| Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm | |
|---|---|
Rabbi Lamm, 2007 |
|
| Position | Rosh Yeshiva |
| Yeshiva | RIETS |
| Position | Chancellor |
| Organisation | Yeshiva University |
| Personal details | |
| Nationality | United States of America |
| Denomination | Orthodox |
| Semicha | RIETS |
Norman (Nachum) Lamm (born December 19, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, United States) is a major American Modern Orthodox rabbi, scholar, author and Jewish communal leader. He is presently the Chancellor of Yeshiva University.
He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Philosophy and was the third President of Yeshiva University (YU), the first to be born in the United States. He was a disciple of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Modern Orthodoxy's most influential scholar), who ordained him at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS, the YU rabbinical school) in 1951.
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In his youth, Lamm attended the Haredi Mesivta Torah Vodaath in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. At Yeshiva College (YC, the men's undergraduate school of YU) he obtained a degree in chemistry in 1949, at which he excelled. He was the secular studies valedictorian of his class. He also attended a secular postgraduate college, the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He considered a career in science, but was persuaded by Rabbi Dr. Samuel Belkin, the second President of Yeshiva University (successor of Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel), to join the faculty at YU.
Lamm's grandfather was Rabbi Yeshoshua Baumol (1880–1948) who authored the Responsa - Emek Halakha. In that work, Rabbi Baumol cited several insights from his young grandson, and even included responsa to Lamm's questions.[1]
Lamm spent 25 years as a pulpit rabbi. He was appointed rabbi of the West Side Jewish Center (Congregation Beth Israel) in 1952,[2] became assistant rabbi at the Jewish Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1958, then rabbi of the Jewish Center from 1959 to 1976.[3]
He obtained his Ph.D. in 1966, and was elected President of Yeshiva University in August, 1976. When he took over the institution he helped save it from looming bankruptcy and raised its endowments as well as its academic rating.
As a Modern Orthodox Jew, Lamm's theology somewhat resembles the corpus of classical rabbinic Jewish principles of faith. The faith that he preaches and teaches is consistent with these teachings. He believes that God exists, that God can reveal his will to mankind, and that the Torah (five books of Moses) is an exact transcription of God's revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai. As an Orthodox Jew, he believes that Judaism's oral law, as recorded in the Mishnah and Talmud, represents an accurate and authoritative understanding of how God wants mankind to understand the Hebrew Bible. In accordance with standard Orthodox Jewish theology, he holds that halakha, loosely translated as "Jewish law", is normative and binding on all Jews.
Lamm's major contribution is as a proponent of the idea of "Torah Umadda" - "Torah and modern culture, or more generally, the environing culture of our days" - a philosophical paradigm which aims at the confrontation of Torah learning and secular knowledge. He argues that the underlying philosophy of Torah Umadda can be traced back to the Talmud and to Maimonides and that it is inspired by the work of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in the mid 19th century in response to the Enlightenment. He states that Torah Umadda and Hirsch's Torah im Derech Eretz are to a large extent complementary - both value the acquisition of secular knowledge and both demand adherence to halakha.
Lamm is a well known voice of "Modern Orthodoxy" (which is also known as Centrist Orthodoxy), regarding itself as the "center" between the "left wing" branches of Orthodox Judaism, such as Rabbi Avi Weiss's "Open Orthodoxy," and the movements of the "right wing" such as Haredi Judaism. (Some writers have suggested a difference between the two terms "Modern" and "Centrist" Judaism—something Lamm dismisses as artificial.)
Lamm is a strong critic of Reform Judaism's attempt to unilaterally redefine Jewishness. In response to their declaration that a person can be considered Jewish with only a Jewish father, and not a Jewish mother, Lamm stated that this was "The single most irresponsible act in contemporary Jewish history." (Landau, p. 292) Nonetheless, he has worked over the years to keep lines of communication open between Orthodox and Reform Judaism, in the hopes that Jewish unity can be maintained. Lamm was a proponent of working with Reform and Conservative Judaism in the now-defunct Synagogue Council of America.
In a lecture before Klal, a “mixed” group of rabbis, he maintained that non-Orthodox rabbis are “valid” spiritual leaders of their congregants, whereas the Orthodox are “legitimate” religious leaders. “Valid” comes from the Latin word validus which means powerful, strong–and they are certainly strong and influential Jewish leaders who should be respected for their efforts. But only Orthodox rabbis can lay claim to “legitimacy,” a word which derives from lex, law. Only one committed fully to the halakha can be considered Jewishly legitimate as a rabbi.
While strongly disagreeing with the theology and religious practices of non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, Lamm has been one of the most outspoken leaders in Orthodoxy for cooperation with Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism. In 1989 and 1990 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir asked Lamm to help defuse the crisis related to the "Who is a Jew?" issue, which had erupted when a Reform convert wanted to make aliyah (emigration to the State of Israel). Lamm devised a solution for the denominational crisis which required delicate diplomacy as well as good will on all sides. In response to Lamm, Shamir appointed Israeli Cabinet Secretary Elyakim Rubenstein, later a member of the Supreme Court, who negotiated secretly for many months with rabbis from Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Judaism, including faculty at Yeshiva University, with Lamm as Rosh ha-Yeshiva. The plan called for the creation of a joint panel that interviewed people who were converting to Judaism and considering making aliyah, and would refer them to a beit din (rabbinic court of Judaism) that would convert the candidate following traditional halakha.
