For the last forty years or so, I have published, b’ezrat Hashem, a large number of books and booklets on a whole variety of subjects. For almost every one of them, there is background material concerning the research, the writing up and the publication of the material. In many cases, there are also follow-up communications as a result of these publications.
In this book I shall share with the reader some of the background to my writings and also the follow-up communications. As with my other works on reminiscences, I have on occasion intentionally omitted the names of people involved or even the entire incident. This is to spare any embarrassment to the people concerned and their families.
Much of the material in this book comes from my books, booklets, files and archival material in my possession. However, there is also a fair amount which I have written from memory and it is thus obvious that errors and confusion can occur.
Although from this book, the reader will get a “bird’s eye view” of my writings, I must stress that this is not a substitute for reading the original material. This is listed together with where it may be found in an Appendix to this book.
I have a number of additional books and booklets in the course of preparation. Since they have not yet been published, I have not even mentioned them in this book. Also, I am continually receiving follow-up communications on already published material. All these things will be incorporated in any future edition of this book that may come out, im yirtse Hashem.
I have entitled this book “Put it on Paper.” I chose this name since many people spend countless hours researching and writing, but because they only write their results on scraps of paper and in addition sometimes just in note form, it eventually finds its way to the genizah or the trash bin. This is a very great pity since others may well benefit from the time and effort spent on this writing. Hence my motto is “Put it on Paper!”