“The Jewish Theological Seminary of America seeks to educate the hearts and minds of men to where they should be,” Dr. Bernard Mandelbaum, president of the Seminary and who next June 30 will succeed Dr. Louis I. Finkelstein as chancellor of the Seminary, last night told the nearly 500 guests attending the 1971 Awards Dinner of the JTS. “But the genuine dilemma of our times,” he added, “is that we often succeed with the mind of man–we know what is right. Yet we fall in feeling the facts with our hearts. Thus, we know that six million or more Pakistanis–and what a terrifying number that is for Jews–are wasting away near death. But we don’t feel it; and not feeling it, we don’t do anything about it.”
The world knows that the survivors of the holocaust, having found a new life in Israel, are constantly threatened by military aggression and war by enemies who have more land than they know what to do with, he stated. “The nations know it but don’t feel it, and so they debate and talk and split hairs about silly UN resolutions, instead of taking hold of the issue with courage, to create peace.”
Referring to Judaism as “a well-spring of ideas and values to guide us in all of our frames of reference–as individuals, as citizens, as families, as a nation,” he commented that the Seminary in all its departments strives for two goals: to teach the knowledge which is necessary for the good life, and to cultivate the commitment in the heart of man so that he will feel what he knows and then do something about it.” Among the seven persons honored last night was Dr. Arthur F. Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board who was the first high member of the government to propose what ultimately became President Nixon’s new economic policy. He was made a Fellow of the Seminary.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
