The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 | Page 3

which will aid in training the group that may be expected to measure up
to our new responsibilities.
It has been a source of great personal pleasure to me to meet with your
Association in your annual convention and to have the privilege of
coming in personal contact with some of your Societies,--at Harvard,
Yale, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Boston Universities. I hope to have
the pleasure of meeting more of you and to derive more of the stimulus
which your enthusiasm gives me in my work. Speaking not only in my
own name but in behalf of my colleagues on the Board of Governors
and the Faculty of The Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate
Learning, I wish your Association and your Journal success in all of
your endeavors.
[Illustration: Signature: Cyrus Adler]
From Louis D. Brandeis
Chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist
Affairs
[Illustration]

THE formation at Harvard University on October 25, 1906, of the first
Menorah Society is a landmark in the Jewish Renaissance. That
Renaissance, in which the Society is certain to be a significant factor, is
of no less importance to America than to its Jews.
America offers to man his greatest opportunity--liberty amidst peace
and large natural resources. But the noble purpose to which America is
dedicated cannot be attained unless this high opportunity is fully
utilized; and to this end each of the many peoples which she has
welcomed to her hospitable shores must contribute the best of which it
is capable. To America the contribution of the Jews can be peculiarly
large. America's fundamental law seeks to make real the brotherhood of
man. That brotherhood became the Jews' fundamental law more than
twenty-five hundred years ago. America's twentieth century demand is
for social justice. That has been the Jews' striving ages-long. Their
religion and their afflictions have prepared them for effective
democracy. Persecution made the Jews' law of brotherhood
self-enforcing. It taught them the seriousness of life; it broadened their
sympathies; it deepened the passion for righteousness; it trained them
in patient endurance, in persistence, in self-control, and in self-sacrifice.
Furthermore, the widespread study of Jewish law developed the
intellect, and made them less subject to preconceptions and more open
to reason.
America requires in her sons and daughters these qualities and
attainments, which are our natural heritage. Patriotism to America, as
well as loyalty to our past, imposes upon us the obligation of claiming
this heritage of the Jewish spirit and of carrying forward noble ideals
and traditions through lives and deeds worthy of our ancestors. To this
end each new generation should be trained in the knowledge and
appreciation of their own great past; and the opportunity should be
afforded for the further development of Jewish character and culture.
The Menorah Societies and their Journal deserve most generous
support in their efforts to perform this noble task.
[Illustration: Signature: Louis D. Brandeis]

From Dr. Richard Gottheil
Professor of Rabbinical Literature and the Semitic Languages,
Columbia University
[Illustration]
I HAVE been asked to say a word of greeting to the readers of the
Menorah Journal. I do so with pleasure; indeed with much satisfaction.
The Menorah students at our colleges and universities will now be
bound together by a new bond, one that will give them a more unified
direction and converge their efforts toward the goal which the Menorah
has set for itself.
I should like to think that it is not entirely fortuitous that this added
impulse is given to our work just at this time. We all feel that the
present is a moment when the very foundations of our ethical life--both
as individuals and as groups--have received a rude shock. At such a
time--more than ever--we need to understand and to bear in mind the
great teachings which Jewish sages have given to the world, as their
and our contribution to the moral foundations of society. Such
teachings were, in most cases, not decked out in the tawdry trappings of
a recondite and far-fetched philosophy, nor garnished with the
decorations of superlogical terminology, nor even put forth with lusty
rhetoric. They were simple and to the point, because they were founded
upon deep religious convictions.
One of these teachings occurs to me as I write these lines: "The moral
condition of the world depends upon three things--truth, justice and
peace." Have we outgrown such teaching? Have the astounding
advances made during the last one hundred years in the science of
physical living brought us any nearer to the true inwardness of moral
living than the ethical principles put forth by these early teachers? As
our hearts are rent by the sufferings of those who are caught in the
meshes of the terrible war now raging, and as our intellects are
befogged by the various excuses advanced in