Hillel at Michigan, 1926/27-1945: Struggles of Jewish Identity in a Pivotal Era

The Early Years under Foundation Director Adolph Fink

We learn from Barry Stiefel’s research that on February 26, 1914, “Jewish students at the University of Michigan officially established their own congregational community, the Jewish Student Congregation. This organization actually predates the more popularly known international student Jewish organization of Hillel.”[20] The Jewish Student Congregation at the University of Michigan was the very first of its kind in the United States and was modeled on a similar congregation at the University of Cambridge in England.[21] This organization offered Sunday services and provided social activities for Jewish students, “sometimes in partnership with the Menorah Society.”[22] The Jewish Student Congregation also provided a gathering place for Jews living in Ann Arbor who were not affiliated with the University of Michigan and who, until 1916, did not have a place of worship or gathering of their own. In other words, the Jewish Student Congregation preceded Hillel as the very first Jewish organization on the Michigan campus following only the Jewish sorority Alpha Epsilon Phi, which was founded in 1909, and the Inter-Collegiate Menorah Society (founded at Harvard in 1908, as mentioned previously), whose University of Michigan chapter was established in 1910.[23]

According to the annotated chronology for the Hillel chapter at Michigan, “first mention of The Michigan B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation can be found in the hand-written minutes of the Executive Committee of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith. 1925—Monday afternoon, December 7, the minutes record that Rabbi Leo M. Franklin of Detroit requested that a B’nai B’rith Foundation be established at the University of Michigan. 1926—December 12, the minutes (in part) read ‘At the beginning of the scholastic year, the B’nai B’rith Michigan Hillel Foundation was founded at Ann Arbor.’ This would strongly suggest that Hillel was on campus in 1926–­1927. However, the University of Michigan index card in the National Hillel Office indicates that service began in 1927.”[24] So while it can be safely argued that Hillel at the University of Michigan was founded in late 1926, it is also evident that real operations in any meaningful sense did not commence until 1927. As we will see, Hillel itself seems to have been torn about the date of its origin on the University of Michigan campus; we encountered a number of instances in which the fall of 1926 was mentioned as the founding date, but we saw other occasions in which 1927 appeared as such. It is quite clear, though, that the latter year must have been the Foundation’s first truly operational one at the University of Michigan. This is perhaps best reinforced by the fact that the Foundation celebrated its Bar Mitzvah in 1940 and not in 1939.

The first issue of The Hillel News that was available to us hails from October 6, 1927, and announces across the entire front page an “Annual Mixer Saturday.”[25] Clearly, Hillel’s social function was crucial to its identity from the get-go. Since this paper bears the “Volume II” identifier, we assume that there must have been a “Volume I” that most likely published its issues in the first six months of 1927—that is, at some point during what in the University of Michigan’s current parlance has come to be known as the “winter semester,” which in most other universities in the United States featuring the semester rather than the quarter system as their organizing principle of the academic calendar, operates as “spring semester.” We very much doubt that any publication appeared in December of 1926 that could also be seen as the Hillel Foundation’s birth at the University of Michigan. In an editorial entitled “Come Around,” which features the exhortation “Get the Hillel Habit” repeatedly in its text, we read that “the Foundation has begun its second year of existence as a vital factor in the Jewish student life of the University of Michigan campus. The experiment, which was begun a year ago by the B’nai B’rith organization, has become an institution . . . The Jewish student body’s meeting place compares favorably with any of the church guild houses on campus. Make use of it. The best Jewish literature is at your disposal in the Hillel library. A piano and victrola are ready at any moment to entertain. Come around and play bridge, dance or sing . . . Get acquainted. Lose ‘that lonesome away-from-home neglected’ feeling at the Hillel Open House . . . Make the Hillel a necessary factor in your life and go through your college career with Hillel behind you. GET THE HILLEL HABIT!”[26] It is clear from this passage that Hillel at the time very much considered 1926 to be its beginning at the University of Michigan and that it wanted to attract Jewish students via its social and cultural offerings. These were to remain important parts of the Foundation’s identity throughout the period of our study as well as until the present. In a piece entitled “President and Committee Chairmen State Policies,” Hillel’s aim to reach every Jewish student on the Michigan campus receives pride of place. A social committee was to do everything in its power to attract students by organizing all kinds of activities, including the planning of a musical revue “fashioned after a regular Broadway production and given on a large scale.”[27] An education committee was to not only conduct Sunday school for local Jewish children but also be in charge of acquiring books for the Hillel library. A religion committee was organizing regular Orthodox services on Friday evenings and Reform services on Sunday mornings. It also commenced planning a speaker series. This issue of the paper informs us that a large number of students had already participated in both kinds of services at the beginning of the new semester. Lastly, we read that Ray Baer, the legendary varsity football guard and a teammate of the recently graduated University of Michigan superstar Benny Friedman, “gave a short talk in which he asked the student body to support Hillel with the same enthusiasm in which they support the Michigan football team.”[28]

The paper of October 20, 1927, informs us that practices are to begin for Hillel’s first musical comedy after tryouts for the cast, which were held in the week of October 1–­­8, and for the girls’ choruses, which occurred between October 7 and 11.[29] While the name of the musical remained a secret at this stage, it is clear from the long list of participants that nearly thirty students were to appear in this show. In an editorial entitled “To the Literati,” Hillel promises to publish the work of poets and writers of all kinds in something called The Literary Comment, which was to appear in addition to The Hillel News. Hillel hoped to rectify the situation on campus and well beyond in which artistic writers of all genres had a hard time getting their work published: “With a Jewish student body of almost 900, the existence of a large number of good writers among them is undoubted. ‘The Literary Comment’ is one of the few publications on the campus which affords an opportunity to these writers to see their work in print.”[30] Even from this single issue of The Hillel News, it is more than obvious that the Foundation was immensely eager to satisfy the deep and broad cultural literacy and engagement that the Jewish students on the University of Michigan campus clearly possessed. But in this issue, we also learn about the Jewish students’ interest in many sports, both as participants and—in our view, much more important still—as consumers of such, which gave Jews at the time immense pride, as indeed it continues to do in the present. And it does so for all ethnic groups—minorities in particular—not only Jews[31] The article bursts with pride in describing the exploits of Ray Baer, Sammy Babcock, and Harold Greenwald on the varsity football team; praises Ralph Cole’s and Joe Morris’s performances on the varsity golf team; mentions Mannie Schorr, Clarence Batter, Meyer Rosenberg, Richard Fecheimer, and Ralph Miller on the swim team; and delights in touting Victor Berkowitz as the middleweight boxing champion of the campus and Joe Stein as its featherweight title holder. Moreover, “Stewart Schloss, All-Cincinnati high school half-back, and Sid Friedman, Benny’s younger brother, are out for freshman football. Stanley Levison and Nimz are working with the freshman swimmers.”[32]

In the November 17 issue of The Hillel News, crucial matters relating to the Jewish athlete and the ubiquitous brain-brawn divide receive further elaboration. We read: “The Jewish student has always been accepted at liberal institutions throughout the United States as an important factor in the life of the University campus. In scholarship he has been found well up among the leaders, if not often heading the list. In forensic activities he has played an important part. In all branches of the mental college life—publications, politics, the arts—he has made his mark. Yet, in activities requiring exceptional physical strength, the Jew is thought by many to have fallen below his standard. This idea has entrenched itself until it appears unfortunately almost a tradition. Athletic history in the last few years, on the other hand, has shown a steady increase in the participation of Jewish students in sports. The situation at Michigan is typical of what is occurring throughout the country. Friedman, who startled the athletic world with his passing and field generalship for three years, initiated the Hebraic Invasion of athletics at Michigan. This year three regulars who pray to the God of Israel or, lest that statement be too broad, have Jewish leanings, can be listed on the varsity. Baer [who, we learn from another piece in this issue of the paper, had just been named to head an athletic committee at Hillel], Babcock and Greenwald have made their marks . . . The men and women who are making their reputations in these fields are dissipating, in large measure, a rather unfavorable and erroneous impression of Jewish inferiority in that which requires physical excellence.”[33] Here, the paper addressed an issue that plagued the Jews as a minority throughout much of their history, primarily in Europe but also in North America—namely, that they remained separate from the majority and its culture by emphasizing intellectual pursuits at the cost of corporeal ones. This, of course, has gone hand in hand with perceiving the Jews as being too urban and thus urbane and cosmopolitan, and thus not sufficiently anchored in the mundane and often physical pursuits of the small-town-based majority that values its ties to the local soil, toil, and its customs. Jews’ alleged distance from bodily pursuit and their perceived disdain for physical excellence all to the benefit of their intellectual acuity and mastery of reading, writing, and counting have rendered them in the eyes of many Gentiles an untrusted “other” who think of themselves as superior compared to their Gentile environment. We do not find it at all surprising that the greater meaning of the prominence and success of Jews in athletics received such a boisterous airing in The Hillel News of the time.

In this issue of the paper, we also read about a lecture given by Rabbi I. E. Philo on the topic of Jews seeking solace and a better life by departing from Judaism and joining other religions: “Those who desert Judaism do so to gain social and economic advantage, the rabbi asserted. At least, they do not find more spiritual satisfaction in the creed they may choose.”[34] The rabbi gave special consideration to three creeds that he viewed as particularly attractive to Jews but ultimately lacking in giving them the succor and comfort that they sought: Christian Science, Ethical Culture, and Unitarianism.[35] In this same issue, we also learn that the title of the musical that Hillel prepared for a campus-wide showing on December 2 and 3 was Hello U, a sort of musical potpourri from its description in the paper.[36]

As we learn from the December 1 issue of The Hillel News, the performance of this musical revue was cancelled. After an inspection of the revue’s book by Herbert A. Kenyon, assistant professor of French and Spanish in the engineering school and head of the University Dramatics Committee, the play as it stood was deemed unacceptable. The revisions suggested by Professor Kenyon were too extensive, thus making the cancellation of the performance necessary.[37]

In addition, Ray Baer’s chairing of the Athletic Committee led to plans for the formation of a ten-team-based inter-Hillel basketball league under the aegis of the University Intramural Athletics Department, which was to include teams of Hillel Foundations, most of which, at this point, were situated at Midwestern universities.[38] This issue of the paper also featured a hearty congratulations to Baer, who had just been named to virtually every All-Conference team imaginable: “Baer is [a] man of whom the Jewish student body on this campus is proud to boast, ‘He is one of our own.’ Although he is outstanding in football his leadership in other fields is also evident. As a student, he has won a scholarship prize in sociology. As one of that rare combination, student and athlete, we take a justifiable pride in his prowess.”[39]

In an editorial entitled “Keep the Faith,” the paper apologized for a faux pas that must have been embarrassing: Temple Beth El of Detroit, known for being the house of worship presided over by the eminent Rabbi Leo M. Franklin, invited many Jewish students from the University of Michigan for a Student Day at the temple. Even though a large number of students accepted this invitation and confirmed their presence at the dinner prepared by the temple’s sisterhood, “a pitifully small proportion of those who sent in these cards fulfilled their expressed intentions of attending . . . While the Hillel News wishes to express its thanks for the excellent program arranged by Temple Beth El, it cannot refrain from remarking upon the fashion in which the Jewish student body of the University of Michigan responded to it. As a remedy for the situation this year, this editorial is useless; as a hint for future behavior, it should prove helpful.”[40]

Under the aegis of Hillel’s Social Welfare Committee, a weekly Sunday school held at the Beth Israel Community Center was regularly attracting nearly thirty-five boys and girls. The Foundation’s Music Committee also became quite active, as did the Book Committee, which acquired, among others, Hugo Bettauer’s famous book The City without Jews. In this book, Bettauer depicted his home city of Vienna with no Jews, writing that the Gentile population had forced the Jews there into exile, eerily anticipating what was to become reality barely a dozen years later.[41]

Iowa won the very first inter-Hillel basketball championship after beating Minnesota with a score of eight to five, The Hillel News of March 29, 1928, informs us.[42] That score is not a typographical error. Basketball was a very low-scoring game in that era, with the scores increasing somewhat in later decades, though they were still nowhere near the levels that we now see. This has been mainly due to the introduction of the shot clock and the players’ much-improved athletic abilities.

