Dear Rabbi Gotthold: I do hope that the matters I discussed with you are receiving their due attention. I have every confidence that this is the case. The two young men who met with you and me concerning the accommodation of Yeshiva University graduates in either the Gold or Greenberg Institutes wrote to me but failed to indicate their proper return addresses. The boys are [redacted]. Will you please tell them that I received their index cards and will try to do my best.Best wishes for a Chag Kasher V’SameachSincerely yours,Rabbi Norman Lamm

The other day you wrote me with some excitement about the problem of Canon Law at the Hebrew University. Let me give you what my inquiry shows. I also write you something about what they mean by the Canon Law Lectureship. The Rector of the Hebrew University stated categorically last week that there will be no chair in Canon Law at the Hebrew University. He further added that all academic programs at the Hebrew University, whether of teaching or research, cannot be decided upon by outside bodies (in this case, the Chicago people), but only by the faculties concerned and subsequently these decisions must be approved by the Senate and the Board of Governors. All that has been agreed to by the University is that a Visiting Lectureship in Canon Law is to be set up. From time to time, outstanding experts in this field will be invited to deliver lectures in Jerusalem on aspects of this subject. There will be no regular course for students or others. The University has several similar lectureships such as the Samuel Paley Lectures in American Culture and Civilization, and the Lionel Cohen Lectureship in Law. These visiting lectureships provide a very useful addition to the regular curricula of the University enabling the University to bring outstanding figures to Jerusalem periodically. A very important point which seems to have been confused due to some of the statements in various newspapers is on the nature of Canon Law. This is a specifically legal subject and is not concerned with the teaching of Catholicism as such. This is a discipline which belongs within the field of legal studies. It should be borne in mind, incidentally, that marriage, inheritance and other matters of personal law of the Catholic citizens of Israel are officially governed by Canon Law just as Rabbinic law governs the same areas for the Jewish citizens. If, for example, Notre Dame introduced a Lectureship in Talmudic law concerning marriage, inheritance, damages, criminal law, etc., it would not …

Dear Rabbi Lamm, This letter to you, a total stranger, was prompted by an article about you in the New York Times of 1 Feb., 1969. I turn to you because you seem to have wrestled with the New Morality and found at least part of your answer. We here at Georgetown have only begun to wrestle. I am a Resident Assistant on a dormitory floor of 45 freshmen, and these gentlemen regularly participate in the Intervisitation program which was put into effect last year. The Student Development staff, the House Councils, and the students are currently engaged in a review of this program. The students have overwhelmingly adopted the idea that what another does in his room is his own business. The arguments roughly approximate your statement about the "negative rule of not hurting anyone else." What is especially disturbing is that these are the same students who, in October, faithfully promised to allow the student community on each floor to operate as the conscience of the floor, following the general norms of society. This has plainly not been done. Having failed in exercising their stated responsibility, some of the New Moralists demand that they be given more responsibility. Indeed, all rules are now to be abolished if they have their way. One House Council is apparently pushing for a parietal program of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.I am especially perturbed because last year I was the instigator of the movement for Intervisitation. I now feel that I have fathered an immoral and irresponsible child. I would like to know what answer you would make to the student body as a whole. How can they be made aware that they are responsible for each other? The traditional teachings of the Catholic Church seem to have gone by the boards to a point that even the younger Jesuits, who are radically liberal, are disturbed.Your answer, if there can be any to strong wills attached to weak minds, will be appreciated. I, too, share your apprehension about the effect on society as a whole, bec…

Happy to congratulate you on presidency of supreme Torah center, Yeshivat Yitzhak Elchanan Yeshiva University. Confident you will succeed in continuing and advancing traditional learning and piety in this great Torah institution. Bracha Mitzion. Rabbi Menachem Kasher

התולה ארץ על בלימה ייטיב הכתיבה והחתימה לשנה טובה ומתוקה חיי אריכי ומזוני רווחי אל כבוד ידידי הרב ה״ג חרוץ ושנון וריח לו כלבנון חכמתו תאיר פניו כש״ת מו״ת נחום לאם שליט״א. שמעתי שמועת טובה וקול הזמיר נשמע בארצנו לעת מציא בשורת גדולתך. ישמח לבר גם אנוכי ביום ה״ לסדר ואהבך וברכך וברך פרי בטנך בא השמועות ביהעלוך יושבי ישיבות ה״ג ר׳ יצחק אלחנן זי״ע ושמו כסאם מכין לשבתך עלה והצלת יתן ה״ לך שם מאויי נפשך ובארץ שלום אתה בוטח

Dear Harav Lamm, שליט"א, please accept my most heartfelt good wishes on your appointment as president of Yeshiva University. We all recognize the enormous impact of Yeshiva on Yiddishkeit in our country. Your appointment encourages me, and I am sure, those who care for Yiddishkeit, to expect much growth as a major intellectual force. I know how committed you are to true Torah ideals.

