ForeverMissed
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His Life

Tribute from Josh Hillman

January 2, 2017

If you asked me what a lens is, I would not know how to answer. What type of lens are you asking about? The lens of an old pair of binoculars, the one on your iPhone camera, or of a magnifying glass you used to play detective with when you were little? As a medical student, when I think about the lens I am struck most by the anatomical lens. With her biconcavity, she plays gate keeper to images, exerting her presence as the primary processor of light. She is the first to decide how to refract the incoming image, soon to be delivered as pure sensory afferent signals through the optic nerve (CN II). 

When I remove my white coat, my concept of a lens changes with it. The idea of a lens morphs into an abstract entity—a vantage point through which I view the world. A collective consciousness of the people I’ve encountered, the places I’ve seen, of the times I’ve contemplated what it is that I think and why I think it. For me, my mentors contribute most to that consciousness. Mentors play an integral role in shaping perception—the people that I look to as my guiding light to help me make sense of it all. The concept of mentorship and the mentor-student relationship is demonstrated beautifully in the Talmud’s anecdote about the relationship between Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish.

After meeting each other while swimming in the Sea of Galilee, Reish Lakish and Rabbi Yochanan went on to become inseparable friends—the type of friends who understood each others thoughts, who challenged one another and respected what the other had to say for the sake of learning from the discourse. Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish both helped enhance the others’ lens, enabling each to excel in their studies. Stronger together, they helped each other reach acclaim in the tannaitic period following the death of Yehuda Ha-Nasi, otherwise known as Judah the Prince, redactor of the mishna. The Talmud recounts the days after Reish Lakish passed into the world of life everlasting. 

When Rabbi Yochanan heard the news of Reish Lakish’s death he was utterly distraught. Unsure how to console him, the local rabbis decided that they should send one rabbi to comfort Rabbi Yochanan. After deliberating, Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat was chosen for the job because “his ideas are very sharp.” So Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat went to console him with his sharpness. He sat before Rabbi Yochanan who was studying a text, and everything that Rabbi Yochanan said to ben Pedat, ben Pedat would respond by saying, “there is scripture that supports you.” No longer able to endure the gut wrenching pain felt by the absence of his dear friend, Rabbi Yochanan screamed:

“You are nothing like Reish Lakish! When I would say something to him, he would challenge me with 24 objections and I would answer him with 24 answers, which led to a fuller understanding of the law. And you say, there is scripture that supports me?”

Unable to contain himself, Rabbi Yochanan unleashed his pent up grief onto ben Pedat for agreeing with everything he said. The Talmud continues, “He (Rabbi Yochanan) went out and tore his clothes and screamed through tears, “Where are you Reish Lakish? Where are you Reish Lakish?” 

On September 11, 2016, I experienced the loss of my own Reish Lakish. I was just getting home from a long day studying Neurology. As I turned the key to my door on King Solomon street I felt a buzz in my pocket—I received an email. The message came from Daniel First, and had no body or text, just a screenshot and title line, “Adler z”l.” “To our Brother-in-law, Dr. Norm Adler z”l—a compassionate, brilliant, spiritual, and wonderful human being… we will deeply miss you… funeral will be 7pm (Israel time) at Eretz Chaim Cemetery near Beit Shemesh.” I caught the next bus from Rabin Square.

The enormity of the loss didn’t hit me right away. I couldn’t accept the reality of Adler’s death, so I tried to hold on as long as I could. It has been over two months that I have been mourning my mentor, Dr. Norman Adler z”l, one of the most prodigiously profound lens shapers of my life. Dr. Adler was my professor at Yeshiva University under whom I studied Psychobiology and Neuropsychology, and my faculty advisor for a group of students (he referred to us as “The Boys”) who were interested in learning about Neuroscience. Nicknamed “The Godfather”, Adler was our faculty liaison communicating our interests to the administration—to people like Harry Ballan, Dean Eichler, Dr. Raji Viswanathan, Dean Sugarman, Dr. Carl Feit, Dr. Gabriel Cwillich and Dr. Will Lee et al. Yeshiva wasn’t ready to create a new Neuroscience major at the time, so Dr. Adler helped us in creating Yeshiva’s first Yeshiva College Neuroscience Society (YCNS). Not too dissimilar from The Dead Poets Society, we rallied around Adler like the students of Welton Academy rallied around John Keating (Robin Williams). Adler reveled in our reveling by helping us create the society, and inviting what he referred to as “friends” to give lectures.

