Whoever entered through the large black wrought iron gates at 3080 Broadway in Manhattan also known at The Jewish Theological Seminary from the 1960s through the early 2000s was entering Morty Leifman’s turf. Today those gates have lost a beloved son. Morty left this world on May 5th after a long illness.
Morty Leifman graduated from rabbinical school at JTS in the mid-1950s and from 1959 through his retirement in 1999 served in various roles inside those gates at JTS. For the remainder of his working life JTS was his home. Perhaps his most prominent role there was the dean of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School but he also served as Senior Vice president of the institution and dean of the undergraduate program with Columbia University. From 1959-1969 Morty served as the executive secretary of the Joint Bet Din of Conservative Judaism that rendered decisions in matters of halakha for the Conservative Movement. He also translated sections of the Hebrew liturgy into English for the Milken Archives of American Jewish Music.
Morty was not an accomplished Bible or rabbinic scholar, nor a theologian like many who shared that space with him. But he knew and studied with almost all of them. His great literary accomplishment was a masterfully translated edition of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Yiddish poetry Shem ha-Meforash, Mentsch published as The Ineffable Name of God (Continuum, 2005). The volume is an act of loving devotion to his teacher that exhibits a subtle understanding of the young Heschel’s poetic soul and a broad and deep understanding of the Yiddish language.
But to list all of Morty’s professional accomplishments is to miss who he was and the role he played at JTS and in the larger Conservative Movement. He was the seminary’s troubadour, raconteur, and carrier of an entire oral tradition of what happened inside those wrought iron gates for well over half a century. I had both the pleasure and honor of spending many hours with him, often in the JTS cafeteria where Morty would regale us with endless anecdotes of the personal foibles of the seminary’s masters, with a combination of both candor and respect that was unmatched inside those gates. He knew all of the personal animosities (and there were many), tactical battles, practical jokes and hundreds of small details of things that went on before all of us were born. Sometimes passing him in the hallway or in the library meant a 30 minute detour because there was something he had to say that could not wait. Often it was a hilarious story he remembered about what happening 50 years before, sometimes in that very spot!
Morty didn’t just tell a story; he acted it out complete with hand gestures and often hilarious imitations of the likes of the great Bible scholar H.L. Ginsburg, rabbinic scholars Louis Finkelstein and Saul Lieberman, medieval historians Shalom Spiegel and Gerson Cohen, theologians Mordechai Kaplan and A.J. Heschel (whom he felt closest to), and many others. He brought to life figures who lived in the imaginations of most of us, scholars we read and even wrote about but did not know personally. In his re-telling of these anecdotes he spoke in multiple languages, accents, and ungrammaticalities as he took us from one caricature to the next. Morty rarely held back and there weren’t many details he kept to himself. He was always respectful but just as often quite critical of things that were happening that he didn’t like. Even the most disturbing anecdotes often ended in a wide grin and laugh, grabbing your shoulder for effect as he bent over laughing at his own words. And then he could turn, on a dime, and get very serious about a matter of importance in regards to kavod ha-Torah (honoring the Torah).
Morty was a real lover of Torah and yiddishkeit and I say that without any hyperbole. He loved liturgy and cantorial renditions that he would often demonstrate upon request. When he served as a prayer leader, whether it was mincha on a Wednesday afternoon or neila on Yom Kippur, you felt you were in the presence of someone talking to God. One who did not know him could easily view his gesticulations and exaggerations as an act of hubris but those of us who knew him understood that this was not the case. He lived among giants and yet he knew exactly who he was. He was a simple Jew who had an intimate relationship with his creator. And he knew how lucky he was to be able to spend his life among Torah greats and many thousands of volumes of Judaica in JTS’s famous library.
The sheer volume of JTS oral lore that Morty held in his head was astounding. At some point in the early 2000s a group of rabbinical students convinced him to allow them to record his stories. Those students saved an entire oral history from erasure. At times we thought he was exaggerating, and maybe sometimes he was. But it didn’t really matter. He was an astute observer of human behavior and, like a true court jester, he would pick up on everyone’s idiosyncrasies and lovingly exploit them with humor and good cheer.
Morty was the kind of teacher who exuded a love for his subject. The classroom was a theater, and he played most of the parts. But he demanded attention, not only to him but to the subject at hand. He took pedagogy very seriously. In an institution of austerity, severity, and rigor, Morty was its opposite; humorous, generous, and creative.
Morty Leifman was a man who believed to his last day that what went on inside those gates at JTS was a crucial part of American Judaism. Yet he was not Pollyannaish or uncritical – he could be devastatingly serious and cutting and would put his career on the line for something, or someone, he believed in. But through it all he remained a consummate believer in Conservative Judaism. When we sometimes expressed our doubts about that he heard us and responded in a serious and honest manner, always with a grin and a twinkle in his eye. He had his own way of being subversive. But even in some of the darker moments inside those gates, I don’t think Morty ever considered leaving them behind. That was his spiritual home.
Liberal Judaism in America and JTS in particular did not only lose one its own in Morty’s passing. We lost a lover of Torah, a lover of humanity, and a beautiful soul. It was an honor to have known him and to have loved him. Shem ha-meforash, Mentsch.