In the preparation of this book, The Leo Jung Jubilee Volume, which I have the honor to present to Rabbi Jung this evening, we commissioned an artist to prepare a drawing which is used on the binding. It is a somewhat surrealistic picture of a prophet, Elijah, holding a book. Merged into the actual drawing is a Hebrew inscription from the Second Book of Kings, 2:46, which reads ve’yad Hashem haytah el Eliyahu – “and the hand of the Lord was to Elijah.” That is an idiom that means that the prophet Elijah was under divine inspiration.I believe that this verse summarizes the tributes that the previous speakers have so eloquently paid to our own Eliyahu, our beloved Rabbi Leo Jung. We feel that his unequaled record of service to Torah and to world Jewry is a result of a life–long divine inspiration, drawing upon the wells of Torah of both parents and teachers, amongst whom were counted some of the greatest Jews of the past generation.Allow me to draw your attention in particular to the peculiar idiom, “and the hand of the Lord was el Eliyahu – to Elijah.” Normally the biblical expression for divine inspiration is al – “the hand of the Lord was on the prophet,” not el – “to the prophet.” Thus, with the prophet Ezekiel and others, we read va-tehi alav sham yad Hashem – “the hand of the Lord was upon him there.”What is the difference? I believe it is this: when we use the expression al – that God’s hand was on or over the prophet – we mean that God works His design in human affairs through this individual; but the man himself remains passive and insignificant. The prophet, over whom the hand of God has been placed, is only a mouthpiece for God’s message. His own personality cannot be asserted – it has been suffocated. It might just as well have been somebody else whom God chose for this mission. The prophet’s character and personality are submerged in his duty. He is used by God – he never asserts his unique self. He is the fortunate accident of predestined history.But w…

Dear Miss Leventhal: Thank you for sending me the book "The Indivisible Isaiah" by Mrs. Margalioth. Since I was of some assistance to Mrs. Margalioth in publishing the book, I received a copy of the Hebrew and English with the compliments of the author. It is therefore unnecessary for me to purchase another volume through Sura. Consequently, I am sending back the book under separate cover. Sincerely yours, Rabbi Norman Lamm.

Dear Rabbi Blau, At the end of January 1964, a book will be published by the Sura Institute of Yeshiva University which I think is of the utmost importance and should be read by every member of Yavneh across the country. The name of the book is “The Indivisible Isaiah: Evidence for the Single Authorship of this Prophetic Book” by Rachel Margalioth of Jerusalem, presently in New York. This 245-page volume is a translation and extensive revision of the Hebrew Shad Hayah Yeshayahu, which argues scientifically and consistently for the thesis that all the book of Isaiah was written by one author, and that there was only one Prophet Isaiah. The author is a distinguished biblical scholar who is in all ways loyal to the teachings and traditions of Torah. You can well appreciate that her work, which goes against the whole dogmatic trend of higher biblical criticism, is one which ought to be read and studied and pondered by every member of Yavneh as well as every thinking Orthodox Jew. Her arguments are forceful, novel, and in accordance with the Jewish scholarly methodology. I cannot urge you strongly enough to circularize this information to all members of Yavneh and encourage them to purchase the book and study it. The list price of the volume will be $4.75. However, I prevailed upon Mrs. Margalioth to make it available to Yavneh students for only $2.75 (less than the regular student discount). Please do give this your attention and try to circularize this to Yavneh as soon as is feasible. All orders should be sent to the author directly at 250 West 99th Street. Please let me hear from you on this matter. Cordially yours, Rabbi Norman Lamm.

Dear Miss Leventhal: Thank you for sending me the book "The Indivisible Isaiah" by Mrs. Margalioth. Since I was of some assistance to Mrs. Margalioth in publishing the book, I received a copy of the Hebrew and English with the compliments of the author. It is therefore unnecessary for me to purchase another volume through Sura. Consequently, I am sending back the book under separate cover. Sincerely yours, Rabbi NORMAN LAMM