The paper also announces the presence of Rabbi Nathan S. Krass, leader of Temple Emanuel in New York City. This place of worship was arguably one of the country’s most prominent Reform synagogues and the congregation to which many eminent New York Jews belonged—Adolph S. Ochs, the owner and publisher of the New York Times, among them. Perhaps more important than the rabbi’s presence was the topic of his lecture: “Psycho-analyzing a Psycho-analyst” was to feature interpretations of Sigmund Freud’s work, among others.[43]

Under the headline “Understanding,” this issue of The Hillel News addresses a theme that has appeared centrally throughout our research: Hillel’s difficult relations with Jewish fraternities and sororities. The editorial welcomes an event in which an unnamed Jewish fraternity organized a smoker to which it invited other Jewish fraternities. Apparently, this was a positive rarity in the fractured and hostile world of intrafraternity culture: “This function, which has become an annual event on that fraternity’s calendar, goes far to better relations between Jewish organizations.”[44] But there remained a serious problem, which the editorial addressed in its subsequent text: “Only one phase of a great problem is attempted here, however—intra-fraternity relations. There is yet another, the establishment of a cordial relationship between the affiliated and the independent student, which is hardly less important. A situation, which was once full of bitterness and antagonism, has been ameliorated, in part by the mingling of fraternity men with independents in the work of the Foundation. An inevitable sympathy has arisen. The Foundation is limited in this work, however, by the number of Jewish students who are active in its different fields. On the Jewish fraternity and sorority does the settlement of the problem rest. From them, as organized groups, must come the initiative.”[45]

Another topic that has been absolutely central in our analysis of these documents makes an appearance in two articles of this issue of The Hillel News: the role of assimilation as an option and strategy for Jews in America and beyond as part of the larger and constant concern about Jewish identity and its many manifestations. The first piece summarizes a lecture by Rabbi Leo Franklin of Temple Beth El in Detroit, in which the rabbi puts forth an argument for what one could call a modified assimilation as the only viable, indeed desirable, option for Jews: “The solution offered by Rabbi Franklin was a compromise between the two attitudes [assertive Jewishness and complete assimilation]. It is not necessary to loudly proclaim one’s Jewishness, nor yet is it necessary to hide it. The Jew can gain the respect of himself and his neighbor by living the Jewish life as it should be lived, decently and courageously.”[46]

The second article dealing with assimilation summarized a well-attended discussion led by Rabbi Adolph Fink, the Michigan Hillel Foundation’s director, which used the Jews’ troubled history in Spain as a gateway to discuss assimilation in the present. This was in the context of Rabbi Fink’s teaching a Hillel class every Wednesday evening on the Jews in Spain of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The lively discussion’s conclusion was that “doubtlessly some individuals may be justified in assimilation, if they suffer a great deal as Jews, but as a group there are too many difficulties and the world would not permit assimilation of all. So, at present, there are proportionately very few who do assimilate.”[47]

Although we could not find any evidence as to whether the aforementioned musical Hello U was ever performed in public as the Foundation’s members had intended, The Hillel News of April 26 features all kinds of artistic endeavors on its front page: “ ‘Mary the Third’ Performance Set for Next Month,” “Dramatics Committee Calls for Synopses of Stunt Show Skits,” and “First Musical Recital Staged at Foundation” all appear alongside articles touting the debaters’ return to campus from a successful spring contest and a Hillel banquet, which was the “scene of ‘April Fool’ Spirit.”[48]

In a remarkably progressive editorial entitled “The Date System,” Hillel picks up on the problematic issue of the stigmatization of women who dare appear with no man by their side for various events: “Library, dance, and theatre dates play an important and justifiable part in university life. But—when the influence of the system extends to a point where a college girl fears loss of social caste if she appears at any kind of mixed function without an attentive male escort at her beck and call, it has gone beyond its limits. Hillel Foundation affairs are intended for men and women. Yet, women are conspicuously absent at most educational and religious functions, seemingly from a fear of appearing unattended. Women are the exception at discussion groups and classes and are absolutely never seen at Friday evening services. Before the recent committee banquet, several feminine members expressed timidity at the prospect of going undated. Appearance in public unescorted was looked upon askance in the Mid-Victorian period. Today, however is an age of women’s rights, and these rights are particularly advocated by college feminists. At every opportunity they are militantly advanced. Freedom of dress, of vocation, of the use of the cigarette are fought for at every step of the way.”[49] We chose to italicize the last three sentences because in both form and content, they could have been written by feminists of the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the possible exception of touting cigarettes. As we will see later in the text, Hillel picked up this topic at a later date as well.

As if to substantiate Hillel’s progressive view on women’s role in American society, the same issue of The Hillel News features an article announcing that a “feminine jurist” is to appear at services: “Judge Mary B. Grossman, of the Cleveland municipal court, will be speaker at the Hillel Sunday services on May 13. Her topic has been announced as ‘Law and Human Conduct.’ Judge Grossman enjoys the distinction of being one of the few women in the United States holding positions on the bench. Judge Florence Allen, of the state supreme court, is another enjoying the same distinction in Ohio.”[50]

The headline of The Hillel News of May 10 announced “Ohio State Debate Sunday.”[51] Apparently, rivalry with Ohio State extended well beyond the gridiron and was big enough in the debating scene to attract campus-wide attention. The Michigan Hillel’s debating pair took the negative side of the question, “Resolved, that the present tendencies of the American Jewish youth are favorable to the future of the Jewish people.”[52] Two further points are worthy of mention from this issue of the paper. First, there was the bevy of names belonging to Jewish students who were initiated into honorary societies like Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, Phi Eta Sigma, and Alpha Alpha Delta for their excellent scholarship and other academic achievements. In addition to these students, others were invited to attend the annual Honors Convocation given by the University and three students were honored in the Law School, with a number of freshmen also rewarded for their scholarly excellence. Second, an editorial entitled “A Word to the Wise” warns Hillel candidates running for the Foundation’s presidency—one unnamed individual in particular—to refrain from engaging in any kind of electioneering and campaigning and other “such sordidness” that is strictly forbidden and viewed as unethical. Indeed, the editorial mentioned that Rabbi Fink, as the Foundation’s director, had the power to remove such an individual from Hillel’s presidency. This power had been invested in him by the Student Executive Council, and the rabbi made clear that he would use it if need be[53]

The last issue of The Hillel News of the academic year 1927–­28 exclaimed in a page-covering headline that Richard Meyer, a junior in the Literary College, won the election for student president of the Foundation.[54] Meyer won by a large majority of the record 253 ballots cast in this election. He had been chairman of the Foundation’s Social Welfare Committee for the previous two years. The paper also ran a detailed article about Judge Mary B. Grossman’s lecture entitled “Law and Human Conduct,” which she delivered before services on Sunday morning. The judge’s main argument was that “much vice is due to lack of standards, not to infraction of individual standards.”[55] The judge traced this to faulty education, which imparted general knowledge “but failed to mold character and teach the rules of life.”[56]

This issue’s last page informs the reader that the Foundation’s baseball team captured the title in the University church league, with the University Intramural Athletic Department awarding twelve medals to the team’s members for this feat. In an article entitled “Committees Conclude Year of Successful Achievement,” we get a comprehensive summary of what the Foundation’s nine committees had attained during the school year. Perhaps the most important innovation was that the Athletics Committee introduced women’s athletics to the community of Jewish students on campus. Hillel organized women’s teams in basketball, baseball, and golf. On the academic-intellectual side of things, the Education Committee’s achievements could not have been more impressive. Lectures on many aspects of Jewish history and religion appeared prolifically, as did discussion groups on many topics led by the Foundation’s director, Rabbi Fink. Prominent faculty members spoke at Hillel, as did the University’s president, Clarence Cook Little. Dr. Carl Weller of the University of Michigan’s medical school delivered a lecture for men on sex, and national figures such as Abba Hillel Silver came to Ann Arbor to speak to Hillel. In addition, “women’s luncheons were instituted for the first time during the second semester.”[57]

But far and away the most important piece in this issue of The Hillel News was its editorial called “Parting.” In it, the paper bade farewell to Irving Yorish, the Michigan Hillel Foundation’s first president, and welcomed Richard Meyer as its second. But the editorial also offered some interesting words reflecting on the Foundation’s two-year existence on the University of Michigan’s campus: “Two years of history will have been written in the records of the Michigan Hillel Foundation within the next few weeks. Two years have been spent in successfully establishing the Foundation as an essential institution for Michigan Jewish students. It has sold itself to the student body in a dignified manner solely on its merits. ‘Knock down and drag in’ methods have not been used, nor have they been found necessary. The service offered has been sufficient to draw an increasing number of those who might benefit.”[58] There is no question that Hillel’s start on the Michigan campus was auspicious if not spectacular. It clearly had gained a solid foothold in Jewish life on campus, even if its reach could not yet rival that of the fraternities’ and sororities’.

