The Lander Legacy
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The Path of Learning 25 students, attempting to emulate his climbing prowess, would often come away bruised and battered. Tragically, several years after Bernard had left the school, a Yeshiva student would lose his life along those very cliffs. Those enthusiastic bolts up the mountainside were emblematic of Bernard’s precocious personality in high school. He was a young man in a hurry: in a hurry to compete with his classmates and moreover, in a hurry to challenge himself to stretch and press against the boundaries of his world, both physical and intellectual. This fire in the belly was certainly present when it came to religious studies, and it also drove his thirst for general knowledge, although perhaps with not quite as much fervor. Many evenings were spent reading in the public library, where he amassed a vast independent knowledge base about Western Literature. Bernard’s favorite general studies class by far was World History, in which he became a star pupil. He was able to easily manage that temporal balance that allowed him to devour the latest copy of the New York Times aboard his school-bound train each morning and then delve into the most venerated Talmudic tractates once he arrived. It was during this period that his political outlook was being shaped, not only by world events, but also by his friend Leonard Berkowitz’s socialist parents. He looked forward to their political discussions and found himself attracted to their notions of “redistribution of wealth” and “fair working conditions.” Friday nights would often find Bernard attending Shabbos services at a Hasidic shtiebel on East Houston Street and then staying afterwards for the camaraderie and spirited discussions. Relishing the atmosphere of learning, Bernard regarded the shtiebel as a place to pray, to study and to replenish one’s soul. Another pillar of Bernard’s early teenage years was Bachurei Chemed, a youth group to which he was introduced shortly after his Bar Mitzvah, by Ben Koenigsberg’s brother, Chaim. Most of the other boys in Bachurei Chemed were from transplanted Galician Hasidic families. The group stressed learning and piety and conducted its business in Yiddish. Emerging from Bachurei Chemed, Bernard soon gravitated to the burgeoning Young Israel movement. He found its distinctly “Americanishe” orientation appealing and would often attend services at its first storefront shul on East Broadway. The Young Israel movement grew rapidly, 26 The Lander Legacy establishing a presence in the Orthodox communities of Williamsburg and Boro Park in Brooklyn. By the late 1920s, they were in twenty U.S. cities. Bernard liked the fact that the classes were conducted in English and that the services reflected a new and decidedly American sensibility. In distinct contrast to the immigrant “greenhorn” shuls he had attended all of his life, at Young Israel there was no sale of Torah honors (aliyot) or other such old-world trappings. At Young Israel, with its focus on attracting young observant Jewish men, Bernard would occasionally attend holiday social events. No social butterfly, Bernard far preferred the company of his friends who chose to devote their time and energies to intense Talmudic learning. Bernard Lander completed his studies at the Talmudical Academy in January of 1933, along with forty-four of his classmates, and began taking courses immediately at Yeshiva College. The decision to follow the path of Jewish learning beyond high school was an almost automatic one. With Bernard’s evident aptitude and his already established breadth of knowledge of religious texts, any other course simply would not make sense. While he certainly entertained thoughts of following his father into the business arena, the world in which Bernard found himself had no place for such a scholar/entrepreneur. Parnassah, or one’s livelihood, was one thing, and Talmud study was quite another. Both required a consuming commitment, passion and dedication. They were, for the most part, mutually exclusive. As they had done for centuries, religious scholars would still need to depend upon the generosity of others to sustain themselves. At this point in his life, this stark practical reality did not disturb Bernard Lander very much. But as the young man continued on his path towards Rabbinic ordination, he would begin to question this dichotomy. “Why not?” he pondered. “Why can’t I combine a life of religious learning with a profession that provides me with a livelihood?” It was a question that would become the hallmark of his future career. 27 Chapter four The Road to the Rabbinate Scholars are builders, builders of the world. —Talmud: Shabbat 114a Bernard Lander felt right at home after he advanced from the Talmudical Academy to Yeshiva College. The daily schedule was identical to the one he had grown used to in high school: learning at the seminary (RIETS) until 3:00 pm, followed by four hours of general study. During his first two years, Bernard’s class of roughly forty students remained together as they delved into the core curriculum of social sciences, mathematics, the physical sciences, literature, and history. But during their junior and senior years, students were permitted to branch out and enroll in elective courses. And Bernard signed up for as many as he could. Even within the relatively small student body, there existed a certain stratification and a distinct hierarchy among its students. Roughly half of Bernard’s class was composed of young men like himself: graduates of Yeshiva’s TA high school. A handful, who had emerged from New York City’s public high schools, suffered during their first years at Yeshiva due to their limited knowledge of Hebrew. Then there were the out-of-towners, who typically came from observant families outside of New York. Many were sons of rabbis and were sent to Yeshiva to follow in their family’s rabbinic tradition. While most members of Bernard’s