The reason we are given details of the desecrations committed by the sons of Eli is that their transgressions were so severe, we later find that their punishment was equally severe. ומשפט הכהנים וגו׳ – the gifts normally allotted to the priests were severely proscribed by the Torah. Chafni and Pinchas exploited their positions – whatever the three-pronged fork brought up, they took for themselves. In addition to being exploitative, it was crude, vulgar. גם בטרם יקטרו – this again manifests the entire desecration of the מתנות כהונה, and in the process they used strong-arm methods.In the midst of reading about the sins of the sons of Eli, we are suddenly told that Samuel ministered and was a young boy. The Torah is here presenting a study in contrast. While the two (Chafni and Pinchas) are making a lucrative business out of the Kehunah, the other (Samuel) is entirely selfless in his devotion.This garment was normally only worn by Kohanim, but Samuel wore it to give it a sense of reverence – as opposed to Chafni and Pinchas, who, although Kohanim, disgraced it.This little coat is very interesting – almost tender. Every year Hannah came and brought Samuel a little coat. Apparently, the literal meaning is that each year she brought him a new coat. In rabbinic tradition (Aggadah), the coat assumes new proportions. We are told some interesting things about it. Hannah didn’t make a new coat for him each year – she made it only once. She brought it to him for Yom Tov and took it back home with her afterwards. The following year, the same process was repeated, and the coat fit Samuel. And so, throughout the years, the same coat fitted Samuel. After Hannah died, he still wore the coat and was buried in the same coat – reminiscent of The Picture of Dorian Gray, wherein only the picture grows old; he remains eternally young.Two things are interesting: why the coat growing, and why was he buried in it? As I interpret it, there seems to be something very special involved, which t…

The perek records the story of Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma, who was accosted by a stranger who asked him, מאיזו עיר אתה? Rabbi Yosi replied, etc., etc. What we have before us is an assertion by Rabbi Yosi that it is better to live among sages than among ignoramuses – among wise men than among fools. Rabbi Yosi disdains all material rewards that might entice him to a spiritually and scholarly less favorable environment. This is, apparently, an unexceptionable teaching. Yet the matter is not quite that simple. Is it really the best policy to pursue in order to assure the dominance of Torah in Israel? If all committed Jews decided to live exclusively in Jewish areas, where kashrut and Torah and tefillah were all assured at the highest level, would this not result in the decimation of our community and in the loss of countless thousands of Jews in the outlying communities? Furthermore, do we not have sufficient examples of great Jews who, by risking an alien environment, succeeded in converting that milieu into great centers of Torah? For instance, we know that Rav left Palestine to go down to Babylon – and almost singlehandedly made that community into a center of Torah for hundreds and hundreds of years to follow. Does Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma then mean to imply that this was wrong? Does he have any alternative solution for the spreading of Torah in Israel? I believe that Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma was not preaching a kind of contemporary retrenchment policy whereby all Orthodox Jews withdraw into one neighborhood and abandon the rest of the community. The stranger who accosted him did not ask, “Where do you live?” He asked him, מאיזו עיר אתה – “From what place are you?” And therein lies the difference. Philo maintained that the pious man is a stranger on earth, for he is intrinsically a citizen of Heaven who is only temporarily here. His real makom is in Heaven. That is, I believe, the meaning of this dialogue between the Tanna and the stranger. What, asked the stranger, is your rea…

When Elisha punishes Gehazi by declaring, “וּצָרַעַת נַעֲמָן תִּדְבַּק בְּךָ וּבְזַרְעֲךָ לְעוֹלָם” – “the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever” – he is not simply cursing him with a disease, but identifying Gehazi’s inner state with that of Naaman before his transformation. In this chapter, Naaman undergoes a complete reversal – from pagan to monotheist, from leper to pure. Gehazi, through his deceit and materialism, reveals himself to be Naaman #1 – the old Naaman – before he met the God of Israel. Naaman had lived a life of duplicity – publicly a man of valor and stature, privately afflicted and conflicted. His leprosy exposed the dissonance between his outer image and inner reality. When he came to recognize God, that duplicity inverted: inwardly monotheistic and sincere, he still had to function outwardly in a pagan world. In contrast, Gehazi appeared outwardly respectable – Elisha’s attendant, popular, even powerful – but inwardly, he was plagued by frustration and insecurity. His chase after Naaman’s gifts was an attempt to fill that void, and in doing so, he revealed that his soul mirrored the old Naaman – aggressive, vain, and hollow. Thus, he inherited not just leprosy, but Naaman’s leprosy. The Torah's spiritual psychology here is profound. In truth, very few people live lives in which their outer and inner worlds align. Society, by nature, demands masks – the Latin word persona means mask – and this is not necessarily hypocrisy, but a social and psychological reality. True freedom, however, is when the soul can shine through the mask – when the inner life is more refined than the outer, and not the reverse. The Rabbis famously taught: אל תקרי חָרוּת אלא חֵרוּת – true freedom is the engraved Torah, internalized. When a person’s external image exceeds the reality of their inner life – when the public persona outpaces the private integrity – that is spiritual tzara’at, a condition of inner exile and separation. As Rashi explains, ואספתו מצרעתו refers …