At the beginning of the 1928–­29 academic year, Hillel sought to convince incoming freshmen that it offered plenty of attractive activities as well as a welcome environment for Jewish students of all stripes. The first issue of The Hillel News of that year is a specially designated “Freshman Issue,” which begins with a welcome notice from Rabbi Fink that underlined the organization’s big-tent aspirations: “The Hillel Foundation is neither Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform in nature. It is merely Jewish, seeking to serve Jewish students of every shade of belief or non-belief. Aiming to weld into one harmonious community the various so-called ‘types’ and groups, no superficial line is drawn.”[59] Throughout the freshman issue, the note that Hillel welcomes all Jews and offers the incoming freshman the promise of belonging to a cohesive, and growing, community is repeatedly sounded: “The Jewish students of the University are eager to know you,” Fink enthuses, “and are anxious to make you feel ‘at home’ on the campus, to give you that comfortable sense of ‘belonging.’ ”[60]

If belonging to the Hillel community was not in and of itself attractive enough, the freshman issue also provides a “catalogue” of activities that Hillel offered the newly arrived freshman, including athletics; debating; dramatics; classes; the literary guild; Avukah, the campus Zionist organization; and Sunday school and Sunday services, among others[61] If neither the promise of community nor the social activities proved convincing, Hillel provided the enticing prospect of enjoying the company of big-name attractions. The freshman issue announced that it was sponsoring a welcome event for freshman on Sunday, September 23, and that “attempts are being made to secure ‘Benny’ Friedman, the former all-American quarterback, to give the feature address in the morning.”[62]

The mention of Benny Friedman, however, is the only reference to the football great and recent graduate and the only other mention of athletics outside of the aforementioned “catalogue.” In the remainder of the issue, Hillel bases its appeal to freshman on its identity as a center for intellectual and social activity. The paper touts that “Hillel Speaking Schedule Shows Imposing Array.” The lecture program of the fall 1928 semester advertises, among other things, the return visit of Lewis Browne, an author of a biography on Heinrich Heine, the famous German poet and writer of Jewish origin whose fiction “achieved wide appeal because of their popularization of religious themes.”[63] Moreover, a two-column article on the last page highlighted Hillel’s already large and growing library that comprised “the cream of Jewish publications” and featured some of the best modern Jewish writers, including Israel Zangwill, Louis Golding, Elias Tobenkin, Frederick Brown, and Grete Stern. Nonetheless, “the subject matter of the collection is far from being limited to Jewish affairs. Sociological problems of interest to youth of all creeds are treated in many volumes.”[64] Both the dramatic and the debating teams were being renewed “to a greater extent than last year, it is hoped.”[65] Fink himself intended to organize more discussion groups that, in the previous year, had “selected problems of the day, such as intermarriage and the assimilation, for discussion.”[66] Fink also intended to offer courses in biblical history and study and a possible third course in “contemporary Jewish affairs.”

Thus the fall 1928 freshman issue not only provides a helpful snapshot at the extent to which Hillel had developed as an organization in a mere two years but also shows the kind of identity that the Foundation sought to construct for itself. As the issue’s editorial indicates, this identity could contain contradictions, or at least, internal tensions. The editorial stresses Hillel’s easygoing social culture: “Informality is the order of the day at Hillel Foundation, at all times and under all circumstances. Whether he wishes to play bridge, make use of the library, dance, study or read, the student is welcome at any time the building is open, generally a good share of the daily twenty-four hours.”[67] Yet the editorial only features those activities that had an academic or religious purpose: “There are opportunities for practically every student to enter upon a field in which he or she is especially interested. Discussion groups and classes in Jewish history are conducted weekly. Friday night, Saturday and Sunday services are held weekly, and speakers of prominence are secured to deliver addresses at them occasionally. Open Forums are led by men and women of literary and religious note.” Indeed, it was only after this list that the editorial finally noted that “regular social events are held. Production of plays and the staging of recitals occupy a prominent place in the program.”[68] On the one hand, Hillel held out the promise of fun, socializing, and community, yet on the other hand, it also conveyed a sense of high cultural and intellectual aspirations that could seem at odds with the enticements of bridge-playing, dancing, or meeting stars like Benny Friedman.

Certainly both aspects of the Michigan chapter were evident in the next available issue of The Hillel News, that of November 8, 1928. The headline boldly announces a “mixer” for the upcoming Saturday featuring the entertainment of Mike Falk, “well known on this campus as a jazz artist, and connected with Seymour Simons of Detroit orchestra fame.”[69] Even so, the announcement is interesting for what it reveals about the social lives of Jewish women on the campus: “The [Social] Committee is carrying out a plan,” it announced, “to provide an escort for every Jewish girl on the campus. Escorts are not to act as partners after they reach the ballroom, however, for with the beginning of the dance it will become a strictly ‘stag’ affair.”[70] The women were seen to require chaperones, which was not unusual in this era but nonetheless reinforced their social subordination to the men. It was also clear that the event was not designed for “pairing up,” as it was a strictly a “stag” affair.

Almost the entire remainder of the November 8, 1928, issue is taken up with intellectual and cultural activities. Lewis Browne, a popularizer of Jewish history with several books to his credit, is announced as scheduled to speak on Wednesday, November 21, this being his third campus visit under the auspices of Hillel: “Many will remember his first book, ‘Stranger Than Fiction,’ in which he portrayed the history of the Jewish race in such an interesting and inimitable style that he has revolutionized the idea of writing history. It is to Mr. Browne, probably more than any other man, that the present day popularity and interest in Jewish events is due.”[71] Such hyperbole was obviously designed to attract interest in the event, but the fact that Hillel hosted Browne three times in two years suggests a desire on the organization’s part to attract students to its cultural initiatives by featuring a popular rather than an academic historian.

At the very least, this issue well shows that Hillel’s initiatives were in high gear by the second month of the fall term. Hillel’s Open Forum was featuring a talk by the University of Michigan history professor A. L. Cross, “and a large crowd of students is expected to take advantage to hear him.”[72] A sizeable audience had already turned out for the previous forum featuring Professor Robert Wenley of the Philosophy Department, who compared American and British educational systems. Sunday services had recently hosted Fred Bernstein, a Chicago attorney, Michigan alumnus, and chair of the Advisory Committee on the Hillel Foundations of B’nai B’rith. The committee “has direct charge of the Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois Hillel Foundations. Bernstein spoke on the aims and ideas of the B’nai B’rith with the purpose of acquainting his audience with the organization which is sponsoring Hillel.”[73]

Forging a sense of Hillel’s identity was clearly important to this still-new Michigan chapter. The November 8, 1928, issue of The Hillel News contains a second-page entry on “What’s What in Hillel” that describes the founding chapter at Illinois, which “blazed the trail which has since been followed in four other universities.”[74] Unlike Michigan, the Illinois chapter did not at this time have its own individual house but instead conducted its activities “on the entire second floor of a two-story building.” One of the leading lights of the Illinois chapter was, of course, its director, Abram L. Sachar, while Dr. Moses Jung offered instruction in religious education, and Morris Sostin was its associate director and a recent Illinois graduate: “As in Ann Arbor, the Illinois group works in cooperation with the local Jewish community, and the Foundation holds its religious services in the inviting temple of the local congregation.”[75] The Hillel News promised to feature foundations on other campuses in subsequent issues, promoting a sense of collective identity among the four different Hillel chapters that existed in the country at the time—all, as we know, centered in the Midwest.[76]

In another article of this issue of the paper, chapter pride took precedent. An article that announces the upcoming formation of the next Hillel debating society proudly proclaims that “the men chosen this year will have a high mark to shoot at, to approximate the success of the two previous Foundation teams. In the first of Hillel’s establishment at Michigan a trio including Ephraim Gomberg, Philip Krasner, and Emanuel Harris won a unanimous victory over the orators of the Illinois foundation,” while “last year Victor Rose and Samuel Kellman represented the Foundation, defeating the Menorah Society of Washington University at St. Louis.”[77]

Avukah, the campus Zionist organization, also sought to expand its activities. Members “decided to broaden the scope of the organization with the formation of an Avukah study group . . . Plans for the study group include a program of study on Jewish life since the emancipation period, leading up to political Zionism.”[78] As much as The Hillel News promoted all these initiatives as part and parcel of the Foundation’s growth, other pieces here show how Jewish students were struggling to adapt to University life and to prejudice as well. The editorial discusses the challenge that many students who followed Jewish dietary laws faced on campus, since they “must be served through some medium other than the ordinary campus eating house. And they are being served—to a very limited extent. But the question arises as to whether the facilities being provided in this direction are adequate and satisfactory.”[79] The editorial was likely provoked by a petition brought before the Hillel Student Council that asked for the establishment of a Jewish eating house that would use the requisite dietary laws of kashrut.[80] Interestingly, however, the editorial proffers no opinion as to whether such a house should be established, soliciting the advice of the readership: “The answer must come from the Jewish student body itself, from the people intimately concerned in the situation.”[81]

This seems strange given Hillel’s consistent and active promotion of Jewish culture and Jewish religious practices on campus. Perhaps there was a concern that a specifically Jewish eating house would be too divergent from many Jews’ desire to assimilate on campus; by pointing out the dietary specificities of the Jewish faith, they would risk appearing as “the Other.” Serving kosher food in a separate facility might have appeared “too Jewish” to some in the Hillel leadership—perhaps a tad too “in your face” for that era—quite possibly for good reason, given the level of anti-Semitism in southeastern Michigan and American society as a whole at this time.

Although the editorial doesn’t specifically mention this matter, another article on page 2, “The Spectator Comments,” takes a strongly assimilationist line by denying that there was a specific Jewish voting bloc in the presidential elections of the United States, which occurred that week: “The Jews in this country have pitched their tents in every political camp; and sailed under every political banner.”[82] Even though it is not directly spelled out in this issue of The Hillel News, the vexed choice between assimilation and cultural specificity—or negotiating some path between them—that beset all of Hillel’s existence is clearly implicit. Hillel was growing and devising new and exciting initiatives for its members, but did this help integrate them into the campus community or just reinforce a sense of separateness?

