“There are two problems facing Yeshiva University today,” says Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm. “Survival and excellence. We can’t have one without the other.” The 48-year-old Orthodox rabbi and philosopher has just been elected president of the university, the first American-born person to hold that position. “I had hoped, fought and fifty thoughts about taking the job,” said Lamm while relaxing in the presidential suite at Yeshiva’s Washington Heights campus. “We have the same problems that are facing every college, only ours are double because of our dual program of Jewish and secular studies.” Yeshiva, which dates back to 1886, is the oldest and largest American university under Jewish auspices. Its 18 divisions include two undergraduate colleges, and graduate schools in social work, natural sciences, and humanities. An affiliated seminary trains Orthodox rabbis. This fall the university will open the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law, which Lamm said will have an entering class of 265 students. A widely-published author and frequent international lecturer, Norman Lamm is generally considered one of the outstanding personalities in American Jewish life. His opinions have been quoted by U.S. Supreme Court Justices Earl Warren and William O. Douglas in decisions concerning the Fifth Amendment, and in 1967 he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the issue of privacy. Before accepting his current position, Dr. Lamm had been offered the presidency of three other colleges, as well as the chief rabbinate in England and Haifa. Despite his commitment to the rabbinate, a field he has been in for 25 years, Lamm came very close to embarking on an entirely different career. A summa cum laude graduate of Yeshiva with a degree in chemistry, Lamm gave serious thought to becoming a chemist. “During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war I was working in upstate New York on a secret munitions project developing a rocket bullet,” Lamm recalled. “Mos

Rabbi Dr Norman Lamm zt”l was an outstanding leader of American Jewish Orthodoxy, as Rabbi of the Jewish Centre, author of outstanding books on Jewish ethics, law and philosophy, and above all as President of Yeshiva University between 1976 and 2003, and then as Chancellor and Rosh Yeshiva until 2013. As President, he did three important things for the University. He rescued it from financial disaster. He directed its rabbinic studies to contemporary issues so that Jewish religious leaders could speak, with the authority of tradition, to the challenges of today. And he personally embodied its ideal of Torah u-Madda, Torah and the wider universe of knowledge, having mastered and integrated both. Elegant in mind, cultivated in speech, sensitive in manner, fastidious in scholarship, warm and generous in his dealings with people, he was for me and many others a role model of rabbinic dignity and humanity. There are textbooks; there are also text-people, rare individuals who, by the perfection of their personality, teach us how to live. Rabbi Lamm was a text person. It was a privilege to know him, see what he achieved, and count him as a friend. The Jewish world is be a smaller place as a result of this loss.

OBITUARIESRabbi Norman Lamm, longtime head of Yeshiva University and prolific author, dies at 92Lamm, who helped rebuild Y.U. into the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy, had lost his wife to COVID-19 in April.Rabbi Norman Lamm, inset, helped rebuild Yeshiva University into the flagship of Modern Orthodoxy during his nearly three decades as its chancellor. The school’s Mendel Gottesman Library is shown. (Lamm photo: Yeshiva University; library photo: Wikimedia Commons)BY URIEL HEILMANMAY 31, 2020, 12:12 PMNEW YORK (JTA) – Norman Lamm, the prolific author and Modern Orthodox rabbi who headed Yeshiva University for nearly three decades, died Sunday. He was 92.As president and chancellor of Y.U., Lamm helped rescue the institution from the financial brink in the late 1970s and rebuild it in the decades that followed into the flagship institution of Modern Orthodoxy. As a pulpit rabbi at Manhattan’s Jewish Center, in his writings on philosophy and Jewish law and as leader of Y.U.’s rabbinical school, Lamm also helped articulate an unabashed ideological basis for a movement that has often struggled to define itself.“He was both an architect of and a spokesman for Modern Orthodoxy, and using his position at Y.U. as a perch he helped buttress that ideology in a substantial way,” said Rabbi J.J. Schacter, a professor of Jewish history and Jewish thought at Y.U. “He was uncomfortable with the word ‘modern,’ so he invented the word ‘centrist’ to describe his brand of Orthodoxy – between the extremes of totally favoring contemporary culture on the one hand and totally rejecting contemporary culture on the other.”His wife, Mindella, died April 16 of COVID-19 at 88.Lamm had a commanding wit and a poet’s ear for the spoken word. His sermons were widely admired, and he was as quick with a pun as he was with a religious homily.In addition to being steeped in Jewish law and literature, Lamm was well-versed in history, philosophy and science. He earned his undergraduate degree…

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, former president and chancellor of Yeshiva University, passed away on Sunday, May 31. He was 92. Born in 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, Rabbi Lamm attended Yeshiva Torah Vodaath through elementary and high school before attending Yeshiva College from 1945–1949, where he graduated summa cum laude as the class valedictorian with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. He continued to study advanced chemistry at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. During his time at Yeshiva College, Rabbi Lamm studied Talmud under the tutelage of Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik.

