rsities unless you add to the richness of the university life, to
the variety of its content, to its genuineness and versatility. And in
the larger American community we Jews cannot perform our full duty
unless we place at the disposal of our country the best fruits of the
Jewish spirit. Our Menorah allegiance, then, rests on the foundation
of Americanism. And insofar as, through the Menorah movement, we are
succeeding in uniting by a common bond men and women who have been
brought up under a great variety of circumstances and conditions, we
are increasing the democratic spirit of our universities and of the
larger life beyond the academic gates. Within the universities, too,
the broadening effect of the Menorah idea is not limited to the
student body. I can bear witness from personal experience that the
university authorities, both faculty members and administrative
officers, are not merely tolerating, or even mildly accepting, the
work of our Menorah Societies in their midst, but are themselves being
led to a better understanding of the place which the Jewish problem
occupies in the larger problem of their universities and of the
American community for whose service they are training the youth of
the land.

_Menorah and Religion_

I have said that the aim of the Menorah movement is the study and
advancement of Hebraic culture and ideals. The culture of a people is
but the permanent expression of its ideals in the various activities
of life. Religion constitutes one of the most important of human
activities, and we in the Menorah Societies are fully cognizant of its
fundamental importance. Indeed, we recognize that the ideals of the
Jewish people are perhaps expressed more truly, more profoundly, more
eloquently in our religious literature than in any other manifestation
of the Jewish genius. We should not be charged with excluding
religion, merely because we aim to include more than religion in our
purposes and activities.

I happen at the present time to be teaching at the University of
Michigan, at Ann Arbor. We have there a Menorah Society, devoted to
the general object to which all our Menorah Societies are devoted. We
listen to speakers and engage in discussions on Jewish history, Jewish
literature, Jewish religion, and current Jewish social, economic and
political problems. Side by side with the Menorah Society there exists
a Jewish Student Congregation, a body of men and women of which I feel
it a privile