Gaudeamus Igitur; Jews at Harvard

...It was a hard-working and upwardly mobile group, but—eating their bag lunches in the basement of Phillips Brooks House or on the steps of Widener Library—they must have felt somewhat outside the institutional mainstream...

...You knew that those guys led very glamorous lives, but you weren't sure what that meant...

...The second factor relates to the resolution of the issues...

...cipal dismissed me from school, and I ran all the way home to tell my mother, and I don't think she fully grasped the implications of it...

...None of this is meant to minimize the existence of anti-Semitism then or now in certain quarters—but that was not the only element in this story...

...Schneider the tailor, who had a little shop in Lynn where you bought clothes off the rack, and she told him "My son is going off to college and he needs something special...

...Even if I hadn't wanted to commute, I'd have had to, because it was 1946 and the veterans were coming back so housing was very cramped...

...I've just had the 50th reunion of my Law School class, and I was showing some of my classmates through the new Hillel building, with its beautiful kosher kitchen, with students studying classic texts and so forth, and it's obvious that there are many students who really want to be Jews...

...Anything else will lead to decline in our quality and our capacity for service...

...Richard Clark Cabot Professor of Social Ethics...

...And he would tell us of the very important conferences and meetings in which he participated...

...So, for example, the ethos at Harvard isn't especially conducive to taking courses in Judaic studies...

...A small minority can care primarily about itself without affecting the host in a positive or negative manner...

...As a good bureaucrat he managed to accomplish some of his aims by indirect means, and those who supported him might have claimed a medium-term victory...

...We represent perhaps a quarter of the student body and a significant proportion of the faculty...

...He abolished compulsory chapel in 1885...

...How this conflict was settled is of great importance to us all, even at present...

...One does not have to be very skillful at reading between the lines in order to visualize the realities described by the Committee of Eight...

...I think that we, as a group, should be a force for national and institutional unity at a time when there is too much that is pulling us apart...

...To be the gatekeeper at Harvard is not a simple task, and merit—yes, even academic merit—comes in many forms...

...Harvard granted its first degree to a lonely Jew in 1720...

...At the same time, however, a new admissions plan was being developed: "Candidates should bear in mind that in all admissions to the University regard is given to character, personality and promise, as well as to scholarly attainments...

...We came here as full citizens de jure, and gradually we have achieved this status de facto...

...There are two important factors that have to be understood concerning this episode...

...and Felix Frankfurter were among the authors...

...In retrospect, that wasn't a good thing to be...

...And because we were commuters, that made sense...

...Everyone had a hard time obtaining employment in the 1930s, but it was especially difficult for Jewish academics...

...that certain members of the faculty object to the appointment of Jews to the tutorial staff in the belief that they are unacceptable to undergraduates...

...In those days, Hillel was off the beaten track, and it was more difficult to observe kashrut or the Shabbat than it is today...

...or political party...

...Herbert C. Kelman...

...I remember our first problem: What do you wear to Harvard...

...And gradually there emerged the postwar Jew in America and at Harvard— identified and assertive, and quite frequently more observant...

...At this time, however, we are part of the Harvard establishment, whether we like it or not, and thus the future is to a significant extent in our own hands...

...Back then, faculty members weren't disposed to join established congregations, and they didn't have anything else, so we filled a real need, and they started to come, to make use of us...

...Professor Isadore Twirsky, Director...

...But it seems to me that today, as opposed to the past, our voices are much fainter concerning many issues of more general American concern...

...No one can label us as marginal to any aspect of life in this institution...

...Therefore, he fought to eliminate admission requirements, like Greek, that served to keep out the graduates of public schools...

...The numbers were so small that no one needed to worry...

...The poorer students were largely local commuters, and thirty percent of that group was Jewish...

...So those of us who had to wait until after the holidays to write the exam were required to stay at Hillel House under the supervision of a proctor to be sure we didn't have access to anybody who'd taken the exam, and then we'd get to take it as soon as three stars appeared in the heavens...

