Letters

Letter to a teenage girl who lost her mother. Reconciles contradiction in our sages’ mourning laws; discusses the departed soul’s ascent and how to keep close to it.

The Rebbe requests a birthday gift. A lively correspondence ensues.

The whole Torah-versus-science "problem", the Rebbe maintained, is based on a popular misconception as to what science is

Correspondence of the Rebbe and Dr. Robert Wilkes, at the time director of the Child Development Center at the Coney Island Hospital, on the subject of assisting children with special needs.

An excerpt from the first "public letter" issued by the Rebbe

There is more to a journey than its destination, insisted the Rebbe in this characteristic letter, written several months after his official assumption of the leadership of Chabad-Lubavitch

How does a painting compel us to see its subject in a new light? And how is this to be applied to the art of life? A letter to a depressed artist

Pain, gain and their rate of return

Can there be such a thing as an outraged atheist?

If the role of education is to civilize the human being, and if civilization is the subordination of the individual will to a higher authority, can there be such a thing as a wholly "secular" education?

Basically the problem has its roots in a misconception of the scientific method or, simply, of what science is

"I studied science on the university level from 1928-1932 in Berlin, and from 1934-1938 in Paris, and I have tried to follow scientific developments in certain areas ever since..."

In addition to my letter of yesterday's date, which was confined to a purely scientific discussion, it is this second letter which will express my real approach to you, the Torah approach of one Jew to another

If he needn't actually do anything, what's the honor?

In Torah, as in nature, there are exoteric and esoteric forces; one hundred and ninety-eight years ago, one of the latter electrified Jewish life

What an education can and cannot do

Medical science discovers the soul

Perfect harmony and full acceptance of a central authority might be the ideal, but ideals are usually the greatest obstacle in getting anything done

Parallels that are worlds apart

in which the means are an end in themselves