Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Eishte MASM1D history, learning, and tradition of the Jews through all the ages. Thus the students are given oppor- tunity to become learned not only in the wisdom of the Moderns, but also in that of their own ancient race. That marks the peculiar function and value of the Yeshiva College; it turns forth men who can be equally able as Jews and as Americans. Our State has many colleges, great and learned colleges, to which Jewish boys are welcome; but the tendency of most of these institutions is to turn the student into a capable Modern, not into a capable Jew. To those people who believe that the Jew should welcome this prospect of becom- ing thus absorbed in the melting pot, should abandon his racial identity in order to become a good American, the Yeshiva would seem use- less, an obstruction to the desired process. Per- sonally, I am not of the group who think this. As the descendant of a long line of New Englanders, I believe the spiritual forces of earth are greater, far greater, than the material forces. I would wish to encourage every spark of spiritual fire which I find anywhere in the world. The divine force which I believe spoke through Abraham, Moses, Isiah and many another Hebrew pro- phet, must not be lost; it cannot be lost. I be- lieve the Jew has a distinctive power, a distinctive understanding which should not be rejected either by him or by the world. I believe he should re- main emphatically himself, a unique indi duality profound in spiritual sensitiveness as well as in intellectual depth. There are two different types amid our Ameri- can Jews. One type, the business man, looks to the future. He assimilates quickly the new customs and ideas he meets here ; but in becoming a very good American, he sometimes almost ceases to be a Jew. The other type, the thoughtful Jew, clings more persistently to the past. He remem- bers his racial culture and traditions. He is con- servative rather than radical. It is to this more conservative Jew that we may look hopefully for some real and important contributions to Ameri- can civilization, through his harmonizing of his Jewish wisdom and intensity of feeling with our Americanism. We do not want to educate him to forget his traditions. Hence we do not want him to become absorbed wholly into our public school system. The Yeshiva College is exactly the institution he needs. It is indeed the capstone, the highest point of Jewish education, the culmination of the great series of institutions which have been built up by the gener- ous and benevolent Jews of America. It should be the pride of every Hebrew, whether orthodox or modern. The work of the Yeshiva College is to take there, the most serious, the most earnest, and often the ablest of the younger Jews, and to educate them in this double knowledge I have described, Hebraic and American. They meet modern philosophy — which says some very wild and con- fusing things ; and they meet modern literature — which is not always courteous toward the Jew. But they meet all these things as discussed in a kindly spirit. Even those harsher criticisms of their race which they will inevitably meet in the world at large, they learn to understand in our College by means of sympathetic discussion instead of angry attack. Hence they are enabled to har- monize past and present, their own world and the outer world, in an intellectual understanding of each. They thus emerge from the Yeshiva not as bewildered Jewish scholars in an alien civiliza- tion, but as American college graduates knowing all that our State educational authorities demand for a college degree, and knowing also the high value of their own race and its traditions. They thus become citizens of peculiar value both to their own people and to America. Up to five hundred years ago, the Jews pos- sessed great universities of their own, colleges the foremost in the world in learning and in culture. In all the centuries since then the Jews have been without these great instruments of development, and have suffered sorely for the lack of them. Only in our own day has this distinctive culminat- ing voice of Jewish culture been revived. Today the Jewish people have founded both the Uni- versity at Jerusalem and the Yeshiva College in New York. The first is, of necessity, far removed from America in spirit as well as in location ; it

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M ASM ID derived from competitive sports, [ he only activi- ties in which our young men have found time to lake a keen interest are those of a literary and cultural nature, such as oratory, dramatics, de- bating and writing in school publications. It is appropriate, however, to record at this lime the establishment of Scripta Mathematica, a quarterly devoted to the facts, history, and philosophy of mathematics, the first of the Yeshiva College pub- lications. This Journal owes its inception, in large measure, to the enthusiastic response in good work elicited by the editor. Prof. Jekuthicl Ginsberg, from his Yeshiva College students in higher mathe- matics, two of whom have articles in the first issue of the Journal. The high quality of the graduates ' work dur- ing then foui years leads us lo hop.- thai through- out then d..y they will ripen in wisdom and trengthen then piritual mould I hey will be l ' 11 ' ■ ' lr I I the college and source of inspira- tion to future clasps. J lru „ ,),.,,, ,,„,,, „, selves and in the many who come after them, the harmonious blending of modern knowledge and et eraal pirituality and faith will iu tain the gradu- ates of Yeshiva College through all the days of their life, and make them useful members of the community in every field of endeavor in which their fruitful work may lie. We send t hem forth with the fervent hope and prayer that they will become a force for good in the great brotherhood of mankind. The Value of the Yeshiva College By Charles F. Horne, Professor of English When the Yeshiva College was established four years ago, I entered its faculty with eager- ness. I thought I saw a very large value, both for Judaism and for the world, which this College might develop. In the last four years I have be- come steadily more convinced of the important place in education which the College can occupy and, so far as its limited facilities permit, is al- ready occupying. Today the College is supply- ing to a group of earnest students the same type of education as our New York State law requires of all colleges of the first rank. It is also supply- ing something far larger and deeper. Side by side with the regular studies required for a Bachelor ' s degree, strengthening these and making them sig- nificant, the College is giving its students a thor- ough training in advanced Hebraic studies, the

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M ASM ID Ninelt ' .in do liiilc id influence American civilization, I lius the Yeshiva Collgcc possesses, and po - alone, the remarkable opportunity I once mon raising Jewish scholarship here to its ancient splendor. There are practical difficulties in the way. A four year college course is supposed to occupy all the time and all the intelligence ol .1 youm; man who undertakes it. How then can the Y shiva College give its students all the work of a regular American college, and also, at the time, give them the required Hebraic studii The answer is twofold. For one thing, in ener- getic America many a student works his way through college — that is he spends long hours at labor intended to support life, and yet he passess ' in his scholastic courses. The Yeshiva relieves its students from this strain by offering scholarships. The deserving student whose family lacks fund, 1 thn enabled t . reside within the college and hive hii chiel n - l lupplied there while studying A I , the double Geld ' .I study requin only an wei ju tifying il (indisputable -xtr.i size and extra labor is thai the student in tie- i ( ollege lod.ij the work iui i are they for what they recognize as a great opportunity thai they actually cover th - d Geld and do M well. In my own department I can testify that they do unusually — sometime remarkably — good work. There are exc; of course; but on the whole I have never had classes of men who followed their ubjects with more diligence, enthusiasm and understanding than do these doubly-worked Yeshiva students. I hope to continue my classes with them for many years. EDITOR ' S NOTE: Professor Home is our Professor of English Composition and Literature. Though a non-Jew his enthusiasm for l eshiva College is intense. It is with great pleasure that we publish his message.