2008 Woodie Awards
The Torah u-Refuah Continuum: Reflections on My Yeshiva Premedical Years
Robert N. Taub
Issue date: 3/29/05 Section: YUdaica
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It has been 47 years since I completed my senior year at Yeshiva College, yet until asked to do so, I never thought to review that experience, or analyze its contribution to my current career and life attitudes. Yeshiva was my starting point for a lifetime of formal medical and scientific training and teaching encompassing two doctorates, four subspecialty certifications, four tenured and endowed professorships, and numerous fellowships and investigatorships; yet I know that I never really left, never really completed my Yeshiva education. Thankfully, the anxieties, merciless self-criticism, feelings of inferiority, justified and unjustified rebellion and anger toward one's teachers are most intense during adolescence and college. These emotions have slowly receded into the shadow of the past; and my alma mater now reemerges into daylight, awaiting scrutiny and validation.
It is easiest to assemble my memories of Yeshiva as a scrapbook of visual scenes and sound bites: aging buildings housing an uneven assortment of towering, intense intellectual virtuosos, impresarios, and quieter, scholarly types; cliques of talmidim of differing attitudes and degrees of commitment to Torah study; secular teacher-student aggregates of various sizes which continually formed and dissolved, sometimes interacted but rarely synergized. When I dwell upon my sensations as a college student, it is automatic to recall specific rebbeim or professors, and how a new insight suddenly flashed during their classes or discussions. It is tempting to substitute these sharply remembered experiences for what needs to be a more considered reflection upon the general atmosphere of the university and how it came to shape my later years. I do have vivid memories of R. Yerucham Gorelik, whose incisiveness and biting iconoclastic wit could not hide his profound love and respect for all serious intellectual strivings, and whose personal encouragement of my medical training was enormously helpful. Professor Herman Wouk stood out for his lengthy handwritten-in-red-ink critiques of my weekly sermon writing exercises, that convinced me forever of the power of precise language and the need for multiple drafts of manuscripts and thoughts.
It is easiest to assemble my memories of Yeshiva as a scrapbook of visual scenes and sound bites: aging buildings housing an uneven assortment of towering, intense intellectual virtuosos, impresarios, and quieter, scholarly types; cliques of talmidim of differing attitudes and degrees of commitment to Torah study; secular teacher-student aggregates of various sizes which continually formed and dissolved, sometimes interacted but rarely synergized. When I dwell upon my sensations as a college student, it is automatic to recall specific rebbeim or professors, and how a new insight suddenly flashed during their classes or discussions. It is tempting to substitute these sharply remembered experiences for what needs to be a more considered reflection upon the general atmosphere of the university and how it came to shape my later years. I do have vivid memories of R. Yerucham Gorelik, whose incisiveness and biting iconoclastic wit could not hide his profound love and respect for all serious intellectual strivings, and whose personal encouragement of my medical training was enormously helpful. Professor Herman Wouk stood out for his lengthy handwritten-in-red-ink critiques of my weekly sermon writing exercises, that convinced me forever of the power of precise language and the need for multiple drafts of manuscripts and thoughts.