Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Twenty M ASMID THE STAFF Seated, left to right: — Louis Engelberg, Eli Levine, Joseph Kaminetsky and Hymari Muss Standing: — I. Goldberg, Frank Hoffman and Samuel Deutsch

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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.

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M A S M I D n ' nl Editorials Commencement: Commencement, paradoxically enough, is a word that connotes to most college graduates an end rather than a beginning. The real meaning of the term, which signifies preparedness to go out and conquer the world, having acquired suffi- cient knowledge to do so, is very often miscon- strued by these very graduates themselves ; and Commencement Day comes to mean to them the culmination of beautiful friendships, the severing of ties comradeship that are but beginning to unite them. Indeed college men begin to look for- ward to Commencement, in their sentimental mo- ments, with a feeling of uneasiness; for there is yet another formality connected with it, besides the enjoyable one of appearing in cap and gown — the dreaded formality of leave-taking. In truth, it is natural for the students to have such a feeling. Too often it happens that brother- graduates — men who have spent the most forma- tive years of their lives together, who have shared identical hopes, fears, and joys — are separated from each other and never see one another, after the glamor of Commencement Day is over. It is a state of affairs, very much to be regretted. We of the Yeshiva College must not let our fate be the same as that of most college-graduates. We have a right to be different. Ours has not been merely an association of four years. Many of us studied at the Yeshiva, connected with the College, long before the eshiva College embarked on its noble career; and some of us will yet con- tinue to study at the eshiva. We have been pioneers together in a great educational endeavor of our people; we have striven these years to reach a common goal, to realize the same ideal: the har- monization of secular learning with our own Jew- ish culture. Ours has been a unique friendship. Commencement must then have for us another and far happier connotation than it has for most college students. It must mean to us the reen- forcement of the bonds of comradeship which hold us together, so thai they may not be easily torn asunder by time and distance. It mutl mean die birth and formation of a powerful Alumni Group that will ever be at the service of our Alrn.i Mater. It must be the first meeting of a group of men, who, having received a wonderful well-rounded education, will attempt to cope with the problems of American Jewry. J. K Yeshiva College: Now that the Yeshiva College is graduating its first class, the question is appropriate: Has the Yeshiva College justified its existence? The problem that faces us now is, does it pay for Torah-true Jewry to continue its support of the first and only Jewish college? Has the College been a credit to the interests of orthodox Judaism? These questions must be faced courageously and impartially by all thinking Jews who have the interests of spiritual Judaism at heart. The opposition to secular studies was strong up to a decade or two ago in Eastern Europe. In Germany and England there was no such con- flict; Jewish elementary and secondary schools, were maintained there by orthodox Kehillahs. The pupils of these schools have remained within the folds of Orthodoxy, in fact, have become leaders in it — after receiving their higher academic train- ing. In Eastern Europe a smattering of non- Jewish knowledge — the reading of a fifth rate novel, for instance, — was sufficient to cause a break with tradition. Why is it. people have often wondered, that secular studies have ill effects in one section of the world and not in another? The reasons for this difference are not far to seek: Stolen waters are always sweet. If secu- lar education is frowned upon and its acquisition regarded suspiciously, the young boy who en- joys the reading of a novel has a simple choice: a burdensome religion or a delightful novel ! And an attitude of antagonism to religion once adopted