President and Rosh Yeshiva
Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman: Visionary Leadership at Yeshiva University
Since 2017, Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman has anchored Yeshiva University on the twin pillars of academic excellence and values-based education, leading it into a new era of growth and innovation. Under his leadership, YU has experienced unprecedented success, including doubling annual giving and securing $520 million of its $613 million Rise Up Campaign, with $100 million raised in fall 2024 alone.
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Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman is the fifth president of Yeshiva University. Since assuming his role in 2017, Dr. Berman has anchored the university on the twin pillars of academic excellence and values-based education, guiding it into a new era of growth and innovation as a global leader in higher education.
Under his visionary leadership, Yeshiva University has flourished. The university has launched over 20 new graduate degrees in emerging fields such as cybersecurity, health sciences, and STEM, resulting in a graduate school enrollment increase of over 100% with students joining from across the United States and around the world. This growth has led to an expansion of YU’s campus footprint, including the establishment of a new Health Science Campus in Herald Square in one of the largest real estate deals in New York City in 2024.
Undergraduate applications have also reached record highs, attracting stellar students who are drawn to the high-quality education uniquely offered at the flagship Jewish university. With Rabbi Berman’s driving focus on student success, the university launched new programs such as the Shevet Glaubach Center for Career Strategy and Professional Development, created a new tier of honor students with the Honors Leadership Society and established the YU-Einstein Medical Scholars Program for elite medical students.
As President and Rosh Yeshiva of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Rabbi Berman leads the university’s Torah mission. He writes frequently for Torah journals and magazines, delivers a bi-annual Talmud lecture to the entire yeshiva student body, and regularly mentors students in the ordination program. His book, The Final Exam, published in February 2023, expounds upon the educational philosophy of Torah u-Madda and illustrates the core Torah values on which Yeshiva University stands.
Rabbi Berman has spearheaded a period of unprecedented philanthropy. During his tenure, annual giving has more than doubled, and the Rise Up Campaign for $613 million—publicly launched just three years ago—has already secured $520 million, including $100 million raised during the Fall 2024 centennial Hanukkah dinner campaign. The campaign has greatly enriched YU’s academic landscape with initiatives such as the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership, and the Senator Joseph Lieberman-Mitzner Center for Public Service and Advocacy.
Beyond campus, Rabbi Berman has emerged as a prominent voice on national and international stages. He founded a coalition of over 100 university presidents united against terrorism following the October 7th attacks in Israel and led the first-ever delegation of university presidents on the March of the Living to Auschwitz. A founding member of the ACE Commission on Faith-Based Colleges and Universities, Rabbi Berman helped bring together leaders from institutions such as Notre Dame, Baylor, Pepperdine, and Brigham Young University to advance access, affordability, and innovation in higher education while highlighting the essential contributions of faith-based institutions across the broader educational landscape.
As a global faith leader, Rabbi Berman builds bridges between diverse communities. In Dubai in 2021, he delivered the keynote address at the first Holocaust Commemoration Day event held in an Arab country; in January 2023, he delivered his widely viewed address, “Covenant Versus Consumer Education,” at the Brigham Young University Forum; he headlined a historic sustainability forum at the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi in September 2023, promoting environmental ethics and peace among Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders; in Hiroshima in the summer of 2024, he joined as a signatory of the “Rome Call for Artificial Intelligence Ethics,” advocating for human dignity-centered approaches to AI; and in December 2024 he delivered the prestigious Hildesheimer Lecture at Humboldt University in Berlin, analyzing the legal and historical intersections of Jewish and non-Jewish communities and presenting a hopeful vision for the future.
Dr. Berman’s thought leadership has been featured in major media outlets such as Forbes, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as on national networks including CBS, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX News, and FOX Business.
On January 20th, 2025, Rabbi Berman delivered the benediction at the 60th Presidential Inauguration of the United States of America.
A proud alumnus of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Berman is a four-time graduate, earning his BA in Philosophy from Yeshiva College, an MA in Medieval Jewish Philosophy from the Bernard Revel Graduate School, and rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He completed his doctorate in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
He is married to Anita Berman, and together they have five children.
History in the Making: 2025 Presidential Inauguration
Watch Rabbi Dr. Berman's benediction at the Presidential Inauguration.
Activity
Since October 7

Dec 4, 2023
Rabbi Berman presents Ishay Ribo with inaugural Or I'Yisrael award at YU's Hanukkah Dinner
Mar 12, 2024
Rabbi Berman welcomes released hostage Mia Schem's family to speak at Yeshiva University
Apr 7, 2024
YU holds solidarity rally with freed hostages and their families at six-month anniversary of Oct. 7
May 6, 2024
Rabbi Berman leads delegation of college presidents and leaders on the International March of the Living at Auschwitz, Poland
July 8, 2024
Rabbi Berman travels to Japan with education leaders dealing with the rise
of AI and how it relates to religion
YU In the News
YU Facts and Stats

GRADUATE ENROLLMENT INCREASED BY MORE THAN
100%

RISE UP campaign: Two years since its public launch, YU HAS RAISED OVER $520 MILLION TOWARD ITS GOAL OF
$613
MILLION

YU FACULTY LAUNCH CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH: New research grants awarded to YU's faculty increased by
80%
between 2021 and 2024.

YU LIBRARIES CONTAIN A WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE, WITH
650,000
print books, 389,000 electronic books, 217,000 electronic and physical journals and 202,212 linear feet of shelving—almost 38 miles.

THE PARNES CLINIC AT THE FERKAUF GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY is among the four largest training clinics in the United States: Serving over
550
PATIENTS
at any given time and providing over 1,500 appointments per month.