...This reborn edifice was for a long time the home of the Iroquois Club, and I note with special pleasure that the Iroquois was one of the very few final clubs that admitted some Jewish members before World War I. The history of Hillel, which came to Harvard in 1941, is relatively short, but it tells a story of continual growth, increasing influence, and mutually beneficial interaction with this university...

...it simply wouldn't have occurred to us...

...Active discrimination was not worth the effort...

...On the contrary, it is a praiseworthy attempt to create a better society...

...it was another world with different rules...

...Hillel has played a very special role in this process...

...So my mother took me to Mr...

...There were other things, as well...

...By the time I taught at the Law School, between 1958 and 1971, the faculty was some 45 percent Jewish...

...We were making progress, but it was slow until '67...

...This is not a fanciful question...

...I knew, for example, that there was a Hillel, and I knew that it was way out in the boondocks somewhere, way beyond the confines of Harvard Square...

...That was 259 years ago...

...The well-to-do lived in the Houses and generally tolerated one another...

...Nevertheless, it has been estimated that by 1900, seven percent of the college was Jewish, and that by 1918 the figure had risen to ten percent—way in excess of the Jewish share in the population...

...I was an English major, and one of the requirements was to have completed an upper level foreign literature course in French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek or German...

...There were guys out there with chinos and white ducks and striped ties and leather patches on their elbows, and you were made to know, without understanding why, that all that was very desirable...

...As I will suggest later, I believe that the present situation imposes special responsibilities on us...

...I had taken a Hebrew literature course, and so I wrote to the English department and I reminded them that when it was founded, Harvard required Hebrew, and I requested that I be given credit for the course...

...And they complied...

...it made religious and racial bigotry unrespectable...

...And then one of the faculty members said, "What about the education of our children, what about bar miztvah...

...First let me mention an important and very pleasant task: the full incorporation of our intellectual heritage into the mainstream of scholarly life at Harvard...

...Things have changed a good deal in the intervening years...

...Not infrequently it was suggested that they change their names, for example, from Goldstein to Gordon, or from Levine to Lewis...

...And, of course, many other ethnic and social groups have become more numerous...

...Some of them had convertibles, and all of them had good looking blond girls, and it was all alluringly foreign and mysterious...

...In order to get the job, the statutes of the University required him to convert to Protestant Christianity...

...Hitlerism violated every canon of human decency...

...But the younger generation took its Judaism much more for granted, saw it as a normal thing, and not as a problem...

...There are many diverse groups at Harvard...

...I realize that the process of group acceptance has not always been entirely smooth...

...To fulfill these tasks requires a strong, vibrant Jewish community at Harvard...

...Photo courtesy of the Harvard University News Office...

...The lack of Jewish faculty during my student days was all the more noticable because many of our best Jewish students were joining the faculties of other institutions...

...There's one sign of change that I've been personally involved with, and have thoroughly enjoyed...

...Today it is fully open...

...The interesting thing about Harvard is the disparity between style and substance...

...I'm not sure I did either...

...The real potential of America lies in special groups thinking and acting for a larger purpose...

...Gross, a Jew with a doctorate from Gottingen, had been turned down by a number of colleges and was about to go to work in his father's clothing business...

...The Lowell era (1909-1933) is rather more difficult to interpret...

...I believe this statement was accurate...

...All that I knew was that it was a good thing...

...For exactly the same reasons, I believe that we have the obligation to fight quotas, not because they are disadvantageous to Jews but principally because they are disadvantageous to our country and all its citizens...

...To see students coming into class wearing a kippah...

...At present our faculty can claim only two senior scholars who are expert in Jewish studies...

...I grew up in Providence, where my father is a Conservative rabbi and where I attended day school and then public high school...

...Wolfson not only produced Jewish scholars...

...After a while, with some urging, it became possible to get kosher TV dinners in the dining halls...

