Bidding farewell to Dr. Bernard Lander a'h, 94

Posted

Touro mourns its founder

By Michael Orbach

Issue of February 12, 2010/ 28 Shvat 5770

Even a death of a 94-year-old can come as a shock, leaving family, friends and a entire community at a loss.

Rabbi Dr. Bernard Lander, founder and president of Touro College, passed away late Monday night, from complications of congestive heart failure. He had been in and out of the hospital over the last few months, according to friends.

Hundreds attended his funeral in Queens on Tuesday morning at Yeshiva Ohr HaChaim, founded by his son, Rabbi Daniel Lander. A sea of mourners - mostly observant Jews, many apparently not; a mix of black hats, knitted yarmulkes and pointed plastic caps - murmured and swayed while mouthing along with Psalms recited from the podium. Shorthaired Russian women smoked cigarettes outside as loudspeakers broadcast the service.  Rabbi Lander's plain pine coffin stood before the ark at the front of the room covered in a black blanket with an embroidered Magen David. A single yahrtzeit candle flickered on top of the box.

At his passing, Rabbi Lander presided over a vast empire of institutions that have educated over 17,000 students. Touro College, which he founded in 1971 with a class of 35 male students, has since grown to encompass 29 colleges and schools in several U.S. states and foreign countries. In an interview with the Jewish Star several months ago, Lander said he created his school to, "provide a quality education for Jews and non-Jews alike, but with a Jewish focus in mind, and education for all."

The funeral was a showcase of memories of Rabbi Lander, both big and small.

The impetus for Touro College came from his father being, "acutely troubled by the danger of secular colleges," his son, Rabbi Daniel Lander explained. Touro College enabled students to attain a secular education without those dangers, he said. Through his work, his father "was the shliach [messenger] of Hashem to carry the maftayach (key) to parnasah (livelihood)" said Rabbi Lander.

Growing up, the younger Rabbi Lander said, he was known as Dr. Lander's son. After he was ordained he received the new title of Rosh HaYeshiva, but he still held on to his original title. "It was the title of Dr. Lander's son I carried with pride and honor that I suddenly lost last evening," he said.

He praised his father as someone who actively sought peace. "Disloyalty met with promotion and emotion," according to the son. "There was no room for pettiness," Rabbi Lander said. "He was legendary for his inability to fire anyone no matter how unproductive..."

Rabbi Lander concluded his speech with an apology: "I have tried to emulate you but your shoes were too big."

Lander's grandchildren reminisced about a grandfather who, despite running a major institution, still had the time to harass camp directors when he felt his grandchildren weren't in the right bunk.

Richard Waxman, Lander's son-in-law, recalled how he met his future father-in-law two weeks after the death of his own father. "I was anticipating this giant overbearing individual," he said. Instead Waxman found, "the warmest individual one can imagine... For the rest of my life he was my father."

Lander had known he was not invincible and in his last year, while suffering the effects of macular degeneration that would effectively render him blind, he appointed Dr. Alan Kadish as Senior Provost and Chief Operating Officer. Kadish,

the senior associate chief of the cardiology division at Northwestern University, was to take over the title of president when Lander would take on the role of chancellor. As to when the eventual transfer would occur, Lander was prescient.  "Life will determine it," he told the Jewish Star in September. "As long as I live, I work."

Kadish was in Israel at the time of Lander's passing and was unable to make it back in time for the funeral.

Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the kashrut division of the Orthodox Union, spoke at the funeral, recalling how a former U.S. senator, after meeting Lander, declared him to be "the most amazing person he ever met."

"The higher the challenge, the higher the mountain, the higher he would go," Rabbi Genack said. "He was the youngest man I ever knew. He accomplished so much but he would sit on the floor and play marbles."

Franklyn Snitow, the longtime lawyer for Lander and Touro University, saw Lander a few weeks before he passed away. They spoke about Touro's latest endeavor, the purchase of the New York State Medical College. Lander's last words to Snitow were "be strong and do it."

"An angel sat on his shoulder to bring about his success,"

Snitow said. He then clarified his relationship; he was Lander's lawyer but Lander was "my mentor and my friend."

During Lander's life, nothing seemed beyond his reach.

Believing, according to Rabbi Genack, that secular colleges in the seventies were the "crematorium for American Jewish life," he founded what would become one of the largest such institutions in the world. In his last years, aside from negotiating the purchase of the medical school, he also planned to create with Birthright an Israeli-based university to help unaffiliated Jews on their first visit to Israel.

Dr. Mark Hasten, chairman of the board of trustees, recalled a trip to Israel when Lander told him he had a plan to create lasting peace between the Arab and the Jews; all he needed was a meeting with the then-minister of agriculture, Ariel Sharon. They met at the Knesset where Dr. Lander outlined his peace idea. The first step, he told Sharon, was a cultural school on the border of Israel and Jordan.

"I nearly fell off my chair," Hastings said. He went on to declare Monday, despite the sadness, a "triumph," in light of all Lander's accomplishments. "I have seen what happened when Jewish life was destroyed..." Hasting said, "It is a triumphant day because we are surviving and thriving.

Dr. Martin Diamond, dean emeritus of the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, said he thought Lander was even older than 94. "He had his 89th birthday a couple of times," Diamond said, smiling. "All his life he tried to better the Jewish community and the community at large. That's why we started a medical school in Harlem."

Until a few months before his death Lander worked a full eight-and-a-half-hour day. At the end of the interview with The Jewish Star last fall, Lander was asked if he had any regrets. He said he did not.

"This is life. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose; you move forward," Lander said. "You always look ahead."