All negotiating parties came to agreement: (1) Conversions must be carried out according to halakha, (2) the beit din overseeing the conversion would be Orthodox, perhaps appointed by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, and (3) there would be a committee consisting of representatives of all three groups to interview potential converts as to their sincerity. Many Reform rabbis took offense at the notion that the beit din must be strictly halakhic and Orthodox, but they acquiesced. However, when word about this project became public, a number of leading Haredi rabbis issued a statement denouncing the project, condemning it as a "travesty of halakha". Rabbi Moshe Sherer, then the Chairman of Agudath Israel World Organization, stated that "Yes, we played a role in putting an end to that farce, and I'm proud we did.,”(Landau, p. 320) Lamm condemned this interference by Sherer, stating that this was "the most damaging thing that he [Sherer] ever did in his brilliant forty year career."
Lamm wanted this to be only the beginning of a solution to Jewish disunity. He stated that had this unified conversion plan not been destroyed, he wanted to extend this program to the area of halakhic Jewish divorces, thus ending the problem of mamzerut. (Landau, p. 320)
In 1997 the issue of "Who is a Jew?" again arose in the State of Israel, and Lamm publicly backed the Neeman commission, a group of Orthodox, Masorti (Conservative) and Progressive (Reform) rabbis working to develop joint programs for conversion to Judaism. In 1997 he gave a speech at the World Council of Orthodox Leadership, in Glen Springs, N.Y., urging Orthodox Jews to support this effort.
In his speech Seventy Faces Lamm warns his listeners that there will be an "unbridgeable and cataclysmic rupture within the Jewish community" unless Jews from all the denominations, including Orthodoxy, listen to each other and try and find a way to work together. In this speech (now an essay) he rejects maximal ideas of religious pluralism, especially relativism. He denies that non-Orthodox Jews have halakhic legitimacy, explaining that their views on halakha do not have normative status. However he goes on to affirm a moderate form of religious pluralism, and holds that Orthodox Jews must accept that non-Orthodox rabbis are valid Jewish leaders, and possess spiritual dignity. He holds that marriages that are officiated at by non-Orthodox Jews can be halakhically valid, but not so non-Orthodox divorces. Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews must find ways to work together.
Originally trained as a scientist, Lamm has maintained an interest in the interface between science and Judaism. In his 1971 essay The Religious Implications of Extra-Terrestrial Life, Lamm writes about scientific developments concerning abiogenesis and evolution, the creation of life on Earth, and the then developing scientific consensus that life could possibly evolve on other planets outside of our solar system (i.e. extraterrestrial life. He writes
Lamm's writings on this subject are prominently featured in the "What Is Out There?" featurette, on disk two of the two disk special edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This featurette offers the views of various scientists and philosophers on the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
In 1971 Lamm wrote Faith and Doubt: Studies in Traditional Jewish Thought, which was released in a second edition in 1986 and a third and up-dated edition in 2006. This book is a personal examination of his religious beliefs.
In the 1980s many in Modern Orthodox Judaism felt battered by criticism from Orthodoxy's theological right-wing. Many Orthodox Jews, notably HaRav Nissim Cahn, began to perceive Modern Orthodoxy as less compelling, and possibly less authentic, than Haredi Judaism. As such, Lamm wrote a principled theological defense of Modern Orthodoxy in Torah Umadda: The Encounter of Religious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish Tradition and its theology of Torah in confrontation with Madda or “Western Civilization”.
In 1999 Lamm wrote The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary, in which he offered an in-depth history of Hasidic Judaism, the spiritual movement founded in the 18th century by Israel ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov. Through examination of primary sources, Lamm illustrates the development of Hasidic theology, from the 18th to the 20th century.
In 2000 Lamm wrote The Shema: Spirituality and Law in Judaism for a general audience not familiar with Jewish theology; this work focused on how a proper understanding of Judaism would lead a practitioner to spirituality. This work was a rejoinder to the viewpoint that religious, observant Judaism was dry and legal, as opposed to spiritual and meaningful.
In addition to these, Lamm wrote many essays on contemporary Jewish issues which were published in the journals Tradition and the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society.
Lamm's brother, Rabbi Maurice Lamm is also a well known rabbi, writer and organizer.
Lamm stepped down as President in 2003, and was succeeded by Richard Joel, who became the fourth President of YU and the first layman to hold the office. Joel is a former attorney who also led the Bnai Brith's international Hillel student organization. Richard Joel had previously been associate dean and professor at YU's Cardozo Law School and was an assistant district attorney in New York City.
Lamm was given the active position of Chancellor of YU [4] after 27 years as President. He still maintains his title as Rosh HaYeshiva ("head of the yeshiva") of YU's rabbinical school - RIETS. He was installed in the new position created for him as Chancellor of Yeshiva University in June 2003. He continues to play a role in the affairs of the institution over which he presided for a quarter century.
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Samuel Belkin |
President of Yeshiva University 1976 – 2003 |
Succeeded by Richard Joel |
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