Richard M. Joel (born 1950) is the fourth president of Yeshiva University (YU), a Modern Orthodox Jewish university with some 7,000 students at its undergraduate and graduate divisions in New York City. In addition, Joel has traveled the globe giving talks on topics of Jewish leadership and identity at numerous universities and Jewish Federations.
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Richard Joel received his BA and JD from New York University where he was a Root-Tilden law scholar, and has received honorary doctorates from Boston Hebrew College and Gratz College. He was an assistant district attorney in New York, and Deputy Chief of Appeals in Bronx, NY. His career continued as associate dean and professor of law at YU’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. President Joel is an at-large member of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU) Board of Trustees.[1]
From 1989 to 2003, Joel served as President and International director of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, an organization which supports Jewish life for college and university students throughout the world. In 1994, Joel orchestrated Hillel's independence from B'nai B'rith, its parent organization since 1925. Joel also increased the organization's financial stability and prestige by bringing on board major philanthropists such as Michael Steinhardt, Edgar Bronfman, and Lynn Schusterman and Charles Schusterman. During his tenure, Hillel partnered with Birthright Israel, and launched the Steinhardt Jewish Campus Service Corps, a group of recent college graduates tasked with engaging unaffiliated Jews and drawing them to Judaism and Jewish events. Hillel also expanded to the former Soviet Union and South America.[2] Joel's tenure at Hillel has been criticized by some as providing stylish instead of substantive Judaism.[3] (More on criticism of Hillel.) However, Joel has also been credited for his “skilled management, magnetism, personal warmth” and “clarity of vision.”[4] Joel is credited as the one who "transformed this movement (Hillel) and put Jewish renaissance at the forefront of the community's agenda," and his contributions to Hillel have been defined as "immeasurable" by its past and present leadership.[5]
During his tenure at Hillel, Joel served as the head of the special commission impaneled by the Orthodox Union (OU) to investigate allegations that community leaders had ignored charges against the abusive outreach rabbi Baruch Lanner, an executive with the OU's National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY). The commission concluded that many OU and NCSY leaders had made serious errors in judgment.
Joel became president of YU in 2003, succeeding Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, who had been president since 1976. Since assuming the presidency, President Joel has appointed new deans for Yeshiva College, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Sy Syms School of Business, and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), added faculty positions throughout the university, and spurred wide-ranging improvements to campus life, including the construction of YU's newest building, the Jacob and Dreizel Glueck Center for Jewish Study, which opened in August 2009.
As president of RIETS, he has spearheaded efforts to reinvigorate professional education for rabbis, continuing education and rabbinic placement.
President Joel speaks often of a Yeshiva University education as "ennobling and enabling" a generation of leadership. Additionally, President Joel has established various centers and programs including the university's centers for Ethics, Israel Studies, Public Health and the Jewish Future.
He has also established a Presidential Fellowship program that provides training and professional development to recent graduates to further their path toward communal leadership.
Joel and his wife Esther (née Ribner), who holds a PhD from YU's Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, have six children all of whom have attended Yeshiva University schools. They currently reside in Riverdale, NY.[6]
Joel's son Nachum is a member of Yeshiva University's a cappella group, The Maccabeats, known for their viral Hanukkah hit Candlelight. Ironically, while Nachum only joined the Maccabeats in late 2010, Richard was featured in the song "Shaleshudis Medley" on the Maccabeats CD, Voices from the Heights, which debuted in March 2010.