As starry-eyed neophytes knowing next to nothing, we had no idea that these friends were actually brilliant scholars in their fields. To get a sense of the list, it included : Dr. Donald Pfaff, Dr. Sam Sacher, Dr. Heather Berlin, Dr. Jonathan Berger, Dr. Stuart Apfel, Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twersky, Rabbi Herschel Schechter, Dr. Concetta Tomaino and David Cesarini. 

One thing he believed in more than anything was that neuroscience was not like the rest of the sciences. Not to say that it was superior, but that it was different. It was not like cell biology which looks at the nature of different cell types throughout the body, or like microbiology which looks at the bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites that share in inhabiting the earth with us.  Nor was it like biochemistry which looks at the enzymes and molecules responsible for mechanisms of metabolism and cell function that exist in the body. Neuroscience was unique because it was interdisciplinary. A culmination of blood vessels and brain tissue responsible for innervating every aspect of the body, every organ, every fiber, the stomach the heart, sympathetic and parasympathetic, somatic and autonomic, nicotinic and muscarinic. The brain is responsible for balance and memory and hormonal regulation, and temperature and sleep. It is an all encompassing organ and field of pursuit. In Adler’s realm, to be a neuroscientist was not to know the brain, but to know all aspects of the brain—the embryology, physiology, histology, biochemistry, epidemiology, pathology, pharmacology, pathophysiology, organic and inorganic chemistry, physics, and calculus. Looking back on the first time he articulated that thought to me, I now envision the scene in Margaret Edson’s Wit, when Dr. E.M. Ashford, great scholar of John Donne’s holy sonnets criticizes a young Olivia Bearing for failing to use the Gardner Edition of the text—“This is metaphysical poetry, not the modern novel. The standards of scholarship and critical reading… which one would apply to any other text are simply insufficient. The effort must be total for the results to be meaningful.”

Adler’s interdisciplinary pursuits did not stop with neuroscience. He loved Judaism, Indian dance, he had an insatiable thirst for reading, a reverence for rabbis and holocaust survivors and he loved teaching. He loved to ardently discuss anything and everything with Rabbi Ozer Glickman aka “The Dude.” He loved his Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, Furst 535, and freaking out about how the world was coming to an end. He loved trying to get us all do to MD/PhD’s and apply for fellowships. He LOVED Judy Collins and Oliver Sacks. He loved Waiting for Godot, and he loved his students so incredibly much. He had so much love for so many students for so many years. Lighting candles and shaping souls, Adler indelibly changed the course of countless lives. He empowered us to think like Alexander Hamilton in Lin Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece—to stand up and say to ourselves and the world, “I WILL NOT THROW AWAY MY SHOT!” 

On a personal note, he taught me what acetylcholine was. How neurons fire and exhibit saltatory conduction from one node of Ranvier to the next. Why auditory and olfactory senses are so highly connected with memory. What comprises the diencephalon. Why sometimes we feel like we have eyes in the back of our head. Most importantly, he taught me to ask better questions, the way Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish would challenge each other—going beyond the “sharpness” of ben Pedat. He taught me Aristotle’s Five Causes. He taught me how to run a film festival. He led by example, and he led with ease—a true catalyst who lowered the activation energy of those around him so that they too could see the light.
Adler always reminded me of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s little prince—perpetually curious and continuously striving. I miss his smirks. I miss his late night email rants. I miss the books he would lend me to read—one of the most impactful of which, As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg. I miss talking to him about Chaim Potok, and of course Moshe Koppel’s timeless essay Yiddishkeit Without Ideology: A Letter to my Son. I miss the way he would always come late, make the most noise, ask the most questions, make the most people laugh, and do a little jig on top of it all—he stole the show in the most adorable way, putting on a ballet of intellectual discourse exposing just how much he knew and understood—all in the humblest of ways. I miss his penetrating ability to touch your soul and make you be the best version of yourself. He showed me how brilliant my own mind was, how incredibly lucky I was to have a mother who raised me with opera and show tunes, a father who raised me with science and math, a brother who challenged me by paving an impressive path, and a grandmother who struggled for me, who fought for her life as a Schindler’s List Survivor, so that my life could be what it is. Adler did this for anyone and everyone. He helped us all see what was right in front of our noses all along—the true lens.

