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Correspondence

October 1971

Exchange with Michael Tabor about Chabad Discourse on Reconciling Divine Omnipotence and Free Will (1971)

General Jewish Thought

1. R. Lamm to Michael Tabor

1. R. Lamm to Michael Tabor (Oct. 15, 1971)

1. R. Lamm to Michael Tabor (Oct. 15, 1971)

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Correspondence

Exchange with Michael Tabor about Chabad and Jews in Yugoslavia (1971)

Dear Rabbi Lamm, I trust you are well and hope after this long absence you have not forgotten about me. Very much has happened in the last nin months so that really I don't know where to begin. There is so much I want to say about my experiences in Yugoslavia and my inner growth and development that perhaps I must save it up until I meet you one day. I hope to be in New York in the summer to see the Rebbe and perhaps I’ll see you then.I thought you may be interested in a summary of the report about the Yugoslavian trip that I made for WUJS and a copy of a short letter I wrote to the Rebbe just after I returned. We still keep in touch and WUJS is sending another group this year. My memories are so exhilarating but sad. My experiences were stimulating to an unimaginable degree and yet when I reflect especially on the situation of the 2 Czech students and 6 Rumanians and the look in their eyes when we finally said farewell, I feel terribly spiritually on edge, a numbness, a feeling of insignificant impotence. The discussions I had late at night with a most refined sensitive soul from Zagreb who was so ashamed about his ignorance of Judaism; the mature student from Sarajevo who was born amongst Tito's partisans in the woods and had hadno Bris etc., etc., all these memories fill me with both joy and sadness. I'll have to writ a book one day. Even now when I talk about what was also a wonderful holiday, I soon become high and talk with Hislahavus about Klall Yisrael.I also enclose a little article I had published about Chabad. It was in response to a rather negative letter that the editor asked me to reply to in 250 words. My involvement with Chabad has developed slowly but surely since I last wrote to you. The more I learn for myself in the original Yiddish and Hebrew texts, the more I became amazed about the depths that exist within the Jewish tradition. In fact I feel annoyed that for so long I was deprived of the philosophy and poetic approach of Chabad. One hears so…
General Jewish Thought

Correspondence

Exchange with Michael Tabor about Halacha, Morality, and Building a Relationship with God (1969)

Dear Rabbi Lamm, I have time just for a short note to extend to you and your family the season's greetings. This period since I saw you has truly been one of turmoil. About [redacted] whom I believe you met while you were in Israel – well, apparently she has turned out to be the exceptional student of this new sem for mature girls (Oy vey!). It is still in the balance with all the agonizing uncertainty that that involves... didn't know that a strong healthy young man like me could suffer so much emotionally from waiting for the lady of my choice. Anyway, I suppose one must have patience for the fairer sex and realise that virtue is not only on one side. She knows I am a bit eccentric and I think it is worrying her whether to take the jump of marriage. All women I suppose want security. Time will indeed tell and in the meantime we both suffer – such is life.Next September I am going to Sheffield to do a post grad diploma in education – a must here after 1972 if one wants to teach in a state school. After that I'll have to wait and see. My stay in N.Y. did not solve all my internal problems and altho' I gained something very special from my yechidus and attending the vabrengen, I still have to relate to the dilemma of my own life. I can't and don't want to shake off my secular skin and adapt an east european weltanshaung and I don't mean this is a pejorative sense. Its difficult to explain in words but thank G'd my Lubavitch friends understand to a degree otherwise I would not be faced with an unbearable either-or dilemma of identity. For the moment I am quiet and keep in the background as much as possible. I think living away in Sheffield will do me good – it will be a challenge in more ways than one and make me more aware of what I am.I received a letter today from my teacher Rav Carmel who is now in Jerusalem and has set up together with a Rabbi Horovitz a special yeshiva for western type students. He mentioned about the effects of dew years of solid learning woul…
General Jewish Thought

Correspondence

Exchange with R. Hollander about Free Will, Miracles, and Nature (1966)

After three sessions I finally finished your piece in the recent Tradition and was much inspired by it as I have been from your other mighty articles. יישר כח for your endeavor to articulate those fundamentals of Yahadut, and may we very soon see you assuming the lofty position of one of our foremost spokesmen – a position which will recognize the זכויות of our time. There was one passage in your piece which does an injustice to traditional מדרשים, in my opinion, and I trust you will forgive me. On p. 39 you write that a מדרש on “motivation at the very beginning of His formation after the initial act of Creation is to attribute to Him an inconsistency.” This statement says that the saintly מדרש has attributed to Him an absurd inconsistency. For the מדרש in בראשית רבה denounces any attempts to interpret the six days as anything but literal 24-hour days. Furthermore, different rates of acceleration in טבע do not represent inconsistency. You may have the impression that מדרשים are slightly absurd. You might be interested to read the ספר נזר הקודש of R. Eliezer Lipman (עמוד א׳ סימן קכ״ד סעיף ו׳ וסימן קכ״ו סעיף ט׳) which clarifies the subject considerably. בברכת התורה, Ort. Hollander, St. Louis
General Jewish Thought