Dear Abe, I am putting into letter form, special delivery, some of the thoughts I tried to express over the phone this morning. When the new J.P.S. translation was first announced I did not share the alarm of some of our fellow Orthodox Rabbis. At most, I felt slightly revolted by the cheap publicity. However, I now have some authentic information, in advance of the official publication, that is genuinely alarming and that, I believe, requires immediate action by the R.C.A. which has, at the last Executive Meeting, referred the matter to the Publications Commission for a report in March. I recommend that the commission, or preferably a specialized sub-committee of it, report before February 14th, which is the official publication date for the book.The information came to me from a lay scholar who is an observant Jew and who attended a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. (I ask you to keep this particular aspect confidential since I do not want to be revealed to the others.) At this occasion, Prof. \[name omitted] regaled his learned audience with contemptuous references to Orthodox Jewry to which he referred as "the lunatic fringe." He maintained that the restraint the translators felt on their account during the preparation of Genesis was almost completely abandoned by the time they reached Deuteronomy.The major departures from the Masoretic tradition should be sought in footnotes throughout the text which refer the reader to "superior readings" in the Samaritan, Vulgate, and—I believe—Septuagint translations.I would like to refer you and the committee to a particular verse which, according to my informant, can best serve as a criterion for loyalty or disloyalty to the Masorah. That is in Genesis 10:10 where four cities are mentioned, in the land of Shinar, as being in the kingdom of Nimrod. Biblical scholars have identified the first three, but have not excavated the fourth, identified in the Bible as Kalach.Non-Masoretic exegetes have the…

Dear Milton: Many thanks for sending me Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning," which I just received this morning. I hope to read it carefully, and return it to you when I am done. If you are in a hurry to have it returned, please let me know. Otherwise, I would like to take my time with it, especially in light of the review that you wrote.It was really a pleasure seeing you and Ruth at the wedding in Springfield, and I hope that the two of you and your daughter will have a year of health and happiness, and of great progress on all fronts.Mindy sends her best.Cordially yours, Rabbi Norman Lamm

Dear Rabbi: Due to the wide gap of our numbers in comparison with the other so-called monolithic faiths it appears wise policy to stress quality and diminish the importance of numbers in an open forum such as you did in your sermon in your usual superb manner last Saturday. However, in the light of Torah, knowledgeable people must be deeply concerned about numbers and bend all efforts to find out where in the past we failed to carry out the first part of the covenant between G–d and Abraham which reads as follows: “Look now toward the Heaven and count the stars, if thou be able to count them and said unto him, so shall thy seed be.” Evidently this means numbers. Then G–d said “I will make of thee a great nation. I will bless thee” etc. which also implies quality. Our Creator was concerned with numbers for it is he who ordered the census to be taken. G–d also gave us all the guidance in His Torah to acquire both numbers and quality in which, in the past, we apparently failed by omission at numbers. You are right. Dialogues with Christianity will serve no useful purpose because we are almost 2000 years too late for that. We are urgently in need of serious and constant dialogues between the learned and wise of our people to elicit the points of Torah which lead to accomplish that which G–d willed us. With warm regards to you and yours, I am Most sincerely yours, Sam Frost

Dear Norman, I just read your article, "God is Alive," in Jewish Life, March–April 1966. I found it so provocative that I’ve been compelled to write to you about it. Frankly, I am troubled by the easy moral of the last section – the eternal consequence of your theological argument. I am troubled by the certainty of “As we will be to Him, so will He be to us!” (my italics). Hester Panim is no punishment that God gives (p. 18), but the hiddenness is so hidden that we do not know it is hidden (p. 19). Therefore, nothing on earth – no incident of national or individual occurrence – is testimony of His being “hidden,” or of His turning His face to us. It is conceivable, then, that existential pain, suffering, and death has as much a witness of us as happy events are. The horrid implication is that deviation from Torah law causes “hidden-ness,” and conformity will cause the land to bring forth fruit (the Shema) seems not to be historically or individually inevitable (to our finite vision). Vide Job and Kohelet, Poland, Russia, and Germany. Reward and punishment is not an issue. If that is so, why should one heed your call to do Mitzvoth and to worship God? Because, your article seems to imply, communion with the living God is its own reward. This, however, places on God a limitation: He has chosen to wait for our acts before He will make His own move! He concomitantly limits His own omnipotence by permitting Himself communion only with the good and prayerful. But can one be so certain about a convert if one is good and prayerful, He will commune? Is that a limit? Dare He not choose to hide Himself for His own inscrutable purpose? And all that is left in such a dreadful instance is the guilt of one’s own extravagant “sin” – he has not performed the requisite acts of ethics or has not prayed hard enough. This was the rebutted position of Job’s comforters. Further, do you guarantee that His purposes do not include “aliveness” for the wicked (Hitler’s visions may have led t…

