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October 19, 1975

Jewish Birthrate and Survival (1975)

Marriage & Sexuality
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Speech

Judaism and the Moral Revolution (1970)

In discussing the setback in personal relationships in contemporary life, mention the scene in ״The Bald Soprano,” by Eugene Ionescu: A man meets a woman, engages her in polite conversation, and they discover to their surprise that they came into New York on the same train from New Haven that morning. Further conversation reveals that they live at the same address on Fifth Avenue. As time goes on, they leam further that they share the same apartment and have the same seven year old daughter. Husband and wife meet, never having known each other beforre. Thus: Lo tov heyot ha-adam levado . Marriage has as one of its two goals affectionate companionship, the banishment of anomie and alienation, not levado. In further discussion of code morality add, that without code morality we have nothing. But does that mean that once we do ob-serve the rules, that Paradise will materialize, that automatically there will become love and "meaningful personal relationships?"No, obviously not. The case for code morality can not be based on illusion or propaganda. First, love and relationship are certainly cherished in Judaism, but not as the highest goal. People who for psychological or cultural reasons can not be "turned on" are no less valuable, nor is their life any less meaningful. Human beings who have made the greatest contribution to history have not necessarily been those who have developed deep relationships. One of the secular saints of our time was Albert Schweitzer. Yet a woman who worked as a nurse with him, volunteering to bexvk סיץ \,Av*\q told me a couple of years ago that she never saw a more dedicated man -- and a colder, more tyrannical and impersonal human being. He gave his life for others, and treated those others in a patron-izing and condescending fashion. Is Schweitzer to be condemned to the limbo of those who could not live up to the misunderstanding of Buber’s I-Thou? (Mention Ramban on ve-ahavta le-relakha kamo-kha -- that it is haflaeah to expect it in the…
Marriage & Sexuality

Article

Rabbi Calls Jews Endangered Species (1975)

The Southern Jewish Weekly/Rochester, Minn./Rabbi Calls Jews Endangered Species, Urges Couples To Have Four To Five Children/By Ben Gollab JTA Correspondent. A leading Orthodox rabbi, describing Jews as an endangered species, has proposed that Jewish couples have between four and five children “not only to maintain our numbers but to increase our numbers.” The proposal was made by Rabbi Norman Lamm of New York in an address to an institute on the changing Jewish family sponsored by the Jewish Family and Children’s Service in Milwaukee. Rabbi Lamm has proposed steps he says are needed for “the restabilization and reintegration of the shaky, fractured Jewish family.”Noting that demographers generally place at 2.1 children per family the number needed to maintain a group, he says Jewish couples should have between two and three children to maintain the Jewish population and another one or two children to assure its increase.At the present time, he declared, American Jews have reached not only zero population growth but a demographic attrition “which places our future under a question mark.” He said that if we apply the concept of endangered species to animals like the buffalo and the American eagle, he said, why not “to important groups in the human species?”Even from “a purely universal humanistic perspective,” he asserted, “we are under a tremendous obligation to preserve the Jewish people for civilization—that can be done only by increasing our population growth.”Rabbi Lamm told the Federation luncheon that “in the effort to restore family life among American Jews to what it once was, or to what we would like it to be,” there must be the elements of love, a commitment “to a transcendental ideal”; a “reassertion of the teaching role by parents”; and grandparents “who will be honored and cherished.”He said the American Jewish family “desperately needs” grandparents as part of the family to serve as “living models of continuity.” He called unfortunate the fact that, i…
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Synagogue Sermon

The New Morality and the Crisis in the Jewish Family (1973)

Norman Lamm, Rabbi of the Jewish Center in New York City and Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University, will be exploring an area of immediate concern, the Jewish family and how it is being affected by movements now referred to in the terms of Youth, the New Morality, and Alternate Life Styles. Dr. Lamm is the author of several works including "A Hedge of Roses", "Jewish Insights Into Marriage and Married Life", "Faith and Doubt" and "The Royal Reach." He has traveled widely, lecturing
Marriage & Sexuality