Bernard Lander founded Touro College after he retired. . . .
The story of his life is not, as it might seem, only about education and aspiration, about fundraising and vision, about shrewdness and humility. It is about aging, and its irrelevance, if one wants to look at it that way.
They say Bernard Lander could raise money from a radiator on the wall. Surely he knew how to convince people to follow his vision. Touro College. It seems like it has been around forever, like NYU or Columbia. In fact, Touro is less than 40 years old. But it has campuses on three continents and schools and subdivisions everywhere.
Its a remarkably practical enterprise, designed to give people who might not otherwise get a college education, a college education. Lander brought campuses to neighborhoods, Jewish, Hispanic, Russian, you name it. Lander brought a college education to those who would run away from it, under another name. Chasidic Jews, who would not enroll in Touro College, enroll in a Touro affiliate, not called a college.
Lander worked at Yeshiva University and saw a crack in the ideological wall there that he expanded into a veritable chasm. Though personally a professor with a doctorate, Lander saw that it was not necessary to push the ideology of Torah Umadda the official sanction of secular education in order to give yeshiva students the opportunity to gains degrees, livelihood, personal satisfaction and the chance to make a contribution. A very pragmatic man, Lander transposed the metaphor and found a way to educate Hispanics, blacks, Asians, Russians and Chinese, too. He found a way to make higher education work. Read the obituary notice for Bernard Lander
As we say, most of this he accomplished after he retired. Do the math. He died at 94. He began Touro College 39 years ago. He was 55. He went into full steam a few years later. It was in his late sixties, his seventies and eighties that he built an international educational complex. He actively conducted the business of the school into his nineties.
And what a business it is: undergraduate schools, graduates schools, medical schools, yeshivas, high schools. A very pragmatic man, Bernard Lander wanted to bring education to the masses. And he wanted the Jewish masses to get an education without getting their Jewish commitment destroyed in the process. He once called the college campus the crematoria of Judaism. Lots of people complained about the college scene. Bernard Lander did more. Infinitely more. May his memory be a blessing.
