My Campus Roots
Rabbi Yechiael Lander
Rabbi Yechiael Lander came to the Pioneer Valley in MA in 1967 to serve as chaplain to Smith and Amherst Colleges. He also helped found the Jewish Community of Amherst, the community synagogue in Amherst, MA, at the summons of Yaffa and Chaim Gunner.
Upbringing and Jewish Background
Yechiael was born in 1927 to immigrant parents in Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. Yechiael’s father came from an ancestry of Jewish farmers who worked under feudal lords in Ukraine for over 100 years. Although their ancestry was primarily Ashkenazi, the Landers carried some Sephardic blood in their veins and kept some Sephardic traditions, including the nusah of prayer. They attended a shul (synagogue), Hevreh Mishnayoth, in Winnipeg in which Yechiael’s father was very influential.
Yechiael’s mother, daughter of a rabbi, grew up in Lithuania and met and married her husband in Canada in the early 1900s. She was “a strong lady.” Although she was five feet tall next to her six foot two inch tall husband, it was clear who ruled the house and it was she. Unlike most women of her time, she had the privilege of studying Torah with her father. Thus she was able to daven from the traditional Hebrew liturgy rather than rely on personal prayers in Yiddish. However, Yechiael concedes, his mother and sister both accepted traditional female roles.
Unlike his four siblings before him, Yechiael attended the Folk Shule, a coeducational liberal Zionist Jewish day school that taught Modern Hebrew and Yiddish and Tanakh from a secular perspective. In addition, a melamed would come to Yechiael’s house and teach him stories from the Tanakh and Talmud for his religious education. His Tanakh study focused on Ketuvim, what Yechiael calls “wisdom literature.” Yechiael notes that he and his siblings also learned much of their Jewish knowledge and values from their parents. Yechiael believes that he was very lucky to have this combination of Jewish study as a child. He claims this well-rounded education enabled him to respect Jews from many different backgrounds. Yechiael currently identifies as a Jewish pluralist who encompasses a wide variety of people, including secular.
However, Yechiael concedes that he learned Talmud with much resistance. While he didn’t view the teachings from his melamed as contradictory to his learning at the Folk Shule, Yechiael had trouble seeing the Torah as a sacred document until much later in his life. Rav Yechiael contrasts himself to his father, for whom the traditional Jewish stories and Sinai were “very real.”
From a young age, Yechiael was involved with the socialist democratic Zionist youth group, Habonim. While there were other youth groups in his hometown, notably the chapter of the Marxist Zionist group Hashomer Hatzair that Chaim Gunner worked with in Winnipeg, Yechiael’s parents let him choose to join Habonim. Though competitors, Chaim and Yechiael became fast friends. Yechiael says that the Habonim movement became his religion.
Yechiael graduated from high school early, at age 16, so that he could move to “Israel” (at the time Palestine, under the British Mandate) as soon as possible. He enrolled in and completed a one-year certificate in agriculture at University of Manitoba, thinking it would prepare him for farming in Israel. It didn’t. The university didn’t allow for much hands on experience.
After university, Yechiael moved to Brooklyn where he worked as a mazkir (secretary) for Habonim. Coming from Manitoba, Yechiael was stunned to be surrounded by a population that was eighty percent Jewish. Yechiael’s job consisted of editing publications and organizing programs in Israel. Yechiael organized a yearlong program that sent Diaspora youth to kibbutzim in Israel for a workshop.
In December of 1947, Yechiael moved to “Israel” as part of a gar’in, a group of people committed to making aliyah (moving to Israel) and living on a kibbutz, and committed to the ideology of creating a new Jew in a socialist democracy. Yechiael’s gar’in included five members who learned together in the same kindergarten as children. During the War of Independence, Yechiael was not directly a part of the army, but organized watchmen for his kibbutz.
In 1952, Yechiael moved back to North America to support himself and his elderly parents. He pursued a liberal arts degree in Winnipeg while working. Yechiael claims the liberal arts degree gave him the opportunity to explore parts of his mind that he had not investigated previously.
In 1956, Yechiael moved to California in order to pursue a Master’s degree in psychology. He studied at University of Southern California while simultaneously working for a synagogue. Although at the time, Yechiael was not a believer, he was able to contribute his skills of community organizing that he developed during his time with Habonim. Yechiael notes that graduate school requires complete immersion, an opportunity that he did not have since he had to work through his schooling.
In 1958, Yechiael married Rose. He began to consider joining the rabbinate, but could not resolve his questions about God that troubled him since he was eleven years of age. However, Yechiael came to a new understanding of God after meeting with Abraham Joshua Heschel during a visit of his to California. They met for two to two and a half hours. Heschel would respond to Yechiael by rephrasing his questions. Yechiael says that his meeting with Heschel gave him “permission to believe in God” in a post-Holocaust world.
Yechiael began to study for a Bachelor’s of the Hebrew Letters at Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in California. He then moved to Cincinnati to study at HUC-JIR’s main campus. Yechiael completed a Doctorate in American Jewish history and was ordained as a Reform rabbi. When ordained, he became assistant to the institution’s president.
