Rabbi Norman Lamm announced his resignation on Monday as
chancellor of Yeshiva University after admitting his failure to respond
adequately to allegations of sexual abuse against the university's rabbis in
the 1980s. Lamm served as president of what is modern Orthodoxy's premier
academic institution from 1976 to 2003, when he was elected chancellor.
July 1, 2013
Dear Friends,
When we celebrated the ninetieth birthday of my dear father,
zikhrono liverakhah, I cited the Mishnah in Avot 5:21, ben tish’im la-shu-ach.
Despite the standard explanation that at ninety years old a person is stooped
and decrepit, and there is much truth to that, I offered a more sensitive and
profound interpretation. Without going into all of the details, I observed that
hishtachavayah, the prostration of the attendee at the Jerusalem Temple, was
the final ritual performed at the culmination of the divine service. Through
prostration pilgrims stopped to reflect on their heavenly encounter and offered
their gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity to serve God through the
divine service. At ninety, I suggested, a person stops to reflect on a life
well lived, a family raised, professional and personal achievements, spiritual
growth, accomplishments, mistakes, successes and failures – and pauses for his
hishtachavayah, a moment of reflection, gratitude, and appreciation.
While I have yet to reach my father’s age, at this moment of
transition in accordance with an agreement reached 3 years ago – as I step down
from my positions as Chancellor of Yeshiva University and Rosh Hayeshivah,
ending over sixty years of official affiliation with my beloved Yeshiva
University as student, faculty member, Rosh Hayeshivah, President, and
Chancellor, I use this moment for mishtachavim u-modim – pause, reflection, and
expression of gratitude. Before beginning, I want to acknowledge that conditions
have caused me to rely on help from my family in writing this letter.
Yeshiva nurtured me, challenged me, and formed me. Yeshiva
took me in as a young, untested, and unproven boy and gave me opportunities for
religious and intellectual growth, personal development, and professional
achievement. For these sixty years I lived and breathed Yeshiva, its problems,
its challenges, and its successes. I enjoyed opportunities that I never dreamed
would be offered me: leadership, responsibility, the trust of a community, the
affection and support of many from world leaders to drawers of water, and the
pulpit of the Orthodox and Jewish world. The day I became President in 1976 I
was humbled to occupy the offices of my rebbeim, mentors, and predecessors –
Dr. Revel, Dr. Belkin, the Rav, zikhronam livrakhah – and a host of other
rebbeim, professors, administrators, and lay leaders; I continue to be humbled
and incredulous today as I step down. I would like to believe that I was a
worthy custodian of their creation and leave the institution and the Torah
u-Madda community more vital, vibrant, and effective religiously, academically,
communally, and financially. Yeshiva University is not only an institution. It
is a faith, a vision, a dream, a destiny. It has been my faith, my vision, my
dream, and my destiny. It is the kind of faith that elicited from me, and from
so many for over 125 years, work, dedication, and endless effort and endeavor.
It would be too easy at this moment in Yeshiva’s history,
when fortune smiles on us and we are a top-ranked university and a thriving bet
midrash, when things are largely going our way, to forget past adversities and
difficulties and to think that our successes are part of the very fabric of our
existence. We cannot assume that it is natural and normal that conditions be as
favorable as they are today, nor should we imagine that they could not have
been otherwise. We forget that the felicity of the present is actually the
fulfillment of the promise of the past. The merciful quality of time causes us
to forget the intensity of the anxiety of years past, when our ability to
survive was in doubt. We are therefore obligated to an appreciation of our
blessings as a special gift, as the keeping of God's word, as the vindication
of the covenant in which He promised us that Torah shall not depart from us or
from our descendants. The experience of fulfillment lays upon us the obligation
of humility, to realize that we are not necessarily deserving of what has come
upon us, that we have not wrought our good fortune with our own hands and
wisdom, that it is God in His goodness who keeps His Word to generations past
and by virtue of which we now prosper. We must demand of ourselves the
obligations that flow from our successes – the qualities of understanding, of
perspective, of emunah, and above all, of a deep humility that the Higher Force
has responded to our own initiative in molding Jewish history and keeping His
promise, through us, to those who preceded us.
