Letters of Thought: Shulchan Aruch haRav in other Circles

Right after writing on A Simple Jew about Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, an interesting story came up . . .

Several dozen copies of this booklet could be found in Yeshivah . . .
Their subject? A test on Shulchan Aruch Admor Hazakan ('Harav') with twenty tickets to Lizhensk as the grand prize . . . A host of Gedolei Yisroel speaking . . . standard Israeli fare.

Standard that is, except for the subject of the tests -Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch . . .
It seemed odd that a kach would come out of the Chassidisher Velt on Shu"a Harav with out some secret Chabad backing.
There had to be Lubavitchers hidden behind it.

But besides for a Lubavitcher's ad inside, there seemed to be no Chabad influence; just the opposite -the Rosh Yeshivah from Punavitch spoke!

Today the story came out.

Before the war the Posek Achron of the those in the camps of Chassidus was the Alter Rebbe.
As a child Rabbi Hendel z"l of Montreal grew up deep in Poland, from a Chassidic but not Chabad family. He related that his teacher in cheider asked him to bring a Shulchan Aruch to learn from. When the class began to learn, however, he was unable to follow along. He asked the teacher for help; and upon seeing the sefer the teacher informed him that he had been given a copy of the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch, while the class was learning mechaver/rema. From this he pointed out that when he had asked his mother for a shulchan aruch, she assumed that b'pashtus he meant the Alter Rebbe's.

But due to many factors, after the war there was a shift towards Mishna Berura.

Now, however, a chissidisher group has come out with a movement to bring back the Alter Rebbe's work to its former status as the final say in the Chassidic world.

How do we know all this?
Rabbi Berel Levin, who worked on re-typesetting the AR SHu"a, heard about what was going on in the Holy Land and called up the people in charge.
"Is there anything I can do to help your cause?"
"Yes," they replied, "For you see, we do not have connections to America and Europe . . . perhaps you could spread our literature there?"
"It would be my pleasure," Berel Levin responded. "I'll have five thousand copies printed and given out."
"Five Thousand?" they said, "In Israel alone we made fifty thousand copies!"

A few calls latter, and Forty Five Thousand copies were made for distribution. Hence the Lubavitcher's add.

The Rebbe once said that hafatzis hamayanis includes not just the chassidus of the Rebbiem, but their nigleh as well.
This seems to be a good start.