We jump ahead a month to the next extant issue of The Hillel News, that of December 6, 1928. On the very front page, we witness the complex terrain that the Foundation was navigating. On the one hand, Hillel was attempting to foster a specifically Jewish community that addressed its members’ concerns while also developing their appreciation for their heritage and culture. On the other hand, it was seeking to demonstrate how it was becoming an integral part of the broader Michigan campus community. This issue’s main front-page article announces, “National Figures to Speak at Sunday Student Services.” Hillel had lined up a slate of prominent rabbis from the Eastern United States and Canada during the academic year, the first of which—Rabbi Joseph Fink from the Buffalo, New York, congregation—was going to speak on “Problems Facing American Jewry.”[83] Two columns over, The Hillel News reports that the Dramatics Committee (which was later to develop into the famed Hillel Players) had selected two one-act plays for a December 19 performance: “The first,” the article reports, was “ ‘Greek,’ by Edward Heyman . . . a story of fraternities and sororities. It portrays the fraternity life on a campus, showing the complexities, trials and tribulations of fraternity men in a college situation.”[84]

Indeed, the December 6, 1928, issue consistently straddles items of specifically Jewish interest and those that demonstrate the Foundation’s wider cultural horizons. On pages 1 and 3, The Hillel News reports on a performance of Jewish folk songs and dramatic scenes from The Dybbuk and The Deluge by the Moscow Habimah Players as an occasion to introduce its readership to the term and institution Habimah, which surely was not known to most American Jews at the time.[85] Almost as a counterbalance, The Hillel News also featured a review of the opera Rainbow’s End, which appears to be more of a comic and music revue than an opera that debuted at the Whitney and was passing through Ann Arbor to places farther west.[86]

Yet what both sets of activities underscore is the broadening of Hillel’s range of programing and the widening of its aspirations. This issue’s editorial expressed both pride and confidence in the growth of the Foundation’s activities: “The semester,” it says, “has not yet come to its happy end, but already we can point with pride to a long list of unusually worthwhile programs which have been placed before the students. Nothing mediocre has been attempted. Every man appearing has been a leader in his field . . . And even at the risk of appearing over-enthusiastic we must note still further the events scheduled for the future, which include the appearance of Louis Untermeyer, American poet, and many well known leaders in the religious world.”[87] Moreover, the editorial even suggests that Hillel’s programming of high-cultural events was appealing to the broader student body, not just to Hillel’s membership: “There is a definite place for programs of this high type on the campus, for who knows but that these programs may be the reflection of an increased interest on the part of the student body in something finer than the weekly, or nightly movie.”[88]

Along with its evident pride in the chapter’s growing list of initiatives, this editorial, then, expresses a hope that Hillel’s lectures and activities—though tailored to its Jewish members—could have a broader appeal. This squaring of the circle, which suggested that Jewish culture and faith had a role to play outside of the Jewish community, was also the subject of a talk given by Dr. Julian Morganstern of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Although Jews had been forced into the ghettos of Europe since the fifteenth century, Morganstern argued that “modern Judaism today has a wonderful opportunity to regain a lost opportunity by becoming a leader in the coming religious revival which is facing the world.”[89] Morganstern claimed that the Protestant Reformation was “the direct result of the zealous work of the Jews in keeping the spark of knowledge alive.”[90] Consequently, Jews had a pivotal role to play in the forthcoming religious revival, as Morganstern saw it, given their intellectual and religious stewardship and the fact that, indeed, “the Jew has not only caught up religiously with the Christian, but is ahead of the Christian fifty years. He pointed to the Reformed Jewish religion as proof of this.”[91]

Another Hillel-sponsored speaker, the author Maurice Samuel, spoke about the possibility of ending racial prejudice.[92] What the articles in this issue reveal—as they oscillate between the editorial report on Hillel’s activities and the belief (or hope) that these initiatives, and Jewish culture more broadly, had a more universal appeal or import—is both a growing confidence in the organization and an anxiety, somewhat submerged here, about its place within the larger university community. The debate between assimilation and cultural assertiveness will sharpen many years later.

Unfortunately, we do not have any extant issues of The Hillel News until March 14, 1929. Yet this issue practically picks up where the last one left off. Indeed, Maurice Samuel, the Zionist author whose talk was featured in the November 6, 1928, issue, here appends “a letter to the Jewish college student” advocating for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.[93] What is remarkable about his appeal, however, is his reference to the impact of Jewish thought on non-Jews: “Non-Jews are fascinated (and sometimes irritated) by the enduring quality of the Jewish mind. They are aware that the Jews have produced greatly, there has been a search for the absolute.”[94] Samuel invokes the storied names of Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson as seekers of the absolute and states that the building of the Jewish community in Palestine represents the embodiment of this ontological ideal in concrete form. Again, Samuel seeks to situate a specifically Jewish (in this case, Zionist) program within a broader philosophical stream: “The Jewish will turn Palestine into an idea.”[95] This issue of The Hillel News also reports on that week’s guest speaker at the Sunday services, Rabbi Samuel Goldenson of the Rodef Shalom congregation in Pittsburgh. Goldenson does the opposite of Samuel: whereas Samuel posits the broader philosophical importance of Jewish thought, Goldenson seeks to ground an understanding of Western liberalism partly on the work of the Hebrew prophets: “He believes in religion as a social force,” the article reports, “his outlook being based essentially on the doctrines of social justice voiced by the ancient Hebrew prophets—a point of view colored, however, by a profound knowledge of the history of Western though from the time of the earliest Greek philosophers.”[96]

In both of these articles, we see the interplay between matters of largely Jewish concern (Jewish history, Zionism) and allusions to their influence among Gentiles and to broader strands of Western thought. Jews could, and should, pursue matters relevant to their faith without necessarily ghettoizing themselves. Indeed, in this spring 1929 issue, The Hillel News shows further how the Foundation was becoming more integrated within the campus community while, at the same time, promoting Jewish-centered cultural activities and celebrating their coreligionists’ academic success. Hillel sponsored its first booth at the annual Penny Carnival sponsored by the Women’s Athletic Association.[97] The Hillel Social Committee began to host open houses this year and, as another article reports, “Thursday afternoon found even a larger number of people visiting the Foundation, and the enthusiasm shown at these initial afternoon open houses indicates that they are to become the most popular function on the Hillel social program.”[98]

Even more impressively, the Hillel Foundation announces in another article that it was working with the University’s Intramural Department to initiate a new sports program where any athletically inclined student could enter a tournament of her or his choice: “Every student will have a wide field to choose from, with tournaments being held in basketball, baseball, handball, swimming, water polo, tennis, golf, foul shooting, bowling and horseshoes.”[99] Hillel was taking an especially active role in creating a baseball intramural league: “Independent and fraternity teams may enter the baseball tournament by getting in touch with the Foundation immediately. This league should draw at least thirteen Jewish fraternities, since that number have already signed up for the University intramural league.”[100]

As much as the Michigan chapter of Hillel sought to present itself as a valued member of the University community, it also championed its own membership and sought to develop ties with non-Hillel Jews. It boasted about the number of Jewish players on the University’s baseball team: “With baseball beginning to draw the attention of the campus, Gerson Reichman, Alfred Freeman, Charles Moyer, and Louis Weintraub are found among the strong-arm men fighting for places on the team. Reichman and Weintraub are practically sure of holding down the catching and third base positions regularly this season, while the other two are making good bids for their posts.”[101] The paper championed Jewish intellectual prowess as well: “The recent publication of the list of all ‘A’ students for last semester shows that eight Jewish students in the Literary School succeeded in maintaining their records for a whole term pure and unblemished by any common ‘B,’ ‘C,’ ‘D,’ or ‘E,’ by the use of the midnight oil or other forms of oil which have been known to work.”[102] But Jewish accomplishments were not limited to those on the Michigan campus: The Hillel News’s column “The Spectator Comments” also highlighted noteworthy achievements like the fact that “American Jews spent more than 235 million in 1928 for both sectarian and non-sectarian philanthropy” and that William Fox’s acquisition of Loews brought four hundred fifty movie theaters under his control[103] Finally, this issue promoted outreach efforts to encourage Hillel members to meet people in the greater Detroit Jewish community. The editorial encouraged members to participate in that year’s annual Student’s Day, “a sincere effort to foster a bond of interest and understanding between Jewish students at the University of Michigan and other educational institutions of the state, and members of the Detroit [Temple Beth El] congregation.”[104]

Occasionally, the different initiatives sponsored by Hillel could lead to some amusing contradictions. Thus on the front page of the March 28, 1929, issue of The Hillel News, we find a summary of Rabbi Goldenson’s talk on liberalism, which had been mentioned in the previous issue. During the talk, the rabbi denounced jazz, seeing in it “an overemphasis of that kind of liberal thinking which is at bottom cheap and false . . . It is a tendency for unnatural acceleration. Syncopation, another quality of jazz, and all those things which it has influence in the life of today, is ‘stunt,’ the desire to do the unusual, the bizarre, the irrational.”[105] Right above the rabbi’s comments, The Hillel News placed an announcement for an informal gig featuring Mike Falk’s local jazz combo, promising that “for four hours the crowd will ‘shake the blues away’ to the tuneful tooting of [Falk’s] ‘Gloom Chasers.’ ”[106]

Indeed, whereas the fall 1928 issues of The Hillel News focused largely on intellectual and religious events and had very little to do with sports or entertainment, by March 1929, the coverage was more evenly balanced. Although the paper dutifully reported on upcoming speakers, such as noted scientist Dr. Raphael Isaac’s lecture on similarities between modern and ancient Jewish thought for the Open Forum series, it is striking how much space had been ceded to sports and social activities in this late March 1929 issue. Not only was the spring mixer accorded a major headline, but throughout this issue of the paper, we get a stronger sense of Hillel’s social life than ever before. In the “On the Campus” column, for example, which had only been introduced that spring, we learn that “a number of Jewish students have played prominent parts in campus dramatics during the past few weeks” in a series of student-authored plays.[107] Pierce Rosenberg was elected to the campus dramatic society, known as Mimes, while Robert Gessner was one of only two seniors chosen to be a representative to the Northern Oratorical League contest in April. Jews were making their mark in athletics as well. Samuel Hart, for example, was the only member of the Michigan hockey team to make the All-Conference hockey team, while several Jewish swimmers were awarded letters.

The Foundation’s Social Committee was also making plans to set up a checker league so that “any Jewish student on the campus is eligible to pit his gray matter in this tournament against others in the learned art of jumping pieces from one end of a checkerboard to another.”[108] Meanwhile, “spring is in the air,” which meant that “bats are appearing on the streets, and Hillel is beginning the organization of a number of baseball leagues in line with its recently adopted athletic program.”[109] And for the third year in a row, members of the Phi Delta Epsilon fraternity won Hillel’s annual bridge tournament.[110]

Yet while the social activities were absorbing more print space in this issue, the editorial itself focused on intellectual matters. The Foundation had, in its first year, produced a literary supplement that had lasted only one issue. The supplement contained “interesting, and perhaps even literary drippings from the pens of Jewish student” and had “aroused some comment and might have been termed an auspicious beginning.”[111] Yet it quickly faded into obscurity. Now plans were afoot to resurrect the ghost and “make it a living magazine” whose purpose would be “to provide an opportunity for literary expression for Jewish students on the campus.”[112] Indeed, the editorial confidently predicted that there was a wealth of Jewish literary talent lying dormant, just waiting for something like the supplement to provide it with a means of expression: “There is a wealth of literary talent among the Jewish students at Michigan which might thrive if it could only be brought out of hiding.” It asserted: “And apparently the difficulty with the Supplement up to the present has been merely a combination of faulty methods of gathering the material and inertia on the part of the campus literary lights.”[113]

Despite the persistent upbeat rhetoric, The Hillel News occasionally opened a window onto some of the downsides of Jewish students’ lives in Ann Arbor. Such was the case in the editorial for the April 28, 1929, issue, which highlighted the perilous living conditions of Jewish students during the summer: “Anyone who has attended a summer school session at Michigan or lived in Ann Arbor during that period,” the editorial recounts, “is bound to realize that the Jewish summer school student’s life outside of class hours has something vital lacking. The picture of over a hundred Jewish students stranded for two months in a small town, with no way of meeting each other, no way of getting acquainted, no worthwhile way of spending their spare time, no chance of satisfying any religious wants they may have, should stir up some serious thought.”[114] The editorial argues that Hillel should remain open during the summertime to accommodate these stranded Jewish students. Although one could say that the editorial might overstate the problem to better argue its point, it does bring out how lonely many Jewish students felt on campus without the supporting organizations to give them a sense of integration within a broader community. Moreover, Hillel’s national/international news column, “The Spectator Comments,” reminded readers of the sobering reality of anti-Semitism that many Jews faced. Two hundred Jewish students at Montpelier University walked out on a visiting lecturer when his anti-Semitic activities were made known to the campus. Yet, hearteningly, the item also mentions that “non-Jewish fellow students filed out of the hall when they learned the reason for the Jewish students’ departure.”[115] Elizabeth Simon, a Hungarian Jewish girl chosen as “Miss Europe” to represent Europe at the Galveston, Texas, International Beauty Contest, withdrew due to the “disagreeable Anti-Semitic outbursts to which she had been subjected since she was chosen.”[116] More troublingly, an edict in Yemen required all Jewish children to embrace Islam on pain of death; this conversion policy “is being pursued with almost incredible vigor and cruelty.”[117] Although these isolated items in and of themselves should not be taken as indicators of a rising tide of anti-Semitism, they did remind readers of The Hillel News that, beyond the leafy confines of Ann Arbor, prejudice and bigotry still abounded.

