Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T04:32:18.725Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Early Years of the Jewish Presence at the University of Illinois

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Winton U. Solberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For over two centuries, the College was the characteristic form of higher education in the United States, and the College was closely allied to the church in a predominantly Protestant land. The university became the characteristic form of American higher education starting in the late nineteenth Century, and universities long continued to reflect the nation's Protestant culture. By about 1900, however, Catholics and Jews began to enter universities in increasing numbers. What was the experience of Jewish students in these institutions, and how did authorities respond to their appearance? These questions will be addressed in this article by focusing on the Jewish presence at the University of Illinois in the early twentieth Century. Religion, like a red thread, is interwoven throughout the entire fabric of this story.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Summer 1992 , pp. 215 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

I thank Maynard Brichford, John Hoffman, Theodore Hymowitz, Fred Jäher, and Sonya Michel for comments on an earlier draft of this essay.

1. Estimates of the American Jewish population in 1870 place the number from two to as many as six hundred thousand. See Oscar and Handlin, Mary, “A Century of Jewish Immigration,” American Jewish Year Book 50 (1949), 13.Google Scholar Stephen Steinberg puts the number at 250,000 in 1880, or less than 1 percent of the population. See Steinberg, , The Academic Melting Pot: Catholics and Jews in American Higher Education (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), 8.Google Scholar The best information on the growth of the American Jewish population is in Sarna, Jonathan D., ed., The American Jewish Population (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1986), appendix 1.Google Scholar

2. Studies of the number of Jews attending American Colleges and universities were made starting in 1915, but Levinger, Lee J., The Jewish Student in America (Cincinnati: B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, 1937)Google Scholar, offers the first reliable figures. His work does not identify individual institutions. The data on the religious affiliation of students at the University of Illinois in the late nineteenth Century are meager. The conclusions in this paragraph are based on a search of names in Scott, Franklin W., ed., The Semi-Centennial Alumni Record ofthe University of Illinois ([Urbana]: University of Illinois, 1918).Google Scholar

3. Scott, Alumni Record, 1-2,21,30,32,46,49-50,62,71,83.

4. Yearbook ofthe Central Conference of American Rabbis 7 (1897), 85,87; 16 (1906), 188-89; 18 (1909), 78-79; 19 (1909), 150-54 (hereafter CCAR, Yearbook). See also Slade, Irving L., “An Introductory Survey of Jewish Student Organizations in American Higher Education” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1966), 4–8.Google Scholar

5. “History,” typewritten, undated, one-page document; Sinai Temple Congregation Minutes, a bound volume, begins with the meeting of February 7, 1904; both documents are in Sinai Temple Records, Champaign County Historical Archives, The Urbana Free Library (hereafter STR, CCHA); see also Rubinstein, Asa, “Midwestern Jewish Commitment and Practical American Idealism: The Early History of Sinai Temple, Champaign, Illinois,” Journal of the Illinois Historical Society 75 (Summer 1982): 83–91.Google Scholar On Reform Judaism, see Meyer, Michael A., Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), esp. chaps. 5–8.Google Scholar

6. Rubinstein, “The Early History of Sinai Temple,” 92-94; [Isaac Kuhn], “Reminiscence” (a six-page, untitled, typewritten document written after 1931; furnished to the author by Kuhn's daughter, Ruth K. Youngerman); Cohen, Nathan H., “Con Brio,” in Lives and Voices: A Collection of Jewish Memoirs, ed. Chyet, Stanley F. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972), 36–113.Google Scholar

7. Council of Administration, Minutes, December 5, 1907, and February 6,1908, 5:96-97,125, RS 3/1/1, University of Illinois Archives (hereafter UIA). The names of the twenty-nine original members, including at least eight women, and the constitution of Ivrim are in the minutes following page 125.

8. Solberg, Winton U., “The Catholic Presence at the University of Illinois,” Catholic Historical Review 76 (October 1990): 766-67;Google Scholar Simon Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 3 (mimeographed, six pages; originally an address delivered in 1948), in Simon Litman Papers, RS 9/5/29, UIA.

