Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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Sixteen MASM1D permanently inspired. It is in this connection that my thoughts turn to 1 eshiva College, of which I am proud to be the Dean. Situated on Washington Heights, Man- hattan ' s highest point, Yeshiva College is in a sense a symbol of the heights of liberalism and tolerance our country has achieved, for it was founded, six years ago, by the very people that through the years have been subject to persecution and repres- sion and are at this moment in Germany feeling the oppressor ' s hand. The only college of liberal arts and sciences in America under Jewish auspices, though it accepts all qualified students and its faculty consists of scholars, Jews and non-Jews alike — Yeshiva College is devoted to the creation of an atmosphere where the age-old verities and the fruits of modern knowledge may be coordinated and compatibly absorbed. The significance of this direct entry of American Jewry — long recog- nized by patrons and seekers of learning — in the field of higher education has been widely acclaimed, and at the coming commencement, the Hon. Her- bert H. Lehman, Governor of New York State, will address the graduates. Yet the ideal of eshiva College is but an expression from the Jewish point of view of the ideal of all the liberal arts colleges, of all schools of liberal arts and science in the great universities. It is natural that most of these institutions were denominational in origin, for they rose out of a concern, not for the individual ' s livelihood, but for the well-being of the community, which I need not emphasize, de- pends upon the state of being of the men and women who are its citizens. The times are out of joint. Individuals in high places, here and abroad, have bemired our trust that the common decencies of life, that honesty, tolerance, magnanimity, understanding — in short, that spirituality and culture, will dominate and direct our lives. It is for their fostering of the ideals inherent in these aspects of life, for their disinterested pursuit of knowledge and development of character, that we turn to the liberal arts col- leges, and hope that in their spirit, and bearing their ideals, will rise the country ' s leaders of to- morrow. CONFIDENCE To Franklin D. Roosevelt Through all the darkness that enshrouds Today And leaves behind its poison of despair. Through hopelessness, an unexpected ray Foreshows the utter banishment of care. An unforeshadowed ray, a tiny hope, More glorious than a nabob ' s opulence, Enlivens man, who need no longer grope Since he is fortified by Confidence. What peerless giant, what colossal force Has suddenly performed this miracle? To what great instrument had he recourse To help him do the unbelievable? A single word to those who seemed forlorn And with it hope and confidence were born. -Bernard Dov Milians

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M ASM II) OR. SAFIK ' .S PvUlSSAC I From .1 thousand colleges, within a month, mi lifly 1 1n ii i ,inil graduates will he M-nl forth. In i vr|l the now slowly diminishing army ol the unem- ployed, Their problem will nol I -. in any e in tial respect, different from thai ol tin- inilln.ii ,il ready seeking work; except that, instead of experi ence, they can exhibit only a sheepskin which pro- claims them bachelors of art or bachelors of science. 1 hey soon find that preference is given 1 married men, particularly la those who for some years have been devoted to their work, and have become expert in their fields of life endeavor. I he college graduate, in other words, is handicapped in com- petition with the young man of equal age who has had four years not of study, but of business. Unless he is planning to enter a professional field, for which college study is prerequisite, the gradu- ate, looking around at the world today, may well question what good his degree has brought him. The value of a college education is something that must be questioned, indeed, not only by the student and the graduate, but by all those con- cerned with the general well-being of the com- munity, especially in a metropolis like New I ork City, which maintains three free colleges for its generations of growing citizens, and wherein are almost twenty other educational institutions of col- legiate and university rank, including two that are among the largest in the world. However im- mediately practical the college graduate, hunting for a job, may be in his estimate of the worth of the four years he has spent in absorbing the subjects and amassing the points required for his degree, the community may perhaps be forgiven if it looks with less interested eye on the graduate ' s pocketbook, and turns its attention upon other aspects and values of his college education. In the minds of many, too many even of the students themselves, the function of the college of liberal arts and science has been confused with that of the technical and the professional schools. These