Students Hail United Front Opposing War (Vol. 1, Issue 8)

Pledging themselves to “the preaching and dissemination of the grim facts of war,” 300 students massed themselves in the Student Synagogue last Monday and enthusiastically participated in the Nation-wide Mobilization for Peace. 

Resolutions were introduced by the principal student speaker, Moses I. Feuerstein ’36, Editor of The Commentator, calling for support of legislation decreeing the R.O.T.C. optional in colleges, “our unalterable opposition to loans, credits, or secondary war material being sent to belligerents”, an opportunity to relate our education to such problems, and “as future rabbis and teachers of American Jewish communities, to utilize our positions as a media through which we may spread a true understanding, and thus an eradication of the real causes of war.”

In the most heated and forceful address of the afternoon, Feuerstein denounced the economic arguments for war as being entirely without justification. “There's no such thing as glory in war. All we see are mangled limbs, blood, and grim death. By kidding ourselves, we are only killing ourselves,” he emphasized, striking out strongly against the jingoistic philosophies of glory and patriotism. 

David W. Petegorsky ’35, representing the S.O.Y., said that in seeking peace “we should denounce war as making the world, safe for plutotracy.”

As representative of the Administration, Dr. Shelley R. Safir, Dean of Yeshiva College, pointed out that “a new philosophy is pervading the campus today”, differing vitally with the attitude prevalent in the various colleges during his career as a student. 

Rabbi Mirsky, speaking for the Faculty of the Teachers Institute pleaded for the cessation of all violence, and urged the establishment of a powerful “insternational police force” as a prtent preventative factor in the fight against war. 

The Student Body of the Teachers Institute was represented by Boris Rabinowitz ‘37, who delivered a devastating attack upon the R.O.T.C. as a powerful militaristic machine which should have no place in the curriculum of any college.