...In a section entitled "Sectional, Racial and Religious Discrimination," here is some of what the report had to say: It is a common opinion that Jews, regardless of their qualifications, have found it increasingly difficult to obtain academic posts in America...

...This was a period of very special significance for Jews...

...Many men whose names became famous were part of that company...

...At this university we are neither hyphenated nor second-class citizens...

...At the same time, our country cannot survive as a collection of competing ethnic groups...

...But finding like-minded people was never a problem...

...Rich people went away to school, and we weren't rich...

...What will we do to shape the character of alma mater tomorrow...

...Research prepared by Judith B. Walzer...

...I am saying that I approve of Harvard's current admissions policies, which do not automatically favor those applicants with the highest test scores but rather seek to maximize excellence and diversity of talent and background...

...Jewish scholars who managed to become professors frequently became "closet Jews," anxious to dissociate themselves from their background...

...I think the forms that anti-Semitism had taken earlier were related to issues that were not as important during our years—things like the social clubs, which by the '60s had lost much of their significance...

...Eliot must have understood that his ambition for academic excellence required an emphasis on merit and a de-emphasis of all else...

...Center Tor Jewish Studies...

...I also know that, within the Jewish community at Harvard, there are divisions of opinion about the concessions that ought to be made to Jews as a group...

...Actually, it was the only school I applied to, which seems terribly naive in retrospect—but I didn't know any better...

...What of our future...

...It is an especially important community because of its youth and its intellectual distinction...

...Lowell had also watched America change through successive waves of immigration, and he realized that an admission system based exclusively on academic merit would, in a short time, change the character of the institution...

...He saw Jews as difficult to assimilate and anxious to preserve "peculiar practices...

...Eliot also argued that the University must be open to all, regardless of "class, caste, race, sect...

...And it coincided in time with the emergence of a generation of Jews who viewed themselves in every way as Americans...

...The first is the historical context in which it took place—for Harvard and for the country...

...And it was important that it was a Jewish scholar who was known as "The Sage of Harvard...

...But we were quite visible...

...If there was a challenge to us at all, it came from other Jews more than from non-Jews...

...Today we are a multitude, represented in all constituencies of the University...

...Anti-Semitic feeling has operated within the universities themselves, in the form of prejudice which is difficult to prove and never officially proclaimed...

...For this, one pays an inevitable price...

...So much for 250 years of history...

...it was the right thing to do...

...From the Jewish point of view, these years are usually remembered because of the so-called quota controversy of the 1920s...

...Jewishness was irrelevant...

...Until the last third of the nineteenth century, it seems to me that there was no problem and no real issue concerning Jews, either positively or negatively...

...It was difficult at Harvard and probably worse in many other places...

...When I went to the Law School, in '27, there was one Jewish professor—Felix Frankfurter—and one Jewish lecturer...

...And many, many students attend a seder at one of the homes where we arrange hospitality...

...In contrast I do believe that, as the Harvard Jewish community, we have some special obligations stemming directly from our history and values...

...It seems to me that the nature of our obligation has necessarily changed over time...

...That was the real issue: the ancient character of the College versus the claims of newcomers...

...To know Greek presumably gives an individual an additional portion of merit, but public schools did not teach the subject when President Eliot abolished it as an entrance requirement about one hundred years ago...

...Frequently these are not easy to compare...

...Jews on the faculty...

...Sometimes we'd have a situation where there was a two day holiday, and the exam was given on the first day...

...I lived in two completely different worlds...

...And in 1901 Eliot said: "It is doubtless true that Jews are better off at Harvard than at any other American college and they are, therefore, likely to resort to it...

...There is a certain luxury in being at the edge...

...there's been a high percentage of Jewish students at Harvard, with a good deal of visibility...

...I came to Harvard in 1964, and I found my way to Harvard Hillel in my freshman year...

...Things are much easier now...

