Here's an interesting excerpt from a 1964 letter of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Iggeros Kodesh v. 23):
Speaking about manuscripts and so forth as it relates to printing Tanachs, he is saying in the second paragraph that even the German professor Kittel did not change the text of Tanach in his Biblia Hebraica.
I think this is a pretty good illustration of one of the reasons why the Lubavitcher Rebbe so appealed to educated non-Chassidim, and impressed his own Chassidim with his broad knowledge. How many other Rebbes - or Rabbis - have ever even heard of a Biblia Hebraica, let alone know what it is like, let alone know who Kittel was, let alone know who Paul Kahle was, etc? It is somewhat interesting that he is critical of using the Leningrad Codex as its basis - the Artscroll Stone Chumash uses it (see here).
You see he really knew what was going on, and therefore he could have intelligent conversations and communications with all sorts of people about all sorts of things. Unfortunately this is also an example of one of the pitfalls of broad knowledge, for it incorrectly states that the 3rd edition of Biblia Hebraica appeared after the war, whereas it actually appeared in 1937. Also, the truth is that "our mesorah" is really - at best - the second Rabbinic Bible with adjustments by Minchas Shai and other shadings to conform to specific rules and traditions. Kittel's edition certainly wasn't really the 2nd Rabbinic Bible updated for rabbinic Jews.