After three sessions I finally finished your piece in the recent Tradition and was much inspired by it as I have been from your other mighty articles. יישר כח for your endeavor to articulate those fundamentals of Yahadut, and may we very soon see you assuming the lofty position of one of our foremost spokesmen – a position which will recognize the זכויות of our time. There was one passage in your piece which does an injustice to traditional מדרשים, in my opinion, and I trust you will forgive me. On p. 39 you write that a מדרש on “motivation at the very beginning of His formation after the initial act of Creation is to attribute to Him an inconsistency.” This statement says that the saintly מדרש has attributed to Him an absurd inconsistency. For the מדרש in בראשית רבה denounces any attempts to interpret the six days as anything but literal 24-hour days. Furthermore, different rates of acceleration in טבע do not represent inconsistency. You may have the impression that מדרשים are slightly absurd. You might be interested to read the ספר נזר הקודש of R. Eliezer Lipman (עמוד א׳ סימן קכ״ד סעיף ו׳ וסימן קכ״ו סעיף ט׳) which clarifies the subject considerably. בברכת התורה, Ort. Hollander, St. Louis

Dear Rabbi Lamm: I am sorry I was unable to come to the convention to meet you once again and to hear your paper. The transcontinental publicity reports that we received here in galuth all made your address sound exciting. The last time I spoke with you, if you recall, you suggested that I go to India to work with the Bnei Yisroel. Since that time four years ago I have spent two years in Eretz Yisroel studying comparative religion and Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University and two years as the שעיר לעזאזל in a congregation that should have been declared a קטלנית long ago. I have talked with Norman Frimer and have written to Ben Kahn in Washington to inquire about Hillel. I grew up in Rabonus and planned all my life for it. It is sad that I have lost my zeal.The reports of your presentation confirm my observations about the future and therefore I am thinking of Hillel. Do you have any advise or alternative suggestions to a young man with a wife and three children out here in the hinterland?Sincerely yours,[redacted]

Dear Richard: You probably will be surprised to receive this letter, especially since it has been some time that we have talked with each other. Nevertheless, I do hope that the surprise will be a pleasant one. I met your father recently and he told me of the manner in which you spent the High Holidays in Cleveland. I was so very delighted and so very pleased (and I need not tell you that your father was at least equally delighted and pleased), that I decided to write to you and to thank you. I thank you because, in a way, hearing this kind of news vindicates all the work that I put in to the Springfield Hebrew Day School years ago. It retroactively informs me that my efforts were not all wasted if a Richard Kagan can retain enough from his precollege background to walk to services and observe the Holy Days in the appropriate manner, Thank you again, Richard, and congratulations, too, upon making your parents so proud of you.I look forward to much good news from you in the future. Mrs. Lamm wants to be remembered to you and we hope that we shall have the opportunity of meeting on many happy occasions as the years pass.Cordially yours,Rabbi Norman LammNL/fzP.S. A friend of mine, Mrs. Sally Lewis, teaches in the Biology Department at Western Reserve and her son Aaron is a graduate student. They are very, very fine human beings and good Jews who hail from Calcutta. Please give them my regards when you see them.

Dear Rabbi Lamm: Thought you might be interested in the enclosed. Hope you approve. Best regards. Dan Abraham

Dear Rabbi Zeilingold: As I told you over the telephone, I genuinely regret my inability to fly out to St. Paul to lecture to your congregation. However, I am pleased to be able to be of assistance to you in any other way. The question which you have been called upon to treat at the symposium in your community, "Is Judaism The Only True Religion?״ is a thorny one, and one which requires a good deal of preparation. My own preliminary feeling on this question could best be summarized as follows: First, we must be clear as to what is meant by ״religion." The term, as generally used, comprehends two concepts or interpretations of experience which, while they differ one from the other, are not necessarily in opposition. Christianity, for instance, sees in religion primarily a dogmatic structure, a system of articles of faith rather than merely "works," by which the Christian usually means ethical deeds. There is, however, a second dimension to religion usually ignored by non-Jews: that of the "mitzvot maasiyot," the practical commandments or observances which, cumulatively, spell out Halakhah, or the Jewish "way." (The concept of "Mitzvah," as Jews understand it, is largely alien to the Christian.) There are some Jewish thinkers today in Israel, as there were in Germany during the beginning of the Enlightenment, who maintain that Judaism is primarily a religion of law rather than of dogma or ideas. I think that by now, however, we have become disabused of this error. It is fair to say that Judaism is, in toto, both a "way" of life which requires certain patterns of behavior both ritually and ethically, and at the same time requires of its communicants the affirmation of certain abstract propositions, such as: the existence of God, His unity, "Torah min ha-shamayim," the chosenness of Israel, etc.Now, the problem of the exclusive truth of Judaism must be discussed in this framework.From the point of view of the practical observances, the question would have to be answere…

Dear [redacted]: I, and all of us at The Center, have been missing you this last while that you have been helping Uncle Sam. We inquire from your parents often and are pleased to hear that all is going well with you. I know that you are quite busy and have little time for correspondence. Nevertheless, I want you to know that we certainly are thinking about you. In addition, I am anxious to be of service to you and offer whatever help I can especially with regard to any problems of religious observance that you may encounter.Please, [redacted], do not hesitate to write and let me know how I can help, if at all necessary.Your parents and Eve are all doing well, and we are all awaiting your return in health and happiness.Sincerely yours,Rabbi Norman LammRNL/fz