Home Home / Letter to R. Eliach Enclosing Article o…

Correspondence

Jan. 2, 1968

Letter to R. Eliach Enclosing Article on Sex Education (1967)

Marriage & Sexuality Jewish Education
View The Text

This content is currently available in its original PDF format. As we expand the library, we plan to add a text version as well.

RELATED CONTENT

Correspondence

Letter to Charlotte Schoen about Her Reaction to "The Role of the Synagogue in Sex Education" (1967)

Dear Mrs. Schoen: Thank you very much for your detailed comments on my lecture on sex education at the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies a week or two ago. Your comments are well taken and thoughtful. I found much to interest me in them. I should like to make clear that I have nothing against those who seek the life of kedushah as a way to mental health, provided that ultimately living practically the regimen of holiness leads them to transcend the quest for mental therapy and to seek spiritual fulfillment. However, to remain at that point whereby one merely uses religion as a tool for mental self-help is to be guilty of arrested development and subversion of the purpose of religion. I therefore find myself in agreement with Mr. Bradshaw concerning immediate methodology, but in ultimate terms, if you permit me to restate my position, mental health is a means to achieve kedushah and not the other way around.Thank you for your comments about a sex education in the public schools, and your confidence in the quality of their efforts. I hope you will be proven right. My own feeling is that even if they perform their tasks to the best of their ability it will not really solve all our problems concerning the role of sex in life and the quality of life itself in this complicated, complex technopolitan society.I very much enjoyed reading the sermonette by your daughter, and especially appreciate her quiet confidence in her Judaism and especially her modesty and yet strength in expressing her faith.Kindest regards,Cordially yours,Rabbi Norman LammRNL/fz
Marriage & Sexuality

Correspondence

Letter to R. Rosenfeld about Integrating Sex Education Into Day School Curriculum (1967)

Dear Lennie: Some time ago I sent you a copy of an article based on a lecture I gave concerning sex education. (If you no longer have a copy, please ask your secretary to ask mine for one.) I feel quite strongly that something ought to be done about the problem. My own very limited experience in education has necessarily circumscribed my involvement in the matter to the theory but I feel intuitively that there's a great educational contribution waiting to be made. Do you think that of the hundreds of underworked and overpaid executives and educationists you have at your beck and call that you can get one person or one committee to look into it? I'm thinking of a method of interlacing sex instruction with both religious and general studies in a truly integrated fashion in Day Schools. Alternatively, you might try a scheme of relating it to Hebrew Studies for afternoon schools and attempt it for all groups from Orthodox through Reform. Sex, after all, cuts across all lines and, at last report, has not been known to be a respecter of denominational boundaries.I would have mentioned the possibility of Rogosin Institute tack-ling the problem, but they have been dragging their feet on less formidable issues. Perhaps you can preempt one or two of their people to work with yours.Do you think it can be done? Think, think. Beter: do!Yours,RABBI NORMAN LAMMRNL/fz
Marriage & Sexuality Jewish Education

Correspondence

Letter from R. Rephun about Programming on Judaism's Views on Sex Education (1968)

Dear Norman: On the question of Sex Education which we discussed over the telephone, it appears to me that we might divide the Sex Education Program into three major parts. As per your your request, the following is a sketchy outline that might serve as a starting point. 1. The Jewish Attitude to Sexuality: This would include modesty, sanctification, arousing undesirable emotions, purity of thought and speech, etc. 2. Reproduction: This would be part of the curriculum, part of the Sex and Health Program, beginning in the lower grades, including the vegetable and animal kingdom until the time human reproduction is reached somewhere in the seventh and eighth grades. Then a program including films and lectures by medical men. 3. Problems Relating to Sex: Such as social relationships, reading matter that is psychologically unhealthy and damaging. Discretion and selectivity in movies. All this based on a very fundamental understanding of the economic and social forces that operate in our society and that transmit a sense of values so diametrically opposed to our own set of values. "How should a Jewish Boy and Girl view these experiences?"If you think this has merit and would like to develop th further, I will be glad to meet with you and work out an experimental program on the subject.With kindest personal regards, I amRSR:ED
Marriage & Sexuality Jewish Education