The Lander Legacy
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and the charming Mrs. Lander moved into our neighborhood 78 The Lander Legacy only about a year ago, they are generally regarded as old and familiar friends. Some exercise leadership by shouting: “Follow me!” while others shout “Wait for me!” Still others are forced to drag their followers, often kicking and screaming, to the place they wish to lead them. It was this third situation that characterized the early days of Dr. Lander’s tenure as QJC president. Lander soon discovered that every discussion about building a new facility was soon dominated by a single issue: the cost. Where will the money come from? How will we be able to afford the upkeep? We already tried this, and it almost put us into bankruptcy! With his ally Morris Lifschitz at his side, Lander fought valiantly to convince a battered congregation that the cost of doing nothing was even more expensive than building a new home. The two succeeded in slowly generating community support for a new building that would include a school for the children, a sanctuary for prayer and study and a social hall. Lander laid out a two-part plan designed to spread the costs over a longer period. Phase A, for which the funds could be raised from within the community itself, would provide only the school building. The sanctuary and social hall would be added later with funding raised from outside sources. It was Lander’s vision that the school building would provide adequate space for a day school, an institution that he felt was absolutely essential for Jewish survival in America. As the plans were drawn up and attractive elevation renderings were displayed to the congregation, enthusiasm for the project accelerated dramatically. It was clear that Morris Lifschitz had performed a great mitzvah by enticing Bernard Lander into joining the Forest Hills community. The rabbi—and now, doctor of sociology—not only understood the priorities of survival required by a Torah community like Forest Hills, but he also possessed the skills to vigorously articulate those priorities in the greater context of Jewish history. This talent is clearly demonstrated in his dramatic plea for support that included the following heart-stirring passage: In the last two decades we have witnessed, first, the saddest and, then, the happiest moments of almost two thousand years of Jewish history. In the wake of Buchenwald and Dachau, the song of our pioneers and builders again arises from the plains of Sharon and hills of Judea. New Horizons 79 Whilst we exalt in the victories and rejoicing of our brethren in Israel, we must not forsake our Jewish Communities in the Diaspora. We cannot surrender five million American Jews and American Jewish life to religious assimilation and desiccation. As we work for an expanding economy and community in Israel, we must simultaneously strive for the building of a creative and self-respecting Jewish life in America. In the building of our Synagogue and Center, we are making a significant contribution to a vital Jewish life in Forest Hills. A variety of topics were capturing the attention of the American public on August 13, 1951. In Jerusalem, the World Zionist Congress was convening to re-examine its future role in relation to the State of Israel, while in East Berlin more than one million German youth took to the streets in a frightening government-directed “peace festival” marked by anti-American slogans and banners professing their devotion to communism. Closer to home, golfer Ben Hogan blazed to a stellar finish in the biggest single purse of his career as his six under par performance earned him an astounding $12,500, while Babe Didrikson-Zaharias took home the LPGA World Golf Championship trophy. The New York Giants were on their way to winning the pennant and black center fielder Willie Mays was completing his first season in the majors that would result in his winning the League’s 1951 Rookie of the Year award. But there were also two landmark events that coincided on that date in the lives of Bernard and Sarah Lander that overshadowed all of the other news of the day. It was on this bright summer afternoon that ground was broken on 108th Street in Queens for the QJC’s new school building, and it was also on this day that the Lander’s first child, Esther, arrived into the world. The school building was completed in June of the following year, and since it could comfortably accommodate more than 300 worshippers, regular services were soon scheduled. The use of the school building was a temporary measure, intended to last only until funds could be obtained to complete Phase Two of the project that would see a sanctuary and social hall added to the floor plan. But a Jewish institution is not merely built with bricks and mortar. Under Lander’s vision for the future of the Forest Hills community, this new facility was to be the home of a day school that would provide Jewish learning and 80 The Lander Legacy transmit Torah values to each succeeding generation of young people. So, months before the building was dedicated, Lander had turned his focus to the vital goal of establishing just such a school. Assembling a group of activist congregants and enlisting the enthusiastic support of Rabbi Morris Max, Lander created a founder’s group that would evolve into the day school’s first board of directors. Lander felt that the school should be autonomous, with its own distinguishing name and identity. He suggested naming the new school after his Yeshiva mentor, Rabbi Dr. Bernard (Dov) Revel. The others agreed. Yeshiva Dov Revel opened its doors for the fall semester of 1952 in the QJC’s newly constructed school building, offering a first and second grade curriculum. The school added classes each year and eventually served children from kindergarten through eighth grade. With the exception of Talmud and Torah classes in the middle school that were segregated by gender, classes