9. Council of Administration, Minutes, June 18, 1907, 5:52, RS 3/1/1, UIA.

10. litman, Simon, Looking Back: An Autobiographical Sketch ([Urbana], [1959]), 60;Google Scholar Litman, Simon, Ray Frank Litman: A Memoir, Studies in American Jewish History, no. 3 (New York: American Jewish Historical Society, 1957), 160-61;Google Scholar Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 2-3.

11. Broun, Heywood and Britt, George, Christians Only: A Study in Prejudice (New York: Vanguard Press, 1931);Google Scholar Feuer, Lewis S., ‘The Stages in the Social History of Jewish Professors in American Colleges and Universities,” American Jewish History 71 (June 1982): 432-65;Google Scholar Lipset, Seymour Martin and Ladd, Everett Carll, Jr., “Jewish Academics in the United States: Their Achievements, Culture and Politics,” American Jewish Year Book 72 (1971), 89–128;Google Scholar Hook, Sidney, “Anti-Semitism in the Academy: Some Pages of the Past,” Midstream 25 (January 1979): 49–54 (quotation at 49).Google Scholar

12. Scott, Alumni Record, 968, 908, 846, 903, 966; Faculty Morgue Files, UIA. There were also two Jewish assistants: Earl E. Libman in ceramics and Victor H. Kadish in chemistry. Scott, Alumni Record, 907,632,897. Despite the Situation at Illinois, Ludwig Lewinsohn, writing in 1922 about “the iron prejudice” against Jewish professors that he found to be “the rule” in American universities, declared that the prejudice had not, to his knowledge, “relented in a Single instance in regard to the teaching of English.” Lewinsohn, , Upstream: An American Chronicle (New York: Bord and Liveright, 1922), 125.Google Scholar Zeitlin, Litman, and Koller spent their careers at Illinois, Blondheim became professor of Romance phüology at Johns Hopkins in 1924, and Bloomfield, who later taught at various universities, was Sterling professor of linguistics at Yale frorn 1940 to 1949.

13. Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 2-3; Litman, Looking Back, 60; Litman, Ray Frank Litman, 160-61, 174, and passim; Clar, Reva and Kramer, William M., “The Girl Rabbi of the Golden West: The Adventurous Life of Ray Frank in Nevada, California and the Northwest,” Western States Jewish History 18 (January 1986): 99–111;Google Scholar 18 (April 1986): 223-36; 18 (July 1986): 336-51.

14. Hurwitz, Henry and Sharfrnan, I. Leo, The Menorah Movement for the Study and Advancement ofjewish Culture and Ideals: History, Purposes, Activities (Ann Arbor: Intercollegiate Menorah Association, 1914), 1–6;Google Scholar Joselit, Jenna Weissman, “Without Ghettoism: A History of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association, 1906-1930,” American Jewish Archives 30 (November 1978): 134-41.Google Scholar

15. Higham, John, “Social Discrimination against Jews in America, 1830-1930,” Publications ofthe American Jewish Historical Society 47 (September 1957): 13–19.Google Scholar

16. These conclusions are based on a study of Student members of the Ivrim and Menorah Society listed in The Mo (1912), 425; (1913), 461; (1914), 436; and on biographical details in Scott, Alumni Record, passim.

17. Hurwitz and Sharfman, The Menorah Movement, 6-14; Hurwitz, Henry, “The Menorah Movement,” The Menorah Journal 1 (January 1915): 50–55;Google Scholar Litman, Ray Frank Litman, 161; Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 3. Urbana sent four delegates to a Conference in Chicago on April 4-5,1912, and it had one representative on the administrative Council at the constituent Convention in 1913. See Hurwitz and Sharfman, The Menorah Movement, 146,151.

18. Hurwitz and Sharfman, The Menorah Movement, 39-41; The Daily Mini, December 10,1913, 4; libman, Anita, “Activities of Menorah Societies: University of Illinois” The Menorah Journal 1 (December 1915): 329-30;Google Scholar Litman, Ray Frank Litman, 161-62; Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 3 (quotation).

