Ari Lamm

Origins and early life

Ari Lamm is the grandson and student of Rabbi Norman Lamm, the longtime president of Yeshiva University, and studied there himself, graduating summa cum laude in history and Jewish studies.

Work and career

He was Yeshiva University's first Fulbright scholar, which took him to University College London for a master's degree in Jewish studies and Eastern Christianity, and in 2015 he received his rabbinic ordination from its Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He went on to a doctorate in ancient Judaism and Christianity at Princeton University, while serving as the William Fischman resident scholar at The Jewish Center in Manhattan and later as special adviser to the president of Yeshiva University.

He became chief executive of Bnai Zion, one of the oldest Zionist organisations in the United States, which in its history opened the Bnai Zion Medical Center in the north of Israel.

Recognition

There he co-founded SoulShop, a media studio for Generation Z and millennial audiences, whose Holocaust education series How To: Never Forget, made with the influencer Montana Tucker, was nominated for a Webby Award. His weekly podcast Good Faith Effort brings guests of many faiths to discuss the influence of the Hebrew Bible, and his thread Why Read the Bible in Hebrew has drawn more than four million views. In 2022 the Jerusalem Post called him probably the youngest head of a major American Jewish organisation, and in 2023 it placed him at number 37, among its Defenders of Israel, on its list of the fifty most influential Jews.