While recruiting for HUC-JIR at Harvard, Rabbi Yechiael met Maurice Zigmond, rabbi at Hillel of Harvard and Radcliffe, who recommended he fill a chaplaincy post at Smith and Amherst colleges. Yechiael moved to the Pioneer Valley in June of 1967 and has been living here ever since. He is now Rabbi Emeritus of both institutions.
By coincidence, or by destiny, as Yechiael sees it, the Jewish realtor who helped him find a house in Amherst introduced him to another Jew in the area with whom he thought Yechiael would get along. Yechiael said he knew at that moment that it must be Chaim Gunner, who he knew in Winnipeg in his youth. Indeed it was. Yechiael was reunited with Chaim and joined him along with Chaim’s wife Yaffa and others in advising and founding the Jewish Community of Amherst. In the mid 1970s, he agreed to become the first rabbi of the congregation. In 1989, he was made Rabbi Emeritus.
Lander, Yechiael. Personal Interview. 14 November 2014.
Chaplaincy at Smith and Amherst Colleges
Q: Why were you interested in working at Smith College?
A: Because of what Rabbi Maurice Zigmond told me–I would be working with people of many traditions as well as my own. At Smith College, there was a religious council of chaplains and students of different faiths. Religious groups engaged in mutual education and activities.
Q: Why were you attracted to that?
A: I was affected and distressed by the religious roots of the Holocaust. Christian anti-Semitism that endured for generations played a role in persecution around Europe. There was very little resistance to killing of Jews. This gave impetus to the Zionist movement and the growth of Israel. I felt that we needed a serious rethinking of interreligious community relationships to create a more understanding world. I saw this job as an opportunity to educate a large population.
Q: Any anecdotes?
A: I don’t believe interfaith services are possible even with the best intentions. They can’t stand with integrity; there’s too much diversion. Yet, this was a way to seriously mutually educate religious groups. Most of the Jews and the other religious groups were from insular worlds.
When I was at Smith, I helped to create a voluntary service organization, SOS, Smith Organization for Service. It was highly developed at Smith with professional staff and students to make policy decisions. There was a full time director. The student board was very much involved in the leadership. We went to schools, hospitals, ghettos, wherever we felt there was a need. We had fleets of five vans to take students all over the Valley. If there’s a logical, comfortable way for people to learn about each other it’s through service. You learn from working with each other. This organization still exists at Smith. It’s been about forty-four years since it’s creation.
This came at a time when colleges were rethinking their relationships with the local communities. The college used to be a golden ghetto in a middle or lower class society. This was a way to reach out to the local community and become of service to them.
We felt that service was a logical outgrowth of our religious beliefs; we’re all directed to serve the community.
We developed a program of supervision to help students make their work more useful. We wrote contracts to define the role and responsibility of every volunteer. We wanted to make service a regular part of their experience rather than doing whatever whenever.
Q: How much was this connected to the office of religious life?
A: It was centered at the chapel at Smith and the office was there. I supervised the board and employees.
Q: What experiences and training did you have that enabled you to supervise this project?
A: My long life of volunteer service, beginning with Habonim and continuing throughout my life. I had been involved with youth organizations and many community pursuits throughout my life, though I didn’t become a rabbi until I was forty years old. I had been director of different organizations. I was also a clinical psychologist.
Q: Did your experience as a psychologist enhance your rabbinic career?
A: Of course it did.
When I was at rabbinical school in Cincinnati, there was no course on counseling relationships. We as students created an informal course for this. We raised money from alumni and hired professionals to lead workshops where we could explore things about ourselves and others and practice facilitating, which is now a regular part of the curriculum.
In the 1950s-1980s there were organizations to train facilitators for sensitivity groups, to make people feel comfortable so they can communicate with each other.
Q: Were you the only chaplain who had a degree in psychology?
A: I believe so. We used the techniques among ourselves as chaplains to create a kind of family. We achieved a high level of cohesion despite changes in students and staff. It was very effective.
Q: What was the Jewish community at Smith and the Five Colleges like when you first arrived?
A: I came in 1967, just after the Six Day War. Smith had about 250 Jewish students. Amherst had about 150. Some Jews would get together for holiday celebrations and to talk about Jewish issues in the world. There were no Shabbat observant students.
Before I came, there was a Hillel rabbi who was responsible for all the colleges. There was an arrangement for rabbis from Holyoke to provide support for students at Mt Holyoke. Daniel Jazer, rabbi at Sons of Zion, the Conservative synagogue in Holyoke, served as a consultant counselor for Jewish students at Mount Holyoke, but he had no active role on campus.
Q: Was there kosher dining?
A: The colleges considered kosher food nonessential. There were no faculty who saw it as important either. Kosher dining came later with a new president who saw that there were needs for different communities. In its earlier stages, we took over part of the French language residential house that wasn’t being used and turned it into a kosher kitchen with a place to daven. After a number of years, Amherst College developed a kosher kitchen, which the students ran. Now one of the residence halls has a kosher kitchen. This was Bruce’s accomplishment.
