The Jewish Theological Seminary conferred the degree of Rabbi on three or its students at the commencement exercises held today. The graduates were Elliot Maurice Burstein, Cleveland; Louis Moses Levitsky (with merit) of Montreal and Jacob Moses Roth (Ph. D.) Elizabeth, N.J.
Nineteen were graduated from the Teachers’ Institute of the Seminary and diplomas in the extension department were awarded to eight others.
An additional endowment of $2,000,000 is needed for the Seminary, Dr. Cyrus Adler declared in his address at the exercises. He announced that the acquisition by the Seminary’s Library of the Elkan N. Adler collection gave the Seminary’s library the distinction of being the greatest Jewish library in the world.
Dr. Adler also announced that Dr. Jacob Hoschander had been appointed to the Sabato Morrais professorship of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. Henry A. Dix, the philanthropist was chosen a life member of the Board of Directors.
Rabbi Max Drob who delivered the address to the graduates urged them to “preach Judaism and not to act as advance agents for the latest plays”.
“You will often find”, he said, “that your adherence to tradition will be called fantasticism and narrow-mindness. You may even be censored by enterprising boards of trustees because you conceive it to be the mission of the rabbi to preach Judaism and not to act as the advance agent of latest plays. You will be told that the less religion and the more topics of the day you present from your pulpit, the greater will be your success as a rabbi. If you are not weak-kneed you will refuse to prostitute the pulpit and remain loyal to the highest traditions of the rabbinate.”
The graduates were urged by Dr. Herman M. Cohan to seek pulpits in the south and west.
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