TRADITION mourns the passing of our founding editor, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm z”l – 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.More will be said and written about his legacy in the coming days. In the meantime, click here to read his essays which have appeared in our journal since he launched TRADITION in 1958.A memorial service will be live-streamed at this link on Tuesday, June 2 at 12:30 p.m. EDT.

On July 15, 1979, Dr. Lamm rose in the sanctuary of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to eulogize Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein. He began as follows: “I feel woefully inadequate to the task of speaking the eulogy for my teacher, my colleague, and my friend, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein. In truth there is only one person who could do justice to this occasion in honor of Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, and that is – Rabbi Joseph Lookstein. Who else but that master orator could compose the proper farewell for so distinguished a man?”Almost fourteen years later, on April 25, 1993, Dr. Lamm delivered a hesped for Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in the Nathan Lamport Auditorium of Yeshiva University. He began as follows: “Surely such a prince and such a giant, who became a legend in his own lifetime, deserves an appropriate eulogy. I therefore begin with a confession: I feel uncomfortable and totally inadequate in the role of the one delivering a eulogy for my rebbe, the Rav. Only one person could possibly have done justice to this task and that is – the Rav himself; everyone and anyone else remains a maspid she-lo ke-halakhah.”Surely, Dr. Lamm’s sentiment is, kal va-homer, more relevant today. Who else but Dr. Norman Lamm would be able to capture, with rabbinic depth and homiletical virtuosity, with thoughtful perspective and clever turns of phrase, the greatness and the contribution of Dr. Norman Lamm?Dr. Lamm was a distinguished leader of American Orthodoxy for more than six decades. Visionary leader and gifted orator, multi-faceted intellectual and powerful thinker, imbued with hasidic sensitivity and endowed with intellectual rigor, Dr. Lamm devoted his life to the Jewish community. One verse in the biblical book that bears his name, Nahum, describes Dr. Lamm’s tenacious and passionate efforts on behalf of our community. “Man the guard posts, watch the road, gird your strength, and gather much vigor” (Nahum 2:2). In a lifetime of service to the Jewi…

A grief-stricken testimonial by a lifelong admirer, devotee and friend. This is not meant to be a eulogy. The death of a giant, be it a monarch or master Jewish scholar and leader, demands a full and fitting recounting of all that defines his greatness. That will surely come to pass in the weeks ahead, as we try to come to grips with the grief of the passing of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, who died this week at the age of 92. There will be many others who will provide the details of a life filled with so many achievements that it is almost impossible to believe they represent the legacy of one human being.

The tributes to Rabbi Lamm are pouring in from the many within his extensive orbit who speak lovingly of how he and his thought touched them. I write from outside that orbit. In fact, my relationship with Rabbi Lamm was created not despite our differences, but entirely because of them. Even the outsider from a distance had to take note of his nobility. For decades, he had no peer as a speaker who combined content and elegant expression. Coupled with his role at Yeshiva University, he became de facto the most important spokesperson for Modern Orthodoxy for decades.

Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, Yeshiva University’s long-time Rosh Yeshiva, President (1976–2003), and Chancellor (2003–2013), died on May 31, 2020. Rabbi Dr. Lamm was born in Brooklyn in 1927, just as the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary was moving uptown from the immigrant neighborhood of the Lower East Side, its home since 1886, to a magnificent new Moorish Revival building, in then bucolic Washington Heights, designed to house both the rabbinical seminary and the nascent Yeshiva College.

The Orthodox Union joins in mourning the loss of, and paying tribute to the memory of, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm. An extraordinary leader, profound thinker, prolific author, consummate teacher, and inspiring rabbinic presence, he had an enduring impact on the Jewish community. Rabbi Lamm’s achievements as a congregational rabbi are legendary. After his initial position as a pulpit rabbi in Springfield, Massachusetts, Rabbi Lamm assumed the rabbinate of The Jewish Center in New York City, where he mesmerized his congregants with weekly sermons unrivaled in their eloquence, erudition, and fidelity to Orthodoxy. His hallmark rhetorical flourishes were always woven seamlessly into his prose, memorably enhancing its message.