Forty years ago, an American professor traveling in Asia wrote a letter to the Rebbe about his encounter with locals eager to learn more about their Jewish heritage. The Rebbe instructed his staff to charge a certain traveling businessman with the task of compiling a list of Jewish works to consider translating into Chinese, and to oversee their subsequent publication.
The businessman was Rabbi Fishel Katz, a dealer of gemstones who traveled the globe. An emissary of the Rebbe, Katz used his business trips and extensive contacts to also fulfill missions for the Rebbe, including printing Tanyas in Africa and across the Far East, arranging holiday services in distant communities, and, of course, organizing Jewish programs in his hometown of Miami.
Katz eagerly submitted his recommendations, and the Rebbe confirmed his selection—two books containing many fundamental Jewish concepts, both written by Dr. Nissan Mindel, a noted scholar and aide to the Rebbe: The Divine Commandments, a brief treatise organized into seven segments, and My Prayer, a much longer book that explains the function and significance of Jewish prayers.
Katz immediately contacted David Buxbaum, a lawyer based in Asia who was fluent in Chinese, to prepare the translation of The Divine Commandments, and by 1989, the pair presented the Rebbe with a Chinese edition of the treatise.
But My Prayer proved to be more of a challenge. The text was much longer, and delays cropped up. Katz doggedly refused to give up, and in the early 1990s he proudly submitted a translation of 86 pages to the Rebbe. But the draft remained unedited and uncompleted for decades.
For the final push, he needed the assistance of Mattisyahu Trusch, a Jewish Texan, entrepreneur, and real-estate fund manager trained at Harvard in Chinese Studies, who was spearheading a translation of the Tanya along with native speaker Elisheva Martinetti.
When Trusch learned of the Rebbe’s outstanding request for a Chinese edition of My Prayer, he enlisted the help of translator Aaron Yehoshua Ben Avraham in Israel to complete and prepare the manuscript for publication.
The decades of effort have finally come to fruition, and the 272-page hardback is now available, published by the Kehot Publication Society—their first Chinese language offering. Chabad.org is also publishing an e-version online, affording Chinese readers across the globe free access to this classic work on Jewish prayer.
“Every Jewish home should own at least two Chinese copies of My Prayer,” says Trusch with pride, “one to show off on your coffee table, and one to give to a Chinese-speaking colleague or friend.”
While publishing Torah in Chinese is now picking up steam, the Rebbe’s interest in the matter is nearly 80 years old. In a post-war 1946 letter written to yeshiva students living in Shanghai, the Rebbe encouraged them to find out if there were any local Jews who could only speak Chinese, and if so to translate pamphlets on Shabbat, tefillin, and the Torah for them.
The Rebbe also taught that translating Torah texts into different languages elevates each language and brings it into the realm of holiness.
“The Rebbe had the foresight to see that there would one day be an international market for books about Jewish culture and traditions in Chinese,” remarks Trusch, “and it is humbling and exhilarating to bring this effort to fruition, hopefully increasing global awareness of the Torah’s universal values, and bringing us one step closer to the Ultimate Redemption.”
My Prayer - Chinese Edition was sponsored with a generous grant from the Garazi Schoonover Family, who benefited from Chabad Houses across Asia, where they did business for decades. It is available for purchase here and for online study here.
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