Therefore I welcome your Society first because it represents something which has done much for learning in our great centres of learning, the universities; and second, because as Americans, Jewish history means much to us in understanding the early development of our own country.
II
Chancellor Elmer E. Brown of New York University
Before the Menorah Society of New York University, May 12, 1914
IT seems to me that it is not only of value to the Jewish students, but to the whole university, that there should be a body here devoted to the study of Jewish tradition, Jewish literature and Jewish history. You are emphasizing something that is of permanent value to your associates here in the University who are not of the Jewish race and the Jewish faith. The Christian Church finds in the Jewish Scriptures some of the finest and most precious of the things it cherishes from the religious point of view. Our civilization in these occidental countries is deeply indebted to the history and the literature of the Jewish race. From time to time that indebtedness comes to stronger expression, and we may expect that in the future the sense of that indebtedness of our whole people to that which is the immediate concern of the Menorah Society will be more keenly felt.
If you go back in the history of this country you will find a time when our New Englanders were especially indebted to what they as Christians called the Old Testament. There was a time in Colonial days when the earlier portions of this literature exercised a mighty influence over these new commonwealths. As you read the history of New England you cannot help being profoundly impressed by the influence of the Hebrew literature upon the life of the seventeenth century. The names and references to the Jewish people are all interwoven with New England history. I was thinking of a curious illustration of this fact only a short time ago. You know the old poem of "Darius Green and His Flying Machine" that has come into astonishingly new popularity in modern times. It contains, you will recall, an enumeration of the brothers of Darius, and four of the five names are taken from Hebrew history. The appearance of these Jewish names in such large numbers is coincident with a reappearance of Hebrew spirit in our Colonial times, all modified of course by Christian tradition, but presenting a most important and essential ingredient of the time. This apparently trivial illustration simply shows that which is to be found in our whole culture. It is profoundly significant in regard to our American culture.
So it seems to me that the Menorah Society has work of two kinds—to bring together our Jewish students on a higher plane of sentiment, and at the same time to put new emphasis, in all parts of the University, on the invaluable things which the Jewish race has contributed to the civilization of the world. So I feel that I may look to you of this organization to bring to New York University a new emphasis upon these great things which are the common heritage of our scholastic society. I trust that you will feel that there is a genuine warmth and a genuine interest in the welcome that I extend to you,—not a welcome to the University alone, but a welcome to this new service in this University, in which every movement such as this has work to do for the good of all.
III
President Charles W. Dabney of the University of Cincinnati
Before the Cincinnati Menorah Society, November 19, 1914
STANDING as it does for the study of the history and culture of the Jewish people, and for the advancement of their ideals, the Menorah Society is welcomed to the University of Cincinnati. This University, of all institutions, should welcome every such organization. The University of Cincinnati claims to represent the idea of the democracy of the higher education, the equality of opportunity for the highest culture in its latest form. The American idea is that the university should be as free to all cultures as our country is free to all races. Standing for this idea more distinctly than any other type of institution among us, the American state university has been called the characteristic institution of the republic. But the municipal university is destined to democratize the higher education even more completely than the state university. The state university makes the higher education free to all who can come to it, but the municipal university takes it to the poorest citizen at his home.