Y.U. Leader Was in Trouble of a Different Kind

On July 1, Yeshiva University chancellor Norman Lamm announced his retirement under a cloud of allegations regarding sexual abuse at Yeshiva University High School during the 1970s and ‘80s.

Image by Yeshiva University/Wikimedia Commons
Lamm may be the first Y.U. chancellor to come under that kind of scrutiny, but he is not the first Y.U. leader to find himself in a tough situation. In a piece today in the Forverts, Yoel Matveev recalls the colorful career of Bernard Revel, the first president of Yeshiva College and Rosh Yeshiva of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary from 1915 until his death in 1940. Y.U.’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies is now named after him.
Born in Lithuania in 1885, Revel studied in traditional yeshivas, but also received a Russian high school diploma and, after immigrating to America in 1906, received a Master of Arts degree from New York University. More unusually, Revel became involved in the Russian revolutionary movement, for which he was arrested and imprisoned. Matveev writes:
Few people remember that Revel had to leave Russia after he was arrested and had served a term in prison… Not a few religious Jews, including important rabbis, were involved in leftist revolutionary activities. But unlike other leftist rabbis, Revel was a member of the Bund, despite its anti-religious orientation. A rov and a Bundist was indeed a rarity.
As Matveev notes, Revel’s revolutionary fervor cooled with his successful academic and rabbinical career in America, but he remained sympathetic to socialism throughout his life. In contrast with current scandals, however, Revel’s politics weren’t particularly controversial among American Jews — though they got him into plenty of trouble in Russia.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Opinion Is this new documentary giving voice to American Jewish anguish — or simply stoking fear?
- 4
Opinion Mike Huckabee said there’s ‘no such thing as a Palestinian.’ It’s worth thinking about what that means
In Case You Missed It
-
Opinion Think every Palestinian in Gaza is Hamas? This week’s protests prove you’re wrong
-
Opinion A Palestinian Oscar-winner’s arrest shocked the world. For these Jewish activists, it was terrifyingly normal
-
Opinion In the Trump administration and Israel, a grotesque display of virility coupled with a loss of humanity
-
Fast Forward Cornell’s new Jewish president says he is ‘very comfortable with where Cornell is currently’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.