Most of all I miss his wit. Senior year I was taking an ethics course with Linda Brown. Adler and I sat down to discuss ethics for a paper I was writing about Kant’s paradoxical obsessiveness with pure virtue. “Ya, Kant was a little uptight” he said, “he probably just needed to get laid.” We both died of laughter.  Never did I ever see even an iota of arrogance in Adler, and it is obvious why. Adler never looked at the world in terms how much he knew or accomplished, but in terms of how much he could know and accomplish. Shifting perspective and adjusting the lens, Adler had a deep appreciation and respect for the universe and the billions of incredibly intricate biological reactions constantly choreographed and completed in chorus. 

In my final class with Adler in my Junior year of College, Adler assigned me a special homework assignment—I was to prepare John Keats’ prolific piece Ode on a Grecian Urn (yes, this was for a Neuroscience course). I’ll never forget that day in class how he went line by line through the poem, dissecting its sentences into phrases into words into letters into punctuation. I’ll never forget how he found himself on the verge of joyful tears as he recited the final lines contrasting its similarity with the final verses of Ecclesiastes:

When old age shall this generation waste,
Though shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

And with my own rendition of Whitman I will end:

O Captain! my captain! our fearful trip is done
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
O Captain! my captain! you guided the perplexed
You showed us ways of looking so the lens could be convex

Eulogy delivered by Dr. D. Alex Bailey on behalf of the Stein (Bailey) side of the family

September 18, 2016

Over this past shabbat, Tahg and I sat alone in NJ, watching the clock and waiting for havdala so that we could head to the airport. We shared a LOT of stories. I recounted how when my mom first started dating Norm he was such a breath of fresh air. I remember her coming home to her NYC apartment after a date with Norm with a big smile on her face  - she described a man who was worldly (he had, after all, traveled around the entire world on Harvard's dime), brilliant (he DID go to HArvard after all) and such a gentleman.  His manners and his chivalry struck such a contrast to the few other men she had gone out with around that time. They shared a love of the arts and culture and, to the very end, they shared a love of traveling. For me, about to graduate YU, he was “famous” – the Dean, the man who was going to sign my diploma in a few short weeks (and who later threatened to put a smily face on Jon's). In fact, not only did Norm sign my college diploma, but he also hooded me at my doctoral graduation from Ferkauf, an experience that we both treasured.

I remarked to Tahg how as people get older, they start to look at their lives and wonder if they left a legacy. Those who feel they have created and left something meaningful behind can move through the end of their lives at peace, knowing they made a difference. Norm - you go to your grave as one of the most accomplished and fulfilled people I have ever met, and I hope that means you went in peace.

In the academic world, Norm accumulated more awards in his lifetime then anyone can list. He is actually the first ever recipient of the Early Contributors to Psychology award in 1974; he has a yearly lecture series at University of Pennsylvania named in his honor; his published research is still used in experimental psychology circles; and his name appears in books and videos used to teach psychology students today. I don't know about his students at Penn or Northeastern, but I can tell you that Norm would walk through any YU community today and be constantly stopped by former students who just wanted to say "hi". In his 10 years as Dean at Yeshiva College and then 10 more as a University Professor, Norm touched the lives of so many people. Some he helped get grants, scholarships or awards. Some he pushed to pursue specific areas of study. And some, he just made smile. His love for learning and culture led him to create the YU Arts festival which gave so many students a chance to express themselves in ways other than books and tests and he created the Honors Program which drew many frum students who might have otherwise gone to Ivy League schools and instead chose YU. He loved being around people, but he especially loved being around his students - they, too, will feel the loss of his passing today.

