The Lost Manuscripts

The hijacking had a sad aftermath. Rav Hutner’s manuscripts, among them the volume of Pachad Yitzchok on Shavuos, which was complete and ready for printing, stayed behind in the hands of the hijackers. Every possible pressure was tried, but nothing worked.

His talmidim, together with others who had heard his talks over many years, worked together to put a new Shavuos volume together. Its introduction applies the posuk, “They will come weeping, and I will bring them in supplication” (Yirmiyahu 31:8), to the talmidim and to Rav Hutner himself. Only joy that comes after suffering, it says, can bring tears of happiness. The sefer would stand as a symbol of all the suffering that the righteous experience, whose beginnings are hard but whose ends are peaceful.