Dear Joe:

I feel it only right that you be informed in advance of a position I shortly expect to embrace publicly.

As Directors of the UOJCA, we are bound by the pro-Administration policy on Vietnam, as voted at our last national convention.

Since that time, a great deal has happened to make me feel that I am not only out of sympathy with our official position, but that I am impelled by conscience to speak out against it. Moreover, I am deeply distressed by the raucous hawkishness of certain Orthodox organizations who have left the impression that a pro-Johnson position on Vietnam is another test of one's loyalty to Torah. I always was disdainful of those Reform and Conservative men who identified an anti-Vietnam policy with "Judaism," and I feel no less impatient with the primitive anti-Communism of certain Orthodox organizations that do just the reverse.

I once believed that Vietnam was a political-military issue of such technical nature that we ordinary citizens could not hope to gather sufficient significant information to pass judgment intelligently on it. But obviously, Vietnam has now become the central moral issue of our times. One need not raise an anti-Johnson position on Vietnam to the level of a religious dogma in order to feel that the lives of all Americans are profoundly affected by the issue of Vietnam, and that this whole dirty mess is sucking all of us into it inexorably and irrevocably.

The argument that a dovish statement by Jews on Vietnam will harm Israel’s case in Administration circles is unconvincing. If, during last June’s war, Israel would have needed military intervention by the U.S., it could not have received it because of American over-commitment in Asia.

For Orthodox leadership opposed to escalation in Vietnam to continue their silence is wrong on two counts. First, considering the dimensions of the problem, it is morally incumbent upon us to speak out without, at the same time, arrogating to our Vietnam position the authority of Judaism's final view or “daat Torah.” We ought to announce our position without any spurious claims to representing more Jews than we do. Secondly, by holding our peace now we allow Agudath Israel and the Agudas Harabbonim to speak for all the rest of us. That is indefensible. They have the right to their opinion, but I cannot in good conscience allow the impression to prevail that they speak for me as well in identifying Orthodox Judaism with the hawk stance on Vietnam. I am in fundamental disagreement with it, and I am embarrassed by the image of Orthodoxy that they project.

It is for these reasons that I cannot continue to support the position adopted by the UOJCA, and must, privately and publicly, disassociate myself from the “Orthodox hawks” and plead for deescalation in Vietnam.

I would feel much happier if you, as President of UOJCA, were to prevail on the Directors to nullify the resolution of the convention and, at the very least, to refrain from taking any position on Vietnam.

Cordially yours,

Rabbi Norman Lamm

RNL/fz

bc: Charles Liebman

Walter S. Wurzburger

Larry Kobrin

Prof. Marvin Schick – Bklyn Coll –

M. Lamm