class were enrolled at RIETS (including all of the out-of-towners), a sizable group was instead enrolled at the Teacher’s Institute. These students were often less observant and lax when it came to attending prayer services. Bernard listened to all the common complaints about the TI guys, but his attitude was more tolerant and understanding. It wasn’t the student’s fault, he believed, that he happened to be born into a less observant family. At least he, or his parents, had chosen Yeshiva to provide a quality 28 The Lander Legacy education in an intensive Jewish environment. Perhaps the pendulum would swing the other way, and TI students would emerge more, rather than less, committed to Torah values. Bernard suspected that the kiddush cup could be viewed as half full. This growing phenomenon of weakened Torah observance—among even the most allegedly “advanced” Talmudic scholars in his class— gnawed at the young rabbinic candidate. Bernard suspected that perhaps the problem could be traced to the methodology employed by the school’s teaching staff. Rabbi Revel, in his quest to broaden the horizons of Orthodox Judaism, had populated the college’s teaching staff with some freethinking faculty members, including those who, according to Bernard, perpetrated and enabled this lapsed level of observance. It is clear that Revel, in hiring faculty in departments such as philosophy, was trying to achieve a certain balance: a harmony between religious and secular wisdom. These faculty members served as a substantial counterweight to what some might regard as the dogmatic approach favored by the RIETS instructors. Revel held strong to the notion that Yeshiva serve as a true liberal arts college and not institute a controlled academic environment of the type that existed at Catholic parochial colleges. Bernard, however, came to believe that certain professors recklessly utilized critical methods of philosophic inquiry to undermine principles of religious belief and that their presence on the faculty was a mistake. This belief would guide Bernard Lander years later as he assembled the faculty for his newly established institution of Jewish learning, Touro College. Like many young idealistic Jews, Bernard took the mandate of Tikkun Olam—the healing of the world—to heart. Such beliefs, when coupled with the utopian visions he encountered at the Berkowitz home, helped to formulate Bernard’s worldview as it took shape in the crucible of the Great Depression. It was this growing sensibility that led him to the emerging discipline of sociology. Yeshiva was one of the first schools in America to introduce a department of sociology. It was there, while studying under noted sociologist Theodore Abel, that Bernard discovered the field that would define his course over the coming years. Sociology held the promise of scientifically understanding human group behavior—something Judaism had been concerned with for centuries. The Road to the Rabbinate 29 Dr. Theodore Abel was Yeshiva’s first associate professor of sociology during the 1930s. He later served on the faculties of Columbia University and Hunter College. A non-Jew, Abel was intrigued by the social dynamics that led to Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933. After gaining the cooperation of the new Nazi regime, Abel traveled to Germany and advertised small cash awards to members of the NDSAP who would agree to write an essay about why they decided to join the party and support Hitler. He received more than 700 responses. Translating, compiling, and analyzing the results over the next four years, Abel published them in the landmark 1938 book: Why Hitler Came into Power (346 pages, Harvard University Press). The book, still in print some seventy years later, is today a widely respected treatise on the social and political forces leading up to Hitler’s rise. Bernard Lander’s college days were also colored by an association he had been developing throughout his entire life. Mizrachi was a religious Zionist movement into which Bernard’s parents had enlisted back in 1913. The movement was founded by Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines in Vilna, Latvia in 1902. Its name is a Hebrew acronym for Merkaz Ruhani (religious center). It advocates that Torah should be at the core of all efforts to establish and maintain a Jewish homeland in Eretz Yisroel. Rabbi Meir Berlin exported the Mizrachi movement to the United States in the early years of the twentieth century. Among those he reached with his message were David and Goldie Lander and Rabbi Bernard Revel. During his junior year at Yeshiva College, Bernard and a group of young Mizrachi rebels, including his friend Charles Bick, established the first American chapter of Hapoel Hamizrachi, a socialist religious workers’ movement within a movement. Hapoel Hamizrachi campaigned for social justice and espoused Torah va-Avodah (Torah and work). Its ideology was an amalgam of socialist political dogma imbued with highly interpreted Torah and Talmudic wisdom. The group gained momentum thanks to the darkening spread of fascism across Europe, but, like many other such international Bundist organizations, it dissolved when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Russia and Germany was revealed. Nevertheless, Bernard’s association with Hapoel Hamizrachi, which included his serving as its president, shaped and solidified his lifelong leadership commitment to social justice. 