Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does indicate approval.–Editor.]

Objection to the statements, made last week at the Yeshiva luncheon by M. Adolph Lewisohn and Mr. Gustavus Rogers, regarding anti-Jewish discriminations in American colleges, are voiced in the Jewish press, on the ground that those statements were “irrelevant” in connection with the Yeshiva idea.

The “Jewish Morning Journal” and the “Jewish Daily News” both point out that Mr. Lewisohn errs in regarding the Yeshiva as a Jewish college with “a theological department” and emphasize that the Yeshiva is not intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism in the American colleges.

While it is true, the “Jewish Morning Journal” writes, that there are Jews who are convinced that there is anti-Jewish discrimination in the colleges, it is also true that “some Jews are prone to interpret discrimination made against them individually on grounds of personal shortcomings as attacks on their ‘Jewishness.’

“There are also Jews,” the paper proceeds, “who discriminate against Jews, against Jewish institutions in which they are themselves officials, Jews who have completely or in part cast off the old Jewish feeling that every Jew must be responsible for the whole Jewish people and these should be the last persons in the world to discuss Jewish problems in America.”

Whether the charges of discrimination against Jewish students are true or not, the “Jewish Morning Journal” further explains–

“It must be made clear that the new Yeshiva is not being erected to provide a college for those Jewish boys who cannot, or think they cannot, gain admission to Yale or Harvard. It is a Yeshiva-college that is being built, not a college. The Yeshiva is the primary and chief purpose of the big enterprise.

“It is not a question of anti-Semitism but of the un-Jewish atmosphere in the institutes of general education; the boy who wants to become a specialist in Jewish studies, a teacher of Jewish religion or a spiritual leader in American Jewry, must be educated differently than the boy who is preparing for a general profession or a business career.

“The discussion of the treatment of Jewish students in the colleges is therefore beside the point and irrelevant.”

The “Jewish Daily News” (May 2) goes a step further and asserts that to erect a Jewish college because of charges of anti-Jewish discrimination, such as made by Messrs, Lewisohn and Rogers, would be equivalent to creating “a ghetto for the Jewish children.” If it is true that Jews are discriminated against, it does not yet mean, the paper contends, that the Jews must have their own college.

“To create a Jewish college on these grounds would be a false step which American Jewry should avoid,” we read. “We do not want to create with our own hands a ghetto for Jewish children. We do not want to stamp ourselves as outcasts from society. We do not want to give an opportunity to the colleges to say to us: ‘You have your own colleges–keep away from ours.’ If we leave the colleges because we are not wanted there, we will have to leave business, industry, real estate and all other fields of activity because we are not wanted here any more than in the colleges.

“Of course,” the paper continues, “the aim of this enterprise is not a Jewish college, but a Yeshiva. The college is merely incidental to the great work of instruction in the Torah.

“It is deplorable that men like Lewisohn and others speak with authority on a subject with which they are so little familiar and present the idea of the Yeshiva in the wrong way. At least they might have informed themselves on the aims of the Yeshiva before making public statements on the subject.”