Yeshiva University: The Garden of Eden Among Universities in New York

By: Isabelle Adler  |  November 26, 2024
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By Isabelle Adler

Amongst all the judgments shared, students have neglected to highlight the unprecedented miracle that is Yeshiva University. Our college is the world’s flagship Jewish university where secular education and Torah studies empower students to be the next generation of scholars and leaders.

Today, YU has 11 undergraduate and graduate schools, four campuses across Manhattan, and over 70,000 alumni worldwide. After over 135 years of education, YU has grown to be a “multifaceted institution that integrates the knowledge of Western civilization and the rich treasures of Jewish culture.”

As a senior student at Stern College for Women, I am amazed every day that YU is among the many great towers erected in New York City. After all the hardships the Jewish people have faced and the horrific aftermath of the Holocaust, YU is full of students embracing Torah values and advancing in secular and religious studies. In fact, this year alone, we have seen the largest increase of undergraduate students on campus in 15 years and an 88% increase in graduate school enrollment since 2016.

YU has given its students every possible resource including a library that is home to thousands of books, half of the inventory being just on the subject of Judaism alone. Multiple kosher kitchens on campus make it possible for students to easily keep kosher. A beautiful beit midrash overlooking Lexington Avenue, courses designed to immerse our souls in Torah study, an entire faculty and staff designated to enhance spiritual growth in students, dorm rooms with mezuzot on every door post, multiple campus rabbis on speed dial, hundreds if not thousands of washing cups at all sinks on campus so you can fulfill a mitzvah and an entire office designated for supporting students who want to make aliyah. Hundreds of yearly events, carnivals, concerts, trips, and speakers are all dedicated to the Jewish State of Israel. 

With the ongoing war in Gaza, universities across the world are experiencing a great surge in antisemitism and hate crimes. Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, in which the terrorist group slaughtered and kidnapped innocent Israeli lives, has fueled American students, leading to hostile and dangerous environments for Jewish students on American college campuses. Swastikas, Nazi salutes, physical violence, threats, and chanting for the destruction of the State of Israel have left Jewish students helpless. 

Columbia University has become a hotbed of antisemitism. According to reports from the Anti-Defamation League, “anti-Israel protestors who were gathered just outside the campus gates to support student encampment reportedly screamed at a group of Jewish students, repeatedly referencing Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.” They screamed, “Let it be known that it was the Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’s name for the October 7 attack] that put the global Intifada back on the table again.” 

Furthermore, according to NBC News, two Jewish students from the University of Pittsburgh “were walking to their first Shabbat service of the school year wearing yarmulkes. As they made their way to the campus Hillel building, they said, an older man wearing a keffiyeh approached them from behind and started to beat them with a large glass bottle.” These are only two examples of antisemitic crimes from a 360% increase in antisemitism since Oct. 7.

Yet, there is still a place of refuge. YU has once again proven to be the pinnacle of support for the Jewish State, the Israeli Defense Forces, and the largest academic advocate for Israel the world has ever seen. The first thing you see when you walk into Stern College for Women is the hundreds of hostage posters on the wall hung up by students. Yet, what captivates me is not the posters themselves, but that I can count on those posters being there tomorrow. In any other academic institution, a poster of a baby being held in Gaza cannot last more than a minute without being vandalized or torn down by anti-Israel students.

How can this be real? How can a university producing the world’s greatest doctors, lawyers, and scholars also be the greatest miracle higher education has ever witnessed? Its noteworthy Deans, professors, and students are the pillars holding this extraordinary university afloat amongst the hatred and violence. Without them, everything would simply be like every other university. The campuses would just be schools, the seforim would just be books, the rabbis would just be teachers, and the students would just be people.

With all the darkness that has escalated across New York City and the world, YU serves as a beam of light that slices through the world of higher education and campus norms. YU is a miracle. 

Photo Caption: Hostage posters hung in the Beren campus 245 Lexington Ave. building 

Photo Credit: Emily Goldberg 

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