...What is happening is painfully familiar: single-issue politics, give me mine and the hell with the rest...

...I'd graduated from Lynn Classical High School, at a time when Lynn had a substantial Jewish middle class population, and I was the first member of my family to go to college...

...There was no one in the family—or at the high school, for that matter—who could counsel me...

...There was a small number of observant students in the College, and rather more in the graduate schools...

...We had some difficulties with the administration when exams were scheduled for Shabbat or the holidays...

...I was really part of a small group, mostly Jews from Roxbury and Dorchester, graduates of Boston Latin, mostly pre-med...

...I said, "You're right," and we got into the business of Jewish education...

...My roommates were completely tolerant, even supportive, of my practices...

...By the time I left, the '67 war had taken place, and many people felt more positively about being Jewish...

...It was a standard half-tuition scholarship, of the kind that was given to commuting students, and it was worth $200, because tuition back then was $400 a year, which was a fortune...

...Still, a very high percentage of the Jewish students take some advantage of the programs and activities the University offers...

...A word or two, next, about the 1930s and the early years of President Conant...

...The door was half open fifty years ago...

...It was a class division...

...Our very first play was Cripples, by Pinski, and I was in it, as were Leo Schwartz and Irving Fain and several others, and our plays were attended by the President of Harvard and his wife, the President of Radcliffe, and so on...

...that is really what is being celebrated here today, and Hillel and Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold deserve much of the credit for this change...

...But Hebrew was not one of those listed...

...A casual look at Harvard in the 1970s will convince anyone that this is a national university, open to all segments of society...

...And the prinMilton Alper is Associate Professor of A nesthesiology at the Harvard Medical School and Chief of Anesthesiology at Boston Hospital for Women...

...But let us go back in time for a moment, to examine some of the highlights of Jewish history at Harvard...

...It is the Committee's view that the University should regard as a part of its educational function the liberation of its students from racial or religious prejudice...

...To accomplish this the University has created a Center for Jewish Studies, and it deserves strong support...

...At the same time, our country came into a period of great secular expansion that created shortages of talent and skills— always a good situation for those on the outside seeking a chance to enter...

...One can be less responsible, and one can play on the guilt feelings of the establishment...

...It was quite an extraordinary experience...

...What am I trying to say...

...The consequences of World War II were enormous...

...Nevertheless, Harvard has helped in many ways: in providing places for us to worship, in facilitating the observance of kashrut by some of us, and in aiding with the acquisition of the new building...

...Jewish neighborhoods and schools contain only a fraction of our population...

...But it is quite certain that, to him, Jews were a unique part of a much larger local and national issue...

...every career and every office can be ours...

...What is perhaps more remarkable is that we have succeeded in transforming ourselves from a group of individuals into a community...

...His intent was clear: "The anti-Semitic feeling among students is increasing, and it grows in proportion to the increase in the number of Jews...

...I am also saying'that we— Harvard's Jewish population—have a special duty to practice and preach tolerance and sympathy...

...If the records are accurate...

...I had friends who, when they learned that I observed kashrut, would say, "Didn't you know those rules went out with the invention of the refrigerator...

...I represented Hillel in its lease negotiations with Harvard for the new Hillel house, and the long-term lease is the only one I know of that has a sukkah clause in it...

...In 1926 these may have been code words that signaled an intention to discriminate...

...There are preppies, and there are people from the mid-West, and there are Jews who are preppies and there are Jews from the mid-West, and there never really seemed to be a distinction that set us apart from the rest of the student body...

...and, finally, the time of World War II and its aftermath...

...Lowell's views were tested by the "Committee of Thirteen," appointed by the Overseers in 1922...

...At that time, the cleavage between undergraduates was not so much, I believe, Jew versus non-Jew as well-to-do versus poor...

...it is an assurance of its continuance...

...And we realized, of course, that there were almost no Lewis Weinstein, a distinguished attorney and civic leader, is, among other things, a past president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds...

