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Correspondence

March 1976

Exchange with R. Maurice Schwartz about Allowing a Conservative Rabbi to Give Yavneh Lecture at The Jewish Center (1976)

1. R. Maurice Schwartz to Yavneh

1. R. Maurice Schwartz to Yavneh (March 11, 1976)

1. R. Maurice Schwartz to Yavneh (March 11, 1976)

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Exchange with Rabbi about R. Lamm's Participation at Interdenominational HaDoar Dinner (1967)

Dear Rabbi Lamm: I was chagrined to read that you are scheduled to be one of the “three spiritual leaders of the three streams (zeramim) of Judaism,” as announced by the sponsors. I realize that this letter is in the category of what you chose to designate at the O.U. Convention as a “dull, obsessive litany” and, therefore, a waste of your time and an imposition on your patience. But I am impelled by a sense of duty to point out that this dinner honoring Conservative and Reform ministers, who for years have used their pulpits, the press and the public platform to teach a “Judaism” which repudiates the Torah in whole or in part, is a product of the climate of permissiveness, which has penetrated large segments of the Orthodox Rabbinate and community. I do not doubt that you considered all this before you agreed, in effect at least (certainly not intentionally) to help honor these ministers and their movements in the eyes of many Jews to whom your participation will make Conservative and Reform “Judaism” a little more respectable Jewishly speaking, than if, for example, you would have publicly rejected the invitation for ideological reasons. Nor do I believe that your message at this dinner, even if it should include a clear rejection of your co-honorees’ stand on “Judaism,” will correct the record, because many more people (not present at the affair) will know and remember the fact that you were a co-honoree with the other two, than what you said at the occasion. My letter is only half-finished and already I feel how useless my effort is when I recall that quite unlike your scholarly self, you chose to hurl such inflammatory terms as “red guards” against some of the rightists, instead of dealing with the issue on the merits. Certainly, when I recall that during the Friday night session, you not only chose to ignore and evade the questions I asked from the floor, but you also lectured me publicly on the waste of my alleged talents, I have no reason to expect a bette…
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