Otherwise, the April 28, 1929, issue follows in the same vein as its predecessor, striking a balance between the intellectual and high-cultural activities organized or sponsored by the Foundation, with more causal pieces reflecting Jewish students’ social lives and their accomplishments on campus. This issue of the paper introduced a new column, “Off the Campus,” to serve as a companion for its “On the Campus” feature. Whereas “On the Campus” focused on noteworthy items involving Michigan’s Hillel members, “Off the Campus” reported on issues from all the different sister Hillel chapters. The purpose was not only to keep readers informed but also to foster a shared sense of identity and community across the different foundations. Almost all the news items were social, rather than religious or intellectual, in nature. Thus we learn that at the Illinois foundation, “Vaudeville is being introduced as a part of Hillel entertainment programs . . . Several hundred students were entertained by a series of singing, dancing and comedy skits, which was sponsored by the Hillel Players.”[118] Wisconsin’s Hillel also had its own Hillel Players, which was “one of the most active organizations in the Wisconsin Foundation.”[119] By this point, Michigan Hillel had organized its own Hillel Players, whose members were preparing for an early May production at the Masonic Auditorium at Fourth and William in Ann Arbor.[120]

The April 28, 1929, issue of The Hillel News also listed many accomplishments of the Michigan Hillel’s women members. Dorothy Touff was celebrated for her election to “one of the highest offices held by women on the campus” as president of the Women’s Athletic Association, while thirteen freshman women “received recognition for their ability to pull down A’s and B’s by election to Alpha Lambda Delta.”[121] We also learn from another article that Hillel’s open houses continue to be warmly received: “Weekly, more students are learning of this delightful way to kill an afternoon and are dropping in for a cup of tea, a game of bridge, a chat, or what have you.”[122] Meanwhile, Hillel’s first handball tournament was “added for the first time to the list of sports sponsored by the Foundation.”[123] The Handball League “has drawn considerable attention and attracted a formidable list of entries.”[124] The only real sour note in this scherzo of upbeat social news was the failure of Michigan Hillel to beat the Wisconsin foundation in the annual debating contest.[125]

As Michigan Hillel neared the end of its third year, the articles in The Hillel News confidently championed the chapter’s growth and recognized that social life (sports, fraternities, clubs) played as much a role in this growth—and how the chapter defined itself—as its religious and cultural programming. Thus the April 28, 1929, issue could, on the same page, describe an upcoming Open Forum talk by Rabbi Solomon Freehof on the question of liberalism in religious faith and note a forthcoming banquet to entertain Hillel workers, where “extreme informality will mark the entire event, with any seriousness to be frowned upon with the same disfavor as an unwelcome mother-in-law.”[126] Wisecracking and merrymaking could lie adjacent to sober philosophical and political topics. But perhaps the best indication of the chapter’s aspirations was a little blurb published halfway down the front page, “Hillel Questionnaire on Jewish Background Sent Out to Students.” The questionnaire was transmitted seemingly on the orders of the University of Michigan Hillel’s director, Rabbi Fink, to find out “what the student really believes and to discover, if possible, whether there is any correlation between present beliefs and past training.”[127] In essence, Hillel was now seeking to move beyond simply appealing to the whole of the Jewish student body on Michigan’s campus and was actively interested—though tentatively, it must be said—in collecting data on Jewish students as well; in other words, it was trying to learn important facts about Hillel’s clientele.

The questionnaire did arouse “considerable controversy” according to an article in the May 1, 1929, issue of The Hillel News.[128] And although the article reports a high level of compliance, it also took pains to limit the importance of the survey: “The study is being made merely to learn the true religious status of students in a large, typical mid-western university,” it argues, while Rabbi Fink avers that it “ ‘is a scientific sociological survey to make whatever correlation that may be found between the religious background of the student and the present state of his interests.’ ”[129] Whatever the intended purposes of the survey were—and we have not located any surviving material beyond these articles about them—its ambition to cover the University of Michigan’s entire Jewish student population of the time was clearly ambitious. That this Hillel-initiated study attained a 75 percent participation rate from the Jewish fraternities and sororities at Michigan underscores Michigan Hillel’s growing confidence in itself as an organization that claimed (and hoped) to represent all Jews on campus. These and similar ambitions were articulated at the Inter-Hillel Convention in Chicago in mid-April.[130] Among the plans for the 1929–­30 academic year were the establishment of a national Hillel magazine (a quarterly) that was to feature student contributions, an inter-Hillel oratorical contest, and a national Hillel society comprising the presidents of the different campus foundations. Once again, news items sought to show both how Jews were becoming more integrated into campus life and how they involved themselves in outreach activities. “The Spectator Comments” column reported that an intercollegiate goodwill conference was held at Rollins College in Florida and that “more than 300 students and faculty members of Southern colleges including Catholics, Protestants, and Jews met to discuss means of bringing about better relationships and understanding between members of the several religious faiths.”[131] One speaker was Rabbi Solomon Goldman, a member of the national Hillel Foundation Commission.[132] Michigan Hillel’s director, Rabbi Fink—himself engaged in his own outreach activities—was presiding over a Passover Seder for Jewish prisoners at Jackson Prison, about thirty-five miles west of Ann Arbor.[133] This issue of The Hillel News also duly reported the doings in Michigan Hillel’s sister foundations but substituted its own “On the Campus” column this time for an article on Passover and its historical background.

Yet the main subject of the final two issues of The Hillel News for the 1928–­29 academic year was the election for president of the Michigan Hillel Foundation. Three candidates were on the ballot: Philip Stern, a junior in the Literary College and chairman of the Educational Committee; Byron Novitsky, a sophomore in the Literary College and the Foundation’s publicity manager; and Morris Zwerdling, a graduating senior from the Literary College who was entering Michigan’s Law School in the fall.[134] Not only was Zwerdling the most senior of the candidates; he was also the scion of a prominent Jewish family in Ann Arbor. His father, Osias Zwerdling (1878–­1977), founded a furrier store in the city in 1904 and became a significant patron of Hillel, helping organize the funding for their buildings well into the post–­World War II era.[135] As we mention later in our book with a bit more detail, Osias Zwerdling also became the founder of the Beth Israel Congregation, Ann Arbor’s oldest organized community of worship, which celebrated its centennial in 2016. The Hillel News’s editorial reminded its readers that while B’nai B’rith had provided a Hillel with a building and a director, “it is up to the student body to provide its own leader, and that leader can make or break the show . . . Hillel’s president is its vital spark. As part of the student body he is the Foundation leader closest to the group.”[136] Given his senior status and his family’s prominence in the Ann Arbor Jewish community, it was perhaps unsurprising that Zwerdling was elected president for the 1929–­30 academic year.[137] Along with congratulating the outgoing president, Richard Meyer, The Hillel News’s editorial for the week of May 16, 1929, bestowed its fullest confidence on Zwerdling: “That that confidence was not misplaced, he will undoubtedly prove next year.”[138]

As the 1928–­29 academic year started to wind down, the final issues of The Hillel News revealed an organization that had great expectations for future growth and was increasingly adept at staging numerous activities that sought both to foster a strong sense of Jewish identity and community and to integrate within the broader Michigan campus culture. The May 1, 1929, issue confidently advised readers to “Expect Packed House for Hillel Presentation of ‘Kempy’ at Masonic Temple on Wednesday.” Using an unabashed amount of promotional hyperbole, this article describes the Hillel Players’ upcoming production thus: “ ‘Kempy’ gives promise of making Hillel dramatic history and of setting a new landmark for future productions to point at.”[139] Perhaps surprisingly, the subsequent issue of The Hillel News gave the production a middling review, praising some of the student actors, calling others disappointing, and concluding with a not especially ringing endorsement: “The [Hillel Players] Committee is to be congratulated for the smoothness of the performance and the evident attention to details.”[140] The other big development at the end of the 1928–­29 year was Avukah, which sponsored a symposium in early May and hosted a national Avukah meeting in Ann Arbor in late June. The May symposium sought to crystallize student opinions on the topic of “Judaism as I See It” in an open forum led by “five prominent Jewish students on the campus,” including Richard Meyer, the outgoing Hillel president.[141]

As the following issue of The Hillel News recounts, much of the discussion at the May symposium was on how Jewish students saw Judaism differently and the role it played in the construction of their identity.[142] For Meyer, his Jewish identity was simply a fact of his existence: “ ‘There is nothing intrinsic or inherent in Judaism. I am a Jew because my environment has been Jewish, and because the Gentiles won’t let me be a Gentile. I don’t think there is anything in Judaism which would make me be a Jew if I were not brought up as one.’ ”[143] For David Cohen, vice president of Michigan Avukah, Judaism was both religious and nationalist: “I began to see that the Orthodox faith was the greatest nationalizing and unifying force for Jews. By professing Orthodoxy I am steadily reminding myself and others that there does exist a Jewish religion, and that there is a national aspect to Judaism.”[144] The final speaker, a junior named Isaac Hoffman, connected Jewish mysticism with a profound sense of realism: “Jewish mysticism as expressed by the old Orthodox Hassids in the Talmud and elsewhere is a desire to accept this world and to appreciate it fully—to beautify it.”[145]

