December 1, 2000
Honoring
the Past, the Present and the Future
El Paso Resident To Be Inducted into the OU’s
Ben Zakkai Honor Society
The Orthodox Union is
pleased to honor long-time affiliate of the Orthodox Union’s (OU) National
Conference of Synagogue Youth (NSCY), Rabbi David Lamm, by inducting
him into the Ben Zakkai Honor Society at the annual Ben
Zakkai Dinner, Sunday, December 10, in Manhattan.
It
is now almost 30 years since his parents took him to his first NCSY
event in California, the beginning of three remarkable decades of
personal growth and institutional service.
Rabbi
Lamm’s musical skills caught everyone's attention while he was still
in high school and his orchestra has been an integral part of almost
every West Coast Regional Convention since. What wasn't so obvious was
that the musician was also maturing into an exceptional teacher and
sensitive advisor. The music was his public persona. The Torah was his
quiet secret, shared only with the dozens of young people whose lives he
was changing through example and friendship.
After
receiving his degree in education and his rabbinic ordination, Rabbi
Lamm began teaching Jewish music and Tefilah at Yavneh, Emek and Hillel
Hebrew Academies in Los Angeles. He
then served as director of the Palm Springs Jewish Community Center,
working with teens and families.
Rabbi
Lamm then moved to El Paso, Texas, to become the Judaic Director of the
El Paso Hebrew Day School. There,
in addition to overseeing the Judaic content and ruach (spirit)
of the school, he organized family and teen learning programs.
After
El Paso, Rabbi Lamm moved to Dayton and Columbus, Ohio, for four years
and then returned to El Paso in June 1996 to help build the NCSY
chapter.
Rabbi
Lamm’s wife, Yafa, and their children have proudly kept the family's
NCSY tradition alive.
OU
President Mandell I. Ganchrow, M.D., explained, “We
are honored to present this long overdue Ben Zakkai membership to the
pride of El Paso, Rabbi David Lamm, for
his tireless dedication to the youth of NCSY and his supreme example of
Torah scholarship.”
Since it was founded in
1954, NCSY has pioneered the
Jewish outreach movement and today is the world’s largest Jewish youth
program. With chapters in
39 states, 215 communities across the nation and 3 Canadian provinces,
NCSY reaches 40,000 boys and girls annually by offering 750 major
educational events and programs and 10 summer camps – in the U.S.,
Israel and the Ukraine.
When the Ben Zakkai
Honor Society was created in 1965, its mandate was to honor those
exceptional men and women who “have demonstrated personal Torah growth
and the promise of future meaningful service to the Jewish people and
the Orthodox community.” Rabbi
Lamm has lived up to that mandate and epitomizes those very qualities.
The Orthodox Union, now
in its second century of service to the Jewish community of America and
beyond, is the world leader in youth
work, advocacy for the
disabled, synagogue services,
adult education and political
action. Its kosher
supervision label, the
 , is the
world’s most recognized kosher symbol and can be found on over 250,000
products in 68 countries around the globe.
###
www.ou.org
Comments?
Requests? Questions?
 Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
of America
Department of Public Relations
Sharyn Perlman, Director
Main Office:
11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004
Phone: 212-613-8321 Fax: 212-564-9058
E-mail: media@ou.org |
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