Rab­bi Nor­man Lamm has had a dis­tin­guished career of over a half cen­tu­ry in the rab­binate and uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tion. Over the course of this time, his writ­ten and spo­ken pre­sen­ta­tions have served as extra­or­di­nary exam­ples of bril­liance, insight, inspi­ra­tion, style, and com­po­si­tion. The read­er and lis­ten­er have sel­dom been dis­ap­point­ed when afford­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be exposed to his thoughts. A rabbi’s ser­mons are infre­quent­ly pub­lished, and there­fore aside from his imme­di­ate con­gre­ga­tion or the audi­ence for whom he is serv­ing as a schol­ar-in-res­i­dence, his talks are at best remem­bered in a frag­ment­ed fash­ion, if at all. Par­tic­u­lar­ly in R. Lamm’s case, with the repub­li­ca­tion of many of these ser­mons in this and oth­er planned vol­umes, we are afford­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to imag­ine our­selves lis­ten­ing in per­son as one of the most gift­ed rab­binic ora­tors of recent years shares his thoughts. For those who appre­ci­ate the his­tor­i­cal moment, an attempt has been made in this col­lec­tion to retain not only ref­er­ences to spe­cif­ic hap­pen­ings of the day, but even the con­tem­po­rary idiom of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s dur­ing which most of these ser­mons were deliv­ered, to gain an appre­ci­a­tion of how events, tastes, and usage have evolved dur­ing these years. Final­ly, anoth­er dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of these ser­mons is the extrap­o­la­tion from aspects of Jew­ish law, moral and the­o­log­i­cal lessons that might oth­er­wise have gone unno­ticed. R. Lamm writes in a ser­mon about the Sukkah, ​“Moral instruc­tion is avail­able to Jews not only in Chu­mash, not only in Aggadah (para­bles) and Midrash (com­men­tary), but some­times in Halakhah (laws). If we look close­ly and care­ful­ly enough, we will dis­cov­er the grand themes of human des­tiny even in legal tech­ni­cal­i­ties, pro­found human wis­dom even in halakhic dis­cours­es. All it requires is imag­i­na­tion, a sense of alle­go­ry, some homilet­i­cal license, and a readi­ness to find beau­ti­ful insights in unlike­ly places.” The author is true to his word.