The Prophet Isaiah says two things: "נחמו נחמו עמי" and, later on, "אנכי אנכי הוא מנחמכם." But is this not a contradiction? If the consoler is the prophet, then how can it be God? And if God, how can it be the prophet? The same question reappears in Halakhah. There is a special commandment to be מנחם את האבל – to console the mourner. Yet, when we come to the mourner to console him, we say to him, המקום ינחם אתכם – may God do the consoling. But if God does it, why is there a mitzvah for man to do so? And if man does it, why invoke God? The answer is that the job of consolation cannot be done by either one alone. One who is in mourning, one who is in trouble, one who is in crisis, requires the sympathetic ear and helping hand of his neighbor – and most certainly the help of God. Yeshiva is now in a state of mourning for the late Dr. Belkin. The enormous task and overwhelming challenge to which I have been summoned is one which I cannot do alone – certainly not without God, and also not without the help of all my friends, colleagues, students – not one prophet, but all prophets together have to work on the task.

Yesterday, synagogues throughout the world read a special passage in honor of Hanukkah. It comes from the prophet Zechariah, who, 2,400 years ago, returned to the Land of Israel from exile in Babylon and there encouraged his despondent brethren and inspired them to continue rebuilding the Holy Temple. In this haftarah, Zechariah has a vision of two of the leaders of our people who are shown a marvelous stone – even roshah – a headstone, a chief or excellent stone, a symbol of strength and endurance by virtue of which the Temple will be rebuilt, the Land rehabilitated, and the People redeemed. Now, this stone, according to the prophet, had a remarkable feature: it had shiv'ah einayim al even achat – seven eyes on one stone. And when the people behold it, they will cry out, chen chen lah – “beautiful, beautiful!” What do these seven eyes mean? Two interpretations: one is that the Lord will watch over it with seven eyes – that is, He will protect it lovingly, cherish it, and care for it. The other interpretation is that it has seven facets – a multi-faceted gem. I mention all this because I believe that Yeshiva University is, for the Jewish and American communities – and especially the American Jewish community – an even roshah, a most precious gem. Truly, there is only one YU. There is no other institution quite like it in the range of its academic offerings, research, community service, and unique commitments. And as we draw to the close of the first century of our existence, our even roshah sparkles ever more brightly. We have, over the last several years, experienced the hashgachah pratit of God’s shiv'ah einayim – the special care and providence of His watchful eyes over us. Just five years ago we were at the brink of despair, teetering on the edge of insolvency. Even our annual Hanukkah Dinner had become so depleted, listless, and lifeless that I seriously considered doing away with it. But – in response to the strenuous labor, incredible generosity, and wise l…

This address is dedicated – as is my shiur tomorrow – to the memory of morenu ve-rabbenu Dr. Samuel Belkin, zikhrono livrakhah, whose tenth yahrzeit we will commemorate in a few weeks, during Chol ha-Moed Pesach. Because Dr. Belkin was not only my teacher for one year – the last year he taught – but also my predecessor as President, I had the opportunity to appreciate the full scope of his prodigious talents and insights – his greatness not only as a talmid chakham and as an educator, but also as a leader. And it is this quality of leadership that I choose to discuss on this, his tenth yahrzeit and the one hundredth birthday of our Yeshiva. Dr. Belkin taught us by example that to be a talmid chakham you need lomdus; to be a yerei shamayim you need emunah; to be a teacher you need love of your pupils as well as your subject matter. But to be a rav, a rabbi in the classic Jewish sense, you need all these – and much more: you need the gift of leadership.Dr. Belkin himself was an orphan from Lithuania who became a renowned תלמיד חכם at a young age, wandered to the U.S., got himself a doctorate at Brown University, and then came to Yeshiva as both a rosh yeshiva and professor of Greek. His contribution to the |ewish world, however, was not confined to what he knew and what he taught, but was distinguished by the way he combined these with his vision, his goals, his determination, his readiness to use either gentle persuasion or confrontation —in a word, his leadership. It was the ability to integrate his Torah and his Mada with his leadership qualities that ensured his place in Jewish history.Dr. Belkin was blessed with great gifts, both intellectual and personal, and few of us indeed can aspire to equal his achievements. But we can learn from him, each in his own way and in accordance with his own personality, to exercise leadership in our careers as rabbis; to bear in mind that the rabbinate is neither a service profession nor a lifelong kollel at the expense of a co…