Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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.

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 13 text:

On March 29, 1928, the New York State Board of Regents amended the Charter of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary to authorize the granting of the Bachelor of Arts and the Bachelor of Science degrees. In September of that same year, Yeshiva College began classes with an enrollment of thirty-five students. Those first classes were held at The Jewish Center on West 86th Street in Manhattan, because the new building would not be ready for another fifteen months. In December of 1929 Yeshiva College moved uptown. The first graduation was held in the Nathan Lamport Auditorium on June 16, 1932 and nineteen students received degrees. By 1933 enrollment was in excess of 125 students, and by 1943, the year Dr. Samuel Belkin was elected president, it had soared to more than 250.