By Tzvi Sinensky, First Things - October 14, 1972... It was the day of (Rabbi Lamm's) second son’s Bar Mitzvah.
In his sermon on this occasion, Rabbi Lamm opens by noting that we live during a time “in which adults habitually grasp at the last straws of their vanishing youthfulness by retrogressing into adolescence and preferring to be boys rather than men.” In such an environment, and upon the occasion of his son’s coming of age, he wonders, what does it take to become a man?... Rabbi Lamm asserts, “To be a man is an achievement.” Manhood is not simply a stage one reaches, but something one attains.