Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 11 text:

Dr. Revel ' s viewpoint however, was not the only one amongst the prime movers in the founding of Yeshiva College. Harris L. Selig, who was largely responsible for raising the funds needed to build the original facilities in Washington Heights as the director of the Yeshiva College Building Fund Campaign, had loftier vi- sions. In a manuscript entitled Standardizing the Hebrew Schools of America he wrote: Practically every great college and university was founded originally as a religious seminary. Princeton was established as a Presbyterian, Harvard as a Con- gregationalist, and Brown as a Baptist seminary. Our Yeshiva College, too, springs from what was originally a Rabbinical seminary, and is it too much to expect that in time it too, like other great American institutions, will he one of the foremost colleges in this country ...

Page 10 text:

Dr. Revel himself, in a manuscript entitled Aims of the Yeshiva wrote: The College which is to be added as an aux- iliary to the Yeshiva is in no sense to be placed in competition with existing colleges and universities, but is to provide a general academic training to those who are also stu- dying in the other departments of the Yeshiva, so that they may harmoniously combine the best of modern culture with the learning and the spirit of the Torah and the ideals of tradi- tional Judaism. And so it was the stated objective of Dr. Revel to create a yeshiva college that would serve as a suitable alternative to existing colleges for the Jewish youth who craved both a Torah education and a secular one. Academic excellence in a secular sense was not foremost in his priorities.

Page 12 text:

This approach did not at all appeal to Dr. Revel who, in a letter to Samuel Levy, chairman of the executive committee of the Yeshiva campaign, reaffirmed his position; The chief purpose of the college department of the Yeshiva is, and should always he, to afford the students of the Torah who are continuing their studies in an atmosphere of love and loyalty to the Torah and Jewish ideals, an opportunity to acquire the learning and culture of the modern world in addition to the learning and culture of Israel ... Thus, the emphasis was to be on Torah, and the college cur- riculum was to complement it, rather than be an independent enti- ty as an end in itself. Has Yeshiva remained consistent in this policy. ' ' That is a question that we will return to after examining the development of Yeshiva College.