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New Head of Yeshiva U. (1976)
Dr. Norman Lamm – at age 48 the newly elected President of Yeshiva University – brings to office the vigor of Jewish tradition nurtured in American soil, a profound scholarship in Torah, philosophy, arts, humanities, and sciences – as a chemist turned rabbi – combined with an eminent ability to relate his erudition pertinently to problems of contemporary life. Rabbi, philosopher, teacher, and author, his appointment is the culmination of an 8-month endeavor of the 50-member Presidential Search Committee – comprising YU faculty, administration, alumni, students, and community and academic leaders – to find a successor worthy of the revered Dr. Samuel Belkin z”l and his distinguished predecessor Dr. Bernard Revel. In books such as The Royal Reach: Discourses on Jewish Tradition, Faith and Doubt, and A Hedge of Roses: Jewish Insights into Marriage and Married Life, Dr. Lamm earned international distinction in bringing the perspective of traditional Judaism to a wide range of themes – including ecology, laboratory-created life, space exploration, extraterrestrial life, violence, privacy in law and theology, and the effects of social change on marriage and family. Twice cited by the U.S. Supreme Court – once by Chief Justice Earl Warren and once by Justice William O. Douglas – and called upon as an expert on Jewish law by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dr. Lamm also emerged as a respected voice in bioethics and medical halakhah. A founding member of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists and a member of the Halakhah Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America, he has served on numerous communal boards and lectured in nine countries across five continents, including Israel, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. He received his BA summa cum laude from Yeshiva College in 1949, pursued graduate studies in chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, was ordained at RIETS in 1951, and earned his PhD in Jewish philosophy from the Bernard Revel Graduate…