19. Samson Raphaelson Transcriptions: Family Tape, 1%9-1971, 243, in Samson Raphaelson Papers, RS 26/20/38, UIA. I thank Mr. Joel Raphaelson for permission to use quotations from his father's papers.

20. Jospe, Alfred, “Jewish College Students in the United States,” American Jewish Year Book 65 (1964), 137;Google Scholar “Chicago Roots of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” 1 (a four-page mimeographed document in the Hillel Foundation Office, Champaign, Illinois); Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 1.

21. Handlin, Oscar, “American Views of the Jew at the Opening of the Twentieth Century,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 40 (June 1951): 323-44;Google Scholar Higham, “Social Discrimination against Jews in America, 1830-1930,” 13-19, 31-32; Higham, John, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America, rev. ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), chaps. 5-7. Google Scholar

22. Wechsler, Harold S., The Qualified Student: A History ofSelective College Admission in America (New York: Wiley, 1977), esp. chap. 7;Google Scholar Synnott, Marcia Graham, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979);Google Scholar Steinberg, Stephen, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America (New York: Atheneum, 1981), 222-52;Google Scholar Greenebaum, Gary T., ‘The Jewish Experience in the American College and University” (Rabbinic thesis, Hebrew Union College, 1978), 55–59;Google Scholar McWilliams, Carey, A Mask for Privilege: Anti-Semitism in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 126-32.Google Scholar

23. Sinclair, Upton, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education (Pasadena: Upton Sinclair, 1923), 260.Google Scholar The university library had been open on Sundays since the early twentieth Century.

24. The Daily Ulini, February 19,1920,4.

25. Ibid., February 21,1920,4.

26. Ibid., February 22, 24, and 25,1920, all page 4; Samuel O. Shapiro, “Meet John Doe and Other Buggers,” 1-3, a manuscript in the Samuel O. Shapiro Papers, RS 26/20/83, UIA; Daily Ülini, February 26, 1920, 4.1 have found no evidence in the Chicago newspapers to corroborate Shapiro's account, and the short time that elapsed between his original letter and Dean Clark's apology make the events recounted by Shapiro seem unlikely. Sabbath observance remained an issue for some time. “I see no moral reason, excepting the fact that the general public as represented by the church members of the State would pretty strongly oppose it,” Clark later wrote, “why the golf links and tennis courts should not be opened on Sunday afternoons.” Clark to C. A. Stephenson, March 27,1928, David Kinley Correspondence, RS 2/6/1, B: 155, F: Clark, UIA.

27. Interview with Florence Weinberg (nee Koenigsberg), a Student in the university from 1923 to 1927, on March 2,1991; Solberg, “The Catholic Presence at the University of Illinois” 777, n. 28; Broun and Britt, Christians Only, 89-90.

28. Scott, Alumni Record, 90; Baldwin, Edwaixi C., ‘The Undying Fire,“ B'nai B'rith News 15 (October 1923): 39.Google Scholar

29. Interview with Florence Weinberg on March 2,1991.

30. Weü, Clarence K., ed., ZBT, 1898-1923: The First Twenty-Five Years (New York: Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity, 1923), 14–15, 17, 27, 108-9;Google Scholar Daily Illini, November 3,1912.

31. Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities, ed. John Robson, 18th ed. (Menasha, Wis.: Banta Publishing, 1968), 381-82, 342-43, 408-9, 245-47, 364-65, 453-54,430-31. Fraternities needed the approval of the Council df Administration to organize on the campus, but the councü's minutes record such permission only for Sigma Alpha Mu (May 14,1918,17:93) and Alpha Epsilon Pi (March 2, 1920, 20:40). On the two local Jewish sororities, see Council of Administration, Minutes, October 29,1918,18:33, and January 24,1921,21:47, UIA.

32. Samson Raphaelson Transcriptions: Family Tape, 1969-1971,225-33, in Samson Raphaelson Papers, RS 26/20/38, UIA; The Ulio (1916), 206-7.

