David Lerner was a difficult mensch.

Lerner passed away on Nov. 12 at the age of 72 and in the days that followed some who were close to the man recounted his kindnesses but they also used the word “difficult” to describe him.

“He was a difficult man but he was still my guy,” his wife Lorren Erstad told me.

Jan Albert, who met Lerner when they were both teenagers volunteering at the countercultural radio station WBAI, posted on Facebook: “I will always remember David for his immense generosity and the fact that he was an unfailingly fair and ethical (if difficult) human being.”

And Harold Berkowitz, who volunteered with Lerner at the Lifelong Peer Learning Program (LP2), offered perhaps the most eloquent description of how he was difficult. Berkowitz wrote that Lerner was “gruff but kind, curmudgeonly but sweet, blunt but tactful, modest yet very knowing.”

As for the mensch that was David Lerner, Ruth Mackaman, another LP2 volunteer, recalled that during the COVID lockdown Lerner got the organization up and running on Zoom, then shelled out his own money to buy iPads for at least ten members who didn’t have computers. He then proceeded to pedal around Manhattan and Brooklyn on a Citibike and give them away. This prompted one of his friends to joke about Lerner being the Johnny Appleseed of tech.

From time to time, Lerner would ask me about the radio stories I was working on. When I told him I had just finished a piece about a young woman in the South Bronx afflicted with cerebral palsy who had no voluntary movement of her arms and legs, the Johnny Appleseed of tech sent her a new iPad.

He was a baal tzedakah, a master of charity, and lived his life by the most important line in our holy texts: Justice, justice, thou shalt seek. The line comes from the Torah, specifically the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 16, verse 20. Go look it up.

Most New Yorkers know Lerner from Tekserve, the independent Macintosh computer store he cofounded in Chelsea and helped to run for close to 30 years. Over the course of that time the business grew from occupying half of his partner Dick Demenus’ loft to a cavernous 25,000-square-foot storefront on West 23rd Street.

After news of Lerner’s passing reached them, former Tekserve employees and customers all over these United States shared memories of Lerner the mensch online. Former Tekserve workers thanked Lerner for being such an uncommon boss. And not just because he and Demenus provided health insurance and free lunch to their employees.

One Tekserve alum recalled that when his father passed away, Lerner offered to cover his airfare to North Dakota to spread the man’s ashes. Another who now runs a store in Scranton, PA wrote: “He taught me more about business than anyone.” A former Tekserve customer praised Lerner for  dispensing advice on the NY Macintosh Users Group (NYMUG) bulletin board before the web existed. Another remembered that Tekserve printed and gave away the booklets Lerner wrote with answers to Frequently Asked Questions about keeping a Mac running.

Perhaps Lerner’s Tekserve partner Demenus put it best in a poem he wrote and posted on Facebook — “So many of us have counted on you for so much.”

Lerner and Demenus ran Tekserve as a capitalist enterprise — in 2011, the store had $100 million in revenue from sales and services — but the impact of their years at WBAI was apparent in the diversity of Tekserve’s workforce.

In the 1970’s, WBAI was housed in a church where it became home to a bunch of Jewish troublemakers. Bob Fass, who helped start the Yippies, referred to his radio audience as “The Cabal.” Margot Adler, the granddaughter of Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler, went to Mississippi to register African-American voters during the civil rights movement. And the Yeshiva of Flatbush graduate Paul Fischer anchored the station’s legendary Vietnam War summary before moving on to write for Dan Rather at CBS.

In 1969, Lerner dropped out of an elite private school on the Upper West Side and joined the fun at WBAI. He was 16 at the time. He and Demenus worked out of the tiny engineering office at the church which was identified by a sign that read “Department of Redundancy Department.” Back then, the only thing to indicate that Lerner was another troublemaker was the letter of reprimand sent to his parents from the management of the Peter Cooper Village housing complex. Young David was cited for unauthorized use of a water gun on the premises. The framed letter hung on the wall of his Manhattan apartment many years later.

