The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 | Page 7

send my hearty congratulations to the Intercollegiate
Menorah Association upon their undertaking the publication of the
Menorah Journal, which I have no doubt will prove greatly helpful in
promoting the knowledge of Judaism among the Jewish college youth.
In a liberal country like ours, with the eagerness of our people for
acquiring knowledge, there never was a lack of Jews in our Colleges
and Universities. But what the Menorah Association will accomplish
with the aid of the Journal is, I hope, to have Judaism also represented
in our seats of learning.
[Illustration: Signature: S. Schechter]
From Jacob H. Schiff
[Illustration]
IT is with much satisfaction that I learn of the launching of the
Menorah Journal, to provide an opportunity for a more general spread
of the high ideals of the Menorah Societies among our college youth.
When I received some time ago a copy of the publication entitled "The
Menorah Movement," I noted with particular pleasure the progress the
Menorah Societies had already made. After an attentive perusal of the
contents of this publication, I felt as if a copy ought to be placed in the
hands of every Jewish college and university student, and I myself

distributed a number of copies for propaganda purposes. The Menorah
Societies are to be congratulated upon their new venture in issuing the
Journal, upon which I wish them every success. It is to be hoped that
the Menorah Journal will help the Jewish student to understand what
Judaism means and what as Jews we should strive for to become useful
and worthy citizens of this country. We shall have to face increasing
problems because of the deplorable war in Europe, which so tragically
affects our co-religionists there, and it will require much devotion and
understanding on our part to properly deal with the conditions which
will necessarily arise. The Menorah Journal should freely discuss these
conditions, so as to inspire its readers with the desire to aid and the
courage needed in the situation which is facing us. Thus, by "spreading
light," the Journal can greatly assist the Menorah movement, and render
efficient service in and outside of the university. Let me wish Godspeed
to your new publication and its managers.
[Illustration: Signature: Jacob H. Schiff]
From Dr. Stephen S. Wise
Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, New York
[Illustration]
I REJOICE to learn of the establishment of an organ by the Menorah
Association. The Menorah Journal will, I take it, serve the threefold
purpose of keeping the various groups of the Menorah throughout the
universities of the land in constant touch with one another, of
interpreting the ideals of the Menorah to widening circles of the Jewish
youth, and of confirming anew, from time to time, the loyalty of the
Menorah men to the Menorah ideal.
A truly great Jew said about fifteen years ago that a high self-reverence
had transformed arme Judenjungen into stolze junge Juden. I believe
that the Menorah movement in this land is in part the cause and in other
part the token of a transformation among young American Jews to-day
parallel to that cited by Theodor Herzl. It marks a sea-change from the
self pitying Jewish youth, immeasurably "sorry for himself" because of

his exclusion from certain dominantly unfraternal groups, to the Jewish
youth self-regarding, in the highest sense of the term, self-knowing,
self-revering. That the self-respecting young Jew command the respect
of the world without is of minor importance by the side of the
outstanding fact that he has ceased to measure himself by the values
which he imagined the unfriendly elements of the world without had
set upon him.
The Menorah movement is welcome as a proof of a new order in the
life of the young college Jew. He has come to see at last that it is comic,
in large part, to be shut out from the Greek letter fraternities of the
Hellenes and the Barbarians, but that it is tragic, in large part, to shut
himself out from the life of his own people. For it is from his own
people that he must draw his vision and spiritual sustenance if he is to
live a life of self-mastery rather than the life of a contemptible parasite
rooted nowhere and chameleonizing everywhere. Time was when their
fellow-Jews half excused the college men, who drifted away from the
life of Israel, as if the burden of the Jewish bond were too much for the
untried and unrobust shoulders of our Jewish college men, as if their
intellectual and moral squeamishness led to inevitable revolt against
association with their much-despised and wholly misunderstood Jewish
fellows. Now we see, and our younger brothers of the Menorah
fellowship have caught the vision, that no Jew can be truly cultured
who Jewishly uproots himself, that the man who rejects the