Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 9 text:

In the world of the Yeshiva student there is no word more overused than Tradition. From our earliest childhood the importance of adhering to the letter of Halacha has been drummed into us. The values have seeped into us unconsciously, forming the very background of the air we breathed and the words we heard. Yet as T. S. Eliot cogently expressed it in a famous essay, Tradition cannot be inherited. If you want it you must obtain it by great labor. Too often, we have taken its meaning and its relevance for granted. The fact of its being there has made us complacent, and, we have refused to consider intellectually the basis of our devotion. Our college experience can help us appreciate anew the meaning and value of tradition. We have become conscious of the various roads the mind of man can travel in its pursuit of the self. The physical sciences have one approach. Psychology, sociology, political science illuminate another perspective. Literature, the arts and history point up still other paths. Our education has resulted in our becoming aware of the infinite complexity of the human personality and the world in which it lives. The acids of modernity, in Walter Lippmann ' s phrase, have turned many of us into relitivists. Even in a yeshiva environment we have been affected by the assaults on our inner sense of security launched by the advance of modern knowledge.