Rabbi Completes Quest to Print Tanya in Every RI City

The whirr and snap of a printer is the only sound in a small study room at the Jesse Smith Memorial Library on Tinkham Lane as 23-year-old Rabbi Aryeh Laufer patiently waits for another set of pages to be done so he can feed the printer again. Later, he will bring the pages to be cut and bound to make 100 books.

That printer has been Rabbi Laufer’s constant companion for the past 10 months. In between his yeshiva studies in New York, he has traveled to 34 of Rhode Island’s 39 towns and cities to finish a mission his father, Rabbi Yehoshua Laufer, started 30 years ago. He is printing 100 copies of the Tanya, a 200-year-old piece of writing that outlines the basic religious philosophy of Hasidism, for each of the towns and cities.

Burrillville is the last town where he needed to print books to complete the project.

Luckily, technology has advanced quite a bit since his father started the printings with the first five communities 30 years ago. When Rabbi Yehoshua embarked on the project, the machinery used was an offset printing press mounted on the floor of a white truck. The truck traveled to Warwick, Providence, Pawtucket, Cranston and Newport, where it stopped at the Touro Synagogue.

Today, Rabbi Aryeh travels with his 40-pound Kyocera computer, a laptop and boxes of paper and ink. Basically, he just has to find a plug.

He said he has stopped mostly at the homes of Jewish people or their offices to make the copies. Sunday, he was printing in Cumberland; on Monday he was printing in Glocester.

“I’ve seen every place in the state,” he says. “I can write a book.”

The books are printed in Hebrew.

Burrillville Police Chief Bernard E. Gannon said he talked to Rabbi Aryeh after being told that three rabbis had left him a loaf of Jewish bread and a Jewish calendar. Gannon, whose mother is Jewish but was bought up Catholic, suggested the library because it seemed the most appropriate place.

The Tanya is written by Hasidic Master Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch, of which Rabbis Yehoshua and Aryeh Laufer are part. The book is a fundamental work on Hasidut (a practical application of the mystical practice of Kabbalah) and a guide for life, offering advice and answers for problems people encounter in their lives.

Rabbi Aryeh said he likes the 32nd chapter in particular. It talks about the love for fellow man.

“You can have a commandment, but it’s not easy,” he said. “You have to look at every person as a soul. It’s very special, very great. It’s a part of God. If you look at a person, what is deeper is his soul.”

Rabbi Aryeh said Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a direct descendent of the rabbi who wrote the Tanya, told followers they should try to print the book and have it studied in every city in the world with a Jewish population. This would pave the way for the coming of the Messiah. And Rabbi Yehoshua said he had found Jews in every city and town in Rhode Island.

Wednesday, at about 3:30 p.m., Rabbi Aryeh finished his last copy of the Tanya in the state. This Tanya would have inscribed in it that it was printed in Burrillville.

“It is done,” Rabbi Aryeh said. “People are already receiving their blessing.”