Rabbi Norman Lamm Ki Sissa-Parshas Parah
March 7, 1953
“A RABBI’S TRIBUTE TO YESHIVA UNIVERSITY”
On the Eve of the Smicha Convocation
Tomorrow afternoon, at about three o’clock, 85 young rabbis, ordained by Yeshiva University
within the last three years, will gather in the University’s Lamport Auditorium for the official
convocation celebrating their semikhah, or ordination. This rabbi will be one of those so
honored. And at an occasion of this sort it is no more than right that some sincere words of
tribute be said in public.
In truth, no expression of thanks can sufficiently describe the undying gratitude, and no tribute,
no matter how well worded, can properly express the great debt which we alumni of Yeshiva feel
towards our alma mater, that veritable fortress of holiness and sanctuary of wisdom. I can well
remember that day, some eight years ago, when I made my first pilgrimage to Yeshiva. The 8th
Ave. subway, despite its reputation as New York’s best, is not calculated to pacify the pains,
fears, and anxieties of a young student making his first trip to Washington Heights, and terrified
with the knowledge that he was now going to be examined, by the president of the university
himself, to see if he would qualify as a student. That trip on the “A” train, which I have made
about a thousand times since, was for me the prelude to a most profound and thrilling adventure.
I remember distinctly that when I knocked on the door of the Office of the President, not only
was my heart in my mouth, but somehow my brain was also anatomically displaced. But Dr.
Belkin, whose admiring and worshipful student I have since become, immediately put me at
ease. He made me forget that he was one of America’s finest Talmudic scholars. He made me
forget that he was an expert in Greek and Hellenistic literature. He made me forget that he had
the reputation of being America’s youngest and one of its finest college presidents. I had to
forget those facts because I was overwhelmed by the warmth and friendliness radiated by one of
the most humane and distinguished personalities it has ever been my privilege to meet.
I can now report that, with the help of God and a lot of cramming, I passed the examination and
was admitted to the Yeshiva. The four years I spent in its college and the six that I studied in its
Theological Seminary were the finest, most gratifying and soul-stirring that any student could
ever hope to experience.
But Yeshiva means infinitely more than the satisfaction of one man’s intellectual cravings and
spiritual searchings. The implications of its welfare and progress reach not only the Jewish
community of the United States, but Jewry of all the world. Through its own social services, and
through the leadership its alumni provide both for the religious and secular elements of our
people, it has become established as the institution representing traditional Judaism at its best
and finest. Allow me to invite you with me in an analysis of Yeshiva’s contribution to religious
Jewry: past, present, and future.
Yeshiva’s contribution in the matter of the past of Judaism has been that it has made the past
alive; it has drawn it into the present. Whereas the major school of the Conservative movement
prides itself most on its Jewish Museum, Yeshiva points with pride to its beit midrash, its study
hall. For it is precisely this that Yeshiva has done: it has demonstrated to a somewhat skeptical
generation that Judaism is not a museum piece; that it is, rather, an active and dynamic factor in
the existence of all Jews. It proved to despairing immigrants that the Torah was not left to
smolder in the ghettos of Europe; and to sophisticated first-generation American Jews, that the
Talmud belongs not in the attic with Dad’s other old books, but in the living room where it can
be studied daily. As the foremost teacher of Orthodox Judaism, Yeshiva has not attempted to
push the present into the past; rather, it has pulled the past into the present.
Perhaps the achievements of Yeshiva in making the past so meaningful and vivid to today’s Jews
can best be described in the words of our sages. Commenting upon the words of King Solomon
that dor holech u’dor ba, “a generation goes and a generation comes,” they say: dor she’ba
ke’dor she’holech... dor she’bo beyamecha ke’dor she’halach va’chachamim ha’rishonim
she’hayu lefanecha – “The younger generation is like the older generation... the generation
which comes in your days is no worse than the generation which has passed away with its wise
men, pious men, and scholars.” When Yeshiva came upon the Jewish scene five and a half
decades ago, the prophecy of the Rabbis did not seem realizable. The situation was grim indeed.
The “younger generation” was an uncultured one, an uneducated one, and a profoundly
un-Jewish one. It did not seem that generation could live up to dor she’hayah lefanecha
va’chachamim ha’rishonim, to the glorious, pious, and spiritual generation which was
evaporating from the accursed soil of Europe. But equipped with the gift of courageous vision,
Yeshiva’s leaders went to work against all odds – and today, two generations after its inception,
Yeshiva can boast of over 500 musmakhim, rabbis who are the spiritual leaders of countless
communities in the United States, Canada, and Israel. By teaching the tradition of the past,
Yeshiva has created a great present. Orthodoxy in America is no longer a vestige, a fossil. It is
the most formidable force in the religious life of American Jewry. An almost-second-generation
American like myself no longer considers the Jewish past an archaic museum piece. To us, who
are not strangers to the English language, to the culture of the Western world and to the
technology of America, the past is not antiquated and old-fashioned.
