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Oct. 2, 1985

Endorsement for "Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel" (1985)

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A Personal Memoir: Encouraging Intellectual Independence (1987)

In conversation with one of my associates at Yeshiva University, I recalled two incidents that made a profound impression upon me. It is worth putting them on paper for my own use at some later time. In the early 1960s, when I was participating in the leadership of the drive for an eruv in Manhattan, I first approached the Rav to solicit his opinion. We were sitting in the luncheonette across from the Main Building, and I told him of my plans and asked if he would approve. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know Hilkhot Eruvin. But why wait for me? Study the matter well, and after you feel you have enough information on the subject, make up your own mind and act accordingly.” It so happens that later he did study the matter, and probably came to a negative conclusion on the question of the eruv in Manhattan, but that is irrelevant. What is important is that he encouraged my intellectual independence. Some months later, after we proclaimed the eruv and the Agudas HaRabbonim objected, under the leadership of the late and much-lamented Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rabbi Immanuel Jacobovits and I went to see him in his home in Lakewood. He was very gracious, and his response to our queries was, “But I don’t know Hilkhot Eruvin...” I compare the two stories. Both men were possessed of a high degree of intellectual integrity. They were not afraid to say that they did not know. But there was one difference between them: the Rav encouraged me to intellectual independence as well as integrity – to make up my own mind and act accordingly. No such encouragement came from Rabbi Kotler, whose sense of authority would not permit such openness.
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Article

What Have We Forgotten? (1987)

I am grateful my mother still recognizes me. She may not do so for long, but right now her face lights up when she sees me. My children have less luck; she seems to feel she ought to know them, so she pretends she does. We all see through the act. Her great-grandchildren are another story. She is repeatedly astonished that they even exist. Like most of the others on her floor, she lives in her remote past, both sustained and terrorized by long buried pleasures and fears, loves and hates. She often calls for her mother, and mourns her “recently” deceased parents with genuine grief. Soon these memories, too; will be forgotten, as her malevolent disease destroys more and more of her brain cells. And then all the past will be a blank. The family is helpless to do anything about it. My father and my siblings give her all our love and care, but that is simply not enough. That is the way Alzheimer’s disease goes. The patient has no recollected past, and no conception of or interest in the future. Only the present counts. It is, as someone said, a radically existential situation. My sadness at Mom’s condition and sense of futility, despite the family’s best efforts, are deepened by a suspicion that her sickness is somehow a a metaphor for our culture, for a good part of modernity itself. To live for now, without knowing the value of the past and the promise of the future — that is the skewed experience of an Alzheimer’s society. Mom’s personal travail is our culture’s collective malaise: a physical ailment in one case, a sickness of the soul in the other. All analogies are flawed, and this one is, too. Mom’s condition is different in certain significant ways from the pathology of modernity. For instance, she is obsessed with Friday. She wakes up thinking it is Friday, so she must get out of her wheelchair, rush home to clean the house, prepare the festive Sabbath meals, and light the Sabbath candles. She is convinced that every day is “erev Shabbos,” the eve of the Sabbath…
Biographical Material

Correspondence

Letter to Elie Wiesel about Reserving High-Holiday Seats (1975)

Dear Elie: I am now more determined than ever to overcome whatever it is that is preventing me from enjoying your company on the High Holidays. After our unbelievable experience of last year and the year before, I made sure that Rabbi Wernuth, our Synagogue Director, would make doubly sure that you receive tickets if you requested them for this year. Hence, as soon as your letter was received indicating your desire to be with us, he personally delivered the tickets to your doorman. Since I took him into my confidence and revealed to him that some dark forces from “the other side” were attempting to frustrate our plans, he sent over one of our people with a duplicate set of tickets after services on the first day, when he noticed that you were not present. I suggest now that we keep these same seats reserved for you and your wife for next year, so that there will be no question about them. Should you not be in New York for the holidays, or for any other reason decide that you prefer not to make use of them, please notify us in good time. I hope you will enjoy your year of teaching in Boston, and I trust we shall be able to get together during this coming year. Mindy joins me in best wishes to you and your wife for a – cordially yours, Rabbi Norman Lamm
Biographical Material