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Correspondence

March 10, 1953

Letter to R. Soloveitchik about Opening a Pre-School (1953)

Jewish Education
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Talk to Day School P.T.A. of Yeshivah Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik (1959)

Story of the eleventh speaker with one man left in audience – who says, "I am the twelfth speaker." 2) Story of minister and suspender buttons and cough drops. One of the functions of a P.T.A. is that every member become a missionary to friends and neighbors who have young children, bearing to them the noble message of the day school movement. We must each be super-salesmen. Every idea goes through three stages – a) when it is ridiculed and ignored, b) when it is fought, c) when it vanquishes. We are now in the second stage. We have come to be respected and resisted. Therefore, in order to fulfill this function properly, we must know how to answer the skeptic – as our rabbis commanded us. This training in how to meet the questioning challenger has two purposes – a) so as to convince the person you are encountering, and b) for chizuk, for strengthening your own convictions. There are generally three main arguments presented against the day school system of education. 1) Value-free education. "I want my child to choose by himself." The enormity of this fallacy makes it almost impossible to meet the question head-on. Abdication of parental responsibility would never be tolerated with regard to general education – or hygiene, or morality. In Jewish tradition, freedom of choice is meaningless in a state of ignorance. Only a person who knows the facts can make an intelligent choice. Otherwise what may seem to be a free choice is really merely the result of being abutted by ignorance and prejudice. 2) "I don't want my child to be a rabbi." To a layman that argument may not be too offensive, but it always rubs a rabbi the wrong way. Parents generally take attitudes of "my best friends are rabbis." a) Colleague in Boston put in bulletin a fictitious letter by parent to principal of schools complaining that she didn’t want her child to learn how to brush his teeth in hygiene class because "I don’t want to make a dentist out of my child." b) This is a statement based upon a p…
Jewish Education

Correspondence

Letter to Meyer Levin about Providing His Son with a Jewish High School Education (1967)

Dear Mr. Levin: It has come to my attention that you have moved into the neighborhood. As the Rabbi of a nearby Synagogue, and having met you privately, permit me to extend to you the hand of welcome and to wish you and your family a very pleasant and fruitful stay. I have been told that you have a 14 year old son whose Jewish education you will probably want to provider for while in New York. May I therefore inform you that Manhattan Hebrew High School meets in The Jewish Center building and provides quite advanced classes for young men and women of high school age. If you are interested, as I suppose you will be, please do be kind enough to contact me at the above number, or please call the principal, Rabbi P. Oratz, at SC 4-2700 between 4:00-5:00 P.M. any day.Sincerely yours,RABBI NORMAN LAMM
Jewish Education

Correspondence

Letter to Jakob Michael about the Need for Religious Education in Kiryat Shmuel (1973)

Dear Mr. Michael: I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the spirit in which you responded to my request to cable Mayor Teddy Kolek, and for the cable itself. The problem has developed into a cause celebre, and since I talked with you I have seen photos and articles in the Israeli press about it. Actually, I am in a way acquainted with the problem first-hand. During the semi-Sabbatical I spent in Jerusalem, we lived in the neighborhood in which the religious parents are now seeking a Mamlakhti-Dati school. My own children had to walk long distances to get to school and back. Despite Jerusalem's generally good bus system, there were no connections between Rehavia and the major religious schools closest to us. And the area the children had to traverse was one that was chocked with traffic during the very times the children had to walk to school. Anyone acquainted with Israeli drivers knows what that means! It is obvious, from all that I have read about the situation and from my personal contacts, that religious education is not favored by the authorities who are themselves not committed to it -- and Kolek belongs in this group. (In the latest issue of Panim-el-Panim, the editor, who has long been antagonistic to the Mizrachi, had a major editorial complaining about the discrimination against religious education in Israel, and the current problem with this school was the major case in point.) Two of the people who are in the forefront of the struggle to get a religious school in the area are Naomi and Ben Zion Hochstien. They are American Olim, highly cultured, genuine Zionists, non-political, and people of moderate disposition. He is a businessman, she is a lawyer. I have known them and admired them for years. I enclose the letter I just received from them (please return it after you have read it). As you will see, it is unfortunate that your cable was not able to change the situation, and even more regretful that the Mapai people are able to use the small-…
Jewish Education