The Jewish college student has “less background and orientation in his religious traditions” than undergraduates ot other faiths, the national director of B’nai B’rith Hillel foundations said today.
Rabbi Benjamin M. Kahn cited recent campus studies in reporting that Jewish students “seem to be more unsure of their religious convictions and particularly unaware of their relationship to history and contemporary reality.”
“On the other hand,” he added, “there seems to be more search among Jewish undergraduates for answer to fundamental questions.” This probably reflects the “traditional emphasis in Judaism of the need for intellectual clarity and the use of the mind as a religious experience,” he said. Rabbi Kaon, who directs B’nai B’rith Hillel activities covering 219 campuses, addressed 200 Hillel student representatives at the opening of a week-long national Hillel Summer Institute at Camp B’nai B’rith.
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