In 1956, after completing a graduate degree in Pastoral Psychology, Meshullam Zalman Schachter, a Chabad Chassid and Holocaust survivor, took up a post as the B'nai Brith Hillel Director at the University of Manitoba. Before long, the once sleepy B'nai Brith Hillel branch at the University of Manitoba became one of the most active on the continent. Almost from the moment he took up his duties, he began to consider how best to introduce students to davvenen and hitbonenut, the deeper contemplative practices he had learned as a young Chabad-Lubavitcher Chassid, praying and meditating on this until finally he composed a little meditation manual in English called The First Step, perhaps the very first book on Jewish meditation ever written in English. This being the 60th anniversary of the original printing of The First Step ca. 1960, Albion-Andalus Books has decided to issue an anniversary edition of the earliest text with minor corrections.