There is no doubt that there are some who feel that it was a subversive act to run a profitable business like Tekserve and treat your workers like they were family.

Derek Davis, who started the pro audio division at Tekserve and is now the head archery coach at Columbia University, described Lerner as “the most honest and fair person” he has ever worked for. The day Davis came into the store for an interview Lerner hired him on the spot.

“It was years later,” Davis wrote on Facebook, “that I figured out that David wasn’t hiring workers. He was hiring family members.

David Lerner sent financial support to an eclectic assortment of non-profits. He contributed to the Hebrew Free Loan Association and, it turns out The Forward. But his wife Lorren said his favorite charity was the Catholic Worker, which may seem an odd entity for a Jew to support.

But Lerner knew that the Catholic Worker fed, sheltered and clothed the poor less than a mile away from his West Village home.

A memorial for David Lerner will take place on Dec. 8 at Poster House, the museum that now occupies Tekserve’s home on West 23rd Street.

When a Jew like David Lerner leaves us, it is customary to say May his memory be a blessing.

The expression comes from the Book of Proverbs 10:7. Go look it up.

 

The post How a troublemaking private school dropout became the Johnny Appleseed of tech appeared first on The Forward.

The Jewish Law Students Association (JLSA) at Brooklyn Law School recently attempted to host an on-campus event featuring Hillel Fuld, an Israeli tech columnist, global speaker, and pro-Israel advocate.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) then sent a letter to the administration that also circulated around campus, accusing Fuld (and by extension JLSA) of such extreme Islamophobia that his mere presence would pose a threat to Muslim and Palestinian students. While a few other student groups endorsed SJP’s statement, these claims are categorically false. The administration effectively caved to the angry mob, and members of JSLA let them off the hook.

Ultimately we were forced to cancel the event in all but name, supposedly because the national accreditation committee was visiting the same day, and the school could not offer adequate safety resources or administrative support. Specifically, they explained that our event required administrators to be present to support sensitive students and make immediate decisions, but that none were available due to the accreditation committee.

The problem with this explanation is that no other group’s events were given the same treatment. What’s worse is that when SJP went ahead with their now celebratory “protest” — itself arguably a violation of the Time, Place and Manner school policies — not only did the school provide security, but multiple administrators showed up to monitor the situation. When I spoke with one of them, she rebuffed my concerns about Jewish students being afraid to be on campus due to this sort of behavior. So much for neutrality.

SJP boasted in an email to their list-serve that “this outcome is exactly the kind of awareness and action our coalition was created to achieve.”

There is a pervasive double standard at my school that has emboldened the local anti-Zionist ideological movement on campus. The latest incident involving the Jewish Law Students Association has shown that it doesn’t matter if pro-Israel Jewish students follow all the rules and SJP actively breaks them.The outcome is predetermined: SJP is supported, and we are marginalized and pushed off campus.

Before SJP hosted a vigil on October 7, 2025 that disregarded Hamas’ war crimes, JSLA requested to move it to another day so our community could mourn, but they refused and the school said nothing. Last April, they hosted a so-called “Passover Liberation Seder” on campus featuring a woman in a keffiyeh — an act of cultural appropriation mocking an important religious holiday to demonize Zionist Jews.

That same month, multiple bathrooms were vandalized with “Free Palestine” and nothing substantial seems to have been done about it.

If the school considered Hillel Fuld’s Tweets too controversial, there are dozens of National SJP tweets that fall into the same category. But that doesn’t matter to school administrators.

Unfortunately, this situation isn’t unique to Brooklyn Law School, and Jewish students across the country have responded in various ways. I believe that our community needs to fight this head on to ensure that antisemites like SJP are not permitted to discriminate with impunity, and to prevent incidents like this from becoming the status quo. But there are some who have chosen a more passive route. They believe that trusting the administration and taking a soft stance on SJP’s behavior will eventually ease the targets on our backs.

While I sympathize with that line of thinking, it is ultimately a mistake.

It is easy to believe that if you behave in a respectable manner, then people will respect you in return. As someone who believes in the inherent goodness of people, I would love to be able to assume that others would treat me fairly. Unfortunately, SJP will not stop antagonizing us, and we cannot expect the administration to stop them for us.

