Special: The Rebbe Corresponds with Mr. Irving Stone

This letter from the Rebbe, זי”ע, is addressed to Mr. Irving I. Stone, of blessed memory, the eldest son of Jacob Sapirstein. Jacob founded the American Greeting card company in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1906, selling picture postcards from a horse-drawn wagon. Together with his two younger brothers (all of whom Americanized their surname to Stone), Irving transformed American Greetings from a small family business into the world’s largest publicly owned greeting card company.

This is one letter from a series that could be read by clicking here.

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By the Grace of G-d
13th of Cheshvan, 5734
Brooklyn, N. Y.

Mr. I. I. Stone
Cleveland, Ohio

Greeting and Blessing:

With further reference to our correspondence, I wish to emphasize here another point about the urgency and speed that should propel every activity for the strengthening of Yiddishkeit [Judaism] in general, and Torah Chinuch in particular.

In normal times, steady, albeit slow, progress might be satisfactory, and sometimes steady progress and speed may not even be compatible. However, we live in “abnormal” times, when things move with whirlwind speed, and we must not lag behind the times in our method of tackling problems in the vital area of Torah and Chinuch. Indeed, in light of the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching that a person must learn from everything around him how better to fulfill his purpose in life, especially in fundamental matters, the present jet age and supersonic speed should inspire the idea of time-saving in the spiritual realm. A distance that not so very long ago took days and weeks to cover, can now be spanned in a matter of hours, and a message that took as long to communicate can now be transmitted instantly. If this could be accomplished in the physical and material world, surely the same should be true in the spiritual realm, whether in the area of personal achievement, or in the area of effecting a change in the environment. To be satisfied with less in the realm of the spirit would be like arguing to return to the era of the horse and buggy on the ground that this was satisfactory in olden days, all the more so since spiritual matters have never been subject to the limitations of time and space.

If anyone may entertain any doubt about his ability to meet a challenge which Divine Providence has thrown into his lap, suffice it to remember that G-d does not act despotically or capriciously, and most certainly provides the necessary capacity to meet the challenge, and to do so joyously, which is the way of all Divine service, as it is written, “Serve G-d with joy,” and which, incidentally, is a basic tenet of the Chasidic approach to all matters.

With all good wishes, and

With blessing,

M. Schneerson [:signature]