The national Avukah meeting, scheduled for the end of June, had an even broader agenda. The meeting was to take up three important issues: “(1) the Palestine project to be undertaken by Avukah, (2) a cultural program based on Jewish life in Palestine today, and (3) a Zionist publication program.”[146] This article also serves as something of an introduction to Avukah, describing its mission as “the awakening among the American Jewish youth of a Jewish national consciousness which should be filled with intelligent meaning and which should be a vital spiritual experience. It postulates the philosophy that Jewish nationalism is a way of life, which should be intelligently understood and lived wherever Jews are found.”[147] Avukah, moreover, “has steadily grown until now there are about twenty more or less active chapters, representing about forty colleges and universities.”[148]

Along with the typical congratulatory messages about Jewish students’ achievements and Hillel activities in the “On the Campus” and “Off the Campus” columns, articles on the Hillel Players and Avukah are written in a tone of confident anticipation. One clearly gets a sense that these fledging organizations are growing and on the cusp of greater things. Yet the final extant editorial of the 1928–­29 academic year returns to the plight of the Jewish summer school student to lobby for a year-round Hillel operation.[149] Again, the emphasis is on the Jewish student’s loneliness and sense of isolation, the very thing that Hillel strove to avoid at all cost—indeed, the very reason for Hillel’s existence and raison d’être. The article describes “more than a hundred Jewish students suddenly set down in a small town to spend eight long weeks living their own lives, with small chance for Jewish companionship of any sort.”[150]

Because the social life of summer school students is not taken into consideration by the powers that be, the article paints a dire picture of Jewish students stranded in a Midwestern college town without any access to companionship: “What are those more than one hundred Jewish students to do with it [spare time], with their only meeting places closed to them? Live eight weeks in the joy of their own companionship? Drown their Jewishness in eight weeks of isolation from everything and everyone Jewish?”[151] The implication of this argument is stark: however much Jewish life had developed at the University of Michigan by then, Jews remained a distinct minority of the greater Ann Arbor population. Consequently, the cultivation of Jewish student life in Ann Arbor was strictly a fall through winter affair. By keeping Hillel open over the summer months, the Foundation would become “a center from which the Jewish student’s social life, his spare time activity may radiate during the eight weeks he is stranded in Ann Arbor.”[152] According to the editorial, the initial proposal generated a considerable degree of interest among a number of students, “and queries have been many as to the possibility of carrying out such a project.”[153]

The 1928–­29 academic year, then, witnessed Hillel’s growing presence as a member of the broader campus community with the organization of the Hillel Players, with its involvement in intramural sports, and its proliferating social activities. Of course the Foundation furthered its mission to provide a sense of community and intellectual growth to the Jewish students that it served. Behind the often-confident tone of many of these articles, however, there still remained a sense—even if only indirectly stated—that no matter how things were improving for Jews at the University of Michigan, they still were outsiders in the University’s community, never mind Ann Arbor’s. One can experience this in Hillel president Richard Meyer’s comment that Gentiles won’t let him be a Gentile, in The Hillel News’s advocacy for a year-round Hillel to support the Jewish summer student “stranded” in Ann Arbor, and in the reports of anti-Semitism’s national presence (though not at the University of Michigan). Nonetheless, the overall impression produced by The Hillel News articles from 1928 to 29 is that this was a happy time for Hillel: its members enjoyed the luxury of being part of a growing organization, new initiatives and activities were constantly introduced to extend students’ opportunities for participating in the cultural life of the Foundation, and the roster of invited speakers and guests provided a steady dialogue on Jewish history and Jewish identity for those who wished to partake of them. Like the University of Michigan as a whole, and like campuses nationwide, Hillel in 1928–­29 basked in the autumnal glow of the final year before the Depression hit and began to upend many of its members’ aspirations—both for Hillel and for their own college careers.

Commencing the academic year 1929–­30, the October 3, 1929, issue of The Hillel News features articles that address all the areas that we in this study have deemed central to Hillel’s identity and existence. Thus, in his welcoming address of the class of 1933, Rabbi Adolph H. Fink, Michigan Hillel’s first director, addresses a crucial issue that was to remain central for Hillel throughout our considered time period: students’ Jewish identities. He exhorted the incoming freshmen “not to emphasize their Jewish activities to the exclusion of campus activities, nor, on the other hand, to avoid all things Jewish.”[154] This balancing act between the Scylla of ghettoization on the one hand and the Charybdis of assimilation on the other has remained perhaps the most salient topic for American Jews to this day. In an editorial entitled “Mixing,” the paper makes it clear that Hillel wants Jewish students to experience their Jewishness in a social way among others. In fact, the editorial uses the mixer to highlight the essence of Hillel: “The purpose of the Mixer is the purpose of the Foundation—to bring the Jewish students at Michigan together on a social basis. Of course, the Foundation is more than a social meeting house, but it represents social equality based on the strength of social bonds, a common race and religion.”[155] An adjacent editorial entitled “Avukah” (Hebrew word for “torch”) explains the goals and purpose of this Zionist organization, using the very term to shed light “amidst the chaos and darkness of American Jewish life.” Avukah assures the students that “its idea of Zionism is not, however, limited by Palestinism. It sees in Zionism revitalizing of Jewish life.”[156]

The subsequent issue of The Hillel News of October 17, 1929, features two very interesting items. The first, entitled “Christian and Jew,” is a verbatim reprint from the University of Wisconsin’s Hillel Review. The text is a review of a “Symposium for Better Understanding” entitled Christian and Jew and edited by Isaac Landman.[157] We learn that “most of the Christian writers seem quite conscious of the fact that most of the readers will be Jewish. Many of them, therefore, seem to be afraid of expressing themselves freely. Thus, many limit their essays to abstract discussions of liberty, tolerance, inter-dependence of human beings, and the forces that are drawing human beings together. Many of the Jewish writers rehash the causes of anti-Semitism. Here are some of the more outstanding ideas presented in the symposium. John Erskine seems to think that anti-Semitism is negligible in the schools and colleges. As a former professor at Columbia University, he might be expected to know better. Columbia has been called the home of the ‘intellectual pogrom’ . . . Elmer Davis opposes what there is of Jewish solidarity. He favors assimilation placing most of the responsibility of making changes upon the Jew. Zona Gale, charming liberal that she is, starts out in an even more charming way by saying ‘I am singularly ill-equipped to write on radical prejudice, for I have none and, moreover, I cannot get the point of view of those who have . . . Channing Pollock calls the Jews too self-conscious, too sensitive to criticism. He believes that the results of the prejudice against the Jew in America is negligible.’ ”[158] This symposium clearly addressed questions that were central to Hillel from its very beginning and were featured throughout the duration of our study and, of course, well beyond into our contemporary period: how much anti-Semitism existed in America, what were its reasons, who were its main carriers, and what, if any, remedies leading at least to its weakening, if not complete eradication, existed? It is not quite clear why the University of Michigan’s Hillel found this particular Wisconsin review such an important voice on this topic to reprint it word for word. But we would repeatedly encounter the themes that emerged in this symposium, including the idea that Columbia University’s anti-Semitism must have been most pronounced because, as we will later see in our book, a study of how Jewish students viewed their environment at a large number of American universities published in 1939 placed Columbia in the “severely anti-Semitic” category, the study’s worst. Thus being known as the home of the “intellectual pogrom” may sound a tad harsh to us today but seems to have had a solid grounding at the time.

The second noteworthy item in this issue of The Hillel News appears in “The Spectator Comments” rubric under the title “The Future of American Judaism—A Contest.”[159] This is an announcement of a writing competition financed by Julius Rosenwald of Chicago in which prizes up to $1,500 could be won for fifteen- to thirty-five-thousand-word essays responding to the following prompt: “For the fullest spiritual development of the individual Jew and the most effective functioning of the Jewish Community in America, how can Jewish life best adjust itself to and influence modern life with respect to (a) beliefs and theories; (b) institutions; the home, the synagogue, the school and other communal agencies; and (c) Jewish education: for the child, the youth and adult?”[160] The deadline was December 31, 1930! On a lighter note, we also read that a “Hillel Mixer Introduces Charming Jewish Co-Eds to Michigan Campus.”[161]

In the October 24 issue of The Hillel News, we encounter a congratulatory editorial honoring Alfred M. Cohen’s seventieth birthday. Attentive readers will recognize him as one of the founders of Hillel. By becoming president of B’nai B’rith in 1925, Cohen had “an opportunity to forward the work of the Hillel Foundation, which his keen mind realized as an organization sorely needed and destined for great success on the American campus.”[162] We are also informed that “the current issue of the B’nai B’rith magazine contains the story of the work of the past year at the four oldest Foundations. The article entitled ‘Looking Back on Hillel,’ is written by the Foundations heads. Dr. Sachar of Illinois, Rabbi Landman of Wisconsin, Rabbi Levinger at Ohio State, and our own Rabbi Fink. The composite story reveals a very successful year in all divisions of Hillel work, religious, dramatic, social, and cultural, with Michigan ably holding its own.”[163] And, of course, the Hillel Library welcomed new books by authors such as Walter Lippman, Lion Feuchtwanger, I. L. Peretz, Sholom Alehem, and Max Brod, to name just a few.

The Hillel News of November 21, 1929, informs us that Lewis Browne, famous Jewish writer and lecturer “and one of the outstanding of the modern biographers,” spoke to Michigan students on the topic of “Credulous America.”[164] Born in London, Browne was the author of two “lucid books” on religion, Stranger than Fiction and The Believing World. We mentioned the former’s content previously. A captivating speaker who addressed capacity crowds on his two previous visits to the University of Michigan campus, Browne was a particularly interesting person in that he was an ordained rabbi who had become estranged from the rabbinate and resigned from it, yet he remained very committed to Jewish concerns.[165] In addition to Browne, the Episcopalian Dr. Frank Gavin discussed the relationship between Judaism and Christianity under the combined auspices of the Hillel Foundation and the St. Andrews Episcopal Church: “Mr. Gavin has been vitally interested in things Jewish all his life. He is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and while taking his degree there, attended classes at Hebrew Union College, a Reform Jewish Theological Seminary.”[166] The long editorial entitled “Everything to Gain” is one of the many attempts by Hillel to tout its advantages in terms of being a fine social environment of succor and hearth—not only a great purveyor of culture but also a discoverer of hidden talents. At Hillel, “out of the dark recesses of the unknown appear debaters of merit, committee workers, athletes, journalists, dancers, musicians and what nots. The unfortunate side of the matter resides in the fact that not enough of this hidden talent is uncovered so that its potentialities may be employed for advancement of the interests of the Jewish group at the University . . . For the college man and woman here it means a chance for physical, mental and moral broadening, of a nature which the University cannot and does not attempt to provide. Why not try your hand at Hillel work? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”[167] Yet another attempt to market Hillel to all Jewish students on campus! We encountered many such efforts in the course of our work. On a lighter note, we are informed that a Foundation basketball tournament involving fifteen teams was about to commence[168]

In The Hillel News of November 27, 1929, Hillel’s outreach to organizations of other faiths features prominently. Thus we learn that on Thanksgiving Day, Rabbi Fink, Hillel’s director, was to participate in the Baptist Church in a communal service featuring him and the church’s minister, with the sermon delivered by the minister of the Presbyterian Church in town. In an editorial on page 2, we learn of the extant and long-lasting tension between Hillel and the Jewish fraternities at the University of Michigan, another recurring theme throughout our study. At the core of this is Hillel’s worry that its mission on campus remains hampered not so much by an antipathy toward the Foundation on the part of Jewish students but rather by a clear indifference and disinterestedness relating to Hillel’s activities, even its existence. For it was “this very thought which was in the back of the Heads of the Foundation founders in the country. The terrible realization that Jewish students were disinterested in things Jewish was the spur which pricked their imaginations and caused them to establish Jewish focal points at American colleges.”[169] In some way, Hillel’s activists viewed Jewish fraternities as major culprits in perpetuating this apathy on the part of Jewish students.

