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A BULLET FACTORY

IN THE CATSKILLS:

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm zt”l Reflects on the War of Independence

A leading light of American Orthodoxy, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, zt”l was one of the great leaders
and thinkers of our time. Elected president of Yeshiva University in 1976, he brought the institution
to new heights. As a pulpit rabbi at the Jewish Center in Manhattan, Rabbi Lamm was famous for his
powerful sermons, still studied by rabbinical students to this day. A scholar of Jewish philosophy and
law, he authored over 15 books on Judaism’s relationship to science, law, technology and philosophy.

In 2008, Eric Halivni (Weisberg), founder and Executive Director of Toldot Yisrael, interviewed Rabbi
Lamm about his experiences during Israel’s War of Independence and his lifelong relationship with
the Land of Israel. The following is an abridged transcript of their conversation, edited for clarity.

Tell us a little bit about your family, and your
connection to Israel as a child.

I was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Today it’s a very strictly
Chassidic community, but then it was a Modern Orthodox
community without much extremism, and generally a good
neighborhood to grow up in, if you couldn’t afford to go to a
better place. I went to school at a yeshivah, Mesivta Torah Voda’ath,
which today is regarded as a right-wing yeshivah, but in those
days we didn’t have right or left; it was one of the only ones. It
was a happier time.
As a student in yeshivah, of course I had a relationship with Eretz
Yisrael. I remember I was probably in the fifth or sixth grade
and they showed us a movie. In the movie you find Yossele (PHOTO: YESHIVA UNIVERSITY)
Rosenblatt, the famous chazzan, singing a moving song about between every blanket there was a rifle to be smuggled in. The
Jerusalem while standing in a rowboat on the Kinneret. I was kids were very empowered and excited to do it.
completely taken by it. It was the first exposure I had to modern Meanwhile, I thought – just packing things, anyone can do
Israel, and it was overwhelming. I remember it to this day, and that. Maybe I could do something special. I was a chemistry
that’s quite a long time ago. But it was something that attracted major; I did four years of chemistry in Yeshiva and one year
me. Those were my first feelings for modern Israel.
of post-graduate work at Brooklyn Polytech. I thought that
In my younger years I was a member of Pirchei Agudath Israel, maybe science students could do something more to help. So
the children’s Agudath Israel, but I also went to HaShomer I got hold of a few of my friends; my chavruta Shmuel Sprecher
HaDati, which was a Religious Zionist youth organization that who got his Ph.D in chemistry from Columbia and went on to
later became absorbed into HaPoel HaMizrachi. In yeshivah, some become the Rector in Bar-Ilan, William Frank, who became a
of the groups were more Zionist, some less, but everyone was brilliant physicist and mathematician, and Matty (Matthew)
attached to Medinat Yisrael. Katz, of blessed memory, my roommate, who was very good in
technology, and I gave them my idea.
I was here in Yeshiva University as a college student from 1945
through 1949, at the time of the founding of the State of Israel I picked up the phone and I called up the Jewish Agency and they
in 1948. We were very concerned because we knew the Haganah connected me to a man called Professor Pekeris. [Ed. Note: Chaim
was vastly outnumbered, and we felt we had to do something. Leib Pekeris became a professor at the Weizmann Institute
of Science and created the Weizmann Automatic Computer,
I went with many of my classmates at Yeshiva to a place in the WEIZAC, the first computer in Israel.] I told him what I had in
West Village where they were sending blankets to Israel, and in mind, but as I’m speaking, he stops me. He says, “Shut up and

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