...One might note, however, the continued presence of social anti-Semitism: Masters were still advised in 1934 to take "care [that] the total of Jews accepted does not exceed what 'the traffic will bear...

...And all these things together have combined to quadruple attendance at our services and other activities...

...Most of all, Harvard has made us feel entirely at home...

...I have already mentioned the first Jew to graduate from Harvard...

...the rights and privileges of Old Boston—founders and supporters of Harvard—versus new ethnic groups...

...And then came the issue of Soviet Jewry...

...the Ku Klux Klan was growing and Henry Ford's anti-Semitism was at its peak...

...At this point I can also begin to speak as an eyewitness...

...We are living in a unique country: no feudal heritage, no real aristocratic tradition, and no history of Jewish emancipation...

...I only knew that money was a serious issue, and that I therefore had to go somewhere within commuting distance...

...There came to the United States large numbers of ambitious non-WASPs, particularly Catholics and Jews...

...We had seen—some of us firsthand— the destruction of European Jewry...

...The last historical episode that I wish to say a few words about occurred in the years following World War II...

...We have seen how difficult it was for Harvard during its long history...

...There are very many respected adults who serve as role models for the students...

...So 1 decided that we needed to attract faculty members, and we sold them on the idea that Hillel is the Jewish community of Cambridge, that we are prepared to serve their Jewish needs...

...I would like us to have a similar ambition—not just as political rhetoric, but in our hearts...

...Satisfactory showing in one of these qualifications alone is not in itself sufficient to guarantee admission...

...Benjamin Shwartz, Professor of History and Political Science...

...The last obligation that I would like to urge on you is more subtle and complex...

...then the years of Eliot, Lowell, and Conant...

...In the very short run, Lowell lost...

...Today we are residing in the most open of societies...

...A sizable community has to face the future with a larger sense of responsibility...

...But we know that the final outcome was different...

...We are here in great numbers, but Jewish history, literature, and philosophy—all indispensable for an understanding of Western civilization—are still insufficiently studied, especially by nonspecialists...

...I was called to the principal's office, and he told me that I'd be awarded a scholarship...

...he was also available, despite his hermit-like existence, to young Jews on campus...

...They gave the commuters locker space, and we would gather to eat lunch together from our brown bags, and I found myself in the company of men who were five, six, seven, sometimes eight years older than I, men who had just been through a war...

...the continuance of a school in which gentlemen from New England had a reserved seat versus the goal of a national university...

...We organized a dramatic group, which presented its plays at the Aggasiz Theater, and lasted for some ten years...

...The civic religion appeared bankrupt, and that sent people back to their sources...

...Jews were the special cutting edge of a confrontation that is still with us today...

...But we also know that a love of Latin has little to do with one's attitude toward Italian immigrants...

...Its preservation was a guarantee of continued Jewish life...

...If you judge the behavior of students in the same way as you judge the Jewish behavior of the adult community—do people give to philanthropic causes, do they worship, do they attend a lecture or a concert—you find a very active life here...

...Harvard has given a great deal to us...

...Some may have disappeared, but most of us are fully identified, proud and aware of our heritage and duties...

...And that was Harvard...

...I know there are many reasons for this development, but it's worth recalling that much of what has happened at Harvard over the years owes to the impact that Wolfson had...

...I think that we can speak of three long periods: from our beginning here until the inauguration of President Eliot in 1869...

...Why, many undergraduates had posters of Wolfson hanging in their rooms...

...I ended up with a sport coat in vivid red and black checks...

...Clearly, going off to college is an important step, so you've got to buy an outfit...

...I understand that Harvard's present policies may cost Jews a few places in every class, just as our attempts to bring about genuine coeducation will require men to cede a few seats to women...

...Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr...

...Still, the difficulty was essentially physical...

...We had been full participants in the war against Hitler...

...but it was, after all, done over and over again...

