Refusing to Endorse Books

This is Ygress, and today we are going to discuss the Rebbe's reticence, or I guess the right word is outright refusal, to write approbations for books.

There is an old custom, especially when it comes to publishing Jewish books, [clears throat] excuse me, [clears throat] to fill out the front section of the book with letters of approbation, also known as haskamos, from big rabbis who say that you're wonderful and that your book is wonderful.

And naturally, keeping with this tradition, many authors approach the Rebbe asking for haskamos, and he always said no.

I collected something like thirty letters, maybe forty letters, where the Rebbe says no.

He says no a lot.

Uh, we'll be looking at a very small sample of them today.

So the Rebbe says no.

What the Rebbe does not say, however, is why he refuses to write haskamos.

So Amir Tsachem, after a brief overview of some of the times that the Rebbe refused to give his approbation to various works, all for more or less the same relatively vague reason, will spend the second, the second half of our shiur today trying to figure out why the Rebbe won't give approbations to books, even ones which he clearly supports.