R’ Levi Yitzchak was the illustrious father of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. A descendant of the 3rd Chabad Rebbe, known as the “Tzemach Tzedek”, he was famous in his own right, having served as the Chief Rabbi of Yekaterinoslav, Ukraine, known today as Dnipro, for some 30 years in the early 1900s.
He fought valiantly for Judaism and Jewish people’s rights under Communism and this earned him his arrest, imprisonment, then exile and ultimately his life – on 20th of Menachem Av, 5704 (1944). His tomb is near his place of exile in the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan. R’ Levi Yitzchok was a true Gaon (genius) and master of Torah and a Kabbalist of epic proportions. The extent of his brilliance, in both breadth and depth of Torah knowledge – as well as his novel approach – was largely unknown until his manuscripts were discovered, deciphered and published, many years after his passing.
Although he wrote hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of Torah commentary while serving as Chief Rabbi of Yekaterinoslav, most of those have yet to be found. The vast majority of his works which survived him are the glosses he penned on the margins of the few books he had with him in exile in Chi’ili, Kazakhstan. He and his wife, Rebbetzin Chana, were so poor that she would produce ink from flowers and plants, and due to the lack of paper, he used the side margins of his few Seforim (holy books) to condense his extensive insights into a few lines or paragraphs. Rebbetzin Chana smuggled some of these volumes out of Russia. Others were retrieved later on. When these were deciphered and eventually published, the world came to know what an absolutely brilliant Torah scholar and immense Kabbalist he truly was.
The Rebbe, his son, would dedicate a talk at his Shabbos Farbrengens (Chasidic Gatherings) for many years, unpacking and demystifying his father’s often cryptic writings. Today, his teachings are published in a 5 volume set, known as “Likutei Levi Yitzchok / Toras Levi Yitzchok”, published by Kehot.
Included in this collection are teachings on Tanach, Midrash, Mishnah, Talmud, Zohar & Tanya, as well as letters which R’ Levi Yitzchok wrote to his son, the future Lubavitcher Rebbe, sharing his deep Torah insights, as well as many personal letters to the Rebbe and Rebbetzin around auspicious days in their lives (wedding, birthdays, anniversaries, Jewish holidays) – with the Kabbalistic significance of these dates.
Over the last several years, there have been a handful of projects geared at unpacking the complex, subtle and novel teachings. The leading and most comprehensive initiative is the “Yalkut Levi Yitzchak Al HaTorah” series, spearheaded by Rabbi Dovid Dubov of Princeton, New Jersey.
