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Correspondence

April-July 2007

Exchange with Dr. Leon Kass about "Science, Religion, and the Human Future" (2007)

General Jewish Thought Biographical Material

1. R. Lamm to Dr. Leon Kass

1. R. Lamm to Dr. Leon Kass (Apr. 24, 2007)

1. R. Lamm to Dr. Leon Kass (April 24, 2007)

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An Interview with Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, Cont. (2008)

The doctrine of am hanivchar – the election or chosenness of Israel – has been glorified and condemned, but mostly misunderstood, for the greater part of our history. Some have dismissed it with contempt and infamously compared it to the Nazi idea of the Herrenvolk; others have exaggerated its particularity as thoroughly genetic in nature; and yet others have diluted it to just about the point of making the notion both pointless and meaningless. Few other ikkarim, major principles of Judaism, have been subjected to such distortion. The comparison to the foul ideology of Aryan racial superiority is a vicious canard that has been with us since the Enlightenment, but ratcheted up since the appearance of mass antisemitism in the twentieth century. The non-ideological discomfort that some modern Jews feel is more of a social nature – “what will my non-Jewish neighbors think of me/us when they hear of this boast?” – and underlies a good deal of the embarrassment with the am hanivchar idea. Not far removed from this concern is its enfeeblement and eventual excision from the prayer book and educational material by many liberal–modernist Jewish groups. Equally fallacious, if less deplorable, is the interpretation of chosenness in some Haredi and especially Hasidic circles, namely, that Jews are religiously and spiritually superior to the rest of mankind and that this pre-eminence is genetically determined. Placing the concept on a biological basis is good for the collective ego but is poor scholarship and untrue to our sacred texts. The doctrine of election is accepted by all great Jewish thinkers but not necessarily to the same degree. Thus, Rambam and a number of other Sephardic scholars accepted it but did not give it the prominence accorded by others. Rambam does not include it in his Ani Ma’amins. Others, from Yehudah Halevi to the Maharal to the Tanya to Rav Kook, gave it an especially high place in the hierarchy of Jewish precepts. But even those who did not emphasiz…
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Exchange with Dr. Ratner about the Jewish Perspective on Population Growth (1972)

Dear Rabbi Lamm, Will you be good enough to write a guest comment on the enclosed article by Rabbi Jakobovits? Am also enclosing two recent reprint booklets which may be of interest. With kindest regards. Yours, Herbert Ratner, M.D., Editor. P.S: I haven't had an opportunity to answer your last letter as yet – but will soon get to it. Thanks for the Rabbis’ Statement on Abortion. Have just discovered Frederic Wertham's The Sign of Cain. He has two good chapters on the Malthus Myth and Euthanasia which we hope to reprint in Child and Family.
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Letter to Dr. Eckstein about His Article on Religion, Science, and Naturalism (1967)

Dear Jerry: Thanks for your undelayed response and the reprints. On the premise that a philosopher cherishes honesty over courtesy, I do hope you will forgive my remarks. After reading your letter, I was going to reaffirm my respect for psychiatry – though by no means my unreserved adulation of Freud and his followers. However, I then read one of jour articles, "The Fall and Rise of Man," and decided to react only briefly – you are quite right about my being quite busy, especially in this season. I find, Jerry, that, as I have always suspected, you are brilliant, but that you suffer from the same defects as do Reik and others of this school. You have weaved an elaborate web of theory based on Freud, Reik, Fromm, and an eclectic study of genesis (its "myths"), and you conclude with a lecture to unrepentant theologians who still seek to protect "religion" against "science" and remain closed to your triumphant version of naturalism which will, no doubt, conquer all. If I’ve put it somewhat crudely, it’s only to emphasize my feeling that this is a case of hubris (not personal, of course) if I’ve ever seen one.Does your Reikian reconstruction of the ”rise”of man really qualify as ”science?” Do you really believe that only the benighted theolo-glans ** especially those of us who still cling to old Biblical "myths" — are disdained by ”scientists?" Certainly you are aware that, without at all deprecating psychiatry, a good case can be made out for psychoanalysis being "unscientific•”Frankly, your analysis **and I had the same feeling when reading Reik’s essays (in German) on tefillin and shofar -* is a superb derashah. with no more authentic claim on ״science'1 than any good sermon or fanciful pilpul can claim to be peshat. The major differ* ence is that when I preach a "gut vort',’ or elaborate a pilpul — No. 1: I know it isn't academically accurate; No.2: I have no pre* tenses as to its scientific validity; No.3: I don't attempt to give it the appearance of scientific va…
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