We really ought to have perfected a way by now, given all our fabulous technology, to be able to point our smart devices at a memorial plaque or the name above the entrance of a prestigious auditorium in a building on a university campus such as “Lamport Auditorium” of Yeshiva University, and get an in-depth article about the person behind that name. Who was Nathan Lamport?
Abraham Nehemiah Lamport or Lamport, z”l, (1854 to 1928) called himself Nathan Lamport in the United States after he migrated here from his native Poland. He was educated in a Talmudic academy in Europe and was, therefore, very comfortable in things relating Hebrew, the Jewish laws and customs and the study of Torah.
He settled in the New England area in 1870 and supported himself through several endeavors while at the same time becoming a key figure in the Jewish community on several levels and in a variety of ways. His businesses ranged from peddling in the Burlington Vermont area, maintaining a junk yard and keeping a peddlers supply house. His communal involvements included serving as the sexton of the local synagogue, performing ritual circumcisions, which involved his traveling out into the local environs around the city, and serving as president of the congregation.
It is said that as his daughter become of age and was being courted by Christians he relocated his family to New York City in the1890s where he went into the Real Estate speculation industry and into the manufacturing of specialty textiles from which he became extremely successful and very wealthy.
He served as President of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (REITS) and became a driving force in its moving to its Washington Heights campus by helping to spearhead its fundraising efforts when he made what amounted to a “challenge grant” of his own concoction in which he made a pledge of $100,000.00, which in today’s 2013 terms translates to $1,040,000.00, and then, when some 126 donors matched his pledge, he contributed a second $100,000.00 to the campaign. His total gift of $200,000.00 was the largest single gift towards the Yeshiva College Building Fund at that time. (The school was going to be called The Yeshiva of America but the name was changed at some point).
Nathan Lamport died at the age of 74 at his summer home in Dobbs Ferry NewYork on August 13, 1928. He was survived by his widow Mrs. Celia Lamport, three sons, Samuel C., Arthur M. and Joseph H., and six daughters, Mrs. Ida Hurewitz, Mrs. Jessie L. Cohen, Mrs. Mildred Rothstein, Mrs. Ethel Bresler, Mrs. Anna Lamport and Mrs. Esther Lamport. He was also survived by his brother Mr. Solomon Lamport, who was also active in furthering Jewish education.
The funeral was held at the Jewish Center in New York, 131 West 86th Street, of which the deceased was a member. It was reported that upwards of one thousand men and women, representing many ranks in Jewish life, attended the services at the Center. A cortege of fifty-five cars followed the hearse to the East Broadway services that were held at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and, then, from the steps of that old Yeshiva Building, 301 East Broadway, which was soon to be deserted for the five-million dollar structure, which Nathan Lamport helped make possible, speakers told the attentive throng of the generosity and kindliness which made the deceased a pioneer in orthodox Jewish educational circles in America. En route to the Yeshiva a stop was made at the Tefereth Jerusalem Synagogue, of which the late Mr. Lamport had been a member and had served as its President.
"Posterity," declared Rabbi Leo Jung, of the Jewish Center, "will remember him as a master builder, to whose ability the new Yeshiva Building will stand as an everlasting memorial. His was the historic privilege of becoming a Jewish pioneer, who used the best of yesterday for the tomorrow. He was a unique personality, to whom the religion of his forefathers was not a congenital burden but an effervescent joy. His passing will cause deep sorrow in many lands."
At the new building, Rabbi Joseph Luckstein, speaking on behalf of the graduates of the Yeshiva, at the Center services, pointed out that the Yeshiva was the crowning ideal of Mr. Lamport's life. Relating an incident which occurred just prior to Mr. Lamport’s death, he reported Mr. Lamport as visiting the new Yeshiva structure and then turning and saying: "I have visited the Yeshiva and now I am content to die."
Eulogies at the Yeshiva services were delivered by Rabbi M. Z. Margolies, President of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of America; Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, President of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; Dr. Bernard Revel, head of the Faculty of the Yeshiva; Rabbi B. Leibovitz, of Poland, and Rabbi Aaron D. Burock, of the Yeshiva Faculty.