...Most of all, we should stand for the value of individual achievement, because it is morally right...

...All this represents a tremendous achievement for us, for Harvard, and even for the United States, since what has happened here has — we are happy to say — also occurred in nearly all other great seats of learning in America...

...There was a great deal to learn, to adjust to...

...Of course, there were very few Jewish faculty members, but the pool (to use modern language) must have been small and Eliot obviously did what he could...

...I have quite a few friends and colleagues who were commuters, and what slightly surprises me is that their feelings towards Harvard are quite positive...

...The earlier generation had seen itself as American, and also as Jewish, and it didn't know what to make of being both Jewish and American at the same time...

...Not many of the new immigrants achieved higher education in their early generations of residence, and still fewer made it to places like Harvard...

...Don't worry, Mrs...

...Discrimination may exist in some [Harvard] departments...

...He was Judah Monis, a Sephardi, who occupied the post of instructor in Hebrew language from 1722 to 1760...

...Four years I was at Harvard, and I never set foot in it, I had no idea what went on there...

...That was not true of our predecessors...

...Much is often made of the fact that Hebrew was a required language in the eighteenth century...

...The next year, Sheldon Glueck was named assistant professor of criminology...

...It's not that we would have thought it a bad thing to do...

...He gave a slight shove to a half-opened door...

...It is very easy...

...I would have to walk to and from Hillel many times, for meals, for services and so forth...

...However, in the long run— much to Harvard's credit—the forces of righteousness triumphed...

...that the third oldest chair at Harvard is the Hancock Professorship of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages, and that the founding fathers of the College had a strong attachment to the Old Testament and to the history of ancient Judaism...

...This is not easy...

...We all realize that what happens in Cambridge, for good or ill, has a large national multiplier...

...I gather that they're rather more careful about scheduling these days...

...In 1922 Lowell made a public statement saying that the proportion of Jews in the College was under consideration...

...We are living in an age of ethnicity, and that has its positive aspects...

...Lowell had watched the proportion of Jews in the College rise rapidly...

...We were certainly aware of the waspiness of the environment, but, at least for those of us with firm Jewish commitments, that didn't matter very much...

...for example, the quality of education in this country, the problem of crime, social justice at home, and many others...

...Frankfurter was always accessible to us, to graduate and undergraduate students, to Jewish causes...

...There is more to Judaism and the Jewish experience than the Old Testament and medieval history...

...Without any doubt this was the period of most rapid progress for Jews and other ethnic groups at Harvard and elsewhere...

...We were a small group, without facilities or subsidies...

...It is the center of Jewish life at Harvard...

...who worship with us on the High Holidays...

...In important ways, these themes parallel the much longer history of Jews at Harvard...

...To redress this imbalance is an assignment for our generation that is entirely within our grasp...

...to remember our own past and therefore to extend an especially strong helping hand to all those who are struggling for opportunity today...

...And then came the brilliant victory...

...At the same time, he was extremely helpful when any of us had trouble...

...I had no idea what my options were...

...We make ourselves heard very loudly on issues like Israel and Soviet Jewry, and that is vital and appropriate...

...In fact, Jewish undergraduates were doing much better than those Jews who hoped to pursue careers of scholarship, i.e., graduate students and faculty members...

...I entered Harvard in 1946, at the ripe age of 16...

...Jewish graduate students were often told by their teachers to abandon ambitions for an academic career...

...When, on the other hand, the number of Jews was small, the race antagonism was small also...

...I remember that he once said to me that he was afraid he might come to be known as "The Pin-Up Professor...

...A second obligation is, I hope, equally congenial...

...I do not believe that we, as individuals, have any special obligations beyond those that pertain to all Jews everywhere—to lead decent and productive lives...

...I don't know what it would have been like if I'd been living on campus, but my impression is that it wasn't very different for those of my Jewish friends who did...

