Warning that the liberal professions are overcrowded and that only a small number of aspiring Jewish youth can hope to enter those fields, Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the American Jewish Committee, president of Dropsie College and president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, in an address to the opening assembly of the Theological Seminary, urged the future rabbis to turn the minds of the Jewish youth toward new fields of endeavor, particularly to handicraft and the trades.
Dr. Adler also urged the students to teach “the ethical concepts and the practice of the simple virtues which are the real glory of Israel and have under the providence of God resulted in our continued life unto this day. Whatever may be the changed fashions of the world about us, we should hold fast to the old morality, to the family which is after all the unit for Jewish life and of society.
“No excitements, no centers, no institutions, no organizations can ever take the place of this,” he declared. “The Jewish people and every people that gives up this simple, sound life of a family will in the long run go to destruction.”
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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.