Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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MASMID The New Americanism Nor must our local obligations be forgotten. In the new connotation of American patriotism, the historical assets of the Jew, cultivated witli freshness of method and integrated with intel- ligence and esthetic meticulousness, are to play a significant part. There are two kinds of Amer- icanism — one is dying out except for Hickville and Hickvillites — the other is emerging triumphantly. The older Americanism in vogue until a few years ago would advise the immigrant to shed his racial, religious, or cultural characteristics as so many handicaps in the way of successful life in the new country. It advised the Jew to throw overboard, somewhere between Danzig and New York, his inheritance, the sum total of ideas and ideals which, as the heirloom of his people, he has car- ried with him on his march through the ages. As a substitute for all this, he was to embrace fer- vently, unquestioningly and undiluted that mystic essence — Americanism. Transition came, and it brought about a new appreciation of the American past as a sum of values, and of the American future as a synthesis of many cultures. The new Americanism would say to the immigrant: This country needs your own contribution. Let the Jew bring his Judaism, tiie German his thoroughness, the Frenchman his sense of style, the Englishman his sense of fair- ness. Let each immigrant offer up on the altar of the new country the cultural asset of his own group. The new Americanism asks the Jew for the sake of America to emphasize his Jewish char- acteristics, to introduce the Jewish note into the symphony of American culture, to intensify and expand his Jewish activities so as to enrich tlie culture of the United States. The broadening of our youth ' s vision, the preservation of its in- tellectual honesty and moral strcnetii, is a sine qua non in this labor. Become a Man! On two critical occasions in the history of our people the dying leader bade his successor above everything to be strong and become a man ; for what determines individual destiny is not learn- ing alone, or sentiment alone, but fundamentally strength of character. The history of the Jewish race is a process of illumination. People without self-restraint, slaves governed by their appetites, cowards and weaklings, must fall by the wayside. They who survive and who take up the struggle of Israel, have survived because of their moral im- pregnability. The American Jewish youth, to rise to the height of its argument, must be willing not so much to reduce the margin, as to raise the level, of its pleasures, to cultivate higher emotion rather than hanker after primitive instincts, to train itself in the service whic ' h demands the individual ' s ethical self-realization as the minimum contribu- tion to national and universal welfare. a o, Tweitt) -two

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M A S M 1 D Whilst some arc ilrivcn lo iciiii ilii al movements, having lost their |)iil.iru(. in the melee of con- flicting views and attitudes, the majority are liold ing on with more than lieroism to the assets of ili past, hut this niajoriiy are welhiii;h exliaiisied. hi (he etoiiomy of hfe we need a jiroper lial ance hetwcen tliosc who, beyond the tlanger of ' blind enthusiasm, offer I ' niinsrI of rli her expcr- ii ' nte, and (hose who are lo eni;ai;c unta|ipeil Strength in the execution of their plans. Unless tiiose who advise and those vvho perform, those whose main bent is toward the future .md those whose main wisdom derives from ilie past, can agree on a platform of cooperation, establish a proper balance, and tolerate each others disabili- ties, the cause of the community cannot prosper. Yet, whereas the old arc growing feeble, the voice of youth has been absent except in college rah-rahs and in a now waning neo-heathen deifi- cation of sport. The profoundcst characteristic of the American Jewish college youth is not wick- edness as some would have it, nor heroism as oth- ers opine, but their ignorance of Jewish values and their complete misunderstanding of the Jewish point of view. As a result vve see a new assimil.i- tion. sired h) ' ignorance and indifference which result in the christianization of vital ideas. What is Our Task? What is our problem? The non-Jewishncss of our youth. What is the solution of the Jewish problem? Judaism, the rise of the Jew to the heights of his religion. Not Anti-semitism in any fotm is our danger, nor is the attitude of the Gentile of basic significance in the Jewish prob- lem. The very first chapter in the Bible which speaks of the Jewish people recites also Pharaohs anti-Jewish legislation. Our haters have accom- panied us on our historic march, as the hyena walks around the camp. We should have been accustomed, after 2000 years of suffering, to Anti- semitism as the Jewish aspea, as the efTect on lewry in particular, of a general anti-alienism. Hitherto, by dint of his idealism, his courage anil his pritlc, the Jew has always been able to conc|ucr the forces of prejudice and wickedness. The only danger comes from within, from (he in- . Inference of our youth. There were few periods III the history of our pe-ople more critical than the present. Three-fourths of Israel are being persecuted, denied the right to life and liberty. In countries again in which the Gentile world has become more humanized, we are afflicted by the scourge of a JcwLsh generation unaccustomed to freetloin, unappreciative of its ideal obligations; our youth is gamboling away, utterly unaware of its importance in the scheme of Jewish life. We cannot continue to hold our banner aloft unless we regain our youth. When, in the first liecade of the lyth century, the German nation found itself at the lowest ebb of its national his- tory, it was the German youth re-inspired by its study of its national literature that lived for its national glory, steeled the national will for sur- vival and brought about the Renaissance of Ger- many. When India groaned under the oppressive measures of Lord Kurzon, it was the Indian youth inflamed by the sight of national misery that aban- doned individual pleasure for the common cause, and achieved the miraculous change in the affairs of their people. In the American scene, we need our youth more than ever. American Israel has expanded and must now assume a wider and higher role. American Israel by now has outgrown its earlier function of sending gifts to Europe and receiving inspiration from the Old World. Today ours is the greater task of becoming a source of Je •ish spirit, a reservoir of Jewish learning and Jewish living, that might send forth its life-giving in- fluences to our people all over the globe. For this greater work emergent from its spiritual crisis, with our leaders borne down by the magnitude and coinplexity of local, national and international probleiTis, it is essential that the American Jewish youth become aware of its potentialities and train itself for worthy participation in Jewish work. Tuemi-one

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MASMID (1 ixe in s s a » By Ml ' KNAKI) DOV Mll.IANS I t.ilkcl my youililul diciins I roiii fancy ' s store Ami shaped a Jrtani-tliiM of my phantasy, Then, decked in pomp to suit her majesty, I took her to myself forevermore . . . A soul and body such as all adore Were blended into perfect harmony; Her guileless splendor lured and dazzled me As though she were a maid that woman bore. The lovely nothing I hail once endowed With life I nameil Revissa, child of dreams. She bids me raise my head when I am cowed As sunlike through the dismal sky she gleams. She is my love, my mother, and my child: iM - I ' ricnd A tiiint; of beauty undtfiled. • • When she held out her hand in the darkness. And I clasped her smooth velvety hand, She unlimbered my petrified starkness And the cold dying embers were fanned. She held out her hand and I grasped it — Like one drowning I grasped her soft hand Like one in the quagmire I clasped it — Like a child who was learning to stand: For .she was to lead in the darkness. Through the marshy unhabited land — Through the cloddish and bouldery starkness, So I clasped her smooth velvety hand. • • • Like a zealot on bare bended knee I kissed the gold hem of her dress. With eyes strained at the heavens to see How the stars watched the envied caress ; Like a zealot I bent and I kissed it — The gold hem of her gossamer dress . . . I had searched for a soul and had missed it And before joy had failed to impress. But I found her and stooped on my knee Like a lover to vow and profess With eyes peeled at the starlets to see f they envied her lover ' s caress. Twenly-lbree