Dear Rabbi Lamm, I also have read occasionally some of your writings and have heard a lot about you, but have not had the pleasure as yet of meeting you personally. However, I am informed by my fiancée that you have kindly consented to assist in the arrangement of our Chuppa on March 30th and I write to thank you for your kindness in agreeing to this. I have today written to Rabbi Jung and also advised him that the Ponyewezer Rav will most probably be in New York on the day of our wedding and, considering his age, I suppose Rabbi Jung and yourself will have no objection to his performing the main Rites with your kind assistance. My fiancée will be able to confirm to you shortly whether the Ponyewezer Rav will, in fact, be able to officiate on that occasion.And so, I am looking forward to meeting you in good time before our wedding in New York and meanwhile remain with many kind regards.Yours sincerely,Albert Loewenthal

Dear Arthur: It is with considerable regret that I write to inform you that I shall be unable to attend and officiate at your wedding on January 13th, p.G. I think you know me well enough to appreciate that had conditions permitted it, I would have considered it both an honor and a pleasure to join you in your great ”simchah.” However, I have been invited to address the World Conference of Orthodox Synagogues which is taking place that week in Jerusalem. My plans call for me to be away for the minimum amount of time necessary for my lecture and other important business, namely, January 6-16, 1968. I hope you will appreciate that the importance of this Conference, the first of its kind in history, is of such magnitude that I had no choice but to accept the invitation. I hope you and your bride will forgive me, and that I shall have the opportunity of joining you on many other happy occasions and, of course, of what I hope and pray will be a long, long life for you of joy and satisfaction.Cordially yours.RABBI NORMAN LAb«4RNL/fz

Dear Mr. Jesselsohn: This letter is long overdue. In early April of this year I gave considerable thought as to how I might properly thank your president, Rabbi Norman Lamm, for a simple act of chesed afforded to me on the occasion of my daughter’s wedding. It then occurred to me that a letter addressed to you as chairman of Yeshiva’s Board of Trustees would at least share with others the knowledge of a good deed that I am sure Rabbi Lamm would modestly keep to himself. My rabbinic and teaching schedule often leaves little time for correspondence, and so I hope the lateness of this note in no way diminishes my gratitude or your reception of its sentiments. I am a graduate of Yeshiva’s high school in Manhattan (1960), an alumnus of the college (1964), and ordained from RIETS in 1967. Like so many, Yeshiva has been an extended family for me since my bar mitzvah. Otherwise, I am in no way exceptional and have never considered myself deserving of special consideration. Yeshiva has been good to me and to my children, and I do my best to translate more than a decade of formal education into service and leadership for the communities I serve. In planning my eldest daughter’s wedding in late March, I sent an invitation to Rabbi and Mrs. Lamm, knowing full well that the probability of his attendance was unlikely. The invitation, however, was more than courtesy. Over the years I have studied nearly all of Dr. Lamm’s writings. He was my Jewish Philosophy professor and has been a seminal influence on my evolving Jewish worldview ever since. At conventions his lectures were eagerly anticipated, and his sermons a nourishing delicacy for any rabbi. From afar, Rabbi Lamm became a critical orienting post in my intellectual and spiritual growth, and the wedding invitation was thus an expression of gratitude and admiration for one who had become an intellectual and spiritual mentor. Some twelve years ago, as Rabbi Lamm assumed the presidency of Yeshiva, I was undergoing a difficult t…