All the speakers hailed him as a pioneer in orthodox Jewish educational work in America. "Nathan Lamport by his own example, pointed the way for a resurgence of orthodox Jewish feeling in the United States", declared Dr. Revel. "Not only did he live the life of an Orthodox Jew himself, but by his generosity to the Yeshiva he made it possible for a new generation of young men to carry the teachings of the Torah to the community at large". "Nathan Lamport planted not only for the present, but for the future," declared Rabbi Goldstein.
A prayer was chanted by Cantor Rakavsky, a graduate of the Yeshiva. Graduates of the Yeshiva served as active pallbearers. The list of honorary pallbearers included the board of directors of the Yeshiva, among them Harry Fischel, Vice-President; Samuel Levy, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Yeshiva College Building Fund, and Harris L. Selig.
Harris L. Selig, in a statement issued later, eulogized the late Yeshiva leader as a zealous and untiring worker for the cause of Jewish learning in the entire United States, and as a man of sterling qualities whose generosity was a stimulating factor in arousing orthodox Jewish community to unparalleled degree of contribution for Jewish educational purposes. "His $200,000 contribution was indeed the beginning of a new epoch in the realization of orthodox Jewry of its greatest need, and preponderant responsibility towards the future of higher Jewish learning in this land", he declared.
Burial was temporarily in Union Fields Cemetery in Brooklyn until May of the next year when his body and that of his late wife’s Sarah Goldenheim (born 1856 in Marijampole, Lithuania), who died on March 4, 1914, were exhumed and transported by ship to Haifa for final burial in Palestine on the Mount of Olives next to the grave of Mr. Lamport’s father.
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When one studies the life and works of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, zt”l, one soon becomes aware of a dichotomy in man that the Rav tries to bring into sharper and sharper focus so that we may better understand the driving forces within each of us that pull us at once to take on the world as it is and to reign it in; to master it, and, at the same time, to bend submissively to the greatness and mastery of the L-rd in the hope of connecting to and knowing G-d in an ongoing effort to commune with Him. The Rav details the complexity of mastering the world and, at the same time, submitting oneself to G-d by establishing a covenantal community where man, by which the Rav means mankind; i.e. men and woman, relate together with each other and with G-d in an ongoing effort to perfect the world as it was created into a life affirming experience by living lives of good and worthy endeavors to the mutual benefit of all; of man and of G-d.
The day of learning that took place in the Nathan Lamport Auditorium in memory of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, zt”l, to mark the Rav’s twentieth Yartzeit, on Sunday April 14, 2013, elevated the experience to a different and perhaps and even more special level just by being held where it was held. Nathan Lamport apparently embodied the dichotomy of which the Rav wrote and spoke. He lived in the world and did everything he could to master it. At the same time, he lived his life as an observant Jew and directed great amounts of his energy and resources to advancing the study and learning of Torah such as it had not been known before in this land that welcomed him.
The Rav came to America and chose to stay here so that his work as a teacher and decider of Jewish religious matters would be unfettered and uninfluenced by outside forces; political or social. He maintained his staunch belief which he punctuated by his consistent practice of the mitzvahs and his continual effort as a teacher working hard to keep the long line of generations of Torah masters in front of his students to where they were as one virtual group from Moshe Rabbainu straight on through to today.
Remembering Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the Rav, in the Auditorium named for Nathan Lamport is comparable to surrounding an amazing painting in just the right frame. The story of a life well lived by a man of great faith who loved to teach was the focus of the day surrounded by a magnificent room designed for helping people hear and appreciate a message well named for another man whose life was similarly lived with great energy and faith who gave from his personal strength, his earned resources and his learned wisdom with no limit. Two lives well lived by two men who enjoyed common objectives and a common faith for the advancement of their community and lasting way beyond their allotted years.
May their memories continue to be for a blessing. |