Perhaps the historic act of Chanukkah itself offers the best paradigm of the relationship of our lay leadership to our educational mission. חנוכה = rededication בהמ"ק. Several sacred items foremost: מנורה, ארון, מזבח. Symbols: מנורה = beauty, esthetics, secular studies יפיפיתו של יפת, Aron = Torah scholarship – our true essence... מזבח = service... esp. "service of the heart" which = prayer, and synagogue. Indeed, the Hasmonean victory was marked by חנוכת המזבח ... Hence, the importance in our Temple of Torah and learning of the services – hard, loyal, arduous, often sacrificial – of all you who are part of our communal family, and especially of those who have been called to leadership.I should like to offer warm public welcome to those who have recently joined our various Boards as Trustees: .....

I don't know who, in what office of this complicated institution, invented the title of my talk, "The Next 100 Years." Whoever it is, the academic equivalent of exile to Siberia awaits him or her for exposing me to the uncertain fate of all prophets. In addition, as a university under Jewish auspices, prophecy is an even more perilous undertaking for us. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, once said that nowadays it doesn't pay to be a prophet in Israel; there is too much competition from the original ones... I am therefore sorely tempted to confine my address to this one observation: "The next hundred years will constitute a century." But temptations were made to be resisted, and so I shall address myself to a problem that I consider quite important. Fortunately, Secretary Bennett too regards the issue as significant. Unfortunately, he decided to make it the centerpiece of his address. Hence, my words will serve as a footnote to his superb speech. And in academia, as you know, a footnote is often as long as the text itself. A hundred years ago, when this institution was founded in a modest single room in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, when Grover Cleveland was beginning his first term as President of the United States, Bismarck was at the helm in Germany, and Alexander III was the Czar of Russia—universities were quite clear about their purposes and missions. Until about fifty years ago it was commonly accepted that the university was responsible for guiding the students on moral issues and helping them develop moral character. Professors regarded themselves as the stewards of an educational legacy of a special kind of wisdom: the nature of the good life; truth and beauty and goodness; and the value of thought and reflection. Of course, there was a legacy of knowledge and skill, of preparing a younger generation to learn a profession and make a living. But above all, education was understood as a moral endeavor. About midway in the past century, …

Until about 50 years ago, it was commonly accepted that the university was responsible for offering its students moral guidance. Professors regarded themselves as not only the teachers of knowledge and skills, but also as educational stewards of a special kind of wisdom: the nature of the good life; truth and goodness and beauty; and the value of thought and reflection. In time, that received wisdom came under progressive assault. Universities began to disseminate knowledge without reference to this ethos. Intellectual inquiry became an autonomous enterprise. The moral mission of higher education was denigrated as too parochial and amateurish and, in the sixties, as being hypocritical, a cover for imperialism. Not long ago, a noted British philosopher observed that philosophers have been trying all this century to get rid of the dreadful idea that philosophy ought to be edifying. If this is true of philosophy, what can one say of other branches of knowledge taught in our ivied halls?This despair about the larger questions of life having a claim on our attention has filtered down to our lower schools. Only a few weeks ago, New York’s Governor Cuomo created a stir when he suggested that values ought to be taught in New York State public schools. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett has repeatedly urged public school leaders to teach moral and ethical subjects that represent a consensus of the community.It is fairly obvious that this erosion of the teaching of values in our schools is a reflection of a deliberate turn of events in higher education and in the intellectual climate of this country. No wonder that George Bernard Shaw once said of us:"I doubt if there has been a country in the world's history where men were ashamed of being decent, of being sober, of being well-spoken, of being educated, of being gentle, of being conscientious, as in America." As usual, Spaw was exaggerating. But there is an undeniable kernel of truth in his criticism.Such value-agnos…

Dear Professor Loebl, I am grateful to you for your warm and generous comments in your letter of October 15. I quite agree with your addendum to the thoughts I expressed in my article – the social sciences are indeed dominated by “natural science envy” in their attempt to act as if they were value-neutral, and your critique is quite trenchant. I very much enjoyed reading your article on “Moral Values and U.S. Policy” in the Spring 1986 edition of Strategic Review. I thank you again for your comments and wish you a very happy and healthful New Year. NL