Bidspirit auction | (HOLOCAUST). SCHNEERSOHN, YOSEPH YITZCHAK. “Lubavitcher

(HOLOCAUST). SCHNEERSOHN, YOSEPH YITZCHAK. “Lubavitcher Rebbe’ns Brief tzu Doktor Yaakov Klatzkin.” Yiddish Poster broadside by the Friediker Rebbe. Brittle, torn at all folds, needs repair. 19 x 17 inches. Expresses with anguish and great emotion as to why the Orthodox choose not to publicly demonstrate against the Nazi horrors. Endorsed with the Rebbe's signature phrase: L’Alter L'Teshuvah, L'Alter L'Geulah! [“Immediately to Repentance, immediately to Redemption!”] Brooklyn, NY, HaKriah VehaKedushah, 24th Adar II 1943.     Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880-1950) the sixth spiritual leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidic movement, sent to the philosopher Jakob Klatzkin (1882-1948) this public response as to why the ultra-Orthodox select do not orchestrate public demonstrations against ongoing Nazis atrocities in Europe.     Klatzkin's family had past associations with the Chabad movement: his paternal grandfather, R. Naftali Hertz Klatzkin (1823-94), was a follower of R. Menachem Mendel, the Tzemach Tzedek. Jakob Klatzkin maintained a connection with the Lubavitcher Rebbe by way of exchange of correspondence. One such example is the subject of this document, a portion of which is translated:     ”Before telling me that we, the ultra-Orthodox, should go out and protest in the street wrapped in prayer-shawls with Torah Scrolls in our arms, you first tell the American infidels and Palestinian heretics, that they themselves should don prayer-shawls and Tefillin and observe Shabbat and Kashruth in their homes. Cease rebelling against God and His teachings and commandments which causes the loss of children in your [secular] schools that are houses of heresy and destruction…     … Despite the heart that witnesses the plight of his Jewish brethren… he does not relate to the cords of his heritage. It is incumbent upon him to establish a committee of concerned people… who will save our [refugee] Polish boys and girls, who are mostly from pious and devote families, from becoming contaminated by heretical environmental influences.”     The Rebbe, new to American shores just three years standing, evidently felt the only fight he could confront, was not the physical destruction of European Jewry, but what he perceived to be, the spiritual destruction of American Jewry. More to the point, he saw that salvation would never come from man-made institutions, but only via direct appeal to God.     Lithuanian-born Jacob Klatzkin was educated in traditional yeshivas before becoming a devoted student of the neo-Kantian philosopher Herman Cohen. Later he became a Zionist-publicist and co-founder of the publishing house Eshkol and chief-editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia in Berlin. He fled to the United States upon the rise of Nazism and returned to Europe (Switzerland) for his remaining post-war years.     See B.M. Rigg, Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher Rebbe (2008) pp. 173-6;     Eli Brackman, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn & the Holocaust: Why Does Evil Prosper? www.oxfordchabad.org/templates/blog/post_cdo/aid/708481/PostID/53832.