THE California Menorah Society met on Monday evening, August 30th, for its first meeting of the college year. There was an attendance of 125. Mr. Louis I. Newman gave a short talk on the aims of the Menorah movement. Milton D. Sapiro, first President of the California Menorah and now the second Vice-President of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, spoke on the history of the movement, tracing the development of the Menorah idea and the formation of the Intercollegiate body; and in closing he presented Stanley Arndt, now President of the Society, with a bronze Menorah, which is to be handed down from President to President each year. President Arndt, in accepting the Menorah, said that it suggested the great problem that the Jews are now facing. The great question at the present time is whether this Menorah will be a mere symbol of the past glories, the past achievements of the Jews, whether it is to be a mere monument of a dying race, or the living emblem of a living race, the soul of a living people. As an exponent of the latter doctrine, he introduced Dr. Horace M. Kallen of the University of Wisconsin, Intercollegiate Menorah Lecturer.
Dr. Kallen spoke on "The Jews and the Great War." He pointed out that democracy in its essence was the liberation of individuality; that by being most one's self, a person or a nation does the most for his neighbors. First of all, therefore, we should know ourselves. Dr. Kallen then took up the condition of the Jews in Russia. He discussed the frightful persecutions there as the result of a great anti-Jewish conspiracy to cover up the graft, the corruption and the inefficiency of the government. He spoke on the great drive of the Jews from the Pale by the military authorities and then the drive back again by the civil authorities. This, he pointed out, involved not only a Jewish problem, but a great international one besides. The second phase of the Jewish question was that of a free Jewish life in Palestine. There the Jewish colonists have practically an autonomy of their own; they have established a Jewish stage, Jewish art, Jewish music; and the colonies were founded upon a social democratic basis, upon the same fundamental conceptions of social democracy that the Hebrew Prophets had preached. Dr. Kallen concluded with a plea for the Jew's double responsibility. The Jew commits a crime hot only as a citizen but as a Jew. The Jews who in length of service to the world are surely an aristocracy must carry this responsibility.
In the discussion which followed, Professor Simon Litman of Illinois, who was present, took part.
A Menorah prize of $50. was announced at this meeting. The judges will be Professor William Popper and Dr. Martin A. Meyer of the Semitics Department of the University, and Judge Max Sloss of the Supreme Court of California.
A musical program, followed by an informal reception to the new members, completed the evening.
N. M. Lyon, the Treasurer of the Intercollegiate, formerly of Cincinnati, is now a student at California and a member of the California Menorah.
Dr. Kallen on the Pacific Coast
BESIDES his address at the opening meeting of the California Menorah Society and other informal talks with the students, Dr. Kallen delivered a series of three addresses at the University of California, under the auspices of the Department of Philosophy, on the general subject: "The Hebraic Tradition in Europe." On August 31st, he lectured upon "The Rise and Significance of the Hebraic Tradition"; on September 1st, "Hebraism and Democracy"; and September 2nd, "Hebraism and Art."
On August 30th, Dr. Kallen met a company of graduates and other public-spirited Jewish citizens in San Francisco at luncheon and explained the purposes and activities of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association.
Dr. Kallen addressed the Menorah Society of the University of Washington in Seattle on August 14th, on "The Jewish Question and the Great War." He also met at a dinner a company of graduates and other public-spirited Jewish citizens in Seattle, and explained to them the purposes and activities of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association.