Yeshiva University High School For Boys - Elchanite Yearbook (New York, NY)

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84311671 litemtiwc by making the curriculum of our school as rich in content and as varied and diverse in character as those ob- tairlfin most city high schools. The instructing staff comprised some of the most outstanding scholars and teachers in the school system, men who have since made their mark in the field of education as school prin- cipals, heads of departments, and edu- cators of note. In June, 1919, we graduated our first class, six young men who were among the enthusiastic pioneers who entered in 1916. This group was fol- lowed by one of six young men in 1920 and by twenty-two men in 1921. The numbers grew in successive years reaching their peak in 1931, when sixty-eight young men received their diplomas, signifying the successful completion of four years of study. To date, including the class of 1937, there are seven hundred and forty-six C7463 graduates of the Talmudical Academy, and over two thousand others who spent one or more years Within its time honored walls, either downtown on Montgomery Street and East Broadway, or in our present magnificent home on the Heights. If it is true that an institution is to be judged, not by its physical structure, nor by its equipment and teaching conveniences, a even by its faculty, however brilliant that may be, but by the scholastic -smel- UE' results it achieves and by the kind of men it turns out into the world, it behooves us at this time to make a survey of the first twenty years of our existence, and to take stock of our efforts along these lines. As to scholastic achievements, judged by the results of the state-wide Re- gents examinations and the percent- age of scholarships Won by our gradu- ates in competition with those of the other city high schools, both private and public, I am happy and proud to report that our school has always stood at, or near the very top. Asked to explain the superior work of Yeshiva high school boys, a former teacher, not a Jew, said: When my attention, some years ago, was first directed to their work-, I accepted the stories of their excellent results as part of the enthusiastic exaggera- tion natural to earnest advocates of any movement. As soon, however, as I came to join the faculty of the T. A., the high school department of the R, I. E. T. S., I found that there actually was a definite and distinct superiority in the quality of the work. Even the larger proportion of foreign- ers did not bring the attainments in English as low as those of the city high schools, and in other subjects results surpassed those of the public schools by even greater margins. State scholarships awards to graduates of consistently high standing proved that this excellence was no temporary phenomenon, but was maintained throughout the entire Yeshiva High School course. Of the rich fulfillment of this great promise, of the influence of these formative years on the character and life-purpose, only the man's full life can speak. The Yeshiva High School is too young an institution for more than half-way glimpses down the days of its graduates. A survey of the activities of our graduates after they complete their high school studies brings to light the remarkable fact that an exceptional, if not an abso-

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the clclzanitc six moh , learning for the sake of learn- ing. Young men, mostly grown-ups, who already possessed a good knowl- edge of the Talmud and Talmudic Literature and who desired to con- tinue their studies either in prepara- tion for the Rabbinate or just for the sake of increasing the knowledge acquired in European Yeshivath, con- stituted the first students of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. As the institution grew and became better known in American Jewish life, it began to attract younger stu- dents, boys between the ages of four- teen to twenty, who came from so- called Americanized-Jewish homes. Most of these boys, being of high school age, were required by law to attend schools where courses in secu- lar subjects would constitute the main program of studies. Confronted with the alternative of either losing these students or organizing a private parochial high school where high school studies would be pursued along- side of, and under the same roof as, the Hebrew studies, those far-sighted and zealous East European Jews ap- plied for a charter and founded in September, 1916, the first, and up to the present time, the only complete secular high school under Jewish auspices and control in America. The first students of this new high schoolJcalled the Talmudical Academy, came from the Yeshiva Etz Chaim which, during the previous year' 419153, had become merged with the' Y. R. I. E. under the pretentious name of the Rabbinical College of America - later abandoned for the present name, the Rabbi 'Isaac Elcha- nan Theological Seminary. Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel, who, although a young man at that time, was already widely known in Jewish circlesas an out- standing scholar and authority on Jewish learning, became the first pres- ident of the reorganized institution. Together with the late Dr. Solomon T. H. Hurwitz, he founded and organ- ized the Talmudical Academy, the high school department of the R. -I. E. T. S. Two years later, when Dr. Hurwitz, co-founder and first prin- cipal of the T. A., passed away after a short illness, the present incumbent, then a teacher of biology in the city high schools and also in the T. A., was called uponktao -E-ead the Yeshiva's high school, a pg-which he has held uninterruptedly up to the present time. Soon after his appointment, the new principal found it necessary to reor- ganize the office routine and the ad- ministration, bringing them more in line with the practices prevailing in the modern up-to-date high schools. He also felt obliged to make changes in the teaching staff, retaining a few of the better instructors and engag- ing some of the strongest and best qualified teachers in the high school system in New York. Improvements and additions to the equipment and teaching facilities soon brought the school up to the standards required by the State Education Department. Learning of the high scholastic stand- ards and the excellence of the teach- ing staff of the new school, students from all over the city became inter- ested and came to register in it. From a school of some thirty odd students in 1917, the T, A. grew rapidly in numbers until in 1931 its registration exceeded four hundred. New courses were added and additional depart- ments of study were developed, there-

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the elclmnite eight lute unprecedented proportion of them -9002-continue their studies in in- stitutions of higher learnings. An increasing number of the best of them proceed with their academic work in the Yeshiva College, the newest de- velopment of the Yeshiva Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, car- rying forward the work begun in the T. A. But, even before that institu- tion was opened to them, the gradu- ates of the Yeshiva High School were enrolled in many colleges and profes- sional schools pursuing post graduate sciences, or the various studies in the arts and preparing themselves for error made of the true state of affairs, is that all, or nearly professions. A common by most people, ignorant all, of our graduates become rabbis. To refute this erroneous belief, I examined our records for the profes- sions entered into by the graduates of our first seven classes'-from 1919 to 1925-and I found the following results: Lawyers-19, Rabbis-6, Business f22g Physicians-5, Public School Teachers-12g Hebrew Teachers-213 High School Teachers --8, College Teachers-3, Cantors-2, Account- antsf2, Actor-1 Maui, This gras a totem 131 out of 163 graduates for those seven years. The data for the remaining 32 was of too meagre a nature to include in this summary. However, the number in- cluded in this survey gives a fairly accurate idea of the activities which our graduates pursue upon completing their studies in our High School. V77 VV V