On Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2019, the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College organized a retirement party for Dr. William Lamborn Lee, who was leaving Yeshiva University after teaching for 36 years. About three dozen faculty, students, alumni and staff, including Dr. Ari Berman, President of Yeshiva University, joined him in Weissberg Commons for an evening of praise, laughter and heartfelt regret at his departure. As Dr. Lee pointed out in his valedictory comments, he has dedicated his career primarily to teaching and furthering education in the broadest and most humanistic sense possible. He described how he migrated from the History and Literature program at Harvard in 1983 to the Yeshiva College English department, which initiated an illustrious and enduring career. Here are just a few of the highlights: director of the Honors Program for six years; active roles in the curriculum review of Yeshiva College; chair of the Steering Committee for and editor of the Middle States Self-Study that helped earn YU re-accreditation; Senior Professor Award for distinguished teaching three times; and a recent re-election by the Yeshiva College faculty to the University Faculty Council. However, what he felt most honored by in this event honoring him was “the validation of undergraduate teaching and the investment the University has made, and is making, in a breadth and depth of education that students can bring into themselves to expand and improve themselves, what I have always known as Torah U’madda.” He ended by saying that “work you can love all your life becomes your life’s work” and that he felt that his life’s work has had some significance in the world.

Dr. William Lee shares his thoughts about his long teaching career

Tributes to Dr. Lee were sincere and respectful, much like the man himself. Rabbi Shalom Carmy, assistant professor of Jewish philosophy and Bible, thanked him for his vigorous leadership and his deep commitment to his students. Dr. David Lavinsky, associate professor of English, praised him for what he called his “academic citizenship” and for fostering a “conversation between generations,” borrowing a phrase from Martin Buber, that promotes the educational project of Torah U’madda that is both forever necessary and unfinished. Dr. Berman recalled his own presence in Dr. Lee’s class when he was a student at Yeshiva College, recalling how upon entering the classroom, “I felt that I would be pushed to be better than I was,” learning in Dr. Lee’s presence accountability, seriousness and the value of learning. He noted that his presence at the event was not as the president of the University but as a representative of the thousands of students whose lives Dr. Lee had touched. “How powerful you have been for our University and for our students, and for that, we all thank you.”

Dr. Ari Berman (left) and Dr. William Lee enjoy a shared reminiscence

Many other tributes came in extolling Dr. Lee’s virtues. Dr. Karen Bacon, the Mordechai D. Katz and Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean of Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences, remembered him as a “commanding presence who enthralled generations of students with his resonant voice and his profound love for each and everyone of them.” Chaim Strauchler ’99YC loved how Dr. Lee taught them how to “open up worlds within ourselves” and Ashrei Bayewitz ’09YC lauded him for taking “intellectual integrity and a commitment to excellence as a matter of course.” Rabbi Chaim Strauchler of the Shaarei Shomayim Congregation in Toronto even wrote a poem: Shall I compare thee to a bright school day? Thou who teaches art so lovely and so temperate: Rough winds do stir young minds of clay, And a classroom’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too erudite the critical eye shines, And often is that self-deprecating laugh dimm’d; And even edits upon edits sometime decline, By an argument’s changing course untrimm’d; But thy eternal guide shall not fade, For great thinking to careful writing is ow’st; And moral virtue from valuing a student’s mind’s shade, Where in eternal lines and lives to time thou grow’st: So long as we, your men, can breathe, or our eyes can see, So long lives your wisdom, and this gives life to thee. Words cannot—but nevertheless must—convey the gratitude that we your students feel for you. You have opened up worlds to us and you have taught us to open worlds within ourselves. Wishing you blessing on your retirement and eternal thanks for your example and your wisdom. Dr. Mordechai Cohen, professor of Bible and associate dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, summed it up for many with his cadence of short, respectful phrases: “Thoughtful scholar/Outstanding teacher/Generous mentor/Wise colleague.”