in- titution . ii i -.I,-. ion ,in l iru -. art • ■quip thru Indents with tli - trainim w •■ -iry for carrying on, in later life, a specific type of ■ • — engineering, teaching, medicine, the law. are, for mature) yeai . the equivalent .l thi school and the technical high school, ihey are tin- modern counterpart f appr ' -nticethip and reading foi a profi ion. The college of libera I arts and science has quite another function, holds quite another position, another significance, in the scheme of higher education. Its aim is to lead its students, not to do something, but to be something. Not specific training, but character and culture, are its goal. The leaders of our land, of all lands, are drawn increasingly from the ranks of the college gradu- ates. Whether, indeed, they rise to individual prominence or remain undistinguished among their communities, it is ultimately from them that the cultural ideals of the land must emanate, from them that the leaven must come to lift the level of intelligence, of tolerance, of liberal and truly- democratic acceptance of the many racial tradi- tions and cultural and ethical systems that meet in this land, to combine and to fuse them into the high American spirit and truly American ideals. Especially in these days, when the darkness of medieval intolerance and racial persecution has engulfed a great European nation, it is essential to keep in mind the spiritual and cultural aspects of college life, and to find in them the true signif- icance of the years spent in a college of liberal arts and after these the years given to the com- munity. For every life, no matter how spent, is given to the community, is a living model for good or for ill; and his years at college become to the thoughtful graduate a responsibility and a pledge to something more than a spree at football re- unions, to a maintenance of the long tradition of spirituality and culture of which he has briefly partaken. but by which, we trust, he has been

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M A S M I D w THE TRAGEDY OF GERMANY History is replete with the shattered illusions of mankind. Monuments of majestic splendor have been conjured up out of the fertility of the human mind to bask in the warm rays of specious reality and then fade into the ephemeral realm of lost dreams. The most recent of these fallen idols is the much-vaunted epitome of human progress — Deutsche Kultur. A Hegel might, with self-right- eous ingenuity, place Teutonic civilization as the synthesis of all human effort, but we, of this day and age, may, with even more righteous indigna- tion, assign to a civilization productive of a Hitler the ignominious position of antithesis to all that is noble and worthwhile in the lofty aspirations of civilized man. Persecution of the Jew is not a new nor an unusual phenomenon. It has been the peculiar fate of the Jew to receive the scorpion-like stings of Fate in far greater measure than any other race. The sharp crack of the whip and the corporal scourge of fire and sword are more the rule than the exception in Jewish history. Why, then, has the conscience of civilized man been aroused to so sudden a pitch of universal condemnation by the recent atrocities perpetrated by the present German government? We of the present generation have regarded, with increasing interest and hope, the efforts of those altruistic souls whose lives have been devoted to the stamping out of intolerance and the main- tenance of world peace. We have seen a League of Nations flower from the blood-drenched fields of the late war. We have heard denunciations of intolerance and discrimination voiced from the pul- pits of all denominations, from the convention halls of all sorts of organizations, from the public fora of every land. Barbarism had been, but more. The dream has ended, as all dreams do. And in its wake has come disillusionment. Germany has betrayed the hopes of mankind. Political, eco- nomic, and social isolation would have been a blow sufficiently devastating of the lives of the six hun- dred thousand Jews in Germany. But Germany ' s return to medieval barbarism stamps her culture as a sham, her refinement as camouflage, and her sense of right and wrong as so horribly perverted that the tortures of a Torquemada were tolerated in twentieth-century Berlin. ould that those Jews were alive, who so confidently and arrogantly proclaimed that from Germany goes forth the Torah and the word of the Lord from Berlin. Once again we are brought face to face with the inevitable reality. Poultices and compresses are mere temporary balsam to the harassed and lacerated body of the Jew. One road of promise is open — the road to Palestine, the national Jewish homeland. THE NEED FOR AN ENDOWMENT Life beckons to another fleck of college grad- uates. Though its welcoming gestures seem rather weary and mechanical, still youth needs no second invitation. Depressions may come and go. but the search for knowledge goes on forever. At a time when all about us the effects of economic stress