...Near the end of my last year in the Law School, I ran out of money, and I would not have been able to graduate if Frankfurter hadn't produced the $500 I needed—and he did it, with no questions asked, within two days of the time he learned of my need...

...And one of the nicest things about that life is that it really does reflect the total community, including the faculty, and not just the student body...

...So far, so good...

...We all knew we were Jewish, but it didn't mean very much...

...The clause provides that the adjacent piece of property, which is owned by Harvard, can be used by Hillel for the construction of a sukkah each year...

...I understand what has happened...

...I remember that in my Junior year, five out of the eight people elected to Phi Beta Kappa were Jews, and the Lampoon ran an article entitled "No Religious Discrimination at Harvard—Three Gentiles Elected to Phi Beta Kappa...

...Today, Hillel is moving from the periphery of campus to its very center, from rather shabby quarters to the beautiful renovated Riesman Building...

...For a few days, people really lived the Holocaust...

...I lived with five roommates, three of whom were not Jewish...

...And this raises a final question: Will our community remain strong or will it disappear...

...Let us begin with context...

...Early in his term he told the Overseers "that a man's religion should not be considered in judging his fitness to teach," and in 1888 he personally appointed Charles Gross to teach medieval history...

...There had been a Holocaust in which the Jews were destroyed, and then there was a near-Holocaust, but this time the Jews were saved...

...Before World War II we were still under-represented on the faculty and perhaps marginal in other senses as well...

...And there was also the Vietnam War going on, which showed that being American was not a sufficient source of values...

...These words were especially ominous at a time when America was experiencing a resurgence of "nativism" after World War I. All forms of prejudice were on the rise...

...It would not have occurred with us...

...As a teacher in the Medical School, I am struck by the open Jewishness of so many students...

...There are very many Jews here, but the style of the institution is clearly Protestant...

...And many young people can't tell the difference between substance and style, and feel that to be Jewish at Harvard, they've got to swim against the stream...

...We have to be leaders in keeping Harvard's gates open to all those who merit entry...

...It is rumored, however, that he continued to observe Shabbat...

...We are told that he did so with "perfect disinterestedness" and joined the First Parish Church...

...Jewish was something you were at home, not at Harvard...

...For most of us, our social lives were still in the neighborhood...

...And I knew that it was right and it was proper, and only later did I come to realize that it was also very lucky...

...It was a different age, in which there was more gratitude for equality of opportunity and less concern with equality of status...

...That is not enough...

...But we should also thank the University at this point, because it accommodated itself generously to our needs as a group...

...Being of a slightly younger generation, I still find it astonishing to read certain passages from the Report of the Committee of Eight, published in 1939...

...Please note that I speak against excessive rigidity and not against high standards...

...I entered Harvard in the fall of'23, and from the start I was deeply involved with other Jewish students, especially in the Menorah Society...

...And that's exciting...

...I'm sure that I qualified for the Guiness Book of World Records for the most tuna fish sandwiches consumed in one academic year...

...We have given much to This text was delivered by Dean Rozovsky on September 16, 1979 at the dedication of the new home of the Harvard- Radcliffe Hillel Society (pictured on the preceding page) and is reprinted, with permission, from Harvard Magazine, November/December, 1979...

...Our room in Matthews Hall was the headquarters for Jewish students...

...In that connection, it's hard to exaggerate the importance of the fact that at the same time, the black people had begun to emphasize their blackness...

...So I looked at the schools in the area, and Harvard seemed like a logical place to want to attend...

...Alper," Schneider said, "we've got just the right thing...

...I was only on campus from 9 to 2 or 3 o'clock, so Harvard was strictly an academic experience for me...

...Furthermore, although the proportion of Jewish students at Harvard declined during Lowell's presidency, it started rising again during and after World War II, and has never been higher than at present...

...On High Holy Days, over three thousand Jews gather at prayers on campus...

...No doubt this last point— the interest in ancient Hebrew— was helpful much later when our presence here was both more numerous and more controversial...

