Samuel Belkin


Samuel Belkin is best known as the second President of Yeshiva University. A distinguished Torah scholar, he is credited with leading Yeshiva University through a period of substantial expansion.

Biography

Belkin was born in 1911 in Svislach, Russian Empire and studied in the yeshivas of Slonim and Mir. Recognized at a young age as an illui, a genius, he was ordained as a rabbi at the age of seventeen by the famed Yisrael Meir Kagan, the Chofetz Chaim.
As a child, he sought to leave Poland after he witnessed his father being shot by a policeman in 1919. He emigrated to the United States in 1929, studied with Harry Austryn Wolfson at Harvard and received his doctorate at Brown University in 1935, one of the first awarded for Judaic studies in American academia. In 1940, an elaboration of his Ph.D. thesis was published with the title "Philo and the Oral Law — The Philonic Interpretation of Biblical Law in Relation to the Palestinian Halakah."
He then joined the faculty of Yeshiva College, New York, where he taught Greek. He became a full professor in 1940 and was appointed dean of its Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary the same year. In 1943, Belkin was named became president of the college, Under his guidance, the institution expanded to become Yeshiva University in 1945. Belkin was a visionary who transformed Yeshiva from a small college and rabbinical seminary into a significant institution of considerable stature in Judaic Studies, natural and social sciences, and the humanities. Under his presidency, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine was opened as Yeshiva University's medical school.
As a scholar, he published many works on Jewish law and Hellenistic literature. His most significant published works are "Philo and the Oral Law" and "In His Image: The Jewish Philosophy of Man as Expressed in Rabbinic Tradition".
In his work, "In His Image," Dr. Belkin described Judaism as a Democratic Theocracy — a theocracy because the first principle of Jewish thought describes the Kingship of God, and a democracy because the Written and the Oral Law emphasize the infinite worth of each human being.
Belkin stepped down as university president in 1975.
The Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law gives an award to one graduating law student each year in Dr. Belkin's honor. The award recognizes the student who exemplifies the combination of excellence in leadership, scholarship and exceptional contribution to the growth and development of the law school. Past recipients of the Dr. Samuel Belkin Award include:
Belkin died in 1976 in New York City after an illness. He was 64.