Dr. Marcel Perlman

Yeshiva University mourns the passing of Dr. Marcel I. Perlman. He was a beloved educator at Yeshiva University, shepherding generations of YU students through the study of psychology, and a proud alumnus of the University, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees. Born in 1934 in Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), and named by his mother after the author Marcel Proust, he arrived in the United States with his family in 1939 at the age of four. The Perlmans made their way from Brighton Beach to Borough Park to Washington Heights to Mount Vernon, where he did most of his growing up. At the age of 18, he crossed the Westchester border into New York City to begin his college career at New York University, drawn there by an accelerated academic program they offered. “But I found NYU to be too large and impersonal for me,” he observed. “So, in my sophomore year, I enrolled in Yeshiva College, and I’ve never regretted that decision.” Perlman decided to stay within the YU family and continued his studies at what would later become the Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology. He earned both a master’s degree and a Ph.D., and, in the process, unexpectedly found that he liked to teach. As a third-year student, he was working as a teaching assistant when the instructor, Boris Levinson, suffered a sudden heart attack. The dean at the time tapped Perlman to teach the remainder of the class: “I was scared to death but found that I really loved it.” He became a full-time faculty member in 1958 and has taught at YU ever since, in part because of a very important discussion he had with Dr. Samuel Belkin, YU’s second president. “Twenty years into my teaching career,” he recalled, “I had a professional opportunity offered to me to start a new program at a major hospital, but it would have meant leaving YU.” He couldn’t decide whether to stay or go, so he arranged to discuss the matter with Dr. Belkin, a man he deeply admired. After he laid out the facts, “Dr. Belkin looked at me and said, ‘Perlman, where are you going? You have a home here.’ And he was exactly right: I had a home at YU. And so, I stayed and never looked back.” He retired from teaching in 2017, though he continued to maintain his private practice in midtown Manhattan until just before he passed away.

Dr. Perlman in his element as a teacher

In an interview with him upon his retirement, Dr. Perlman noted that “right now, psychology is an exciting field, and it’s that excitement I try to convey to my students in every class I teach.” In fact, Perlman felt that his true legacy at YU were the students who went on to become professionals in the discipline “because of something they heard or something they experienced by being in my classes or by discussing things with me.” “I am so gratified when former students of mine say to me, ‘I’m in this field because of you, because you made us think,’” he said. To Perlman, it didn’t matter if they become psychologists or psychiatrists or social workers. “I’m agnostic about the discipline,” he said. “What’s important is for people to improve the whole area of mental health and all its clinical aspects, and I’m gratified that my students can be part of that work. That is my concrete legacy.” During his time at YU, Perlman taught courses on all the campuses, mentored and supervised hundreds of students, and served on multiple committees, including the search committee that initially brought Dr. Karen Bacon, the Mordecai D. and Monique C. Katz Dean of the Undergraduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences, to the University as dean of Stern College for Women, an accomplishment about which he felt very pleased. “I am very proud of Dean Bacon,” he said at the time. “She is what I would call ‘quietly strong.’” “There are only a few faculty members who, over the course of their careers, are viewed by their colleagues as ‘elder statesmen,’ both knowledgeable and wise,” said Dr. Bacon. “Marcel Perlman is in that category, and over his tenure at YU, he earned the reputation of being someone to turn to on matters large and small. ‘Colleague,’ ‘friend,’ ‘devoted teacher’ and ‘loyal YU alumnus’ are words that come to mind as I look back on Dr. Perlman’s life and career, a record to applaud and admire, and I salute him.” As for his retirement, he said, “I don’t think it will be that much different than what I’m doing now. I’ll do some writing, see my patients, teach some classes. I am, and have been, a lucky man.” A celebration of his life is being planned for the spring. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Guiding Eyes for the Blind at donate.guidingeyes.org