Waves crashed on the shore and palms trees swayed in the wind as the Jamaican sun baked down on two rabbinical students standing in dress pants and starched white shirts. They were fiddling with a portable printer, with neat stacks of paper meant be bound into Tanyas, the slim but significant volume penned by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Rebbe of Chabad.
The young men were Shmuel Butler and Aryeh Herson, who had come to the Caribbean country to assist Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries Rabbi Yaakov and Mushkee Raskin, who arrived there in 2014 to serve the Jewish community.
In addition to traveling the island in search of Jews with whom to connect, study Torah and perform Mitzvhas (as "Roving Rabbis" have been doing since the late 1940s), the duo was on a mission to print Tanyas in six cities: Negril, Falmouth, Ocho Rios, Montego Bay, Kingston and Port Antonio.
It’s a tradition that began in 1978, when the Lubavitcher Rebbe - Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory - called for the printing Tanyas all over the world. Since then, more than 6,700 editions have been printed, with thousands of people touched by the wide-reaching and never-ending endeavor.
The Rebbe specified that at least 100 copies should be printed wherever Jews may find themselves, and that those local Jews actually learn from the freshly imprinted pages. But it was more than just a learning campaign, he explained. For if the goal was simply that everyone should study Tanya, it would have been sufficient to simply send copies to the Jews of each city and encourage them to study. Rather, the Rebbe said the fact that the Tanya was printed in their own hometown would encourage them to study and explore the text on a much deeper level.
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TAKE PART IN PRINTING OUR COMMUNITY TANYA #8,022
It is a special merit to participate in its printing, we are offering all members of the community to have their name included in the back pages of the Tanya.
Your contribution will help cover the costs of this unique printing.
For each name please include the English spelling of the family name as well as the Hebrew name for each family member and their mother's Hebrew name.
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