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Boris Smotar's
'Between You
... and Me'
(Copyright, 1963,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Inc.)
The Jewish Student
From time to time, studies on the attitudes of Jewish college
students and their sense of Jewish identity are being made in
this country by interested Jewish organizations and scholars .. .
More than 50 such studies are known to have been made during
the past two decades, involving 12,000 students in various
colleges and universities . . . One is a four-year study at three
universities conducted by Dr. Alfred Jospe, veteran Hillel direc-
tor, who attempted to follow an entire college generation from
their freshman year to their graduation . . . Virtually all studies
confirm an assumption that, for most of the 275,000 American
Jewish students, their Jewish identity presents no longer a sub-
stantial problem . . . They affirm their Jewishness without
noticeable embarrassment or a self-consciousness . . . They no
longer feel that their Judaism diminishes their American
identity . . . Some escapists are still around, but most have
accepted the fact that they are Jewish, and there is little flight
from Judaism among them now . . . The basic ties to Jewish
life—superficial, vulgar and sentimental as they frequently are—
are nonetheless deep-seated and tenacious. . . . Unlike their
parents' generation, and unlike the Jewish student of 20 and 30
years ago, few seek devices of protective coloration . . . Most
of them do not observe kashruth, but they do not think that
public observance of dietary laws tends to make a Jew con-
spicuous in the eyes of a non-Jew . . Most of them do not
speak Yiddish, but the speaking of Yiddish in public does not
make them feel uncomfortable . . . In his study, Dr. Jospe estab-
lished that 78 per cent of the students disapprove of the use
or display of Christmas trees in Jewish homes . . . Nearly 90 per
cent would definitely reject any name change designed to hide
one's Jewish identity as being incompatible with their self-re-
spect as Jews . . . Only 10 per cent of the Jewish students who
were interviewed said they favor intermarriage, while 84 per
cent said they are opposed to mixed marriages.
Campus Moods
While his Jewishness is no longer an embarrassment to the
Jewish student, Dr. Jospe believes that one of the greatest Jewish
problems today is the fact that many young Jews at the uni-
versity have no Jewish problem at all . . . They affirm their
Jewish identity, but what is the content of this identity? . . .
They clearly assign a low position to religion in their hierarchy
of life's goals . . . While 42 per cent of the interviewed Cath-
olics and 15 per cent of the Protestants considered it important
to live in accordance with the teachings of their religions, only
8 per cent of the Jews even marked this item . . . The more
important aims for Jewish students were: to make the world a
better place to live in (30% ); to get happiness for yourself
(28% ); financial independence (21%) . . . Only 9 per cent
thought that it was also important to seek to help make others
happy . . . And the suspicion prevails that even those who are
eager to make the world a better place to live in, mean a better
place for themselves, only accidentally for others . . . While
74 per cent of them stated that they owe their greatest loyalty
to their families, only 10 per cent considered loyalty to God as
an important value . . . Thus, while accepting their Jewish
identity, they are intellectually and spiritually not at home
with it . . . This is visible from the fact that only 5 per cent
said that they attend synagogue services at least once a month
or more frequently, or that they observe the Jewish holidays .. .
Contrary to the persistent claims of rabbinical groups that there
are signs of a religious revival on the campus, virtually all
studies show what appears to be a decrease in this religiousness
of the students ... As they move from their freshmen to their
senior year, they become more uncertain about the need for
religious beliefs as a basis for a philosophy of life . . They
become more inclined to believe that there is a genuine and
probably irreconcilable conflict between science and religion.
Jews C, ehind. Iron Curtain Compiled in Bibliography
Dr. R. L. Braham of the
faculty of the N. Y. City Col-
lege, author of the documentary
account "The Destruction of
Hungarian Jewry," and M. M.
Hauer, a member of the YIVO
staff in New York, have com-
piled a bibliography, "Jews in
the Communist World," that
should prove valuable in the
search for information regard-
ing Russian Jewry.
The sources compiled in this
book are the non-English ma-
terial, listing 845 reference
works published from 1945 to
1962.
There are two parts to this
important bibliography — one
containing the general country-
by-country listings, alphabetic-
ally arranged; the other being
a supplementary list of English
references published by Dr.
Braham in 1961.
YIVO'S support in gathering
this data, the aid of such
eminent authorities as Dr. Solo-
mon M. Schwartz and others,
has been enlisted in compilin
this work.
Calling attention to the in-
terest that is being shown wide-
ly in the Soviet anti-Semitism,
commenting that it is "fre-
quently interconnected with
that of Zionism and cosmopoli-
tanism," the authors point to
the denial to Jews of minimal
rights conceded to adherents of with those of other religions,
other faiths. They state that and the books by authors in the
there are writers who claim that latter group are specifically in-
Jews are given equal rights dicated by their compilation.
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79
Stand On Israel
There is a benevolent students' acceptance of the fact that
Israel is a reality, but this seems to be all . . . Several studies
throw some interesting sidelights on the attitude of many stu-
dents towards the State of Israel . . . One of the questions asked
by Dr. Jospe was: "Assume that you had sufficient funds to visit
two foreign countries during your lifetime and could make your
decision now, which countries would you choose?" . . . Sixty-
nine per cent of the questioned Jewish students selected France;
24 per cent selected England; Israel ran a poor third with just
about 20 per cent . . . 76 per cent of the students said that
American Jews should feel some sense of personal obligation to
the building of the State of Israel; 15 per cent do not know, and
9 per cent do not think so .. When an attempt was made to
discover what they consider a satisfactory fulfillment of the
obligation, 89 per cent suggested the contribution of funds—by
others, since most of them do not contribute themselves . . .
Fifty-two per cent recommend affiliation with a Zionist organiza-
tion—a step they avoid taking on the student level . . . Nine per
cent believe that a period of direct personal involvement or
service of young American Jews in Israel may also be a good
way of fulfilling this obligation . . • As to Jewish illiteracy among
the students, the best example is the answers to a question put
by Dr. Jospe to 400 incoming Jewish freshmen at three schools
. . The question was: "What festival do we customarily as-
sociate with the name of the Maccabees?" . . Only 17 per cent
of the group were able to identify Hanukah correctly .. . The
same group was asked to name any three Hebrew prophets,
with the result that in one school only 16 per cent could answer
the question, in the second school only 14 per cent knew the
answer, and in a third school - only 11
per cent were able to
answer.
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