Emanuel Rackman

Rabbi (Menachem) Emanuel Rackman ( Menachem 'immanuel Raqman; June 24, 1910 in Albany – December 1, 2008) was an American Modern Orthodox Rabbi, president of the RCA, vice-president of Yeshiva University. President of Bar-Ilan University from 1977 to 1986. He held pulpits in major congregations and helped draw attention to the plight of Refuseniks in the then-Soviet Union and attempted to resolve the dilemma of the Agunah, a woman who cannot remarry because her husband will not grant a Get, the required religious divorce decree that would free her to remarry under Halacha.

Biography

Rackman was born in Albany, New York on June 24, 1910. He graduated from the Talmudical Academy in 1927, as its valedictorian. Rackman asked for a one-year deferral from Columbia University, and spent the entire year working towards semicha at Yeshiva University (YU), where he was in the shiur of Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik. The following year he started splitting his time, spending half of each day at Columbia and the other half at YU. Rackman entered service during World War II in the United States Army Air Forces in 1943 as a chaplain. He served as a military aide to the European Theater of Operations special adviser on Jewish affairs, where his experiences with survivors of the Holocaust influenced his decision to pursue the rabbinate.

Rackman was the eighth in as many generations to earn rabbinic ordination, but the first to earn a living as a rabbi. He said that "it was my father's hope that I would continue the family tradition, insofar as I could be both learned in the Jewish tradition while making a living in another way". In 1967, after 20 years at Shaarey Tefilla, he accepted a position as Rabbi of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan to succeed Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, who had been elected to serve as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. He was elected by his peers as president of the New York Board of Rabbis in 1955. He also served as president of the Rabbinical Council of America.

Following the publication of Philip Roth's short story "Defender of the Faith" in The New Yorker in 1959, Rackman wrote a letter to the Anti-Defamation League accusing Roth of promoting antisemitism and asking "What is being done to silence this man?"

In 1969, Rackman praised the JDL, claiming that in many instances "the Jewish Defense League has demonstrated its ability to be the instrument presently required by the Jewish community."

In 1970, he was named as provost of Yeshiva University. He was the president of Bar-Ilan University from 1977 until 1986, succeeding Max Jammer and succeeded by Michael Albeck, and served as the school's chancellor until his death.

Rackman died at age 98 on December 1, 2008.