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Greeting and Blessing:

I duly received your letter, in which you write about your special tribute to our distinguished mutual friend, Mr. Chaim Yaakov Lifschitz, in whose honor you have donated part of your library to Jerusalem.

I trust the event came off even better than expected, all the more so since our friend, Mr. Chaim Yaakov Lifschitz, truly merits the honor. Moreover, the esteem and appreciation reflected in your gesture give rise to additional gratification.

It is to be hoped that this event will meet with widespread acclaim and will raise the prestige of Jews in general, and particularly of Jews observant and conscious of their sacred heritage, who put on tefillin and support traditional Torah education, such as the recipient of the honor, as well as the one who bestowed it - as I am aware of your endeavors in this direction in Detroit.

May it stand you in good stead, and may you always have good news to report.

With blessing and esteem,

P.S. I regret that I was unable to accept your suggestion to participate with a personal message to the above-mentioned event, lest it be misconstrued and misused in support of certain aspects of the institution to which your generous gift was made. One such aspect, which is of particular concern in this day, is that leaders of the ill-famed league against religious “coercion” in the Holy Land are members of the Faculty of this very institution, where they enjoy esteem and honor. Regrettably, the said institution has to this day not found it necessary to dissociate itself from this league, nor even to ban it from using the prestigious name of the institution in their anti-religious demonstrations throughout the Holy Land, (including the Holy City of Jerusalem-and even at the site of the sacred Kotel Maaravi, after it had been liberated a few days before Mattan Torah where, to our great shame and pain, members of the Faculty led demonstrations against G-d and His Torah). I do not wish to dwell on so painful a subject, made still more painful by the fact that this most reprehensible and senseless war against our religion was renewed in the very midst of the wonderful spiritual revival in the wake of the miraculous victory of the Six Days’ War.

It is not my practice, nor desire, to find fault with my fellow-Jews, least of all with my fellow-Jews in Eretz Yisrael. However, I had to explain to you why I could not accede to your request.