2008 Woodie Awards
Searching for Torah u-Madda
Shalom Z. Berger
Issue date: 4/18/05 Section: YUdaica
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Who was the most influential personality at Yeshiva College when I first arrived in the late 1970's? In all honesty, the name that carried the most weight was Joe DiMaggio. It was not his years of guarding the outfield fences across the Harlem River at Yankee Stadium in the 40's that gave him this aura of authority at Yeshiva - DiMaggio was enshrined in the Hall of Fame years before and the Yankees of the 1970's had a different look, following their purchase by George Steinbrenner - rather it was his position as "pitchman" for the Bowery Savings Bank. The word on 185th street was that Yeshiva's financial situation was such that the Bowery was going to foreclose on the uptown real estate properties of the university, spelling the end of almost 100 years of the Torah u-Madda experiment in Manhattan. "Say it ain't so, Joe!" was the cry of me and my classmates.
But where was the Torah u-Madda that had been one of the drawing cards that attracted me to Yeshiva College? Having completed two years of study in Yeshivat Har Etzion, I knew the ins and outs of the beit midrash and happily spent my mornings within the four cubits of the beit midrash. Yeshiva's original building gave off a whiff of intrigue, with forbidden floors above the dormitories in RIETS (now Muss) Hall, back entrances into Lamport Auditorium where R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, whom we all called the Rav, still gave his annual Yahrtzeit shiurim and a coal chute off of 186th street that old-timers still reminisced about. The rebbeim were well represented by the generation of Talmidei Chachamim who had arrived at Yeshiva as refugees from the Holocaust and their accents and appearance gave off an aura of the guardians of Torah and traditional Jewish values.
My schedule of classes at Yeshiva College was also impressive, as were the extra-curricular activities offered on-campus. I grappled with the questions of the ancients in my philosophy courses, rode with Hrothgar and Beowulf in English literature and made it my business to attend all of the performances put on by the dramatics society (I will admit it publicly here. I never attended a single Yeshiva College intercollegiate sports event. Nevertheless, my close reading of the back pages of The Commentator kept me abreast of the goings-on in that realm).
But where was the Torah u-Madda that had been one of the drawing cards that attracted me to Yeshiva College? Having completed two years of study in Yeshivat Har Etzion, I knew the ins and outs of the beit midrash and happily spent my mornings within the four cubits of the beit midrash. Yeshiva's original building gave off a whiff of intrigue, with forbidden floors above the dormitories in RIETS (now Muss) Hall, back entrances into Lamport Auditorium where R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, whom we all called the Rav, still gave his annual Yahrtzeit shiurim and a coal chute off of 186th street that old-timers still reminisced about. The rebbeim were well represented by the generation of Talmidei Chachamim who had arrived at Yeshiva as refugees from the Holocaust and their accents and appearance gave off an aura of the guardians of Torah and traditional Jewish values.
My schedule of classes at Yeshiva College was also impressive, as were the extra-curricular activities offered on-campus. I grappled with the questions of the ancients in my philosophy courses, rode with Hrothgar and Beowulf in English literature and made it my business to attend all of the performances put on by the dramatics society (I will admit it publicly here. I never attended a single Yeshiva College intercollegiate sports event. Nevertheless, my close reading of the back pages of The Commentator kept me abreast of the goings-on in that realm).