Letter from R. Shafner Thanking R. Lamm for Inspiration Over the Years (1998)
Dear Rabbi Lamm: I am a musmach of RIETS and attended my Chag Hasmicha this year. I just wanted to let you know how your words have inspired me over the last ten years, which I spent in Yeshiva College, RIETS, Wurzweiler, and the Bernard Revel Graduate School. Your intellectual honesty and your messages of dignity and balance, vehement centrism, and love of all Jews have profoundly impressed themselves on my thinking and my rabbinate. My gratitude goes out to you and to the Yeshiva and University which you have steered these many years. You may remember that we spoke before I went off to be the Rabbi of India for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Bombay after receiving my Semicha, MA, and MSW three years ago. I am presently the Rabbi of the St. Louis Hillel Center at Washington University in St. Louis, a wonderful institution with a large and passionate staff and a very active Jewish student body. It is exactly what I have been looking for, and the fulfillment of guiding and teaching Jewish students, faculty, and staff knows no bounds. My best wishes for a freeing Pesach and a Chag Kasher V’Sameach.