On page 3 of this issue, we encounter two articles characterizing the contradictory role of women in Hillel, Jewish life, the University of Michigan, and American society as a whole. On the one hand, we read a short article on the planning of a women’s party headlined by “Plans Are Maturing for Hillel Hen Party” in which the “girls” are asked to “underline December 12 on your date calendars and tell the men you’ll be too happy to see them some other night.”[170] Right next to this is an announcement that Florence Frankel “will lead a discussion of Achad Ha’am’s first three essays” in the Achad Ha’am study group, which “carries on all its discussions in modern Hebrew.”[171] The paper from January 23, 1930, featured an article on the expansion of the Hillel Basketball League, which would be composed of “two divisions with a like number of teams in each . . . The members of the championship team will receive gold basketballs awarded by the Hillel Foundation.”[172] This issue of The Hillel News was the first in a number that touted the fifth anniversary of the Hebrew University’s founding in Jerusalem, which was to be celebrated in April 1930: “The Hillel Foundation, we understand, will employ the occasion to bring the work of the University to the attention of students at Michigan.”[173]

Ecumenical themes feature in the December 5, 1929, issue of The Hillel News. Dr. Gavin’s forthcoming lecture, already mentioned in The Hillel News of November 21, receives front-page prominence with a much more detailed account of Dr. Gavin’s expertise in the subject of Christian-Jewish relations.[174] We are informed that Dr. Gavin holds doctorates from Harvard and Columbia in addition to his aforementioned education both at the University of Cincinnati and at that city’s Hebrew Union College. His lecture entitled “The Jewish Background of Early Christianity” featured an issue that has proved sensitive to both Christians and Jews over the ages. In an editorial called “Good Will,” the text reads: “Probably the first Good Will banquet ever held on such a large scale in an American university will be given under the sponsorship of the Michigan Union, Wednesday evening, December 18. The various members of the three main religions, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism, will mingle at the dining table in an effort to perpetuate the friendly feelings between [sic] the three groups. The Union is sponsor of the banquet and invites all students, faculty members, and townspeople to participate . . . President Ruthven, the main speaker of the evening, will be making his first appearance before a large cosmopolitan group of students since he entered upon the presidency of the University this fall . . . Father Babcock of the Catholic Church, Rabbi Fink of the Hillel Foundation and a Protestant minister will officially bridge the gap between [sic] the various religions in interesting talks.”[175] This was a coming-out of sorts for President Alexander Ruthven, whom we will encounter on numerous occasions throughout our study. Tellingly, it was in connection with a theme that remained dear to Ruthven’s heart throughout his presidency at the University of Michigan and that formed his overall vision for constituting the proper character that a university of Michigan’s caliber and stature required as guidance of its educational mission and rule of its ethical principle—namely, the understanding and collaboration among the three great religions of Western civilization: Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism.

Continuing with the ecumenical and interreligious theme of this issue of The Hillel News, we also learn that “representatives of all denominations, gathered together in this first general Thanksgiving convocation, were led in prayer by the various directors of spiritual activity on the campus including Rabbi A. H. Fink, Rev. Merle H. Anderson of the Presbyterian church, and the Rev. R. Edward Saules of the Baptist church.”[176] The paper also announced that on November 24, Justice Louis D. Brandeis had broken “the silence he had maintained for thirteen years regarding Zionism” by committing himself wholeheartedly to this idea and movement in a keynote address that he delivered at the Hotel Mayflower in Washington, DC[177]

The theme of ecumenicalism spilled over into the last issue of The Hillel News preceding the Christmas holiday. We are informed on the front page of the December 12, 1929, edition of the paper that a “Campus Good Will Banquet” was planned by the Michigan Union.[178] “In the same spirit that prompted the communal Thanksgiving services, the Michigan Union is standing sponsor to a Good Will banquet, Tuesday, December 17 at 6:15 PM in the Michigan Union Ballroom.”[179] Once again, the speakers announced were President Alexander Ruthven, the three aforementioned representatives of the three major denominations, and also Mayor Edward W. Staebler who was going to address the assembled representing the city of Ann Arbor.[180]

In the editorial called “Campus Opinion,” we once again bear witness to the complexity of the dating issue that clearly beset Hillel at this time. A rarely signed editorial, in this case by initials J. H. S., argues that closing the doors to those who do not wish to “date” on open house nights “defeats the purpose for which they were established. The Open House, as its very name implies, is an event to which everyone interested should be cordially invited. Its purpose ought to be that of providing social contacts for all who desire them. The Open House affairs should endeavor particularly to provide a congenial group for the formation of new friendships. They should be mixers where the more reticent individuals can be induced to meet others, and push out of the shell of shyness which deprives them of social enjoyment. Unless the Hillel Open House can achieve these things, they are of little use.”[181] Juxtaposing this opinion seems to be the Federation’s official line, which apparently only admitted students with “dates” to attend these open house events: “It is undoubtedly true that the ‘date’ affairs have proved very enjoyable to those who have put in an appearance the past few Sundays. It is also true that the stag affairs have brought a preponderance of men.”[182] Once again, however, we see Hillel’s sensitivity to this matter by “throwing open” the pages of The Hillel News for discussing this issue so “that a complete and representative opinion may be reached.”[183]

On page 4 of this issue of the paper, we are treated to a particularly edgy subject that the aforementioned Dr. Frank Gavin raised openly in his lecture. The speaker “created a furor by an expose of the discrimination practiced by medical schools in the East. Dr. Gavin made a complete investigation of the number of Jewish students who were allowed to enter these schools and found that scores were kept out solely because they were Jews. The total number admitted to these schools, he found, is very small. He revealed that many Jewish students were forced to go abroad each year to study medicine because of this discrimination. A Jewish student is forced to apply to about five medical schools to obtain entrance in contrast to the one or two schools to which Christian students apply, the minister reported. Dr. Gavin made this report to the Good-Will Committee of the Federal Council of Churches in New York.”[184] As is well known, and as we will demonstrate in our further work on Jews at the University of Michigan (which is to appear in late 2017 or early 2018), such blatant discrimination was not contained to the country’s East Coast and was common to all its regions, the Midwest included. Indeed, the University of Michigan’s medical school also partook in this discriminatory practice.

The ecumenical activities continued into 1930. The January 16 issue of The Hillel News informs us that Rabbi Fink addressed the Women’s Alliance of the Unitarian Church on the subject of “Chassidism” on January 10.[185] Even in the themes of plays picked by the Hillel Players we can detect an ecumenical bent. Indeed, the next play that the Players were going to perform had nothing Jewish about it and was deeply anchored in eighteenth-century Catholicism, demonstrating the wide intellectual reach of this troupe and, at least indirectly, of the Hillel Foundation itself: “More than fifty students responded to the call for tryouts for the next Hillel Players production, Caponsacchi, a three-act drama . . . set in the eighteenth century and centered around an affair in which the monk, Caponsacchi, and the wife of an Italian layman of Rome become entangled.”[186] We also learn in this issue that Rabbi Fink and “Reverend Harris, Director of Harris Hall and one of the rectors of St. Andrews Episcopal Church” formed a group of Jewish and Episcopal students “to study the always interesting subject of Judaism and Christianity. The subject of Jewish-Gentile relations is now one of the most important problems facing America today and according to Rabbi Fink it can be solved ‘and good will made a reality only through knowledge’ first of your own religion and then the religion of others.”[187] There were going to be twelve weekly meetings throughout the coming term lasting into the first week of May. Under the headline “A Gesture of Good Will,” this issue of the paper offered an editorial supporting this interfaith activity wholeheartedly: “This very novel idea is probably the first constructive attempt on the Michigan campus to bring Jews and Gentiles together distinctly for the purpose of seeing their common intellectual and religious heritage.”[188]

Religion remains the theme in the ensuing editorial. Under the headline “Religious Hillel,” the paper feels the necessity to tout Hillel as a religious organization as well. In Hillel’s quest to become a social and cultural big-tent gathering place for all Jewish students on campus, there emerged the concern that to some Jewish students, the Foundation may have come to deemphasize—not to say diminish or neglect—the religious aspects of Jewish life. It was time to tout Hillel’s contributions to Jewish religion on the Michigan campus and to recenter that aspect of the Foundation’s image and mission in addition to its intellectual, cultural, and social ones: “It is easy to over-look the religious side of Hillel if one becomes overwhelmed by other interests. But religiously Hillel is doing big things. Friday and Sunday services, orthodox and reform respectively, are held weekly; every afternoon a Kiddush service is given at the Foundation and on the high holy days appropriate services are conducted. Rabbi Fink, visiting rabbis, and ministers as well as student speakers address these congregations. It is encouraging to see that a number of Hillelites make it a regular practice to attend services. The number is slowly but steadily increasing as students come to realize that Hillel offers them spiritual opportunities in addition to the social and intellectual ones which it sponsors. The college age it has often been said, is the age in which to form habits. Jewish students on campus should use the Hillel services to form those religious habits which will give them the fullest spiritual development in later life.”[189]

The Hillel News from February 20, 1930, also includes plenty of articles on all the aforementioned areas of interest, excepting that of women. Thus the front page of the publication announces, “Offering Jewish students an opportunity to meet Dr. Alexander Ruthven, President of the University, the educational committee has arranged for an informal luncheon to be held at the Michigan Union Women’s dining room, Thursday noon, February 27.”[190] On the same page, we are also informed that James Waterman Wise, son of the famous Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and “famous critic and poet” Untermeyer will come to Ann Arbor on March 6 and 10, respectively, to present lectures to Hillelites. Lastly, the paper announces that “plans [are] complete for couple dance to be held March 1.”[191]

