Former Yeshiva U president Rabbi Norman Lamm dies at 92
Rabbi Norman Lamm, a noted Modern Orthodox rabbi, president emeritus of Yeshiva University, author and communal leader, died Sunday at the age of 92.
Lamm had just lost his wife to COVID-19 a month earlier. The funeral was scheduled to be held privately on Sunday.
Lamm was the third president of Yeshiva University, serving from 1976 until 2013, and is credited with reinvigorating the institution and helping to save it from bankruptcy.
He got his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, in 1951. In 1952, he was appointed rabbi of New York’s Congregation Beth Israel, where he served for six years before becoming assistant rabbi at the Jewish Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1958. In 1959, he was promoted to the Jewish Center’s rabbi, a position he held until 1976.
Lamm was a prolific author, writing more than a dozen books. His first book, Faith and Doubt: Studies in Traditional Jewish Thought, has been updated twice since he wrote it in 1971.
Perhaps his most famous book is Torah U’madda: The Encounter of Religious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish Tradition, in which he lays down the philosophical underpinnings of the religious paradigm that Yeshiva University embodies. Written at a time when Modern Orthodoxy was being dismissed as “less authentic” than ultra-Orthodoxy, Torah U’madda explores the importance – and challenges – of synthesizing a deeply religious life with worldly endeavors and secular wisdom.
His book The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary won a National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish Thought category in 1999.
Lamm stepped down as president in 2003, when he was succeeded by Richard Joel. He maintained the title of chancellor of Yeshiva University and rosh yeshiva of its rabbinical school until 2013, when he announced his retirement. His otherwise laudatory career was stained at the end by his acknowledgment that he had failed to respond adequately to allegations of sexual abuse against YU rabbis in the 1980s.
In an email to alumni, Yeshiva University said Lamm “was one of the most extraordinary, elegant, and articulate spokesman for Jewish life in modern times. His oratory, wisdom and leadership inspired our institution for over three decades.” On Twitter, current president Ari Berman expressed that “his family and the entire Yeshiva University community should find comfort and strength in the extraordinary life he lived.”
Tradition, an academic journal of Modern Orthodoxy thought that Lamm helped
found in 1958, said on Twitter that Lamm was “a man of wisdom, scholarship, and leadership. His vision of a religious movement as intellectually engaged and spiritually sound, and his articulation of Torah u-Madda as a rigorous and dignified philosophy, shaped Modern Orthodoxy as we know it.”
Former Israeli ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon said “he was hero of Diaspora Jewry in the US and built up its relations with Israel. He was a gifted orator, a visionary leader, a skilled academic, a talmid chacham [scholar], and a kind man. Blessed be his memory.” •
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It is also unclear whether the Trump administration is seriously pursuing the designation through formal channels, which would typically require coordination across multiple federal agencies.
Demands for an end to police brutality have spread globally.
In London, hundreds of protesters took to Trafalgar Square on Sunday chanting “no justice, no peace.” On Saturday, a crowd descended on the US Embassy in Berlin calling for the police officers to face justice.
The arrest on murder charges on Friday of Derek Chauvin, the police officer seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck, has failed to satisfy protesters. Three officers who stood by as Floyd died have yet to be charged.
Floyd’s name is only the latest to be chanted by protesters over the perceived lack of police accountability for violent encounters that resulted in the death of black men.
The issue ignited in 2014 with the shooting death of a black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, where police fired tear gas at protesters on Saturday night. •