In the Aleinu, mishtachavim is followed by modim, modim, as
in thanks. But there is another meaning as well, one that holds the key to real
leadership and one upon which I reflect at this important transition in my
personal and professional life. Jacob’s blessing to his son Judah, Yehudah,
attah yodukha achekha (Gen. 49:8), literally means "Judah, your brothers
will recognize you (as their leader)." However, the word yodukha, they
will recognize you, is etymologically related to the word vidui, confession,
and therefore teaches us that only those who can, like Judah, confess, are
those who can be acknowledged as real leaders.
And it is to this I turn as I contemplate my response to
allegations of abuse in the Yeshiva community. At the time that inappropriate
actions by individuals at Yeshiva were brought to my attention, I acted in a
way that I thought was correct, but which now seems ill-conceived. I understand
better today than I did then that sometimes, when you think you are doing good,
your actions do not measure up. You think you are helping, but you are not. You
submit to momentary compassion in according individuals the benefit of the
doubt by not fully recognizing what is before you, and in the process you lose
the Promised Land. I recognize now that when we make decisions we risk, however
inadvertently, the tragedy of receiving that calamitous report: tarof toraf
Yosef, "Joseph is devoured," all our work is in vain, all we have put
into our children has the risk of being undone because of a few
well-intentioned but incorrect moves. And when that happens – one must do
teshuvah. So, I too must do teshuvah.
True character requires of me the courage to admit that,
despite my best intentions then, I now recognize that I was wrong. I am not
perfect; none of us is perfect. Each of us has failed, in one way or another,
in greater or lesser measure, to live by the highest standards and ideals of
our tradition – ethically, morally, halakhically. We must never be so committed
to justifying our past that we thereby threaten to destroy our future. It is
not an easy task. On the contrary, it is one of the greatest trials of all, for
it means sacrificing our very egos, our reputations, even our identities. But
we can and must do it. I must do it, and having done so, contribute to the
creation of a future that is safer for innocents, and more ethically and
halakhically correct.
Biblical Judah was big enough to admit that he was small. He
confesses a mistake. He can experience guilt and confront it creatively. After
the incident with Tamar, he does not offer any tortured rationalizations to
vindicate himself. He says simply and forthrightly: tzadkah mimmeni (Gen.
38:26), she was right and I was wrong. And with that statement Judah is
transformed into a self-critical man of moral courage. He concedes guilt. He
knows that he is guilty with regard to Joseph, and together with his brothers
he says aval ashemim anachnu, "indeed, we are guilty.” Pushed to the
limits of the endurance of his conscience, he rises to a new stature and
achieves a moral greatness that is irrefrangible and pellucid.
This is what I am modeh as I reflect on my tenure. Tzadkah
mimmeni. I hope that those who came forth and others who put their trust in me
will feel that faith vindicated and justified. Modeh ani.
One might think it appropriate to mark the formal end of a
career in avodat ha-kodesh with the recitation of Havdalah, the blessing which
marks the end of the sacred period of holy days. Yet my whole career in avodat
ha-kodeh has been one of havdalah.
Consider: When we recite this prayer, we bless God who
distinguishes between sacred and profane, light and dark, Israel and the
nations, Sabbath and weekday. Jewish practice calls for us to recite this
havdalah on Saturday nights and at the end of holidays, not only over a cup of
wine, but also during the Amidah of the evening prayer which marks the
transition from holy-day to week-day. And the Talmud requires that the havdalah
be recited specifically in the blessing which attah chonein la-adam da’at, in
which we pray to the Almighty for the gift of wisdom and knowledge and
understanding. What is the relevance of havdalah to this specific blessing? The
Rabbis answer, "if there is no knowledge, whence the ability to
distinguish?" In other words, the ability to discern between different
values, to discriminate and to distinguish between competing claims, and
therefore the ability to emerge whole from the confusions that reign in life,
requires da’at – special insights and intellectual gifts.
And yet, if we examine the passage of the havdalah
carefully, we remain with the question: why so? Apparently, it should be rather
easy to make these distinctions. Any child can tell the difference between
light and dark; reference to identity of the parents will tell us if one is
Jewish or non-Jewish; the difference between the Sabbath and weekdays is
nothing more complicated than consulting a calendar; and even the distinction
between sacred and profane is not overly taxing – who cannot tell apart, for
instance, a Sefer Torah from a novel? Why, then, the special requirement for
da’at or knowledge, for intellectual graces, in order to perform havdalah?
