Divrei Hesped for Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm Z"L

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June 02 2020
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Divrei Hesped for Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm Z"L 


 


Rabbi Dr. Norman (Nachum) Lamm z”l was an extraordinary Rav, who graced a number of pulpits including the fledgling rabbinate in Springfield, Mass and culminating in the prestigious Jewish Center of Manhattan. He subsequently became Rosh Yeshiva and President of Yeshiva University fortified by his rabbinic aristocratic regalia. His oratorical skills and written oeuvre were sui generis. In my humble opinion, he was one of the most voluble speakers I have ever heard and his written fluency was well nigh unparalleled. His oratory was brimming with content and simultaneously presented with elegance, structure and poetic mellifluity. His derashot were an exercise in binyan/building - brick by brick, one saw the fundamental themes of our Torah Weltanschauung while undergirding those ideas with a profound understanding of the world at large. He was au courant with all the scientific, medical and requisite knowledge of the modern world that he brought to bear in his derashot, lectures and shiurim. In short, his intellectual contributions were impeccably constructed works of art. They were both edifying, inspiring, creative and concurrently, delightful and stimulating to the listener and the reader.


 


Rabbi Lamm was preeminently responsible for saving Yeshiva University from the throes of bankruptcy. He brought together his masterful skills and talents and demonstrated a remarkable and personable human connectivity with others amidst his intellectual acumen. His valiant efforts to stake out and create a synthesis and middle of the road approach in a world of extremes, is a testament to his well thought out and carefully honed philosophy of “centrism” that epitomized from his perspective the quintessence of YU and its raison d’etre in a world of flux that was looking for clear navigational directives. Despite his many detractors from all sides, he demonstrated a rugged temerity in presenting his intellectual and emotional tapestry. He was the consummate “mentsch” who was even able, in his beneficence to even beautifully eulogize his denigrators and disparagers. He was an exceptional model for דרך ארץ קדמה לתורה with his noble and sterling character.


 


Besides being an outstanding scholar and towering Talmid Chacham, he was a renaissance personality. He was profoundly anchored in philosophy, chassidic thought and other abstruse machshava currents that resonated throughout the millennia. He was a very gifted teacher and his thinking was articulated in a logical, carefully delineated, demarcated and precisely defined fashion.  His eulogy for his mentor and Rebi, Rav Soloveitchik zt”l was a classic tour de force and masterstroke which very much reflected his own philosophy of life. 


 


Despite his inchoate academic and intellectual acuity and prowess, he was also a sensitive and warm human being who displayed compassion, benevolence and boundless kindness to the sensibility of others. As a scion of gedolei Yisrael, he was fully cognizant of the centrality of limmud haTorah but he was eminently capable of disseminating it to the modern world with such coherence and fluency that it penetrated the minds and hearts of those trained in the western world.


 


He leaves a gaping void in the entire Jewish world and we owe him boundless gratitude and hakarat hatov both for his intellectual fecundity, distinct Rabbinic leadership and his ability to bridge so many worlds in such a distinctively beautiful and seamless fashion. He was a colossal figure in the Jewish world and his loss is a deeply sorrowful aveida for the whole of Klal Yisrael.


 


Yehi Zichro Barukh.

Venue: Ramat Beit Shemesh Ramat Beit Shemesh

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    Learning on the Marcos and Adina Katz YUTorah site is sponsored today by Judy & Mark Frankel & family l'ilui nishmos מרדכי בן הרב משה יהודה ע"ה and משה יהודה ז"ל בן מאיר אליהו ויהודית