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Speech

1985

Draft for Address at the Convention of the RCA (1985)

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Speech

Past, Present, and Future - A Jubilee Perspective (1985)

A jubilee anniversary for an institution no less than for an individual is an occasion for brooding reflection. It is a time for both retrospective and prospective assessment, for pulling out of the hurly‑burly of daily events and viewing one's life from a wider perspective than is usually given to us. I shall therefore take this opportunity of the fiftieth birthday of the RCA to reflect on our current situation according to the paradigm of the three tenses – Past, Present, and Future. I intend to speak not about the R.C.A in these three time segments, but rather to analyze how we have gone about handling these tenses themselves. Let us begin with our host culture – the U.S.A. In its politics, its technology, and especially its psychology, America is a Future‑oriented culture. Hence, its emphasis on youth – even in a period when its population is aging and should be more concerned with geriatrics than pediatrics. Its greatest strength is: the Present. The mightiest (and most benevolent) power in the world, it is thoroughly immersed in the here‑and‑now. It is pragmatic, empirical, and business‑like.However, its great weakness is — the Past. Because of its relatively brief history — a mere 210 years — America's valuation of its past as a factor in the Present, its historical consciousness, is remarkably tenuous and deficient. In a sense, it is still a pioneer country eager to throw off the shackles of the Old World and build a new one. Consider this: What for an ordinary American child is early history — the 1770's — is for a Jewish school-child late Jewish history, the period of the Acharonim!2The most poignant and painful illustration of this characteristic American insensitivity to history is the incredible brouhaha of the Reagan administration — not of one man, an honorable and decent President, but a whole team of so-called experts — because they did not appreciate events of only 40 years ago, events of the most recent past. The President wanted to forget the P…
Orthodoxy & Other Denominations Modern Orthodoxy & the Charedim Who Is a Jew?

Article

Position Paper for Remaining in Synagogue Council of America (1974)

Five years ago I was asked to submit, to a special study panel of the Orthodox Union, a draft of the reasons why we ought not to secede from the Synagogue Council. I now have been asked to do so again. As I look over my paper of 1969, I am convinced I can let almost the whole thing stand as is. Indeed, it is depressing how little things have changed – and how caught up we are in a nexus of inconsequentiality! It seems to be the fate of Orthodoxy, at least in this country, that its major battles are fought over matters of little or no genuine significance. We have allowed truly important matters to be bypassed, and have chosen what are, relatively speaking, trivialities on which to stage our strongest stands. The Orthodox Union, as a more or less centrist group, seems peculiarly afflicted by this penchant for the petty. Once again we are evoking great principles – and wasting precious time and risking wounded pride and injured feelings – on an issue which is of concern as a symbol, but unimportant substantively. From everything that I have heard about the Synagogue Council of America (SCA), it has a limited scope of activity. It is not the kind of organiza-tion which will seriously affect the destiny of Torah and American Jewry one way or another. I do not by any means wish to deprecate the value of SCA. It has its place in the community and its functions to perform. In the course of the past several years I have intermittently accepted some assignments from the SCA, and have had occasion to observe its activities and, in most cases, to admire its efficiency and its adherence to the principles upon which the Ortho-dox groups have conditioned their affiliation with it. But it certainly does not appear to me to be worthy of the dissension it has produced in our ranks. We will survive with it, and without it. It is almost farcical how we have succeeded in making a “tzimmes” yesh me’ayin.Nevertheless even insignificant issues must be met if they are thrust upon us agai…
Orthodoxy & Other Denominations

Correspondence

Exchange with Dr. Avi Rockoff about Speaking to Cross-Denominational Group (1987)

Dear Dr. Lamm, As a member of the Massachusetts delegation you addressed yesterday (and as a YU graduate), I want to thank you for the splendid presentation you gave our group. I assure you that it was as effective as it was forthright and articulate. At our closing session Monday evening, one Conservative and Reform participant after another rose to declare that your speech was the trip's highlight. Said one woman, "Rabbi Lamm was an epiphany." All of us marveled at how clearly superior YU's efforts were to those of the other seminaries. Everyone likes to be taken seriously, and no one could miss the intensity with which you and your colleagues took seriously and in fact shared the goal of our mission: to promote Jewish unity. I have to tell you that as a YU alumnus, I was enormously proud. The result? Reform and Conservative participants were shocked into recognizing how distorted their stereotypes of Orthodox Jews were. (Perhaps we Orthodox members of the group helped a little, too.) But more important: the ideals by which we live commanded new respect by being set forth clearly and without apology. (For example, discussing "patrilineal descent," one Reform woman shook her head and said, "But I thought the Orthodox opposed it just because they wanted to have it their way and not ours. I didn't know there was a law involved.") Our group were concerned ba'alei batim, not radical ideologues; faced with an explanation of halacha, they wanted not to reject it, but to learn more about it. I am sure, Dr. Lamm, that you hoped to accomplish these things, and I just wanted to let you know that, at least as far as this particular group was concerned, you succeeded. Next, of course, you have to host a Unity delegation from Agudas Yisroel and the Chassidim of Munkacs... Meanwhile, we will do our best in Boston to have our leaders follow your example. Once again, thank you. Sincerely, Avi Rockoff
Orthodoxy & Other Denominations