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Correspondence

Dec. 22, 1967

Letter to Eugene Funk about Mystical Experiences and Building a Relationship with God (1967)

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Article for Commentary Symposium (1966)

I have always felt that Shammai’s policy was wiser than Hillel’s in their respective reactions to the Gentile who challenged them to teach him the whole Torah while standing on one foot. It is probably better not to try at all than to risk all the ambiguities that must necessarily attend a condensation of one’s religious outlook to a couple of thousand words. Nevertheless, out of deference to the preference of the Jewish tradition for Hillel, I am willing to take my chances and come armed with naught but naive trust in the reader’s fairness, no matter what his convictions. (1) I believe the Torah is divine revelation in two ways: in that it is God-given and in that it is godly. By “God-given,” I mean that He willed that man abide by His commandments and that that will was communicated in discrete words and letters. Man apprehends in many ways: by intuition, inspiration, experience, deduction – and by direct instruction. The divine will, if it is to be made known, is sufficiently important for it to be revealed in as direct, unequivocal, and unambiguous a manner as possible, so that it will be understood by the largest number of the people to whom this will is addressed. Language, though so faulty an instrument, is still the best means of communication to most human beings. Hence, I accept unapologetically the idea of the verbal revelation of the Torah. I do not take seriously the caricature of this idea which reduces Moses to a secretary taking dictation. Any competing notion of revelation, such as the various “inspiration” theories, can similarly be made to sound absurd by anthropomorphic parallels. Exactly how this communication took place no one can say; it is no less mysterious than the nature of the One who spoke. The divine-human encounter is not a meeting of equals, and the kerygma that ensues from this event must therefore be articulated in human terms without reflecting on the mode and form of the divine logos. How God spoke is a mystery; how Moses receiv…
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Issues of Faith (1967)

The fundamental concept that captures the whole essence of Judaism – the idea of God, the obligations of man to Him, the interdependence of human beings – in one word, is that of mitzvah, commandment. The noun, in its different forms, appears about 180 times in Scripture; in its various verbal forms, perhaps twice that number. This is, of course, only a minor indication of the vast significance of what is apparently so simple an idea. The term mitzvah implies the existence of a Metzaveh – One who commands. The divine Metzaveh must obviously be theistic, i.e., a personal God, not an impersonal deistic or pantheistic deity – only a personal God is sufficiently concerned with men to command them. Mitzvah additionally implies that man lives under obligation to the Metzaveh, and that his life must be regulated in accordance with His express will. Furthermore, the very existence of mitzvah tells us that the will of Metzaveh formulated in the mitzvah was made known to man – hence, some form of revelation had to take place. The derivation of mitzvah from Metzaveh rules out the identification of mitzvah with generalized virtue, which may be self-motivated, a utilitarian ethic, or merely a reflection of contemporary mores. Similarly, it is a distortion of the concept of mitzvah to define it as religious folkways or customs. Folkways may be charming, even very valuable, but they do not presuppose an origin external and transcendental to man – on the contrary, their source is the folk, not God. The Jewish tradition cherishes customs and folkways – at least it values most of them – but takes pains to distinguish between mitzvah and minhag, custom. Despite the prominence given to the latter, it does not supersede the former – at most, it helps guide us to a proper interpretation of the mitzvah.
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Correspondence

Exchange about Faith and Feeling Emptiness (1976)

Dear Rabbi Lamm, Two things are true – 1) I'm not as they say from the letter writers and 2) I wanted to wait a bit before writing you in order to be able to base my observation on a little more that first impression and intuition. This letter has been in the writing since I got here – this time I'm going to give it a real go and hope to actually send you something. My life is so one dimensional here that it shouldn't be hard to know what to write about and yet everything gets so muddled and complicated when looked at closely. School is the center an basically the only element of my life. The learning is excellent – the course of study has been very well thought out and the program includes enough variety both in terms of material covered and the inevitable slant perspective on it by the individual teachers that I don't get bored or find the classes tedious. Also I've been very fortunate – my roommate is a wonderful person and we've become close friends. As it happens she's also my havrusa and has helped me adjust to the learning as well as the living here. Actually we're a threesome – a third friend completes our group. We share a lot and right now a major part of our energy is involved with the developing of a puppet theatre. It began as a Purim spiel but is now taking on much greater proportion. I'll let you know just how successful we are in this endeavor as time goes on. Time has become an interesting phenomenon to me – in so many ways I feel as though I've been here always and yet I feel as though the time is passing by very quickly. At first I was on something on a high – everything was perfect – it was the best of all possible worlds 2/2 collide. That of course could never last and was followed by an inevitable down period. I think right now things are stabilizing out and I'll be able to live on more neutral ground. I've been bombarded with such a multitude of concepts and the attempt to comprehend them and their subtleties and their subsequent relevance to…
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