By the Grace of G-d27 Adar Sheini, 5741Brooklyn, N. Y.

Greeting and Blessing:

I was surprised to receive your letter and painfully astonished at its contents from beginning to end.

It is difficult to reconcile your seemingly deep concern for Yiddishkeit in your city and for living in harmony, etc. with the abrasive tone of your letter.

Particularly puzzling is your statement, “Do you honestly think and feel it is right for us to be subjected to only Lubavitch thinking?” Anyone who knows about Lubavitch thinking knows that “subjecting” others is alien to it as it is alien to Torah, “Whose ways are ways of pleasantness and its paths are peace.”

As for your reference to . . . in particular and your charge that after so many years in the city nothing has been accomplished except a Chabad House lately — this is completely at variance with my information. According to the reports I have received through the years, Rabbi ... was instrumental, and highly instrumental, in many communal endeavors and leading educational institutions . . . And in organizing various activities such as Torah classes for adults, work with Russian immigrants, to mention but some of the work which has helped to improve substantially the whole complexion of Yiddishkeit in your city. I use the past tense only because he started doing these things many years ago, but he is still actively involved in many areas and, I understand, is active also in the administration of leading Torah institutions in your city.

However, since you so categorically deny any such activities, I must ask you to be good enough to send me in writing specific data refuting any and all claims that Rabbi ... may have on achievement in the area of strengthening and spreading Yiddishkeit in your city, so that I can confront with this document all those who have been misinforming me on these issues all those years.

Needless to say, since you were so outspoken in your critical remarks, finding not one good word for Lubavitch in your city, I trust you will be just as outspoken in documenting your charges, or recanting them — in the event that you find, on closer scrutiny, that the charges were without foundation.

As for your account of the eiruv project in your city, I happen to know personally some of the senior Rabbis and younger Rabbis and I can hardly accept the allegation that “though all in the area were in agreement,” they permitted themselves to be overruled by one person who, according to you, has done nothing positive for Yiddishkeit in your city. Clearly, to surrender a considered Torah opinion to a veto of such an individual would not be in keeping with the function of a Rov, much less a Vaad Horabbonim.

Be it as it may, I can only reiterate my request for a clear and unequivocal statement, either verifying of recanting your allegations and, to borrow a phrase from your letter, “I would greatly appreciate your response to this letter at your earliest convenience.”

With blessing,