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Retrospective Remarks on Choosing a Career

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A Personal Memoir: Encouraging Intellectual Independence (1987)

In conversation with one of my associates at Yeshiva University, I recalled two incidents that made a profound impression upon me. It is worth putting them on paper for my own use at some later time. In the early 1960s, when I was participating in the leadership of the drive for an eruv in Manhattan, I first approached the Rav to solicit his opinion. We were sitting in the luncheonette across from the Main Building, and I told him of my plans and asked if he would approve. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “To tell you the truth, I don’t know Hilkhot Eruvin. But why wait for me? Study the matter well, and after you feel you have enough information on the subject, make up your own mind and act accordingly.” It so happens that later he did study the matter, and probably came to a negative conclusion on the question of the eruv in Manhattan, but that is irrelevant. What is important is that he encouraged my intellectual independence. Some months later, after we proclaimed the eruv and the Agudas HaRabbonim objected, under the leadership of the late and much-lamented Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rabbi Immanuel Jacobovits and I went to see him in his home in Lakewood. He was very gracious, and his response to our queries was, “But I don’t know Hilkhot Eruvin...” I compare the two stories. Both men were possessed of a high degree of intellectual integrity. They were not afraid to say that they did not know. But there was one difference between them: the Rav encouraged me to intellectual independence as well as integrity – to make up my own mind and act accordingly. No such encouragement came from Rabbi Kotler, whose sense of authority would not permit such openness.
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Self-Assessment Notes About First Semester (1976)

The form I have followed for this academic year of 1975-6 is to give my lectures at the beginning of the first semester, and thereafter to have them do the various kinds of work. What we finally settled on was for each one to attempt a kind of satire written by C.S. Lewis in the Screwtape letters, and then I assigned one research project over the whole year, and one Hasbarah paper for each semester. For the second semester, I invited as many guest lecturers as I could, people who had or were working on books in the field. For the second semester, I had invited Meir Schiller (a young Hasid working on a book), Emanuel Rackman, Joseph Telushkin, David Bleich, and possibly Yaakov Jacobs of the Jewish Life. Note the following items that ought to be revised or added to the course: 1. Instead of Hasbarah, be open and use the word, "apologetics." 2. In writing about Apologetics, reference should be made to some of the greatest Christian Apologists, such as C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Belloc, Arnold Lunn (the Catholic). 3. Perhaps I should concentrate more, especially during the first semester, on what others have done. Perhaps assign readings in C.S. Lewis, or Xerox parts of him, from his other works in addition to the Screwtape Letters. The same holds true for three other writers mentioned above. I also should use some of the Orthodox and even non-Orthodox Jewish writers, and criticize their works objectively (include Avigdor Miller, who fails to criticize modern civilization, but just ridicules it instead). 4. The major works of the above apologists are as follows: a) the problem of pain; mere Christianity (these first two are probably his best); the great divorce; the pilgrim's regress (the last two are in the nature of fantasies); and the Screwtape Letters. b) Chesterton: Orthodoxy (a real classic); St. Francis of Assisi. c) Belloc: The French Revolution. d) Lunn: Now I See (his best work); Is Christianity True? Books by the above can be obtained, if unavailabe in New…
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Autobiographical Reflections - Full Interview

Rabbi Lamm is interviewed by Toldot Yisrael.
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