YU STUDENTS FIND SUCCESS
96%
of YU undergraduates are employed, in grad school or both within six months of graduation.

THE CARDOZO LAW SCHOOL has one of the most robust field placement programs in the country for future lawyers, with
11
IN-HOUSE
CLINICS,
15
FIELD
CLINICS,
OVER
100
EXTERNSHIPS
each semester in every field of law.

RIETS EDUCATES THE NEXT GENERATION OF RABBIS:
80%
of all major congregations across our communities are led by RIETS graduates.

YU IS CURRENTLY EMBARKING ON
MORE
THAN
65
construction, infrastructure and security projects on campus.

UNDERGRADUATE ACCEPTANCE TO MEDICAL SCHOOL IS DOUBLE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE.
91%
of YU undergraduates who apply to medical school earned admission between 2021 and 2024 with 128 applying and 116 accepted.
Academic
Excellence
Highlights
Learn about our distinguished faculty members whose work exemplifies YU's commitment to exceptional education.

Under God's Vine and Fig Tree
On Monday, I will stand before our nation to offer words of blessing at Donald J. Trump's second inauguration. It's a profound moment for me—not just for the gravity of the occasion, but for how it binds together the threads of American history, religious tradition, and our collective hopes for tomorrow.
They don't teach this in rabbinical school. There's no chapter in the ancient texts titled, “How to Bless a President.” But as I prepare to head to Washington, D.C., my mind has wandered to another capital city, one that has whispered its wisdom through the centuries: Jerusalem.
It turns out I'm not the first to make this connection. George Washington found himself drawn repeatedly to the words of an ancient Hebrew prophet named Micah and his vision of Jerusalem. More than fifty times in his letters and speeches, Washington returned to Micah's dream—not of conquest or power, but of a place where “everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.”
This wasn’t mere rhetoric for Washington. In 1783, fresh from leading the revolutionary army, he wrote to a friend with an oddly specific request: Would they send him some grape vines and a couple of fig trees? Here was the father of our country, literally trying to plant Micah’s vision in America’s newly free soil.
The image is almost too perfect—the general who had wielded the sword now seeking to cultivate vines. It echoed Micah’s prophecy of a time when nations would “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” Washington wasn’t just building a garden; he was planting hope.
A few years later, writing to the Jewish community of Newport, Rhode Island, he wove that same biblical imagery into a profound promise of religious freedom. He wished for them that they would “merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants” while everyone sat “in safety under his own vine and fig tree.” The metaphor had evolved from personal yearning to national vision.
But visions take root slowly. The peaceful era Micah foresaw hasn’t arrived, not in Jerusalem and not in our own divided nation. The ground beneath our feet often feels unsteady, the winds of discord blow fierce and cold.
This is why, in preparing my benediction, I found myself drawn to another prophet, Jeremiah, who spoke to people living in uncertain times. He offered them an image of a tree planted by water, its roots reaching deep to the stream, remaining green even in drought, bearing fruit even in hardship.
That’s America at its best: a nation that draws strength from deep roots—roots that reach back to Jerusalem and Athens, to London and Philadelphia, to every shore from which our people have come. These roots tap into wellsprings of faith and reason, of liberty and law, of the sacred and the civic.
Washington understood this. He called faith and morality the "indispensable supports" of American prosperity. Not because they were imposed from above, but because they rose from below, from the soil of human hearts cultivated in freedom.
As our nation approaches its 250th year, these roots are tested anew. The heat comes, the winds blow. But like Jeremiah’s tree, we endure when we remember what sustains us—those core values that America shares with the faith traditions that have found shelter here: the sanctity of life, the pursuit of liberty, the call to service, the morality that underlies all law.
On Monday, standing on the Capitol steps, I will offer words of blessing to our nation and its forty-seventh president. But the real blessing is already here, planted deep in American soil—this extraordinary experiment in freedom and fellowship, this ongoing effort to cultivate a garden where all may sit without fear.
May its leaves remain green, and may it never cease to bear fruit.
Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman
President
Yeshiva University
My Inauguration Reflections
January 20, 2025
I was deeply honored and humbled to lead our nation in prayer today representing Yeshiva University, the Jewish people and all those who find meaning in faith.
In recent years, our country has faced deep divisions, and much uncertainty. Americans are yearning for meaning and connection. Faith provides moral clarity and reminds us of the shared humanity that binds us together.
I prayed today for President and Vice President to lead our country with strength and courage.
I prayed for unity—for our country to be bound together by our foundational biblical values of life, liberty, service, and sacrifice, and by faith and morality, which George Washington called the “indispensable supports” of American prosperity.
As a university president, I prayed for the next generation of students: “Guide our schools and campuses to inspire the next generation to pair progress with purpose, knowledge with wisdom, and truth with virtue.” Each day, I witness how universities have the power not just to cultivate intellect but also to nurture upstanding character and goodness in the leaders of tomorrow.
The hostages have been in our prayers everyday since October 7th. With great joy we welcomed home Emily, Romi and Doron and with great pride in Israel, we pray for its further safety and security.
Finally, I prayed for all Americans to realize our shared dream of a life filled with peace and plenty, health and happiness, compassion and contribution. May we all have the confidence to rise to this historic moment. For while we trust in God, God’s trust is in us the American people. America is called to greatness, to be a beacon of light and a mover of history.
May our nation merit the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s blessing, that like a tree planted by water we shall not cease to bear fruit, May all of humanity experience Your blessing. And let us say Amen.
For media opportunities, contact Doron Stern at doron.stern@yu.edu