Dear Rabbi Lamm: Thank you for entrusting to me the advance copy of the booklet. I hope you will not infer from the paucity of criticism that my reading has been perfunctory; most of the themes are familiar from your earlier presentations, and they, like the ideas I had not previously heard from you, are impeccably articulated. Minor editorial comments – phrases that sound better than they read, asides that would best appear as footnotes – I have indicated in the margins of the manuscript. One point of substance regarding our ḥeshbon ha-nefesh: I think you underestimate the extent to which the Right will allege, not without basis, a slackness in our midst with respect to everyday kiyyum ha-mitsvot, recitation of berakhot, etc. (see David Berger’s comments in the Tradition symposium of 1981). When I think of people to my Left, I think less of writers like Yitz Greenberg than of many ba‘alei batim whose lack of passion does not stop at discouraging their children from becoming klei kodesh. There is, of course, another side: our community has welcomed the nominally Orthodox and semi-Orthodox into our schools and shuls. If we are compromised by the laxity noted above, it is because we do not make such people uncomfortable in our shuls and because we do not check the tzitziot of every day school applicant (I am informed that at least one prominent yeshiva ketanah in Brooklyn declines to admit children if one parent graduated Yeshiva of Flatbush). A rabbi I respect recently asked me whether I would not be happier if YU were more elitist religiously in its recruitment policy, so that I could be sure our students all embodied the ideals I would want them to project. I explained that our outlook discourages both rigid separation from the ambiguously committed and the creation of an overly protective hothouse environment for those within our walls. Insofar as the Right often holds us responsible for the failings of such members and students, I think it is incumbent upon us t…