were mixed. Under the leadership of its first principal, Rabbi Dr. Morris Charner, the school soon developed a reputation for academic excellence. Attracting students through the high quality of both its Judaic and general curricula, Yeshiva Dov Revel eventually reached an enrollment of more than one thousand students, creating the need for a new expanded building on 112th Street. Bernard Lander continued to serve as president of the congregation for another five years, but it would be nearly ten years before the synagogue component of the QJC building would be completed. Much to the sorrow of his congregants, the shul’s beloved Rabbi Max made aliyah to Israel a few years later. He was succeeded by Rabbi Joseph Grunblatt, who would serve as QJC’s spiritual leader for the next forty years. Bernard Lander’s work in restoring vitality to the Forest Hills Jewish community reached beyond the day school and the synagogue, institutions with which he was directly involved. Taken together these facilities constituted a solid cornerstone for the entire Queens Jewish community. Over the coming years, their presence attracted a class of highly committed Jews to Forest Hills. The neighborhood was marked by an ambience of reverence and serious dedication to Jewish values, as evidenced by the thirty QJC families headed by ordained Orthodox rabbis. The community became home to the leaders of major Jewish organizations such as New Horizons 81 the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Council of America, and Mizrachi. It was in Forest Hills that these observant families could confidently send their children to school and enjoy the Torah lifestyle they preferred. The growth of the Forest Hills Jewish community soon led to a second Orthodox synagogue opening its doors and, as housing prices began to escalate, the community expanded into adjoining neighborhoods such as Kew Gardens. The transformation of the Queens Jewish community from one eking out an existence in a ramshackle storefront to a vital center for the nation’s most Torah-devoted families is a dramatic one that Bernard Lander could deservedly look back upon with pride. But while Lander was perhaps one of the most tenacious and goal-oriented leaders to stride across the stage of American Judaism, he was fundamentally a modest man who did not thirst for glory. The driving impetus that characterized the Queens transformation was driven not by Lander’s search for acclaim, but rather by his intrinsic devotion to Judaic expression. It was these motivations and instincts that would guide Bernard Lander over the coming decade as he attained leadership positions at the national level among several major Jewish organizations. They would guide Lander’s course in the days ahead as his influence was starting to be felt in circles far beyond his Queens neighborhood. Lander felt he was ready for the formidable challenges that lay ahead and so, armed with his confidence and convictions, he set out to fulfill his destiny in the broader panorama of national leadership. 83 Chapter nine Learner to Leader Let all your actions be for the sake of Heaven. —Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers) 2:12 Watching the evening news in 2012, one would assume that the question of Jewish settlements in the Middle East is an entirely “au courant” issue. But, in fact, the struggle to reclaim the ancient Jewish homeland dates back to the days before Theodore Herzl first conceived and articulated the Zionist dream in the late nineteenth century. There have traditionally been two streams flowing from the Diaspora that have fed the Zionist current over the decades. The two constructs of this dichotomy are labeled Political Zionism and Religious Zionism. It was the latter stream, with its precepts of redemption based on Biblical scripture, into which Bernard Lander was immersed, and it was from this movement that he emerged as a leader of the Mizrachi movement. Mizrachi originated at the dawn of the twentieth century at a world conference of religious Zionists held in Vilnius, Lithuania. The gathering, called by Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, was initiated in direct response to Theodor Herzl’s recent rekindling of the ancient Jewish dream of territorial redemption. Reines had attended the 1899 Third Zionist Conference in Switzerland and was responding to Herzl’s call for European rabbis to support his fledgling movement. Not an observant Jew himself, Herzl nevertheless clearly understood that for it to gain acceptance, the Zionist endeavor must contain a religious, not merely a political, dimension. Rabbi Reines passionately concurred and expounded on the Torah underpinnings of the Zionist vision during the Vilnius conference. Inspired by his words, the delegates were moved to action and voted to create an entity that would place Torah squarely into the heart of the Zionist movement. In determining a name for this newly forged religious 84 The Lander Legacy Zionist group, Reines recalled a term coined by his colleague Rabbi Samuel Mohilever years earlier: Mercaz Ruhani or religious center. Shortened to Mizrachi, the movement has been a potent force in the development of the Jewish homeland. While Mizrachi is perhaps best known for being the first religious political party in the new state of Israel, where it vigorously campaigned for laws enforcing Kashrut and Shabbat observance, it was in the American vineyards of Mizrachi that Bernard Lander toiled, primarily due to the efforts of Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan. As the American Jewish community sought to rebuild its leadership in the wake of World War II, Bar Ilan began actively recruiting young blood to serve in the Mizrachi movement. In 1946, he succeeded in attracting both Rabbi Lander and his friend Morris Lifschitz to serve on the organization’s executive board. Lander soon became a popular and articulate advocate for Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisroel. As