In a Rabbi Shatzkes we have seen the historical figure of a Rashi: profound Talmudist,
meticulous student, aristocratic bearing, and subtlety of intellect. In Dr. Belkin we have
experienced the presence of a Yehudah Halevi, the sort of personality which combines true
scholarship and intimate knowledge of both Jewish and Greek worlds with an essentially poetic
character. We have seen in him the Yehudah Halevi sort of person, one who can integrate
brilliance with goodness and balance it with sobering common sense. And in Rabbi Soloveitchik,
that greatest of contemporary Talmudists, we have felt the overwhelming presence of a Rambam,
Maimonides. We have seen in him the same Maimonides who flourished in Spain 800 years ago,
the same dazzling genius, the same grand sweep over all spheres of intellectual endeavor – from
halakhah (Jewish law) to philosophy, and from facility in languages to modern science. The past
has indeed been pulled into the present. The younger generation has been taught that it can be as
Jewish, and even more Jewish, than the old – despite the modern setting.
And Yeshiva has made its mark in the present, per se, too. Its contribution to the present is more
than quantitative, more than just so many rabbis ordained, so many lawyers or scientists or
psychologists graduated. It is, in a deeper sense, the conscience of our day. Few students have
passed through its portals unchanged. Some few may have left the fold. Some may have failed to
finish their courses and receive their degrees. But all have emerged inspired. They have gained
themselves a conscience. Like Joseph of old who, caught in the morass of immoral Egypt and
tempted by the sinful wife of Potiphar, sees demut diyuqno shel abba, the image of his father
Jacob, the saintly patriarch who was his towering guide in Canaan – so too the alumni of
Yeshiva, wherever they go and in whatever situation they be, remain supremely conscious of the
fact that they are the sons of this saintly Yeshiva which was their towering guide in that little
Canaan on Amsterdam Ave. between 186th and 187th Streets. We have been made aware of the
needs of our fellow Jews. We have been sensitive to the moods of our coreligionists. In short,
Yeshiva has become the active demut diyuqno, the active conscience of American Jewry.
Third, Yeshiva means insurance for the future. By acting toward its own students in a spirit of
friendship, cooperation, and personal interest – and not in a spirit of cold financial figures and
empty counting of credits and awarding of automatic degrees – Yeshiva has made its graduates
love it so that they will ever strive to accomplish its most cherished dreams: the establishment of
a Torah-true, Orthodox, respectful, and enlightened Jewish population. The bond which ties its
alumni to Yeshiva is not made of the unraveled pigskin of a football. It is made of the lines of a
Talmud, placed end to end, and glued with the affection of a rebbe for his talmid, and of a father
for his son. I can personally recount amazing instances of Yeshiva offering to do things for me
and other students that no other school ever dreamed of doing for its pupils – and all this in the
most gentlemanly manner conceivable. As a result, the spirit of loyalty and devotion which we
feel toward Yeshiva will ensure that at every time in the future, wherever we may be, we shall
strive to act in accordance with the noble principles with which Yeshiva has imbued us.
The symbolic words of today’s reading from Parashat Parah summarize the attitude of its
graduate to Yeshiva. When the priest in charge of purifying and cleansing those defiled by
contact with dead bodies would perform his ritual of taharah or purification, he would sprinkle
some drops of the sacrificial blood with his finger. And the direction in which he would do this is
significant: ve’hizah el nochach penei ohel mo’ed – the priest would sprinkle it in the direction of
the front of the Tabernacle. Melamed, our rabbis say, this teaches us that hayah mitkaven
ve’ro’eh piskho shel heikhal – he would face and see the door of the Tabernacle. Even if the
priest were at the other end of Jerusalem, no matter how far away, he could still carry on his
work of purification – provided that he kept in his mind’s eye the doors of the Temple.
The kohanim – the rabbis and lay leaders graduated by Yeshiva University – know that their
mission in life is to carry on the great work of taharah, of purification. In a world defiled by
contact with death and the spirit of death; in a world gripped by fear of extinction by atom
bombs; in a world contaminated by the deadening effect of ignorance and prejudice; in a world
in which thousands are lost souls, borne aimlessly by the currents of the times like deadwood by
tidal waves; in a world dominated by death and the fear of death – the sons of Yeshiva regard it
as their sacred duty to cleanse and purify, to breathe a spirit of life, to rid the world of dead blood
and to inject new blood. But if this work is ever to be accomplished successfully in the future, we
know that we must constantly face piskho shel heikhal, that our hearts and minds must constantly
be directed toward the interior of that sanctuary of wisdom, and that our soul must constantly
return to be replenished from that infinite source of holiness and dedication: Yeshiva University.
No matter where it shall be our fate to minister, no matter how many years will separate us from
the great day of the semikhah convocation, we know that the sublime process of purification
from the deadly elements of ignorance and cynicism can continue only by reference to that
Tabernacle known as Yeshiva.
So long as Yeshiva flourishes, so long as it gains the support of the Jewish community which it
serves, so long will it remain the source of our inspiration and director of our efforts at
purification. We are powerless without it; we can move worlds with it.
Yeshiva’s greatness, then, extends in three dimensions: past, present, and future. It represents to
us the model of our history and tradition; it is our conscience; and it shall ever remain the
inspiration for whatever purity we can achieve in times to come.
As its youngest graduates gather tomorrow in Yeshiva, they shall be keenly aware of the destiny
which beckons them onward. And their hearts shall be ebullient with profound feelings of
gratitude to that hallowed institution and its inspired leaders. Tomorrow we shall be privileged to
close another link in a long chain. And we shall do so with the combined prayers of our teachers,
ourselves, our congregations, and all our fellow Jews that we shall someday ourselves be
privileged to forge yet another link and extend this holy chain into countless generations to come
– into eternity itself.