...The gap between my world and that world was especially large because I was a commuter...

...My impression is that, in spite of its length, this early period is relatively less important from our point of view...

...His reign—one can really call it that— coincided with the enormous wave of economic progress in the wake of the Civil War and the beginnings of mass immigration from central, southern, and eastern Europe...

...Remember that the Russian czar would have been much more clever if he had abolished the Pale of Settlement...

...And just before you begin, there's often a student who will ask to use the mike for a minute to make an announcement, and that morning a student with a kippah and a beard asks me for the mike and makes an announcement that the Maimonides Society is sponsoring a lecture, and I sat there listening and thinking to myself that this is an incredible phenomenon...

...Therefore, now is the time to add to the role of critic that of builder...

...Those who raised the issue seem in agreement, to use the words of one of them, that "racial prejudice is so thoroughly ingrained and taken for granted that no one takes much notice of it except in particularly flagrant cases...

...I remember vividly the day the notice of my acceptance came...

...Intermarriage is increasingly common...

...Actually, for most of this century, and certainly since the '30s and '40s, Michael Bohnen is an attorney, active in a variety of Jewish communal endeavors...

...Few of us have had strong religious training...

...But I would not want my words to be misinterpreted...

...We have 400 people who come here to daven every Shabbat, and 3000 or more Ben-Zion Gold is Rabbi at Har-vard-Radcliffe Hillel Society...

...However, this is not Lowell's time revisited...

...It was dreadful...

...The Committee is informed...

...When I arrived at Harvard, in 1958, Hillel was a kind of boys' club...

...The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 gave us a new sense of self-confidence: we joined the other immigrants who had a national home...

...in other words, to support diversity and the most recent arrivals, and to recognize that unduly rigid standards frequently are instruments of intolerance...

...But what did I know of gray flannel suits and tweeds, or even of chinos...

...Broad admission criteria were eventually used to bring in new groups of Americans, especially after World War II, and culminated in the practice of admitting students without regard to their economic circumstances...

...That makes it much more real, and much more meaningful...

...However, as I have already noted, the postwar generation has given hopeful signs...

...And it seemed to me that we needed a real community...

...no such differences exist about our rights as individuals...

...Let it be said that Harvard welcomed us with open arms, as students and teachers in all its varied faculties...

...If their number should become forty percent of the student body, the race feeling would become intense...

...We are not newcomers in Cambridge...

...Now, of course, all that has changed...

...If you wanted to be an observant Jew, you could be, and nobody was going to interfere with you...

...to maintain and preserve our beliefs and traditions as each one of us understands them...

...The young student and even the faculty member who comes to this university can all too readily lose touch with Jewishness...

...As with so much else, our meaningful history at Harvard begins with the presidency of Charles William Eliot, that great man who began the transformation of a provincial college into a university...

...It would never have occurred to us to do anything like this back in 1950...

...Where will we be when Harvard celebrates its four hundredth anniversary, in 2036, only 57 years from now...

...it had reached 21.5 percent in 1921...

...We owe this to those who preceded us and to those of all faiths and ethnic origins who will follow us...

...The committee repudiated the notion of quotas and the faculty adopted its report with the following statement: "That in the administration of the rules for admission Harvard College maintains its traditional policy of freedom from discrimination on the grounds of race or religion...

...the reaction to Italians or the Irish might have been similar...

...It had three Jewish members: Paul Sachs and Harry Wolfson of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Milton Rosenau from the Medical School...

...It is the reason why this is a truly happy day...

...Jews have certainly not been immune from these tendencies...

...That was a real turning point...

...There's a very nice kosher kitchen at Hillel, and kosher meals can now be purchased as part of the general meal plan...

...Just a couple of weeks ago, I was lecturing to a second year class in Pharmacology, and there's a corner of the blackboard filled with announcements and notices of meetings and things like that, and there's a big thing about an upcoming meeting of the Maimonides Society...