been appropriately redacted. That work is led by Sichos in English’s editorial team, headed by Rabbi Naftoli Hertz Pewzner and including Rabbis Levi Oster, Don Moshe Coleman, Shea Shmotkin, and Zalmy Shmotkin.
Inside the Letters
The initial volume—Volume II of the series (the first volume, to be published at a later date, contains letters from the Rebbe during the leadership of his predecessor, the Sixth Rebbe)—contains letters from the year 1950 and 1951, allowing the reader to glimpse the scale and scope of the Rebbe’s organizational work and personal guidance even at that early juncture.
“This was a year of transition,” Rabbi Avtzon says. “The Sixth Rebbe, had passed away; the Rebbe had not yet acceded to the movement’s leadership—and yet, when people wrote to him for advice or guidance, the Rebbe answered them, clearly and decisively.”
The volume includes a 20-letter correspondence of encouragement with a disbarred lawyer facing the dissolution of his family and a mid-life crisis; multiple letters responding to a woman suffering chronic illness; letters to a young man paralyzed by self-doubt; to an anxious bride; a couple deciding whether or not to move; soldiers, businessmen, mothers; ordinary people of all walks of life.
At the same time, these letters show the Rebbe spearheading Chabad’s work to support the Jews of North Africa: directing the establishment of a yeshivah, a Teacher’s Seminary, and numerous Talmud Torahs to serve the boys and girls of Morocco’s 100,000 Jews while coordinating with numerous American Jewish organizations. He wrote to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee with concern for the Jewish refugees of Iraqi Kurdistan, recently forced from their homes by the Iraqi government, who were in Tehran at the time.
“In these letters we see the Rebbe speaking to American Jews, who were by and large far removed from the European shtetl,” Rabbi Pewzner says. Some were committed Jews, some had only just begun to explore their heritage, but all lived in a time and place where religious observance was under enormous pressure. “The Rebbe unequivocally expressed the Torah’s guidance, but he did so from within the parlance and reality of American life,” he says.
Whether a deep and touching letter to an 11-year-old girl who asked, “Why did G‑d take my father?” or a thoughtful and personal response to a businessman who argued that closing his shop on Shabbat would irrevocably ruin his business—these were not stock answers. “Reading these letters decades after they were written, one still has the sense of overhearing an intensely private and personal matter,” Rabbi Pewzner says.
Hundreds of volumes of the Rebbe’s teachings, correspondence, and writings have been in print for decades. And yet, there remains a vast, distinctly American, side of the Rebbe’s guidance and leadership that has hitherto never graced the printed page.
As volume after volume of The English Letters is published in the months and years ahead, readers will, yes, find an immensely valuable archive of never-before-known historical material. But, most importantly, a broad readership will find a vast treasury of wise counsel and personally relevant guidance—as relevant in 2026 as it was in 1950.
To pre-order and look inside ‘Igros Kodesh - The English Letters’, click here.
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