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 Shlita 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 heightened 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 may often represent an academic 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.

Storytelling is an age-old chassidic practice. The Rebbeim of Chabad would refer to chassidic stories as the Torah Shebichsav (the Written Law) of Chassidus. That name is significant, for chassidic stories, like the stories of the Patriarchs, Moshe Rabbeinu, and the other heroes of the Tanach, are "living Torah," expressions of infinite G-dly truth. Moreover, these truths are not expressed as theoretical principles, but as events occurring within the real-life framework of day-to-day experience.

In this vein, the question has frequently been asked: Why doesn't the Talmud include a tractate devoted to the subject of the love and fear of G-d? Chassidim would answer that this is unnecessary. The tzaddikim, the righteous sages of every generation, provide us with firsthand experience of these qualities, and hence there is no need to have recourse to a mere academic treatment of the subject.