30 The Lander Legacy It was also during this Hapoel Hamizrachi period that Bernard began his lifelong association with Dr. Pinkhos Churgin, who acted as the group’s faculty advisor. Churgin would go on to become president of the national Mizrachi Organization of America in 1949 where he conceived and planned the creation of Bar Ilan University in Israel. He moved there in 1955 to serve as the new school’s first president. Bernard’s friendship with Dr. Churgin would prove to be of major importance in the coming years. It was also during his early years of involvement with Mizrachi that one of Bernard’s more bizarre life episodes occured. He and a college classmate, Avi Greenberg, decided that they would attend the Mizrachi national convention being held in Washington D.C. One of their most favored speakers, Rabbi Shragai, was going to address the mostly conservative grand plenum, and both young men wanted to be there to relish what promised to be a fiery moment. Unfortunately, they did not have the funds to pay for their travel expenses from New York. Relying upon their thumbs, the duo managed to hitchhike as far south as Baltimore, but there they ran out of luck and willing drivers. Pooling what little money they managed to scrape together, Bernard approached the driver of a long black vehicle parked near the main highway. Desperate, he managed to negotiate the price of a ride with the driver of what turned out to be a hearse, although the two passengers had to remain prone in the rear bed of the vehicle all the way to Washington. “We were dying to get to that speech,” quipped Dr. Lander years later, proud of the fact that he has attended almost every Mizrachi convention since then, although usually arriving in a more traditional manner. During his senior year, Bernard Lander made an unsuccessful electoral bid for the presidency of his Yeshiva College class. Falling short of that, he was, however, elected to serve as president of the Students’ Organization of Yeshiva or SOY, an older social organization that saw Bernard involved with organizing the RIETS Purim festival, among other responsibilities. He also fulfilled his social justice agenda at SOY by distributing cash stipends to students in financial need during the darkest days of the Depression. The experience left its mark on Bernard, who would never forget the struggles of pride and compassion he encountered when helping those facing serious financial challenges. In June, as America prepared for the upcoming Olympic Games in Berlin, Bernard Lander was granted his undergraduate degree with The Road to the Rabbinate 31 honors from Yeshiva College. Roughly half of his graduating classmates went on to secure jobs in the field of Jewish community service (teachers, social workers, fundraisers, etc.) while the other half went into business or sought out advanced training in the professions. A handful, including Bernard, decided to continue their studies at RIETS for two more years of postgraduate work that would, if they were successful, earn them semicha or ordination as members of the Orthodox rabbinate. It was at this point in his life that Bernard Lander entered the more rarefied atmosphere of advanced Judaic learning. Bernard’s intellect had provided him with a serene conviction that a better world could be achieved through the modern application of social policy guided by venerated Jewish teachings. It was during these seminal years that Bernard’s world truly began to expand and unfold. While continuing at RIETS, Bernard developed an enduring relationship with one of the most revered and distinguished rabbinic families in the Orthodox Jewish world. The Soloveitchik dynasty traces its lineage back to Aaron and the Biblical Levite tribe. Hence, when, during the European Enlightenment it was necessary for Jewish families to adopt an official surname, they selected “Soloveitchik,” or nightingale, a reference to the ancient role of the Levites as singers in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Bernard began attending the shiurim (lectures) of Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, the Rosh Yeshiva or Head of RIETS, during the fall of 1936. “Reb Moshe,” as he was known by his students, was a leading figure in European Jewry when he was recruited by Rabbi Revel in 1928 to head the seminary. Reb Moshe was the son of the legendary and charismatic Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik of Brest-Litovsk (Reb Chaim of Brisk) who revolutionized the study of Talmud with a popular form of analysis that would become known as “The Brisker Method” or “Derech Brisk.” Reb Chaim based his method on the teachings of the Rambam (Maimonides) as laid out in his Mishneh Torah. It is viewed as a “conceptual” or “reductionistic” technique, aimed at resolving apparently contradictory Talmudic passages. The Brisker Method represented a departure from the more holistic, or “face value,” approaches in use at the time. Reb Chaim’s innovative methods garnered a large and fervently loyal following. Reb Chaim’s son Reb Moshe was born in 1879 and spent his early years studying alongside his brother under the guidance of their illustrious father in Brisk, in what is today Belarus. After the Communist takeover 32 The Lander Legacy in 1920, the family moved to Warsaw where Reb Moshe served as the head of the Talmud department of the Tachkemoni Seminary. His reputation as something of a genius and an educator par excellence soon spread throughout the Yeshiva world. It was in Warsaw in 1928 that Reb Moshe was recruited by Rabbi Revel, who convinced him to immigrate to New York and accept the Rosh Yeshiva position at RIETS. At RIETS, Reb Moshe’s reputation as a master of logic and legal constructions began to soar. His deep knowledge of the Talmudic tractates, plus his extraordinary powers of ratiocination, as he developed layered streams of precedence to represent both competing sides of a given religious issue, were considered to be nothing short of artistic in their flow and texture by those, like Bernard Lander, who were fortunate enough to attend Reb Moshe’s shiurim. This was an intense time for Bernard Lander. Long days, and often longer nights, were devoted entirely to his Torah and Talmudic studies. In addition to absorbing Reb Moshe’s elaborate legal constructions, Bernard directed a good portion of his time towards Jewish law in preparation for Download 1.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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