33. Baird's Manual, 333-35; Oren, Dan A., Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 25–26.Google Scholar

34. Rubinstein, “The Early History of Sinai Temple,” 92-96.

35. Litman, Ray Frank Litman, 170-71.

36. Baldwin, Edward C., Our Modern Debt to Israel (Boston: Sherman, French, 1913), 200–209 and passim.Google Scholar

37. Baldwin, Edward C., “Judaism and Modern Ideals,” B'nai B'rith News 7 (October 1914): 1, 6.Google Scholar This article was originally delivered as an address at the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Brotherhood of the Kingdom held on September 1-4, 1914, at Marlborough-on-the-Hudson, New York. Walter Rauschenbusch was one of the nine founding members of the Brotherhood, which was organized in 1892. Baldwin mentions Rauschenbusch in Our Modern Debt to Israel, 204-5. See also Baldwin, “The Undying Fire” 38-39; and Baldwin, “A Prospect of Religious Co-operation,” B'nai B'rith Magazine 41 (October 1926): 22.

38. The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at the University of Illinois: Silverjubilee Year, 1923-1948, [1], a printed document in the Simon Litman Papers, RS 9/5/29, UIA; Bisgyer, Maurice, ed., This is B'nai B'rith, lOth ed. (Washington, D. C: Supreme Lodge of B'nai B'rith, [1952]), 51.Google Scholar

39. “Chicago Roots of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” 2; Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 1; CCAR, Yearbook 19 (1909), 154. Sinai Temple Congregation Minutes (87, STR, CCHA) show that on January 12, 1913, the congregation instructed the secretary to write to Stolz and Emil G. Hirsch in Chicago and to Dr. Charles Levy in Peoria requesting aid in building a place of worship. I find no earlier evidence on this point in the minutes.

40. Kuhn to Kraus, November 18,1915; Koller to Kraus, November 18, 1915 (quotation); both in the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati (hereafter AJA). On the IOBB, see Grusd, Edward E., B'nai B'rith: The Story of a Covenant (New York: Appleton-Century, 1966),Google Scholar and Moore, Deborah Dash, B'nai B'rith and the Challenge of Ethnic Leadership (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981).Google Scholar On Kraus and B'nai B'rith, see his Reminiscences and Comments (Chicago: Tony Rubovits, 1925), chap. 4.

41. Sinai Temple Congregation Minutes, December 19, 1915, STR, CCHA; Rubinstein, “The Early History of Sinai Temple” 96-97.

42. Litman to Rosenwald, January 14, 1916; Litman, “Hillel, Early Days,” 1; both in Simon Litman Papers, RS 9/5/29, UIA; Mann, Louis L., “Rosenwald, Julius” in Dictionary of American Biography, 16:171 Google Scholar (quotation). An unidentified handwritten note on a pink card describing a telephone conversation with Stanley Kaufman on October 20 or 21, 1975, says that Rosenwald and Mr. Kuppenheimer (of Chicago) each gave $5,000 toward construction of the temple and that the congregation raised $8,000. See STR, CCHA.

43. Rubinstein, ‘The Early History of Sinai Temple” 98.

44. Baldwin, Edward C., “A Proposed Investment in Character,” The Jewish Advocate, March 22, 1923;Google Scholar “Chicago Roots of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” 2; Louis L. Mann, “The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations” in Independent Order B'nai B'rith, Proceedings of the Thirteenth General Convention of the Constitution Grand Lodge (1930), 216 (hereafter abbreviated IOBB followed by the number of the general Convention proceedings). See also the annual reports of the Committee on Religious Work in Universities from 1914 to 1923 in the CCAR, Yearbook, esp. 32 (1922), 75-77; and 33 (1923), 49-53. Frankel attended the 1923 Conference, held from June 27 to July 2 in Cape May, New Jersey. Volume 33 (1923), 163-99, contains Eugene Mannheimer, “The Jewish Student at the University” followed by a discussion.

45. Author's interview with Abram L. Sachar, September 20, 1964; The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at the University of Illinois, [1].

46. “The Hillel Foundation,” B'nai B'rith News 15 (March 1924): 204.

