From the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe to his wife, written in America in the late 1920s

Sunday, 6 Iyar, on a train from Detroit to St. Louis

To my dear wife,

With gratitude to God for life and peace,

On Friday, I wrote you [letter] no. 208, which you’ve certainly received. I would like to write to you now, but writing by hand is difficult. So I am using a typewriter. It’s better than not writing at all; I want to write – and you want to read a letter from me, regardless of how it’s been written. The main thing is to have something to read. 

This is the opening paragraph of a letter that Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, wrote to his wife Nehama Dina, from a train traveling through the heart of the American Midwest, from Michigan to Missouri. The letter continues with a detailed description of his Shabbat in Detroit and how much he enjoyed reading her letter on Friday evening.

The Rebbe, who then lived in Riga, Latvia, traveled to Eretz Israel and the United States in 1929, where he visited communities of Lubavitcher Hasidim. He sent a letter to his wife at least once a week, most of them handwritten, describing his experiences and not forgetting to congratulate her on her birthday.