Norman Lamm Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Lamm was married to Mindella, who died of COVID-19 on April 16, 2020, at the age of 88. At the time of his death in May 2020, Lamm had two sons, Shalom and Joshua, and a daughter, Chaye Warburg. He had a second daughter, Sara Lamm Dratch, who died in 2013. He was also survived by 17 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.

In July 2013, Lamm announced his retirement as Chancellor and Rosh HaYeshiva after more than 60 years at Yeshiva University, and apologized for not responding more assertively when students at Yeshiva University High School for Boys said that two rabbis there had sexually abused them. After retirement Lamm left the spotlight of communal life. According to a family member Lamm suffered from an illness that affected his memory. Lamm died on May 31, 2020 in Englewood, New Jersey.

One of Lamm’s major contributions was 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 argued that the underlying philosophy of Torah Umadda 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’s brother, Rabbi Maurice Lamm (d. June 30, 2016), wrote The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning and other books.

Lamm stepped down as president in 2003, and was succeeded by Richard Joel, who became the fourth President of Yeshiva University and the first layman to hold the office. Joel is a former attorney who also led the Bnai Brith’s international Hillel student organization. Joel had previously been associate dean and professor at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School, and was an assistant district attorney in New York City.

Lamm’s writings on this subject are prominently featured in the “What Is Out There?” featurette, on disk two of the two-disc special edition of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This featurette offers the views of various scientists and philosophers on the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

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 accompaniment, in 1999 Lamm published The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary, which offered an in-depth development of formative Hasidic thought, the mystical teachings of the movement founded in the 18th century by the Baal Shem Tov. Through examination of primary sources, Lamm illustrates the development of Hasidic theology in the 18th and 19th centuries. The book won the National Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought.

1999: National Jewish Books Award in the Jewish Thought category for The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary

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, Conservative and 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, New York, urging Orthodox Jews to support this effort.

While strongly disagreeing with the theology and religious practices of non-Orthodox forms of Judaism, Lamm was 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 goodwill on all sides. In response to Lamm’s suggestion, Prime Minister 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 (moving) to Israel, and would refer them to a beit din (rabbinic court of Judaism) that would convert the candidate following traditional halakha.

In 1989, his doctoral thesis examining the theological-kabbalistic differences in the Hasidic-Mitnagdic schism was published as Torah Lishmah: Torah for Torah’s Sake in the Works of Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin and His Contemporaries. Influences on Lamm came from both camps, with Rav Soloveitchik descended from Hayim Volozhin, main Mitnagdic theorist, who is compared with Hasidism’s theorist Schneur Zalman of Liadi.

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”.

Originally trained as a scientist, Lamm maintained an interest in the interface between science and Judaism. In his 1971 essay “The religious implications of extraterrestrial 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 the Solar System (i.e. extraterrestrial life). He writes:

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.

He obtained his Ph.D. in 1966 and was elected President of Yeshiva University in August 1976—succeeding Rabbi Samuel Belkin, YU’s second president. When he took over the institution, he helped save it from looming bankruptcy, raised its endowments, and led the school to a national top-100 school ranking. Lamm also played important roles in Jewish scholarship. At a time when ArtScroll was in financial trouble, Lamm introduced the publisher to philanthropist Jerome Schottenstein. The introduction led to the financial support from Schottenstein, whose namesake was bestowed on the Schottenstein English translation of the Babylonian Talmud.

In 1958, Lamm helped founded Tradition, an academic journal of Modern Orthodox thought. He also launched the Torah U-Madda Journal.

In addition to these, Lamm has written many essays on contemporary Jewish issues which were published in the journals Tradition, founded in 1958 by Lamm, and the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society.

Lamm spent almost 25 years as a pulpit rabbi. He was the Assistant Rabbi to Rabbi Joseph Lookstein of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in Manhattan, New York. His first pulpit was in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was appointed rabbi of the West Side Jewish Center (Congregation Beth Israel) in 1952; became an assistant rabbi at the Jewish Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1958; and then the senior rabbi of the Jewish Center from 1959 to 1976. In 1959, he also became a professor in Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University.

Lamm served as the third President of Yeshiva University, the first to be born in the United States. He was a disciple of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (one of Orthodoxy’s most influential modern scholars), who ordained him at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school in 1951.

Lamm was one of four siblings and grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His father, Samuel, had several different jobs, including as a kosher inspector for New York state. His mother, Pearl (née Baumol), was descended from a respected rabbinic family. In his youth, Lamm attended Mesivta Torah Vodaath in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He attended Yeshiva College, the men’s undergraduate school of Yeshiva University, and obtained a degree in chemistry in 1949 before working in a clandestine laboratory in upstate New York developing munitions for the newborn State of Israel. He was the secular studies valedictorian of his graduating class. In 1951, he was ordained as a rabbi at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University’s rabbinical school. He also took graduate courses at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now the New York University Tandon School of Engineering). He considered a career in medicine 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 Yeshiva University. Lamm later earned a Ph.D. in Jewish philosophy from Yeshiva University.

Norman Lamm (December 19, 1927 – May 31, 2020) was an American Modern Orthodox rabbi, scholar, academic administrator, author, and Jewish community leader. He was the Chancellor of Yeshiva University until he announced his retirement on July 1, 2013.

Lamm’s maternal grandfather was Rabbi Yehoshua Baumol (1880–1948), who authored the responsa entitled Emek Halakha. In that work, Baumol cited several insights from the then-young Lamm and responded to his questions. It was Baumol who encouraged Lamm to leave Mesivta Torah Vodaath to attend Yeshiva College, where Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik would become his mentor.