But Norm, you leave a legacy well beyond the academic walls of the universities in which you served, and that is your love for your children and grandchildren. Norm, in your insistence in calling all of the Bailey boys and our wives and children YOUR children and grandchildren, you made it clear that your love for us was total and complete and we felt it daily. For all the exasperated “Oh, Norm”s we have all uttered in response to a corny joke or at way, WAY-over-our-heads conversational gambits or at your “absentminded professor” moments  – and there were many, MANY of those “Oh, Norm”s! – there was so much more appreciation for the love we felt from you, the warmth, the caring, the ever-present smile for us and our kids. It's not surprising to any of us that your heart is basically the only organ that didn't fail you at the every end.

Even more than your children, you ADORED your grandchildren, felt truly thankful to Hashem and blessed to have them in your life, and appreciated each one in his and her uniqueness. We may only have pictures left now, but those pictures say it all. The smile on your face as you are surrounded by, climbed on, reading to and just hugging your 19 grandchildren is priceless.  You connected yourself to our children in so many ways, because you had such an endearing childlike wonder and curiosity about the world, not to mention a true appreciation of juvenile humor! The expressions of pure bliss on your face in all of the pictures we have seen with you and your grandchildren say it all. We are all going to miss you terribly, but I daresay our children, your grandchildren, will feel the hole in their lives moving forward the most.

Norm, you are truly, truly one of a kind. You’ve sat at my Shabbat table and spent an hour talking about “Waiting for Godot” with one of my friends and you’ve sat at Kiddush with some other friends throwing back shots of single malt scotch and adding with full gusto to the crass and apikorsut atmosphere. You spent 25 years doing research on rats and you’ve sat at the piano and played the most beautiful music. You talked philosophy in ways we couldn’t even begin to understand and you tried to buy Captain Underpants books for our sons. You have been a deeply religious man and approached your Jewish practice with love and also curiosity, trying to understand why you were doing and always making sure you were doing the right thing. One of your favorite pesukim – and the one you once said you wanted on your matzeivah – is from Kohelet:

 וף דבר הכל נשמע את האלוקים ירא ואת מצוותיו שמור כי זה כל האדם

The final word, when everything has been heard is to fear God and do his mitzvot  for this is a person's true essence

You thought through and questioned most things in your life, exhaustively, but no matter what your conclusions, you never wavered from the responsibilities Hashem gave you, never questioned the role given to you by Hashem.

Perhaps more than anything, Norm, music was central to your appreciation of life. You loved music of all kinds, from all over the world, no matter how atonal or strange it sounded to the rest of us! This past Friday at the hospital, a roving musical group came by, playing kabbalat shabbat music, which you loved perhaps more than any kind of music. As soon as they started, your blood pressure, which had been tragically low, spiked to almost double for about a minute... this was after you had been sedated for over two days. So you registered the music even without being fully conscious. Micha, who had an intense connection with you as a fellow brain, said so rightly - the tragedy is that Norm HIMSELF would have been the one who would have most loved to hear that and would have explained how exactly it all worked.

Norm, you gave us so much, you leave such a legacy to us and for us and even with the challenges along the way, what endures and will endure is the joy, the love, the giving and the focus on your children and grandchildren.
Since you loved music so much, I want to end with a quote from the Broadway show Wicked (and I can picture you waving your finger to the music), from a most beautiful song sung by the two main characters, the witches Elpheba and Glynda, who have to separate after forming a deep and loving relationship, despite their differences.  It’s a special song in its own right but I want to quote two lines from it in closing because it speaks directly to me and I think it represents how all of us feel about you in all of our lives. I won’t subject you all to singing, but the words are:  “...and just to clear the air, I ask forgiveness for the things I've done, you blame me for....who can say if I've been changed for the better but because I knew you, because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”

Rest well, Norm, and continue to share your love for us, from up high. You have changed your family, your friends and dare I say the world, all for good.

 

Eulogy (hesped) delivered by Tahg Adler

September 18, 2016

I am not sure where to begin, so I'll just start.

How do I take the past 40 years of my lifetime memories with my father and now have to say goodbye with a farewell speech.

I called my father every day (at least once a day) for the past 20+ years of my life. When I flew in to visit my father in Israel last week, I asked him to please continue to call me every day. A few days ago, my father called me, simply said "hello" and then hung up the phone. I knew that was going to be the last time that I would ever have the chance to speak with him and my heart broke.

