Dear Dr. Lamm, As a member of the Massachusetts delegation you addressed yesterday (and as a YU graduate), I want to thank you for the splendid presentation you gave our group. I assure you that it was as effective as it was forthright and articulate. At our closing session Monday evening, one Conservative and Reform participant after another rose to declare that your speech was the trip's highlight. Said one woman, "Rabbi Lamm was an epiphany." All of us marveled at how clearly superior YU's efforts were to those of the other seminaries. Everyone likes to be taken seriously, and no one could miss the intensity with which you and your colleagues took seriously and in fact shared the goal of our mission: to promote Jewish unity. I have to tell you that as a YU alumnus, I was enormously proud. The result? Reform and Conservative participants were shocked into recognizing how distorted their stereotypes of Orthodox Jews were. (Perhaps we Orthodox members of the group helped a little, too.) But more important: the ideals by which we live commanded new respect by being set forth clearly and without apology. (For example, discussing "patrilineal descent," one Reform woman shook her head and said, "But I thought the Orthodox opposed it just because they wanted to have it their way and not ours. I didn't know there was a law involved.") Our group were concerned ba'alei batim, not radical ideologues; faced with an explanation of halacha, they wanted not to reject it, but to learn more about it. I am sure, Dr. Lamm, that you hoped to accomplish these things, and I just wanted to let you know that, at least as far as this particular group was concerned, you succeeded. Next, of course, you have to host a Unity delegation from Agudas Yisroel and the Chassidim of Munkacs... Meanwhile, we will do our best in Boston to have our leaders follow your example. Once again, thank you. Sincerely, Avi Rockoff

Dear Avi: Many thanks for your letter and the enclosures – all of which I read with much interest and delight. My grandfather, o.b.m., who was also my Rebbe, wrote a couple of sefarim. When another author mailed his work to my grandfather, the latter would respond by sending him a copy of his sefer, and inscribe it: chaburah tachat chaburah... In the same spirit, I enclose a number of recent publications, and will have another one sent to you separately. Keep them coming! NL:ro enclosure 500 West 185th Street, New York, N.Y. 10033 – (212) 960-5280

Dear Rabbi Lamm, I hope you and your family are well. I understand you have a sabbatical coming up, which I hope will turn out to be both restful and productive. My son Ari, who is involved with dormitory administration this year, tells me of many new additions and refurbishings. He even says the food, and especially the shabbos cholent, is awesome. If that isn't a סימן ברכה, I don't know. Best wishes for a כתיבה וחתימה טובה.

Dear Rabbi Lamm: A couple of weeks ago my son Ari told me that he met and spoke with you, and that you had expressed interest in my sending you more of my articles. I frankly wasn’t sure that I might not be imposing on your time by sending them, but of course am flattered and delighted to do so. Most are from the Jewish Advocate, our illustrious local rag. One is a short drasha prepared for the first yahrzeit of Marvin Fox, alav hashalom. The echoes of the Queens Vaad’s ban on women’s shacharit davening are reaching these parts loud and clear. The issue is convulsing our little community and threatening to tear it apart (all in the name of fidelity to tradition or the quest for deeper spirituality, of course). In this polarized atmosphere, a stance of bemused and ironic detachment is useless.

Dear Rabbi Lamm: Today my wife attended a Yom Hashoah commemoration at the Young Israel of Brookline. There she heard a local man quote at length from a Warsaw ghetto memoir “found in a bottle.” It was written by a man named Rackover. This was presented as fact. (One woman asked if we were related.) Am I mistaken in recalling that you once sent me offprints from an essay comparing the theological stances of Hersh Rasseyner and Yossele Rackover, the latter being a fictional creation first published in the Yiddish press after the war? (I forget the name of the author to whom the essay – or was it a volume? – was dedicated.) All the best, Avi Rockoff. P.S. At my son’s graduation on the 22nd, I’ll try to come over and say hello.

Dear Rabbi Lamm, I just wanted to congratulate you on the splendid chag hasemicha this past Sunday. My wife and I were there because Rabbi Samuels was among the inductees, and also because our future mechutanim’s current son-in-law, Akiva Sacknovitz, was too. (Our own son Ari was engaged last week. This is a new, and very pleasant, phase for us.) The speakers were excellent, particularly Ari Berman and Minister Ne’eman, whose presence was obviously of political significance. He was a little hard to hear, but what he had to say was very much to the point. And of course hearing you speak is always a great pleasure. Oratory like yours is really a lost art — I can hardly think of anyone who practices it, in this country anyway. I particularly enjoyed the way you turned the Yosi ben Kisma baraita into a dramatic dialogue, complete with colloquial inflections. Terrific! I also enjoyed the irony of hearing you advocate taking controversial positions (or non-positions), while standing in front of a faculty who presumably thought that’s just what you were doing. I just wonder, though — how many of the new musmachim are actually planning careers in the pulpit? Anyhow, a hearty yasher koach from the out-of-towner. Best wishes to you and your family for a chag kasher v’sameach. Avi Rockoff