47. Florence Kuhn (Mrs. Morris Meyer) to Faye Sholem, [c. July 1976] (first quotation), in STR, CCHA. Transcript of a tape-recorded interview with Abram L. Sachar by Faye Sholem, Theodore Hymowitz, and Ann Hymowitz in Chicago, February 2, 1976, 3^4 (second quotation). Copies of the tape are in the STR, CCHA, and in the possession of Stanford Sholem, Champaign, Illinois. Mr. Sholem has a transcript of the tape. The Authorized (King James) Version translates the phrase: “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.”

48. Frankel, Benjamin M., “Attracting College Youth to the Synagogue,” CCAR, Yearbook 35 (1925), 326-28.Google Scholar The university required the foundations to incorporate in order to offer courses for credit, but there is no record in the Office of the Secretary of State that Frankel incorporated Hillel Foundation at this time.

49. Frankel, “Attracting College Youth to the Synagogue,” 328-33; IOBB, Twelflh General Convention (1925), 34.

50. The Reform Advocate, July 14, 1923; IOBB, Twelfth General Convention (1925), 8.

51. Greenebaum, “The Jewish Experience in the American College and University,” 86, n. 75; Sinai Temple Congregation Minutes, January 13,1924,128, STR, CCHA. According to one report, the UAHC endorsed the work of Hillel and contributed $1,000 toward its budget (presumably in 1923). See IOBB, Twelfth General Convention (1925), 28. Around 1918, Isaac Kuhn recalled, he and others called on leaders of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and on B'nai B'rith in Chicago for help, and Adolf Kraus sent the secretary of the latter organization to Champaign to meet with interested townsmen. Kuhn, "Reminiscence." Kuhn's account, if accurate on the date, underscores the fact that Frankel was the catalyst in enlisting the aid of B'nai B'rith.

52. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 272.

53. CCAR, Yearbook 34 (1924), 44; “Chicago Roots of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” 2; Mann, “The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” 217; Meites, Hyman L., ed., History of the Jews of Chicago (Chicago: Jewish Historical Society of Illinois, 1924;Google Scholar repr., Chicago: Wellington Publishing, 1990), Preface and passim. Some accounts say $11,000 was pledged, others say $12,000 (and with twelve luncheon guests that figure may well be accurate), but Mann gives $10,000 as the figure in the source cited in this note.

54. B'nai B'rith Executive Committee Notes, “The Jewish Student at the University,” in AJA; CCAR, Yearbook 34 (1924), 45; IOBB, Twelfth General Convention (1925), 29-30,85; “Chicago Roots of B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” 2-3.

55. CCAR, Yearbook 34 (1924), 43; 35 (1925), 94-95. Joselit, “Without Ghettoism,” 142-54, discusses various reasons for the decline of the Intercollegiate Menorah Association. See also Wald, Alan M., “The Menorah Group Moves Left,” Jewish Social Studies 38 (Summer-Fall 1976): 289–320;Google Scholar Wald, Alan M., The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left front the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 30.Google Scholar

56. CCAR, Yearbook 34 (1924), 43-44; 35 (1925), 94-95; 36 (1926), 67-69; 37 (1927), 112-15.

57. These events can be traced in the CCAR, Yearbook 33 (1923), 51-52; 34 (1924), 43-45; 35 (1925), 94-98.

58. “Chicago Roots of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” 3; CCAR, Yearbook 35 (1925), 95; IOBB, Twelfth General Convention (1925), 228-29; interview with Florence Weinberg (Frankel's widow) on March 2,1991.

59. CCAR, Yearbook 35 (1925), 98-104. For a recent Statement affirming that Jewish education must be religious education, see Hertzberg, Arthur, Being Jewish in America: The Modern Experience (New York: Shocken Books, 1979), 86–94.Google Scholar

60. IOBB, Twelfth General Convention (1925), 93-94; Leonard, Oscar, “A Home for the Soul,” The B'nai B'rith Magazine 39 (May 1925): 276-77;Google Scholar Cohen, Alfred M., “Sabbath Eve at the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation, University of Illinois,” B'nai B'rith Magazine 41 (October 1926): 40 Google Scholar (between 40 and 50 men attended the Sabbath eve Service and 275 students the Sunday morning Service). A typewritten copy of the prayer, probably the original document, is in the Sinai Temple Con-gregation Minute Book, STR, CCHA; the text is also in “Protestant, Catholic and Jew Formulate Common Prayer,” Christian Century 44 (March 10,1927): 310. Arch-bishop Michael J. Curley sharply criticized Father O'Brien for his part in this ecu-menical effort. See Solberg, “The Catholic Presence at the University of Illinois,” 788-89.

