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Correspondence

Nov. 16, 1969

Letter from Michael Tabor about Music and Jewish Thought in England (1969)

General Jewish Thought
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Letter from Michael Tabor about Synthesizing Educational Disciplines and Music (1970)

Dear Rabbi Lamm, I trust you are well. I was reading over my last letter to you recently, and I felt perhaps it was rather aggressive and even a little rude. I apologise and I hope this is not the reason you have not yet replied. Besides the Lubavitcher Rebbe, you are one of the few rabbis I can respect and to whom I can look for some guidance and inspiration. Intellectually I am very lonely here in England. Without intending to be arrogant, I am able to talk with scientists about science, philosophers about philosophy, Halakhists about Talmud and halakhah, and artists about art. But I also want someone who can correlate and synthesise all these disciplines into one magnificent unity. Am I expecting too much?I do not know if I mentioned that I have composed some music which is an expression of my experiences over the last few years. I have been told that in parts it sounds like Bartók and in others like Stravinsky! I would love to arrange it for a quartet or quintet. I have an especially lovely theme for the cellos and violas floating about at the back of my mind. There is only one catch: I do not have the technical know-how to notate and arrange the music.This again illustrates the point that it is not enough to have intuitions and feelings. There is a need also for a discipline, a technique and ability to express one's true potential. Only in this way can it become manifest. Similarly with Halacha and the discipline of daily living.I just don't have time to study music really seriously. One cannot do everything one would like to, but even this doesn’t mitigate the frustration. The only consolation is that I can play my piece, which is still in a state of flux over four basic themes, on my violin and my sister's viola.I hope it is not an imposition asking you to write when you have time. I again apologise if I was rude. I am an angry young man, but I hope not for a lost cause!ntn
General Jewish Thought

Correspondence

Letter from Michael Tabor about Sheffield Trip (1972)

Dear Rabbi Lamm, greetings from Sheffield! I trust you and your family are well. I am settling into my new environment and am enjoying it. Two years ago Yugoslavia, last year N.Y., this year Israel, now Sheffield! I hope the constant movement between such different worlds will be a creative process and experience. Sheffield is a beautiful town in the Midlands with small but highly Jewish community. Many things that have been dormant within me now become more active once I have removed from any town past a few academies. The nature of provincial impossibility of pursuing committed orthodox Halacha is the problem to experience if it is isolated. Even more familiar milieu especially if the surrounding activities are not by any means completely unattractive. I won’t bore you with the obvious dilemmas but it has made me acutely aware of the significance of the policies of Torah while we miss sufficient services to live in a complete physical and mental growth…
General Jewish Thought

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Letter from Michael Tabor about Yarmulkes in Public, Language, Intellectual Growth, and Music (1973)

My dear Reb Lamm, Shalom! Greetings from London! I have been home for 3 weeks and back north to Sheffield on the seventh, for another 12 week stint. My first teaching practice was, according to my tutor, a baptism of fire! My school (10-11 yr) was in an Education Priority area with 40% immigrants... Many are the tales I could tell you: my experience of what the anthropologists call culture shock – Kfar Chabad then Sheffield!! Suffice, however, one incident which for me is one of the stories of my T.P.Compromise is an inevitable reality that we, as human beings, living as we do in an as yet unredeemed world, are vulnerable to. Well being the sort of Tzaddik that I am(!) I decided that I would wear my kippa at school even though I was warned by well wishers, as well as members of staff, that I was looking for trouble; did I realize the class I was going to take ect ect,.Anyway an the first day, before I took the register I told the class that I would explain why I wear this little black hat at all times. They all accepted it and then one Jamaican girl put up her hand and asked most innocently 'Does that mean Mr Tabor, you are not a catholic!? I had plenty of other problems but none on this score. It was, in retrospect, more an education for me than them and really a wonderful exercise in coming down to earth, to metzamzam my thought and speech. I only hope that my next school stint of 8 weeks in an industrial steel area is o.k. I enclose a copy of a letter sent to me by one of the girls in my class. She was a real richtige.....! I think it is worth more than a long tutor’s recommendation. Intellectually I have been very stimulated by the academic side of the course. It has given me an opportunity to read about what interests me. I am absolutely fascinated by Piaget's research into the growth of concepts within the child's mind and the vital importance of language both as a means of communication and a tool for intellectual growth. Often I wait to shout out: yes, of c…
General Jewish Thought