Q: Did the Smith students make their own minyan (prayer group composed of at least ten people, traditionally male; minyanim plural)? Did you support women’s minyanim?
A: I had considered women as equal for a long time and encouraged a women’s minyan when I got there. This wasn’t the first place for women to form a minyan. Of course there were Orthodox rabbis nearby who looked askance. We had our own davening for Shabbat and holidays.
Q: Were there Smith students who objected to participating in a women’s minyan for traditional reasons?
A: People with traditional religious commitments generally did not attend Smith, Amherst, or Mount Holyoke.
Q: Who led the services?
A: In the beginning, I did, mostly, but after being here for a while I trained a core group of women to be hazzanim (service leaders) and baal korehs (Torah readers). I trained Smith and Amherst students to lead roles in services.
My daughter was born 1962. She loved to daven as a little girl and would often come and act as hazzan on Shabbos and holidays. The rabbi lost his hazzan when she went off to college. She loved the tradition from childhood on. I think she was already committed to the rabbinate in some mysterious way. [She’s now a rabbi.]
Q: Were only men allowed to lead at joint Amherst-Smith services?
A: No, everybody could lead.
Q: Was there a mehitzah (partition that separates women and men in some synagogues)?
A: Generally no. But some students went off to Israel for a semester or a year and were exposed to traditional services [with mehitzoth]. A woman at Smith said she didn’t feel comfortable without a mehitzah. I was the occupant of that mehitzah. I wanted to accommodate her; Mehitzah seemed to be of tremendous importance to her. I told myself I’ll learn what it meant for women to be behind mehitzah for centuries. I learned a lot.
She was fine with women leading services though. At joint Amherst-Smith services, a mehitzah would never work.
Jews who needed a traditional setting were encouraged to join Chabad because they felt more comfortable in that setting.
Q: What’s your personal opinion on mehitzah?
A: I think it’s overdue that the mehitzah is less prevalent. I am very much committed to equality between men and women as well as families. In Los Angeles, on Wilshire Boulevard near Westwood, there’s a wonderful shul of mostly Sephardic Jews. There you could sit separately or in a joint family section.
Q: Tell me more about prayer services.
A: For many of the holidays, we combined services for Amherst College and Smith College, often meeting at Johnson Chapel at Amherst or Helen Hills Chapel at Smith. Some students would travel on Shabbat and holidays, but there were a number of students from Orthodox families who felt somewhat uncomfortable.
We instituted davening (worship) from a number of siddurim (prayerbooks). We wanted to combine denominations. We changed prayer books almost every week. At each service we would make a common decision of which liturgy to use.
Q: Did you have Torah scrolls?
A: We had traveling arks for Torah scrolls, of which we had two. One set of parents of a Smith student offered a Torah scroll for the Smith community to borrow. The other scroll was borrowed on a permanent loan from Congregation Bnei Israel. We gave it back eventually.
Q: Were any matches made between Smith and Amherst students?
A: It was probably a goal for some of the individuals but it was not a stated purpose. I encouraged contacts between Smith and Amherst students, such as worship, Jewish education, and social programs. I wasn’t a shadchan (marriage broker). I encouraged and enabled mingling but I didn’t make individual introductions.
There were some marriages between Smith and Amherst students. I officiated at many students’ marriages at the end of their senior years.
Q: Did students come to you for spiritual counseling?
A: Many students came to me for counseling, spiritual, personal and otherwise. It was probably a third of what I did. I devoted certain days to be at Smith and certain days to be at Amherst. I wanted students to get used to my presence there.
Q: Did Amherst College have multi-faith chaplaincy similar to Smith?
A: There were only Jewish and Christian advisors. There was a Protestant minister designated as the college chaplain. I was a religious advisor in addition to priests for Catholic students and advisors for Protestant students. Later on, when Amherst had more international students, the nature of religious groups at Amherst grew. At the beginning there were just a few and then it grew.
Q: Was there more religious diversity at Smith?
A: Perhaps. I helped form a Hindu group at Smith, which was part of my job, to facilitate communities coming together to provide support, after the following incident. There were many Hindu students who organized a group that would celebrate Diwali in autumn. They would invite the rest of the community to join them for food, dancing and wonderful things for the occasion. One year they used a swastika as their symbol. It was a Hindu symbol. They did it without knowing the Nazi connotation. As you can imagine, tension exploded on campus. Jewish students felt uncomfortable, but the Hindu students had no idea what the swastika was used as by Nazis. I knew it was Hindu symbol, but I was upset because my students were upset. This was an opportunity of learning for everybody. The next year the Hindus chose another symbol.
Q: Does this program still exist at Smith?
A: Smith let the program go a few years ago. Religion had become much less of a priority for the college. Many groups were left on their own.
More information on Yechiael Lander’s life and work can be found in his memoir, Reminiscences: from the Prairies to Paradise.
Lander, Yechiael. Personal Interview. 26 November 2014.