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Educators Discuss Stand of Jewish Students Towards Jewishness

August 29, 1952
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A comprehensive survey of the attitudes of Jewish college students in America towards their Judaism was projected at a conference here of directors of the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations from all over the United States and Canada.

The conference which met for two days to discuss the work of the campus religious agency during the coming year, adopted a plan whereby an entire “generation” of students will be followed through four years of college by means of interviews and questionnaires to measure the impact of Hillel’s program of Jewish education on its thinking.

Although the conference discussed only the preliminary details of the projected survey, it is expected that the majority of the more than 200 Hillel units will participate. The total project will, in all probability, take a minimum of four years to complete.

The conference also heard the mass of Jewish students characterized as “mute” as far as expressions of religious, political or moral convictions are concerned just as the total college generation of the post-war era has been dubbed the “silent generation.” In a paper on “The Jewish Student – 1952” Rabbi Max Ticktin, Director of the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation at the University of Wisconsin, pointed out, however, that there was on almost every campus a small creative minority of Jewish students which must be encouraged.

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