Norman Lamm

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.

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.

Norman Lamm (December 19, 1927 – May 31, 2020) was an American Modern Orthodox rabbi, scholar, academic administrator, author, and Jewish community leader.

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.

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.

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.

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 1958, Lamm helped founded Tradition, an academic journal of Modern Orthodox thought.

He also launched the Torah U-Madda Journal.

In 1959, he also became a professor in Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva University.

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.

He was the Chancellor of Yeshiva University until he announced his retirement on July 1, 2013.

Lamm served as the third President of Yeshiva University, the first to be born in the United States.

He had a second daughter, Sara Lamm Dratch, who died in 2013.

He was also survived by 17 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.

As a Modern Orthodox Jew, Lamm's theology incorporated the corpus of classical rabbinic Jewish principles of faith.

The faith that he preaches and teaches is consistent with these teachings.

He believed that God exists, that God can reveal his will to mankind, and that the Torah (five books of Moses) is an exact transcription of God's revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai.

He believed that Judaism's oral law, as recorded in the Mishnah and Talmud and subsequent rabbinical interpretation, represents an accurate and authoritative understanding of how God wants mankind to understand the Hebrew Bible.

And, in accordance with standard Orthodox Jewish theology, he held that halakha, loosely translated as "Jewish law", is normative and binding on all Jews.

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.

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.