Thankfully, some members of JLSA agree with me. We have upcoming events and will continue hosting speakers. Each one of these will be a test for the administration to prove that they aren’t a bunch of cowards or low-key antisemites. We will not stay silent in the face of these inconsistent applications of policies and seemingly arbitrary constraints.

Instead of trying to personally reassure alumni that there isn’t a systemic antisemitism problem, maybe Brooklyn Law School should come out with a statement admonishing SJP for their behavior.

The discrimination Jewish students like me are facing will continue until the pressure to abandon it exceeds the pressure to maintain it. There’s a fundamental difference between imposing censorship and demanding equal treatment, which is exactly what I’m calling for. As it says in Pirkei Avot ,“If I am not for myself, who will be?”

Robert Dweck serves as Vice-President of the Jewish Law Students Association and the Federalist Society at Brooklyn Law School. A second-year law student and CAMERA Coalition member, his work focuses on antisemitism, campus climate, and freedom of expression.

Three years ago, a mid-sized Conservative synagogue in the Midwest began searching for a new senior rabbi. The search committee received 42 applications. Not one candidate combined deep Talmudic learning with congregational experience. Most were second-career professionals with limited textual fluency. Several had never led a community through a full Jewish calendar year. The committee eventually hired a capable rabbi, but the search exposed something deeper: the pipeline of traditionally-formed Jewish leaders is running dry.

This is not an isolated incident. It is a pattern. And now we have the data to prove it.

The newly released Atra report, “From Calling to Career: Mapping the Current State and Future of Rabbinic Leadership,” is the most comprehensive study of the American rabbinate in a generation. It offers something rare in Jewish communal life: clarity. We now know who today’s rabbis are, how they are formed, and what the next generation will look like. The portrait is sobering. But it also reveals an extraordinary opportunity, if we have the courage to seize it.

This moment could mark not the decline of rabbinic authority, but its renewal. Everything depends on what we do next.

At the Crossroads

The numbers tell a consequential story. There are approximately 4,100 non-Haredi rabbis currently serving in the United States. Only six percent are under 35, while more than a quarter are over 65. The long-anticipated retirement wave is cresting. At the same time, the pathway into the rabbinate has fundamentally shifted. Many new rabbis now enter as second-career professionals — often with limited immersion in traditional Jewish learning and communal life.

Why does this matter? Because rabbinic formation isn’t simply professional training. It is the transmission of a civilization.

Rabbis formed young develop textual fluency that becomes second nature. They absorb communal norms through years of apprenticeship. They build mentorship relationships that span decades. They learn to think in Jewish categories before the default assumptions of secular culture take root. They spend Shabbat after Shabbat in communities, watching master rabbis navigate conflict, comfort the mourning, inspire the indifferent. This kind of formation cannot be replicated in a compressed professional program, no matter how well-designed.

Second-career rabbis bring valuable life experience — maturity, professional skills, perspective that comes only with age. These gifts are real. But when second-career entry becomes the dominant pathway rather than one pathway among several, something essential is lost: the deep grammar of Jewish thought and practice that has sustained our people through every upheaval.

To its credit, the Atra report highlights rabbis’ enduring sense of calling. Ninety-seven percent report that their work remains meaningful. This devotion is real and admirable. Yet many also speak of unclear expectations, emotional strain, and insufficient institutional support. The rabbinate increasingly resembles a helping profession under strain rather than a moral office grounded in tradition, discipline, and collective purpose.

This is not merely a workforce challenge. It is a civilizational one, for rabbis do not operate in isolation. They shape schools and federations, influence donor priorities, frame communal responses to antisemitism, and articulate the public moral voice of American Jewry. When rabbinic authority weakens or when it becomes culturally detached from the communities it serves, the entire ecosystem of Jewish institutional life feels the strain.