On page 2, we encounter an editorial that opines that entering Michigan in the second semester is particularly difficult and much harder than in the first semester. It announces that Michigan Hillel Foundation Director Rabbi Adolph H. Fink will speak to such second-semester entrants to the University about adjustment problems and how best to overcome them. On the same page, we also note that a joint Jewish and Gentile religious study group organized by Rabbi Fink and Reverend Thomas Harris “to study the history of Judaism and Christianity in their relation to each other” will hold its first meeting of the semester on Wednesday at the Hillel Foundation.[192] Lastly, on page 4, the newspaper announces that the Hillel debaters will clash with their counterparts from the University of Illinois in Detroit at Temple Beth El and that the bridge contest attracts a large list of entries.[193]

In the very next issue, there appears a complaint voicing Hillel’s disappointment regarding the lack of participation by the Jewish fraternities in writing something for a newly instituted venue in the paper called “On the Campus”: “An attempt has been made to secure for this column all available information about activities of Jewish students on campus. Every fraternity was notified of the existence of this column and numerous solicitations of news were attempted but results were discouraging.”[194] The tension caused by Hillel’s intellectual and educational mandate and its disdain for the fraternities’ mainly social role on campus is best expressed by the following sentiment in this piece: “Accomplishments in University circles rather than trivial social items or personals are the type of material desired. There will be no guarantee of publication of any articles submitted but everything deemed worthy will be printed.”[195] The conflict between Hillel’s self-perception and its assessment of fraternities could not be expressed in any clearer manner. Here we have evidence of an interesting unsolved intra-Hillel tension regarding the Federation’s relationship to Jewish fraternities. While on the one hand, Hillel saw its mission very much as a social one—in other words, as an organization offering Jewish students the opportunity to thrive communally in a place in which they feel comfortable and can live and express their Jewish identity in whatever manner they so choose—on the other hand, Hillel somehow found the social dimension of the fraternities shallow and, in a way, not sufficiently Jewish.

In an editorial entitled “Your Move!” Hillel implores freshmen in particular to join the various committees (educational, social welfare, social, publication, among others) of the Foundation that plan its life on campus. The paper once again announces President Ruthven’s forthcoming address to students at the luncheon.[196]

The ensuing issue of the paper features a front-page article on the Hillel Players, a drama group that was to be featured in many an issue of The Hillel News and of which Hillel remained clearly proud. Many of this group’s performances, just like in this case, occurred in the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, a prime and coveted venue on campus for plays, musicals, operettas, and operas to this day. The Hillel Players surely were among the most effective campus-wide ambassadors for Hillel’s presence at the University. They were completely unique among campus organizations in that they were the only drama group that was entirely student run and directed. Each academic year, they presented one major production that was either student written or authored by a well-known playwright and already successfully performed on stages in New York, Chicago, and/or Detroit. Often the Hillel Players’ performances featured socially significant themes. They performed mainly at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, almost always in March or April.

The Hillel News of March 6, 1930, features a fascinating article under the headline “Ruthven Urges Loyalty at Hillel Luncheon” that recounts how the president inveighed against the malicious gossip about Michigan, “which is seized eagerly by newspapers everywhere,” and exhorts the students not to accept this gossip as truth and to “condemn the administration without an adequate knowledge.”[197] The editorial, appearing most often on page 2 of the paper, is devoted solely to Hillel’s forming the aforementioned Religious Committee to deal with the obviously contentious matter as to how much and what kind of religious activities should be featured in Hillel. From the editorial’s text, it is clear that the main problem confronting the Foundation on this important matter was “not student skepticism or organized and carefully thought out disbelief in religious matters but rather student apathy and disinterestedness.”[198]

Other than congratulating George Abramovitz for sinking thirty-eight consecutive foul shots and lauding six students from the Literary College (the equivalent to what is now the College of Literature, Science and the Arts [LS&A]) and three from the medical school for having received all As in the past semester, the most notable article in this issue of The Hillel News was a detailed summary of poet and critic Louis Untermeyer’s talk at the University under Hillel’s auspices in which he inveighed against Jews’ invoking the existence of anti-Semitism in America (he thought it was bogus): “I dislike the ‘professional Jew,’ ” he said, especially in literature, where he chided the work of Ludwig Lewisohn in particular as well as that of other authors “who capitalize on these imaginary sufferings of their race.”[199] Most of the “persecution” of the Jews, according to Untermeyer, is “due to the attitude that the Jews themselves take.”[200] Untermeyer said that the African American poet Langston Hughes had a similar interpretation of the “negro problem” in the United States as the Jews had of their predicament, though unlike the Jews, “ ‘Hughes, however, has a saving sense of humor, his material is more original and he has much more reason for complaining.’ ”[201] Alas, we could not find any published reactions to this article or to Untermeyer’s talk, which surely must have raised some controversy and ruffled some feathers, though we are also certain that many Jews in his audience and well beyond on the Michigan campus and in American society agreed with him. And many still do. Interestingly, with Jews as compared to other minorities, it is their overidentification with being Jewish that is coded as reactionary and dismissed as playing the victim and being the “professional Jew,” whereas assimilation is extolled as the progressive option, the enlightened way. Thus, unlike with African Americans, where assimilationists are derided as “Uncle Toms” and those who express “blackness” are prized for courage and rectitude, the exact opposite pertained to Jews in the 1920s and 1930s and remained so until the late 1960s when a new form of Jewish identity, one that defined itself at least orthogonally—if not in clear opposition—to dominant white America, emerged. It was spawned by the student revolts on the campuses of America’s leading universities, with the University of Michigan as a major force. But the fact remains that even today, Jews are quickly blamed for excessive tribalism, which is often associated with a certain particularism that is viewed as conservative, even reactionary, if it remains confined to Jews and does not also exhibit a considerable dosage of ostensible universalism, whereas the exact opposite is the case with other minorities where their identification with and pride in their particular group is always coded as progressive.

The ensuing seven issues of The Hillel News feature articles on a number of interdenominational matters (“Indian Educator Will Talk Here This Afternoon,” “Bishop to Talk on Hebrew Books,” “Inter-guild Dinner to Be Given by Wesleyan Guild on April 27”); numerous pieces on the Hebrew University; a debate on the value and necessity for Hillel to have its own facility accompanied by a sincere gratitude to the University for allowing Hillel to use University facilities campus-wide; and the appearance of a number of women in leadership positions listed on the masthead of the publication, with Josephine Stern, who was to become the University of Michigan’s first Hopwood Prize winner in 1931, among them.

One topic from the April 3, 1930, issue of The Hillel News is worthy of special mention: the Foundation’s need for its own space. In a signed editorial entitled “A New Foundation,” Byron Novitsky, vice president of the Hillel Student Council, makes the emphatic case for the first time in arguing that Hillel possess its own building and facilities in order to maximize its many missions on campus: “The problem of building a new home for the Hillel Foundation is not a new one. I cannot understand why up to this time it has not caused greater discussion among those interested . . . In the fall of 1926, the date of Hillel’s establishment on this campus, the site at 615 E. University was thought satisfactory as a temporary home . . . We have existed in this same place for almost four years during which time the Hillel Foundation has outgrown its home. We cannot function here as we should. We are cramped for space, and the foundation is suffering because of it.”[202] Novitsky goes on to describe how the Foundation can only host one function at a time because there exists no room for more and how the available space is often much too crowded when popular speakers come to address the students or during open house on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Sunday evenings. Many of Hillel’s functions had to be held elsewhere on campus, quite often in the Women’s League Building (now Michigan League): “As a result of this, the Jewish students do not connect any of the above events [speakers, lectures, drama and music performances, and social occasions such as dances] with the Hillel Foundation since all of them are away from its home. It is quite true that the affairs are held under the auspices of the Foundation and the students are aware of it. However, the spirit which has grown up with the Hillel in is present handicapped condition would develop a great deal faster and reach the heights we dream of a great deal sooner, if there were a place where all things carried on could be performed in the atmosphere provided by the Hillel Foundation. A spirit, a Hillel spirit, would be created with greater intensity, and our objectives would grow nearer and clearer to us . . . In a new and more comfortable home in which we could house all our activities, the Foundation might grow to satisfy all our hopes and ideals for future Judaism.”[203]

On May 22, 1930, The Hillel News published its last issue of the academic year, in which an editorial entitled “Another Year Gone” offers a useful summary of the year’s highlights and problems. The editorial commences by stating that establishing a concrete tally of successes and failures for an organization of Hillel’s kind is “hopeless when the work is not of a material nature. Hillel’s value is outside the realm of numbers or weights of measures; it is abstract.”[204] Still, a bevy of positives were worthy of mention: “[Hillel] is offering more and more to the Jewish students on the campus. This year has seen the development of a program of athletics more extensive than any yet attempted . . . The loan fund has been established . . . The Hillel Players has made its debut in an outstanding production . . . The Movement for a building suitable for housing Hillel activities has gathered momentum . . . These are merely the most noticeable advances; others of as great importance but of greater subtlety have also been inaugurated.”[205]

But then the editorial changes course by stating in the very next sentence, “Still all is not well. The intensity of the support given to Hillel is tremendous but too few individuals are contributing to it. Interest in the foundation is manifest in many, but still not enough. If it is true (and we hold it to be so) that the future of Judaism depends upon the abilities and attitudes of those who are now the Jewish college students, then upon the success or failure of the Hillel Foundation rests the future of Judaism.”[206] Pretty heady stuff, this! Thus the editorial concludes by exhorting Jewish students to “ ‘roll up your sleeves. See, here is work to be done. You are the first generation of Jews to hold aloof from the worthy endeavors of your co-religionists. Come on.’ ”[207]

Immediately following this editorial is another entitled “An Appreciation,” in which the Foundation thanks the University of Michigan for the many ways in which it has supported Hillel’s presence on campus, from providing its faculty members as speakers to opening its many facilities for Hillel to hold its activities in them: “The Hillel Foundation feels the tremendous debt it owes Michigan and can never hope to completely express its appreciation and thanks for the infinite amount of aid which it has received.”[208] These two editorials provide great insights into Hillel’s overall mission among Jewish college students and the American Jewish community at large on the one hand and its relationship to the University as its host on the other.

Lastly, we find an article on page 7 of this issue—a rarity, since virtually all others never exceeded four pages—entitled “Successful Year Sees Growth of Hillel Movement: Foundations Increase in Influence on Many of the Country’s College Campuses.”[209] We read: “The passing school year is without a doubt the most successful in Hillel history, bearing out more clearly than ever the wisdom of the vision and efforts of the late Rabbi Benjamin Frankel, who conceived and founded the first Hillel Foundation at the University of Illinois. The number of Foundations was increased to eight: at the Universities of Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio State, Cornell, Southern California, West Virginia and Texas. In all the number of students participating in their activities increased, and the scope of work broadened.”[210] The article then proceeds to highlight noteworthy events from some of these Hillel chapters, giving “the baby member of the group, the Foundation at the University of Texas,” a particularly lengthy passage[211]