he spoke before newly founded Mizrachi groups in cities across the country, Lander became an impassioned exponent of the Zionist dream, presenting the case for religious Zionism to an increasingly receptive audience. “The clock of Jewish history is moving rapidly before our eyes,” he would exhort. “It is our duty as serious and stalwart Jews to insure that Torah is not abandoned in the rush to meet our destiny.” Within two years, Herzl’s Zionist dream would become a reality, only six months shy of his 1898 prediction that a Jewish state would emerge within fifty years. With the establishment of the sovereign State of Israel, the Mizrachi movement’s primary mission shifted to one of shomer (watchman), guardians making sure that traditional Judaic law and observance would be woven tightly into the new nation’s legal structure and social fabric. In 1949, Rabbi Lander’s friend and former faculty advisor Dr. Pinkhos Churgin was elected president of the national Mizrachi Organization of America. His first order of business was to begin work towards establishing a new university in Israel that would combine both religious and general studies—similar to the Yeshiva University model in New York. Churgin needed an outspoken and energetic spokesman to carry the banner for his vision and, not surprisingly, he turned to Bernard Lander. Churgin invited Lander to join a founder’s group that convened in Atlantic City in 1950. There, the concept of creating an Orthodox-affiliated institute of higher learning in Israel was overwhelmingly endorsed, and the name Bar-Ilan Learner to Leader 85 University, honoring the founder of the American Mizrachi movement, was selected. Churgin and Lander’s enthusiasm for the new project was soon met with widespread scorn among the non-religious Jewish press in both the United States and Israel. While this was to be expected, the reaction among Israel’s Orthodox community was not. Churgin encountered strong pressure from the country’s rabbinic leadership, including Tel Aviv chief rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman to abandon his notion of exporting American-style Yeshiva learning to Israel. The idea of combining religious and secular studies under the same roof was anathema to the European-trained rabbis who now constituted the new state’s religious hierarchy. Churgin was persuaded to abandon his original concept and, instead, modified his plans to establish a secular, coeducational Israeli university. The school would be sponsored by American Orthodox Jewry, and while it would not include a seminary, it would offer a full-fledged Jewish studies department. It was this concept, as modified, that succeeded in gaining acceptance in both Israel and the United States. By 1952 the Israeli government agreed to allocate land for Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. At the same time, Dr. Lander was named to the new school’s board, where he urged his fellow directors to purchase the orchards and other properties adjacent to the site. This investment advice proved to be indeed prescient since the school has today become the nation’s second largest university with a growing enrollment of some 27,000 students. Construction began the following year, and the doors were opened in 1955. Because of the recruitment and fundraising efforts conducted by Lander and others, most of the school’s financing and the majority of the original students came from North America. When Lander was asked by the board—whose members greatly respected his foresight and erudition—to conduct screening interviews with prospective American applicants, he agreed and discovered that he greatly relished this role, taking pride in his own ability to accurately discern the most promising of candidates. Bar-Ilan University articulated its mission in this way: “to blend tradition with modern technologies and scholarship and teach the compelling ethics of Jewish heritage to all. To synthesize the ancient and the modern, 86 The Lander Legacy the sacred and the material, the spiritual and the scientific.” It is this transcendent quest for ichud and havdalah—determining the points of unification and lines of demarcation of the sacred and the secular—that would come to characterize the rest of Bernard Lander’s professional life and eventually form the cornerstone of his lasting legacy to the Jewish people. Pinkhos Churgin died in 1957, shortly after Bar-Ilan University started its third year of operation. Prior to his death, however, Rabbi Churgin had attempted to point his prot.g.e, Bernard Lander, towards deploying his talents to benefit his alma mater, Yeshiva University. Churgin had repeatedly urged Yeshiva president, Dr. Samuel Belkin, to hire Dr. Lander to reinvigorate the school’s flagging graduate programs. Eventually Belkin saw fit to act upon Churgin’s advice. The call came in November 1954 when Belkin, who had assumed the helm at Yeshiva in 1943 after the death of founder Bernard Revel, told Lander that he wanted to discuss bringing him onboard to help administer Yeshiva’s two postgraduate schools. The first was a Jewish studies program initiated by Revel himself in 1935 and renamed the Bernard Revel Graduate School subsequent to the founder’s death. The second program was established in 1948 as the School of Education and Community Administration or SECA. SECA’s founding dean was a member of Yeshiva’s first graduating class, Dr. Jacob Hartstein, who had fielded a small but outstanding faculty and fashioned a curriculum offering advanced courses in psychology, education, and social work. Hartstein left Yeshiva in the early 1950s before either of the graduate programs had been accredited for the issuance of postgraduate degrees. Lander greeted Belkin’s invitation with enthusiasm and, after resolving a potential conflict with his employer Download 1.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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