Formation, Not Demographics, Is Destiny

The next generation of rabbis will look markedly different from previous ones. Among current rabbinical students, 58 percent identify as women and 51 percent identify as LGBTQ+, with a significant portion identifying as trans or nonbinary. Many come from non-traditional Jewish backgrounds — converts, children of intermarriage, Jews who found their way to serious practice later in life.

These demographic shifts are inevitable and, in many ways, enriching. A diverse rabbinate that reflects the breadth of Jewish experience can strengthen our communities. The question is not who enters the rabbinate, but how they are formed.

A diverse rabbinate formed in deep textual literacy, halachic fluency, and communal responsibility will serve the Jewish people brilliantly. A diverse rabbinate formed primarily through ideological conformity and therapeutic training will not. The issue isn’t identity. It’s formation. It has always been.

Religious leadership cannot long endure when it becomes unmoored from the moral instincts, lived traditions, and covenantal expectations of the communities it serves. A rabbinate shaped more by the ideological grammar of elite secular culture than by the rhythms of Jewish religious life will struggle to command authority, inspire loyalty, or sustain continuity — no matter how sincere or well-intentioned its members.

Judaism has always thrived on creative tension: between past and present, law and compassion, authority and humility, particularism and universalism. The best rabbis hold these tensions with grace. They can advocate for change while honoring tradition. They can welcome the stranger while maintaining boundaries. They can engage contemporary questions without flattening either the questions or the tradition. But this capacity doesn’t emerge naturally. It must be formed — through years of study, through apprenticeship with master teachers, through sustained immersion in communities where these tensions are lived rather than theorized.

What Excellence Looks Like

Before charting the path forward, we must envision the destination. What would a renewed rabbinate actually look like?

Imagine rabbis who combine the textual fluency of traditional yeshiva training with genuine pastoral sensitivity. Who can navigate both Talmudic argumentation and congregational politics with equal skill. Who arrive in communities not to affirm what’s trending, but to guide toward what’s enduring. Who lead with moral authority earned through learning, humility, and years of service.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s the future Jewish life requires.

And we already see it emerging. There are communities where young, traditionally-trained rabbis are revitalizing Jewish life through serious learning and warm welcome. There are synagogues where Torah study, social justice, and ritual observance reinforce rather than contradict each other. There are day schools where rabbis teach with both intellectual rigor and deep care for students’ spiritual lives, and campus settings where rabbis offer students substantive Judaism — not watered-down platitudes — and find eager audiences hungry for depth.

The Orthodox Invitation

This brings us to the most consequential omission in the Atra report: the absence of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) from full participation.

Founded in 1896, RIETS has been the backbone of Modern Orthodox rabbinic life in America for over a century. It ordains approximately 50 rabbis annually — a significant portion of the Orthodox rabbinate. Its graduates populate synagogues, day schools, and communal institutions across the country. They embody a leadership model rooted not in expressive identity, but in disciplined obligation: years of intensive Talmud and halachic study, rigorous preparation for pastoral work, and formation within a tradition that sees the rabbinate as a sacred responsibility rather than a personal calling alone.

Yet RIETS did not fully participate in the Atra study. Its student data was estimated rather than integrated. Its voice was muted. This omission distorts our understanding of the American rabbinate and inadvertently shifts the perceived center of gravity toward institutions more aligned with progressive formation models.

But absence is not destiny. And critique can become an invitation.

This is RIETS’ moment. For over a century, it has quietly trained rabbis who embody halachic seriousness and communal service. Now, it has the opportunity to demonstrate publicly what rigorous traditional formation produces: not rigidity, but resilience. Not narrowness, but depth. Not exclusion, but excellence that genuinely serves diverse communities.

By fully engaging the national conversation about rabbinic leadership, RIETS would provide an essential counterweight — not through opposition, but through demonstration. It would show that there are multiple pathways to rabbinic excellence, and that the path rooted in intensive traditional learning has produced extraordinary leaders for generations.

In an era when data increasingly drives philanthropic priorities and institutional strategy, presence is leadership. Participation is not capitulation to progressive norms — it is stewardship of a vital tradition. 