I was grateful for being able to spend just a few more days with him as we had some very good quality time together, but now my heart aches with the pain that I won't be able to speak to him about anything and everything anymore.

Whether it was an important career decision or a simple question about how to deal with my silly kids, he always had good answers to me. More than anything, he knew how to listen and his lesson for me was that we usually knew the answer ourselves, he would just let us talk in order to have us come up with the answer. That was a key lesson of his. Listen to others to let them say what needs to be said.

I want to try and highlight some of the amazing accomplishments my father achieved during his lifetime. I am a professional recruiter and think my father probably has one of the longest resumes in the history of the world filled with academic posts, publications, research and awards.

My father graduated from Harvard for his undergrad and then went on to pursue his PhD at UC Berkeley. He did his post doc at UCLA and then became a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. My father actually created the Biological Basis of Behavior program at Penn which is now a popular program across many University campuses. My father was a Professor at Penn for 25 years and went on to become the Dean of the college of Arts and Sciences. He then spent a few years as Vice Provost at NorthEastern University in Boston and then eventually became the Dean at Yeshiva College (of Yeshiva University) in New York. After 10 years of being Dean at YU, he continued on as a Professor teaching hybrid courses around science and religion (two of his passions).

I have fond memories of visiting my father in his lab with my siblings at Penn during my childhood. I also have fond memories of building my blocks in my fathers office while he was busy working on his research. I remember his weird but intriguing masks that he collected from all over the world. I remember his incredibly complex fish tanks and even the framed butterflies he had on his walls.

My father is one of the smartest people I know. I think it's pretty safe to say that he was actually a genius. He was always thinking and always analyzing. But he did it in a cool way that was not threatening. He had a wonderful way of trying to connect with people at their levels. He was almost like a chameleon and could adapt to whatever conversational topic was being talked about. Granted, many times his level of understanding was well above many of us, but it was still fun to have those conversations with him.

He loved his siblings, his children, his step children, his cousins, his grandchildren, his step grandchildren, his wife and course all of the students he mentored throughout his 50+ years in academia. He told me last week, that the thing he loved most about being a professor was helping others and mentoring students. He enjoyed coaching and bringing out the best in people. I told him last week that my favorite part of my job is also helping and mentoring others and I think that brought a smile to his face.

Whenever I would be with my father in Israel (if he was visiting me or if I was visiting him), I would hear students call out, "Hey Dean Adler" and he would light up. To this day, I meet people who remember my father either as their Professor, Dean or academic advisor and they all have fond memories of him.

His academic passions were biology, physiological psychology and then in his later years he became very passionate about the merger between religion and science.

My father loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved Science and the pursuit of knowledge. He also loved music and tried to instill music in all of us, because he felt that was important. He would rotate by taking his kids to classical concerts throughout our youth. He was so proud of his brother's musical accomplishments and his daughter (my sisters') musical performances.

My father also liked to have fun and had a great sense of humor. It was sometimes intellectual humor, sometimes it was nerdy humor, but his humor was always unique to his personality which brought smiles to many of our faces.

Even though my father was an elite academic scholar, he still knew how to have fun and be silly and related to anyone on their level.

During my youth, he made up a language called Flagmere, which was a language with no rules other than inserting silly words to describe something. For example, he would say, "Please pass me the "borchmayer", while pointing to an object and then you would know that object was the "borchmayer".

Growing up, I spent many nights watching horrible horror movies with my father. My father and I would then have long existential conversations about the meaning of the horror movies and sometimes he would take those conversations and put them into his University class lectures.

During my recent trip of visiting him in Israel last week, we actually spent some time watching horror movies in the hospital and would then try to dissect their meaning and significance.

I want to end my farewell speech to let everyone to know that out of all of my father's many accomplishments, awards and accolades, my father loved academia, he loved music, he loved science, he loved horrible horror movies, he loved his family, he loved his friends and he loved Israel. He had hoped that one day we would all end up living in Israel together. His plan was to move to Israel permanently by the end of next year upon retirement from YU. He was very proud of my sister Tanya for making Aliyah with her family and hoped that others would follow.

Papa,

You accomplished so much in your lifetime and you leave us with wonderful memories that we will cherish.

I miss you and love you Padre....