Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 16 text:

Message from the President As you leave Yeshiva College, I extend my sincerest congratulations for your past achievements and wish you every success in your future endeavors. Yeshiva College concentrates on the moral and spiritual purposes of the knowl- edge acquired in a liberal arts college — a center of learning which provides the opportunity to search and research into the mysteries of the universe, to acquire a better understanding of the world in which we have been placed, to achieve a greater appreciation of the lives and destinies of the peoples among whom we live. Here you have devoted yourselves to the full development of your capabilities as Jews and as students of Western Culture. You thus bear the special obligation to further your personal growth through the unending study of Torah and of all knowledge. In the years ahead it is to you that we will turn for the leadership of our communities, for the inspiration of our youth. It is you who will carry forward our sacred traditions. I have abiding faith that you will utilize your education for consecrated service to G-d and our fellowman. Sincerely yours, SAMUEL BELKIN President 12

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The ultimate goal of any college career must be to aid the individual toward appreciation of his personal identity. The contemporary liberal arts college stresses achievement ' not in the realm of information as much as in the realm of insight and experience, and this is to be greatly praised. Modern man faces, as his gravest dilemma, alienation — psychological, social, economic and religious. Such alienation can only be alleviated through the self-realization of every individual within the context of his modern life. It is in this realm that college serves as the unique attempt to solve modern problems. The individual is not to be approached as a unit, a number, another student, but rather as a human intellect searching for self-understanding and self-appreciation. This is no mean quest nor are there set pat answers or methods for its successful fulfillment. The college years are four years of agony — years of perplexity, of withdrawal, of excitement, of despair, of hope, of success, of failure — they are years of doubt and frustration, but they are also fruitful years. In truth, the quest for oneself is heightened in college. The easy concession to the status quo. to the fictitious realit of the average American is lost and one is faced with a struggle for existence, a struggle for one ' s soul and mind. To attend a regular college would be to appreciate the agony of only half one ' s soul. Yeshiva College alone is capable of aiding the whole man — the full soul. mind, and existence of the individual — for it alone joins the secular and the religious in recognition of the realities of modern life.

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Message from the Dean Undergraduate colleges have been placing too much stress on professional prepa- ration thereby helping to create what Ortega y Gasset calls the most specialized barbarians who know the finest nuances of their specialty but are ilhterates in every other respect. At Yeshiva College you were privileged to receive a broad humanistic education of the kind which rather than undermine or destroy will — I am sure — reinforce and strengthen your traditional Jewish patterns and foster the highest moral and ethical standards and spiritual growth. As you, members of the 35th graduating class, leave the sacred halls of Yeshiva, the best wishes of the faculty and the administration go with you. I hope that whether you be far or near you will always retain interest in your .AJma Mater and her concerns, and I wish each and every one of you farewell in the sense that you may truly fare well. Sincerely yours, ISAAC BACON Dean 13