"THE ENVY OF THE WORLD AND THE PRIDE OF THE JEWS": DEBATING THE AMERICAN JEWISH UNIVERSITY IN THE TWENTIES

Eleff discusses the variant manners in which non-Jews engaged the traditional and liberal communities by analyzing two contemporaneous yet independent initiatives under- taken by members of the orthodox and nonorthodox communities during the 1920s. In that decade, both groups attempted to build Jewish-oriented colleges. The reactions from both Jews and Gentiles reflect differing attitudes toward the more socialized liberal Jews and traditionalist Jews, whose conservatism and irreconcilable religious differences absolved them from leaping into America's melting pot. In contrast, reaction to an orthodox attempt to form a Jewish college was split between Jews and Gentiles. While liberal Jews feared that an orthodox college threatened to hold up American Jewry's continued attempt at cultural assimilation, non-Jewish observers viewed this initiative quite differently. They supported it, hoping that a Jewish college, while inherently exclusionary, would add to the cultural and intellectual diversity of American life.