Jews -- Periodicals; Jews -- United States -- Periodicals
The Menorah Society appeals to me as a college graduate not only for
many of its positive virtues but also for some of its negative merits.
It is not in any sense a social organization, and above all it is not
a secret society. Now I have my own peculiar views about secret
societies in universities, and I do not believe that they tend to
promote college spirit and college unity. It has been well said that
in these societies those who are in any particular societies are
brothers, while every one else who belongs to another society, or to
no society whatever, is just a step-brother. To my mind that is not a
good spirit in an American institution.
It seems to me that, having in this city a Hebrew Union College with a
gifted faculty, we should establish at our University a Department of
Semitics. Since the University is a public school, an institution
supported by public taxation, it certainly could not affiliate
directly with a sectarian institution, but I see no reason why the
professors in the Hebrew College, if they are not already overworked
like the students, should not be able to conduct courses at the
University itself, and I believe such courses would promote the
Menorah movement more than anything else you could do. I think you
would attract students from far and wide to the University of
Cincinnati, and you would thereby achieve one of the ends for which
you are working.
MR. WALTER M. SHOHL
It is gratifying to me to attend this meeting of the Menorah, because,
as the Chairman has said, I heard the flapping of the wings of the
stork at its birth. I recall very well the preliminary meetings that
we had when the organization of the Menorah Society at Cambridge was
first spoken of. At that time I was one of the doubters; I held back.
There were in Cambridge a number of societies, social primarily, that
did not desire members of our faith among their number. I felt that a
movement which was composed entirely of Jewish men would be mistaken
for an effort at a Jewish fraternity that was to take the place of the
fraternities in which we were not welcome. The other men, however,
felt that we could have a society the purposes of which had nothing to
do with social matters, and that we could bring out all that was good
in Jewish matters of culture and develop a society to promote those
interests. So at first somewhat reluctantly, I joined in with the
movement, and the result has justified their farsightedness, and I am
sorry now that I was only a "trailer" in the beginning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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