The answer is that for those who are superficial or who
dwell in only one realm, da’at is indeed unnecessary. If we associate only with
kodesh (holiness), Israel, ore (light), and Sabbath, or only with hol (the
profane), the nations, hoshekh (darkness), and weekday, it is easy to discern
distinctions and life is much less confusing. The full atheist has few
problems. There is little to confuse him. He swallows all of contemporary life,
and therefore he has no difficulties in trying to tell apart its various
strands. Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, the Jew who does not step
out of his self-imposed boundaries of the sacred, of Israel, of the light of
Torah, rejects all that is new and secular and alien in the contemporary
culture, and he too has little to confuse him.
However, da’at is needed and havdalah is vital for those of
us who choose to live in both realms, Torah and Madda, and will reject neither
– for those of us who opt both for light and darkness, for Israel and the
nations, for Sabbath and weekdays, for the sacred and the profane.
This category describes most of us, who are known by the
somewhat infelicitous name “Modern Orthodox,” who will not succumb to the
blandishments of the materialistic and hedonistic and atheist society, and yet
refuse the easy comforts of intellectual ghettoization; who believe that the
function and the mission of the Jew in the world is to illuminate the hoshekh
(darkness); to sanctify the hol (profane); to bring the Jewish message to the
nations; and to introduce the warmth and meaningfulness of the Sabbath to all
the days of the week.
For us, who are involved in this great mission, that of
Torah and that of Maddah, was the dictum of the Rabbis meant: im ein da’at,
havdalah minayin. It is we, who straddle both worlds, who are therefore subject
to the danger of confusion, and who therefore need the special divine gift of
da’at or knowledge, insight, in order to be able to perform havdalah, always to
distinguish between the light and the dark, even when we try to illuminate the
shadows of life; to know what separates the holy and the profane, even when we
try to consecrate the secular.
Educationally, the highest expression of this point of view
is Yeshiva University. For Yeshiva is more than a university; it is truly a
universe, a microcosm of the American Orthodox world – its vices and its
virtues, its faults and its merits, its promises and its potentials, its
currents and sub-currents. No other place in the world offers such a
combination: a Yeshiva and a medical school, a Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological
Seminary and a Stern College for Women; a Talmudic Kollel and a school of education.
The ideal of Yeshiva is: kiddush ha-hol, the sanctification
of the profane and the illumination of the dark and the Judaization of the
general. It is Yeshiva, therefore, which strives most mightily for that da’at
to keep havdalah, to be able at all times to discern and distinguish, to avoid
confusion in a terribly confusing world.
This vast educational complex, this "Yeshiva
Universe," is the vision of some of the greatest Jewish scholars of our
and of past generations – and it is one which, because of the implied risks,
constantly requires da’at and increasing havdalah in order to save our
generation, and future generations, from confusion. May Yeshiva’s future be
both gracious and powerful as it is led by my distinguished successor,
President Richard Joel. He deserves the loyalty of all segments of our beloved
institution – students, faculty, board members, and amkha.
And finally, a prayer for my family, my students, my
colleagues, and my friends: Learn from my experiences, both positive and
negative, to achieve success with grace and to face failure with dignity, to be
prepared for the extreme periods of life’s challenges without hubris or
despair, and never to stop hoping and expecting better news and better times.
Above all, learn the importance of commitment to great and noble ideals even
when it hurts and disappoints, but to trust that ultimately it will all prove
worthwhile. I pray that you will always strive to live morally upstanding and
spiritually fulfilling lives, marked by abiding loyalty to the principles of
Orthodox Judaism, to Torah Umadda, along with respect for all people who
honestly follow the dictates of their own beliefs and conscience even when such
do not accord with your own deepest commitments, and to combine your love of
God and Torah with love of all humans created in the image of God.
If in any way my life’s experience can encourage in you the
aspiration to attain a modicum of wisdom; a trust in the faith in our
ancestors' spiritual strivings from Abraham through Moses through the giants of
the sacred Jewish tradition; a measure of the value of the sweetness and
intellectual excitement in the study of Torah; a desire to excel in the
practice of mitzvot; the reassurance that ultimately character and Godliness
are infinitely more ennobling and valuable than any worldly goods or social
approbation; and the strength to hold fast and persevere through a life of
havdalah – why, then, my life – and yours – will have proven worthwhile.
Halevai!
Rabbi Norman Lamm
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