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| Founded | 1942 |
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| Founder | Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn |
| Headquarters location | Brooklyn, New York |
| Distribution | North America, Israel, South America, South Africa, Australia |
| Official website | kehot |
Kehot Publication Society is the publishing division of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Kehot was established in 1941 by the sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. In 1942, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak appointed his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who became the seventh Rebbe in 1951) as director and editor-in-chief.[1]
Prior to the establishment of Kehot, printed editions of Chabad texts were limited. Since its founding, Kehot published many volumes of both Hasidic texts and general Jewish literature, growing significantly as an established publisher of Jewish books published in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Persian and Arabic.[2]
Rabbi Menachem Mendel served as editor for many of the early Kehot publications. In a 1946, he wrote of his editorial work for Jewish holiday literature published in French and in English. He edited both Jewish educational literature for children as well as volumes of Hasidic discourses.[3]
Rabbi Menachem Mendel also worked on publishing old manuscripts from the previous Rabbis of Chabad. In the first years he mainly focused on the works of the fourth Chabad Rebbe, the Rebbe Maharash also writing a biography on his life. Rabbi Schneerson also published the encyclopedic work of Chaim Hezekiah Medini the Sdei Chemed, with rearranging it and adding indices In 1956 he began publishing the discourses of the First Lubavitcher Rebbe the Alter Rebbe, a project he later related as "time consuming".
Kehot is one of the largest orthodox publishing houses in America publishing over 600 new titles in the last 80 years.
This publishing house is known for properly indexing their works (not so common in Jewish publishing).
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Main article: Maamarim (Chabad) |
One of the biggest undertakings of Kehot was to publish the discourses of all the Chabad Rebbe's which is an ongoing work numbering hundreds of volumes. Below, the discourses published by Kehot are listed.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson:
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Main article: Igrot Kodesh |
Igros Kodesh (lit. holy letters) are published letters from the Lubavitcher Rebbes. As of 2021 there are 59 volumes published including 33 volumes of the last Lubavitcher Rebbe.
In addition to all the deep Hebrew Chassidic texts, Kehot also focuses on publishing in English for the English reader to benefit from a few of their works, a number of large projects such as:
The name Kehot (קה"ת) is an acronym for Karnei Hod Torah ("the rays of the Torah's glory"), and the three Hebrew letters feature in the publishing house's logo. The letters also refer to the Hebrew year, 5505 (תק"ה), in which the founder of Chabad, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, was born.
