To Know and To Care

The stories contained in this book reveal a multidimensional picture of the Rebbe's leadership, showing many different perspectives of his personality. Our intent, however, is also to communicate something more than what is being said, to intimate to our readers an awareness of the general thrust that runs through all these different narratives. Giving sole focus to any particular aspect of the Rebbe's personality, for example, the miracles that he works, the advice he gives people, his scholarship, narrows - and in that way, distorts - the picture of the Rebbe we all have. Every person who has developed a relationship with the Rebbe has his own way of talking about him. But every person also realizes that his viewpoint is only a limited one and that there is something much greater about the Rebbe that he cannot describe. Nevertheless, by seeing a variety of these personal perspectives, it is possible to develop a greater sensitivity to what that greater dimension is. It is our feeling that stories express this best. Stories are alive. In contrast to a biography which represents a cold intellectual perspective on a person's life, in stories, his responses to the people and the circumstances he encounters breathe with vitality. Besides biographies come with explicit or implied conclusions; stories quietly allow the reader to draw his own.