The alternative is to cede the narrative entirely. And that would be a loss not just for Orthodox Jews, but for everyone who believes that Jewish leadership requires both deep learning and moral seriousness.

Building the Future

The Atra report hands us a gift: clarity about where we stand. The data is sobering, but the opportunity is immense. Yet this requires action and courage from multiple actors.

Seminaries and training institutions must reclaim non-negotiable standards. Textual fluency cannot be optional. Every ordained rabbi should be able to navigate a page of Talmud, engage classical commentaries, and ground contemporary questions in traditional sources. This isn’t fundamentalism, it’s literacy.

It’s the difference between a doctor who can read an X-ray and one who cannot. Extended apprenticeship must become standard. Classroom learning must be complemented by years of embedded communal experience. There is no substitute for watching a master rabbi navigate a contentious board meeting, comfort a family in crisis, or inspire a reluctant bar mitzvah student. These skills are caught, not taught.

Seminaries should create exchange programs between institutions. Let students experience different formation models while maintaining their home institution’s standards. Imagine HUC students spending a summer immersed in Talmud study at Yeshiva University — not to change their denominational commitments, but to deepen their textual foundation. Imagine RIETS students learning pastoral counseling from master teachers at the Jewish Theological Seminary. This kind of cross-pollination would strengthen the entire field.

Donors and philanthropic leaders must shift funding from innovation theater to formation infrastructure. The Jewish communal world loves pilot programs and convenings. What we need now is patient capital for the slow work of formation. Endow rabbinic chairs at institutions committed to traditional learning combined with pastoral excellence. Make 10-year commitments, not three-year grants. Create post-ordination fellowships that place newly ordained rabbis in strong communities with master mentors for two or three years before they take senior positions. Fund the apprenticeship model that produces excellence. Fund gap-year programs in Israel and intensive pre-seminary preparation. Give talented 35-year-olds considering a career change the resources to spend a year studying Talmud seriously before they apply to rabbinical school.

And measure what matters. Ask grant recipients not about diversity metrics or innovation buzzwords, but about textual competency, communal integration, and long-term placement success. One major philanthropist could transform the field by endowing a fund that provides significant annual support to institutions meeting rigorous standards for traditional learning, pastoral training, and placement support, regardless of denomination.

Communities and search committees must become more sophisticated consumers of rabbinic talent. During interviews, probe beyond résumés and talking points. Ask candidates to walk you through their approach to teaching a page of Talmud to diverse audiences. Ask how their formation prepared them to navigate tensions between tradition and change. Ask about their longest mentorship relationship and what they learned from it. Ask what it means to be a link in the chain of Jewish tradition.

An Urgent Call

The American rabbinate stands at a crossroads. One path leads toward continued fragmentation: rabbinic training driven by ideological fashion, second-career professionals with limited formation, institutions talking past each other, and communities unsure what excellence even looks like.

The other path leads toward renewal. Seminaries committed to both traditional learning and pastoral care. Donors funding formation rather than innovation. RIETS and other serious institutions leading publicly. Communities demanding rabbis who are both deeply rooted and genuinely responsive.

We don’t have to choose between tradition and inclusion, between excellence and accessibility, between past and future. These are false choices designed to paralyze us. We can have — we must have — rabbis formed in the deep grammar of Jewish thought who can lead diverse communities with wisdom and grace.

The Atra report should be read not as a warning of inevitable decline, but as an invitation to institutional courage. It surfaces truth. And truth creates possibility.

A rabbinate with moral gravity will not simply anchor Jewish life in an unsettled age. It will renew it. It will produce leaders capable of holding both tradition and change with grace. Leaders who can welcome the stranger without abandoning boundaries. Leaders who can engage modernity without being captured by it.

This is not the moment to retreat into tribalism or settle for mediocrity. This is not the moment for hand-wringing or passive resignation. This is the moment to build — not to drift, but to define. Not to mirror culture, but to shape it. Not to manage decline, but to engineer renewal.

The data is clear. The path is visible. The opportunity is now.

All that remains is the will to lead.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.