NEW YORK
The Jewish Week
07/02/13
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
In open letter, Rabbi Norman Lamm admits he must now “do teshuva” over missteps in handling the Finkelstein allegations.
Nearly seven decades after he first entered Yeshiva University as a student, five decades after he began teaching at the school, 37 years after he became its president and a decade after he stepped down from that post, Rabbi Norman Lamm this week retired from his last, mostly ceremonial, position at YU.
In an open letter which acknowledged that it was being written with the help of family, Rabbi Lamm, 85, who has been in failing health, announced that he is ending his service as chancellor and rosh ha yeshivah in accordance with an agreement reached three years ago with YU officials.
The rabbi alluded in the letter to the controversy that became public knowledge six months ago over alleged cases of sexual abuse at the YU high school for boys in the 1980s, an incident that has tarnished his reputation in the twilight of his career.
“At the time that inappropriate actions by individuals at Yeshiva were brought to my attention, I acted in a way that I thought was correct, but which now seems ill conceived,” Rabbi Lamm wrote in his six-page open letter. “I understand better today than I did then that sometimes, when you think you are doing something good, your actions do not measure up. You think you are helping, but you are not.
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