61. IOBB, Twelfth General Convention (1925), 94-96; Louis L. Mann, “The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations,” in IOBB, Thirteenth General Convention (1930), 224-26.

62. IOBB, Twelfth General Convention (1925), 96-97.

63. Sachar, A. L., “Hillel Ten Years After,” B'nai B'rith Magazine (1934): 12, 30–31,Google Scholar 35, in the Simon Litman Papers, RS 9/5/29, UIA; IOBB, Thirteenth General Convention (1930), 57; for reports of the Hillel Foundations at various universities, see IOBB, Thirteenth General Convention (1930), 588-623.

64. Frankel died on December 21,1927. Several accounts mistakenly cite cerebral hemorrhage as the cause of death. The death certificate recorded in the office of the Champaign County Clerk gives malignant endocarditis as the cause of death. The tributes are in The Hillel Magazine 3 (January 20,1928): 1,3.

65. Author's interview with Sachar, September 26, 1964; Sachar to Nobuo Horiuchi (my research assistant), May 10,1988; Transcript of Sachar Interview, 1-2, 8,17. The landlady later expressed regret at her refusal to rent Sachar a room.

66. Kinley to Sachar, May 20, 1929; Sachar to Kinley, May 25, 1929; Kinley to Sachar, May 31, 1929; E. C. Baldwin to Alfred M. Cohen, June 4,1929; David Kinley Correspondence, RS 2/6/1, B: 178, F: Hi-Hr; Sachar to Lawrence M. Larson, June 30, 1929, RS 15/1/1, Departmental Subject File, UIA; Transcript of Sachar Interview, 7,22.

67. Sinai Temple Congregation Minutes, January 12, June 1, 1930, 147, STR, CCHA.

68. See Sachar, A. L., “The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations in American Universities,” American Jewish Year Book 47 (1945), 141-52;Google Scholar and Slade, An Introductory Survey of Jewish Student Organizations, 85-112.

69. Transcript of Sachar Interview, 12,18-22; The Hillel Post (later called B'nai B'rith Hillel Post), 1931-1932 passim; February 25,1932,1936-1937 passim, RS 41/69/806, UIA; IOBB, Thirteenth General Convention (1930), 236.

70. Abram L. Sachar, A Host at List (Boston: little, Brown, 1976), treats this aspect of his career.

71. Sachar describes Hillel Foundations as “the product of the vision and perseverance” of Frankel in his book Sufferance Is the Badge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939), 533. Commenting on this passage, Baldwin wrote Kuhn that the two of them envisioned the foundations long before Frankel did while acknowl-edging Frankel's part in selling the idea to B'nai B'rith. Kuhn agreed, adding that he was never satisfied with the results of the foundation and questioned whether he ever would be thoroughly pleased. He does not explain the reasons for this point of view. Baldwin to Kuhn, January 10,1940; Kuhn to Baldwin, January 18, 1940; both in STR, CCHA. Sachar also assigns “the major share for the genesis of Hillel” to Frankel in his “Address” at the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Hillel in 1973, a copy of which he furnished me on March 19, 1991. Despite his contentions, the evidence entitles Kuhn and Baldwin to a larger share of credit for Hillel than Sachar allows. The quotation is from Sachar, “Address,” 1.

72. This paragraph draws on Sachar, “Address,” 5-7.

73. In 1924, at the peak of Sinai Congregation's enthusiasm for Hillel, members empowered the trustees to seil Sinai Temple and establish a foundation building at the university. But on June 19, 1927, when Frankel was abroad, the congregation unanimously rescinded the earlier motion, with Isaac Kuhn voting “aye.” Sinai Temple Congregation Minutes, June 19,1927,133-34, STR, CCHA.