Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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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

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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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MASMID I had searched for a succoring soul In the dreamlands that I had created — To conduct me aloft to a goal Whose attainment I long had awaited. I had seatched for a soul in the dreamlands. The phanfastical realms I created, Like the frightened who need the seem-Iands Where all youthful ambitions are mated; Like one starving for need of a soul. Whose great hunger could hardly be sated, I was eager to climb to the goal Where the process of mortals is waited. • • • From the finest of clay she was molded — She sprang from the richest of clay — Like a plant from the subsoil she sprang, And she blossomed in peerless array; Like a plant from the subsoil she sprang Whose seed had been molded of clay . . . And her lover-creator now sang In his heart for his golden-hued fay: — For her life-seed was carefully molded. So the artist was buoyant and gay. And he watched how his flower unfolded And blossomed in peerless array. • • • Like a goddess in loose-hanging drape She was sculptured, and Venus was shamed, And I knew ' neath the gold figured crepe Was a soul that was pure and unmaimed. Like a tall Grecian goddess or fairy. So beautiful beauty was shamed, She was draped lest the rash and unwary Be struck blind by such brilliance untamed — Hence I kissed the gold hem of the drape And gladly my earth-life disclaimed When I saw through the flowery crepe That her goddess-like self was unmaimed. • • • Oh, lead me away from the valley To the loftiest, towering heights Where the light-headed mountain-folk dally With the gamboling nimble-foot sprites. Oh show me the road, I beseeched her, Through the regions untrod to the heights Twenty-jour