What Would Rabbi Lamm Have Said?
Oftentimes, when a pressing issue in the Jewish community emerges, I wonder to myself, “What would Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm (the two modern-day thinkers for whom I have the most respect) have said about this issue?
Indeed, we certainly could use their wisdom today in addressing the current worldwide climate of antisemitism, the Haredi draft issues in Israel, and other serious challenges the Jewish community is facing.
But alas, we can only speculate about what their responses might be.
However, with the help of artificial intelligence, there is a way to develop a sense of what these thinkers might be saying in response to events that have occurred after their death.
And I had the opportunity to experiment with this idea recently.
Here’s the story…
Each week I receive an email from the Lamm archives – a repository of Rabbi Lamm’s sermons, presentations, and correspondence throughout his life – with links to a drasha he delivered along with other timely material. If you haven’t explored the site, I highly recommend it – lammlegacy.com. You can also sign up to receive the weekly emails.
This week there was a link to the RIETS Centennial address Rabbi Lamm delivered in 1997, commonly referred to as the “caveman” speech. In his remarks, he discussed Rav Shimon bar Yochai and his son, who found refuge in a cave and learned Torah there for 12 years. Rabbi Lamm felt that living in a cave is not the norm for a Jewish society or community and that any attempt to impose the discipline of the cave on the real world is destructive. Furthermore, he felt that Yeshiva University should not aspire to educate its students to live in caves once they have left the school.
This prompted a very caustic and critical response from an individual living in Lakewood, NJ. In the letter that he wrote to Rabbi Lamm, he introduced himself as a “caveman” living and learning in a yeshiva in Lakewood in the 20th century. In a very sharp tone, the letter writer questions Rabbi Lamm on the wisdom of leaving the cave: “How exactly are you more enlightened than the rest of us? How exactly has your institution created a better Jew? Has your emunah become so much stronger than ours through your analysis of Kierkegaard and other apikorsim? Are your middos so much more refined than ours by reading the works of menuvalim such as Shakespeare and Freud?”
Both the original address at the centennial, along with the letter to Rabbi Lamm, are posted in the archives of the Lamm Legacy site.
After reading both the original speech and the letter in response, I wondered whether Rabbi Lamm ever answered this individual – and whether that letter might be available on the archives, too.
So I asked my friend, Rabbi Tzvi Sinensky – the main architect for the site and the individual who is most familiar with its contents – if the letter was accessible.
Unfortunately, no such letter was ever found.
Did Rabbi Lamm respond to this individual? Perhaps … but we can only speculate on what the response might have been, if he answered the letter at all.
However, with the help of artificial intelligence, we can more than just guess as to what Rabbi Lamm might have said. We can simply ask for a response to be drafted, based on the contents of the two documents and the kind of person Rabbi Lamm was.
And that’s exactly what I did. I fed ChatGPT the information … and asked it to draft a letter in the voice, tone, and intellectual posture of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, responding respectfully but firmly to the Lakewood writer’s criticism.
In ten seconds, it spit out the following letter:
A Possible Letter Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm Might Have Written in Response to the Letter He Received from the Individual in Lakewood, NJ
Dear Mr. ________,
Thank you for your letter. Although its tone is more vigorous than I am accustomed to in scholarly debate, I nevertheless appreciate the passion for Torah that animates your words. A sincere concern for the welfare of k’lal yisrael must always be taken seriously, even when expressed in sharp disagreement.
Permit me, therefore, to clarify several matters which, I fear, may not have been fully understood in my original address.
You write of “cavemen” as though I had used the term to ridicule b’nei Torah. In fact, as I explained in that very speech, the cave is not a derogatory symbol. Chazal themselves depict the cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai as the crucible in which the deepest layers of Torah were revealed. I would never diminish such a place, nor those who devote their lives to Torah study within its walls. The cave is essential. The Jewish people cannot survive without those who immerse themselves in Torah with total purity and devotion.
But Chazal also teach that the very greatness of R. Shimon and R. Elazar was incomplete until they left the cave and re-engaged the world of ordinary Jews—Jews who plow fields, earn a livelihood, and perform mitzvot not on the level of sublime perfection but with simple sincerity. The Divine Voice did not rebuke Rabbi Shimon for his years in the cave; it rebuked him only when he applied the standards of the cave to the entire people. The rebuke was not for separatism per se, but for absolutism.
This was the point of my remarks: not to disparage those who remain in the cave, but to caution against insisting that all of k’lal yisrael must live there.
You also question my usage of the Rav’s teachings. Permit me to say gently but firmly: I was privileged to learn from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik for many decades, to listen to his shiurim, to discuss matters of philosophy and halakha with him, and to seek his guidance in difficult communal issues. I would never claim that the Rav endorsed every position I have taken; no responsible student would. But I do insist that no one should simplify the Rav into an icon of a single, monochromatic ideology. He was a complex, profound, and often paradoxical thinker. His embrace of Torah, his commitment to halakha, his rigorous standards of piety—these were absolute. But he also understood profoundly the dignity of the Jew who stands outside the walls of the beit midrash, the encounter between Torah and the modern world, and the necessity of engaging the broader Jewish community, even when that engagement demanded firmness and caution.
To reduce the Rav to a slogan is to diminish him. To invoke him as a blanket rejection of every interaction with other Jews is to misunderstand the person he was.
Regarding the question of cooperation with non-Orthodox Jews: I have never argued, nor would I ever argue, for theological compromise. Halakha is inviolate. But within the realm of communal life there remain areas—defense of Israel, combating antisemitism, supporting Soviet Jewry, protecting shechita, and more—in which the Rav himself believed limited cooperation was warranted. To insist that every such cooperation constitutes treason to Torah is, with respect, to mistake zealotry for fidelity.
You write movingly of Torah learned al taharas hakodesh. So do I. The admiration I expressed in my address for the “simple Jew with myrtles in his hand” was not a rejection of talmud Torah, but an affirmation that Torah does not belong only to scholars. It belongs to every Jew—yeshivish, Modern Orthodox, traditional, or seeking—and our task is to elevate all of them.
You also raise questions about students of RIETS whose spiritual paths lead them to more insular yeshivot. I do not begrudge them this. If a young man finds that the atmosphere of Lakewood or Brisk is where he will grow most intensely in Torah, then I rejoice in his growth. But the existence of multiple valid paths does not invalidate the one we follow at Yeshiva University. Torah does not insist on a single mold for all Jews. The cave is one model; the beit midrash that stands in the midst of the world is another.
Finally, you ask that I apologize for belittling b’nei Torah. I assure you that no such belittlement was ever intended. If my words gave that impression, I regret the misunderstanding—not because the content was wrong, but because every Jew, especially a ben Torah, deserves to be addressed with dignity.
But I cannot retract what I wrote, because I believe it to be true: the Jewish people needs both models—those who remain in the cave and those who, like Rabbi Shimon after twelve years, return to heal the world. K’lal yisrael is too fragile, too diverse, too sacred to afford the luxury of dismissing one camp or another. We must cherish the Torah of Lakewood no less than that of Yeshiva University; but neither should be delegitimized by the other.
If I may suggest with friendship: let us debate with passion, but let us not reduce one another to caricatures. We both care deeply about the future of our people. On that common ground, perhaps we may yet stand together.
With blessings for continued growth in Torah and yirat shamayim,
Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm
The letter is dignified, thoughtful, and principled—exactly how Rabbi Lamm typically responded to critique—yet it still addresses the substance of the criticism directly.
And while I would have loved to have seen what Rabbi Lamm actually wrote in response, I do think this is a very close example of what he might have said.
