Translation

7 Elul, 5712 [August 28, 1952]
Brooklyn, N.Y.

To the members and Gabboim
K’hal Chasidim Synagogue of Manchester1

Greeting and blessing!

A number of days ago I received the copy of your letter, and I was happy to see that you appropriately appreciate the work and achievements for your community of Rabbi Shmuel Rein. This shows that you take his work with interest and integrity, and that you want to keep a close connection with us here, which is expressed by your wanting to send him here as your representative.

I hope that like every living thing, your good feelings will keep on growing and will permeate through the Shul members to their homes and all their activities. This is the essence of our Torah and faith: that they should apply not only to a part of the day and the rest of the time Yiddishkeit is not to be acknowledged. Rather, a Torah of life, of a living God, who encompasses all of life from the first moment to the last moment after one hundred and twenty good years. Not only to be a Jew in Shul, while praying and studying, but also at home, in the street, in the office, and so on. As we say twice every day in our prayers: “…when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way.”

As for your suggestion that Rabbi Shmuel Rein should make the journey here: the situation is, that according to what he writes to me about the state of his health, I assume the fatigue of travel and the changes in what is habitual, eating and drinking and general lifestyle, as well as the excitement (albeit from joy), would be too much strain for him. Surely, he already gave you my letter to him, which is in accordance with the above.

I want to thank you for the good thought of sending your representative, especially from a community that bears with pride the name “K’hal Chasidim.” “A good idea is joined to action,” and as the Alter Rebbe (Tanya, Chapter 16) explains these words of our sages of blessed memory: “joined to action,” means that there must be an action as well, even if far from the thought. I therefore hope that you will also undertake an action, that is, the good result that the visit would have brought will be actualized in reality, though the specific thought did not actualize.

I conclude with a wish to be inscribed in heaven for a good year to all the members of your synagogue and the members of their households, to each according to his needs in the physical and the spiritual.

With blessing,

M. Schneerson