Jewish Universities' Distinctiveness, Unique
Role Outlined in 'The Academic Revolution'

How distinctive are Jewish uni-
versities? Do they differ from the
other American universities? In an
important study prepared by Chris-
topher Jencks and David Riesman,
in a Doubleday Anchor Book en
titled "The . Academic Revolution.•
they declare that "distinctiveness
evidently requires a religious ra-
tionale" and that "What stands out
among Jews as a thong Protest ants
is the inability of even a relatively
cohesive and very education-con-
scious ethnic group to create a dis-
tinctive pattern of higher educa-
tion differing in any significant re
sped front all-American norins.•
Referring to Yeshiva Universi y,
and equating it with Brandeis 'Uni-
versity, the two- authors maintain
that "Yeshiva is national, but its
appeal is really to the sectarianism
of Orthodox Jewry rather than to
the ethnic loyalty. of Jews in gen-
eral. Brandeis is also national, but
then it is only ambivalently Jew-
ish."
A footnote on. graduates quotes
. authorities to indicate that 8 tier
cent of all 1961 BAs were Jew-
ish, that "in that year Yeshiva
awarded. about 0.05 per cent of
all BAs in the United States or
0.6 per cent of all the BAs
awarded to Jews. The quoted
statistics show that 24 per cent
of all the BAs planning to enter
medical school were Jewish,
that "Einstein enrolls slightly
more than I per cent of all medi-
cal students. Since we have no
exact data on the proportion of
Jewish students who are Ortho-
dox, we cannot say with assur-
ance what proportion of Ortho-
dox students are at Yeshiva or
Einstein."
Some unusually interesting com-
ments are made in this important
study on Jewish scholastic aims, on
the status of Jewish students for
higher learinng and on communal
aspirations. The authors state:.

'The nature Of the dialectic between
religion and ethnicity can be illustrated
by comparing Protestant to Jewish ex-
perience. It is a matter for argument
whether the Jews constitute one ethnic
group or several. German Jews, Spanish
Jews, English Jews and East European
Jews were culturally- quite different
when they arrived in America, lacking
' even a common language. They were
also divided religiously, with many
German Jews bringing or adopting Re-
form while others usually found them-
selves more at home with Orthodox
or Conservative Judaism. Rut all sorts
of Jews felt relatively free to move
around among these Jewish denomina-
tions, according to their temperament
and hopes for their children, just as
Protestants often shopped around
- their" denominations. Some
among
also adopted a distinctively Jewish
brand of secular radicalism. Each of
the Jewish denominations founded its
own college to train rabbis and Hebrew
school teachers. but these remained
tiny. Only the Orthodox followed the
usual Anierican pattern of expanding
their institution for teachers and
preachers into a general purpose under-
graduate college; Yeshiva. And even
Yeshiva attracts a rather small propor•
tion of all Orthodox Jewish under-
graduates. (It also attracts some non-
Orthodox Jews, especially to its pro-
fessional programs. But even the Albert
Einstein College of Medicine, founded
in a day when discrimination against
Jews was taken fur granted in Gentile
medical schools, enrolls only about 5
Per rent of all Jewish medical stu-
dents).
In general. Jews have preferred Uni-
versities and colleges where they were
not a majority, or failing that where
their majority was unofficial, as at
CCNY. The major exception, and one
that perhaps proves the rule, has been
Brandeis. A by-product of the wave of
ethnic self-consciousness provoked by
the Hitler massacres and the founding
of Israel. Brandeis nevertheless chose
a name that stressed its commitment
to "American" rather than narrowly
"Jewish" standards • of greatness. AVOW•
edly non-sectarian, it placed no special
emphasis on either Jewish religion or
the Jewish secular radicaltra d i t i on.
aimed for precisely the same kind of
academic and professional distinction
universities.
as the leading Gentile between
Brandeis
"Tile relationship
and the Jews was thus rather like the
relationship between the University of
Tennessee and Tennesseans, or the Uni-
versity of Washington and Washing.
tonians. It was not that Brandeis was
thought to be different from rival in•
stitutions, or that its boosters were at-
tracted by unique programs tailored
to their particular needs, For both
donors and applicants. Brandeis' appeal
Was simply that it was "theirs." The
donors were not usually from the as-
similated German-Jewish families whose
names appear on plaques at Harvard
iIId Columbia. They were More likely
to be second- or third-generation Fast
European immigrants, whose millions
hospitals.
would otherwise have built
or contributed to
bought Israel bonds,.
J.wlsh "civil defense." Yet it no more
occurred to these donors that the ;
Brandeis curriculum or pattern of
deviate from na-
Student life should
---
-•

DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, September 19, 1969-17

THE

tionwide academic norms than that
Mount Sinai Hospital should deviate
from national medical standards. Brati•
do•is was meant to be - separate but
identical." a 'monument tea Jewish abil-
ity to compete 'successfully in : the non-
Jew ish world on "American:. rather
than distinctively "Jewish" terms.
Brandeis was to he distinctive in its
clientele, but es en here there Was some
mbivalence. Lou:tied two !Mildred miles
from the major center of Jewish life
in :1.nterica, near the epicenter of An-
glo•Saxon first family respectability,
Brandeis appealed to some Jews pre-
cisely because it did not seem - too
ish." The University did not recruit
non-Jewish faculty members as such,
but it was understandably proud of the
many distinguished ones it gut. Simi-
larly, its graduate students represented
III faiths (though the majority probably
had none). Its under-graduate body
was more conspicuously. Jewish, but
even here Gentiles were both Present
anti publicized. What, then, was its ap-
peal? Many Jewish families evidently
want a college that minimizes the
danger that their children will marry
Gentiles, while at the same time ensur-
ing that they can enter a Gentile
graduate school or land a job with a
Gentile employer if they choose. For a
Jewish family in the hinterlands, local
institutions look like a poor bet on
both counts. They usually have relative-
ly low academic prestige, and also too
few Jews form a Hillel or sustain a
self-enclosed dating system. Brandeis,
on the other -hand, seems to maximize
both the chances of getting into a good
professional school and the chances
of meeting a "nice Jewish girl (or
boy.)" (Like other Northern institu-
tions • hots- ever, Brandeis seems to have
had limited appeal in the South, per-
haps because Southern Jews are often
niore Southern than Jewish. Many find
Northern Jews abrasive, cynical, and
culturally. alien.")

Discussing the Negroes and their

Jewish Prisoners
Reported Faithful
to Chapel Services

• CHICAGO (JTA)—A rabbi serv-
ing as a prison chaplain at a fed-
eral penetentiary has reported that
all of the Jewish inmates usually
attend the weekly Sabbath serv-
ices he conducts, in contrast to a
survey finding that very few of
them attended services even once
a year before their incarceration.
The psychology and Jewish be-
havior of such inmates was de-
scribed by Rabbi Bernard M. Cohen
of Terre Haute, Ind., in a recent
issue of the bulletin of the Chicago
Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Cohen did
not identify the penal institution,
but it was assumed to be the fed-
eral penetentiary at Terre Haute
Rabbi Cohen reported that the
number of such inmates is usually
small and that such Jews usually'
are involved in crimes. categorized
as "white collar," involving fraud
"and other areas of manipulation.
usually on paper," rather than
crimes of violence.
Efforts to plan religious and
other pastoral services, Rabbi
Cohen noted, must deal with the
fact that -Jewish inmates are
often persons with college de-
grees and ,with social contacts
"in the highest circles." Such
prisoners, unlike "the usual in-
mate who denies guilt," admit
their guilt.
Rabbi Cohen, who is a Reform
rabbi, said the sectarian religious
approach in' his program was in-
significant, explaining that "The
mere fact that Hebrew is an in-
tegral. part of the service and that
the Torah is read, serves for a
spiritual, prayerful kinship. -
He added that it was not unusual
for 25 inmates to come to a serv-
ice "insisting upon wearing the
skullcap and the prayershawl so as
to feel the special quality of the
service!' He described as "an-
other interesting statistic" the fact
that "a large number of the men.
after departing from the penal in-
stitution. do maintain congrega-
tional affiliations as well as some
regularity in attending religious
services."
Another phase of the, religious
program is the holiday table.
Rabbi Cohen stressed it was not so
much the nature of the holiday
foods for the occasion which mat-
tered as the fact that the inmates
assembled "as a community, as a
family." He Raid that the table also
represented to the Jewish inmate
"a link in the chain which binds
him together with the 'outside' so-
ciety."

colleges, Jencks and Riesman
make these interesting observa-
tions:

"While Negroes are more nu
merous than Jews in America,
academically gifted Negro under-
graduates are far scarcer than
Jewish ones. In order to put to-
gether a student body intellectual-
ly comparable to Brandeis. a Ne-
gro college would have to Make
itself the first choice of a very
large share of all talented college
applicants. Under current condi-
tions, with white colleges comb-
ing the country for such students,
this seems almost inconceivable.
In part, the problem is that •no
Negro college's BA carries the
same weight as one from Harvard.
Oberlin or Berkeley. Equally se-
rious, not even the best-endowed
Negro college can match the com-
bined resources of Northern white
colleges in bidding for promising
Negro students. Furthermore,
Brandeis succeeded in part be-
cause, aside from Orthodox Yesh-
iva, it had no Jewish competition.
Too many Negro colleges are
within social and academic hail-
ing distance of one another for
any one of them to-corner the mar-
ket' on Negro talent. The Negro
college scene is, in this respect,
more akin to the Catholic than the
Jewish one. Boston College,
Georgetown, Fordham and Notre
Dame compete with one another
as well as with non-sectarian col-
leges for promising Catholic stu-
dents; Fisk, Howard and More-
house do the same . . ."
There is a "social note" in the
comment by the two authors that,
"for a long time, 'there 'will be
the residual 'social' minority, com-
parable perhaps to some of the
JeWish students at Brandeis, whose
parents want them to meet the
right people, marry the right
spouses, • and remain within the
protective community."
"The Academic Revolution" by
Jencks and Riesman is a signifi-
cant work for our time and a valu-
able study of our universities.

Origin of Shiva From Ancient Times

The sages noted that it was the
practicii in ancient times, even
I prior to the revelation at Mt. Sinai,
to mourn intensely, not only for
one day, but for one week—Shiva.
Thus, Joseph was an avel for seven
days following the passing of his
- father, the patriarch Jacob.
After the revelation, Moses es-
tablished the seven days of Mourn-
ing by special decree declaring, as
formal doctrine, that which had
been practiced only- as custom. Ile
enacted, the sages asserted, the
seven days of Mourning as he en-
acted the biblical seven days- of
rejoicing of major holidays. The

connection between the two op-
positei is hinted at in the verse
from Anios, "And I will turn your
feasts into mourning„" Just as feats
were observed for seven days, so
mourning was to last for one week.
—From "The Jewish Way in Death
and Mourning," by Maurice Lamm.

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