Students entering Yeshiva College in September will benefit from an exciting new curriculum that is six years in the making. Yeshiva College’s course offerings have changed and evolved over the years, of course, but this new educational program marks Yeshiva College’s first complete curriculum overhaul since 1928.

Naturally, incoming students have questions. Most of the students about to attend classes for the first time on the Wilf Campus in New York are currently studying in Israel or have recently returned from yeshivot there. They have received the following letter to answer their questions and allay possible concerns:

Dear Students,

This is an exciting time, as registration approaches and you begin to plan for the years you will be on our New York campus, building a solid springboard from which to launch your professional careers and life pursuits.

This new curriculum was designed especially for you, our students, with the sole purpose of giving you the best possible education to prepare you for success and entry into top career positions and graduate schools. Read the rest of this entry…

Yeshiva University Museum Presents Fourth Annual Stern College Senior Art Show

Artwork by Stern College for Women students will be on display at the Yeshiva University Museum in Revelation: The Fourth Annual Stern College Senior Art Show. Presenting 38 works by graduating studio art majors, the exhibition provides a window into the art-making approach, as well as the personal observations and insights of 11 young Jewish female artists.

Leah Fried, “Self Explanatory”

A rich mix of styles, techniques and technologies, Revelation includes digital photography, oil painting, stop-motion animation and stone sculpture, among other media.  The wide-ranging subjects reflect the students’ intellectual and emotional curiosity, from Lauren Kahn’s striking sculptures of New York City manhole covers to Dina Wecker’s minutely detailed pen-and-ink aerial Manhattan skyline to Jordana Chernofsky’s pointillist nature paintings to Melissa Zehnwirth’s glam-inspired screen print.  The show was guided by Traci Tullius, the acclaimed video and performance artist who leads Stern College’s studio art program. Read the rest of this entry…

Dr. Eliezer Jones and Dr. David Pelcovitz: “Instill Children with Values to Become Their Own Internet Filters”

On Sunday tens of thousands of Jews filled Citi Field in Queens and heard from Haredi leaders that the Internet should be avoided in the home at all costs and used sparingly at work, and then only with a filter blocking out content that could be damaging spiritually.

Debate as you will what some may see as draconian edicts to protect the Jewish community from moral corruption. But at the heart of the matter is a question that should concern us all: How do we keep our children safe on the Internet?

Read the rest of this entry…

Stern College’s Avital Chizhik on the Diaspora Jew’s Constant Quest for Jerusalem

We’re standing in a hall in downtown Manhattan, overlooking a dusky Liberty Harbor.

The girl standing next to me points to the river view and says, “Doesn’t it almost look like Jerusalem? That terrace over there and that tree? The way the sun is setting?”

I gaze for a minute at the view. We’re overlooking a dark Hudson River, a boat passing by, the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

No, it doesn’t look like Jerusalem in the least. Not here. This is most certainly New York. I muster a smile, trying to think of an agreeable response, until I finally sigh and admit, “No, it doesn’t look like Jerusalem. Not at all.” Read the rest of this entry…

New App Offers Users Enhanced Visual Overview of Yeshiva University

Take a tour of Yeshiva University’s renowned undergraduate and graduate schools, with the swipe of your finger!

This Is Yeshiva University, the official University guidebook, is now available for download on the iPad. Read the rest of this entry…

Students Pitch their Business Plans at 2012 Sy Syms Entrepreneurship Competition

A Web site that makes personal training available to exercise novices in their own homes. A Facebook app that offers one-on-one tutoring and keeps track of students’ coursework. An organization that enables college students to bring their love of science to classrooms in public schools across the country. A sandwich company that delivers one meal to a homeless person for every sandwich it sells.

Bella Frankel presents her idea—a comparative shopping search engine—before the judges at the Fast-Pitch Competition.

These were just a few of the ideas in the running for the grand prize at the 2012 Ira Rennert Entrepreneurship Institute Fast-Pitch Competition, presented by Yeshiva University’s Sy Syms School of Business on May 9. Read the rest of this entry…

Athletic Banquet Honors Student-Athletes Across 14 Varsity Sports

The annual Athletic Awards Banquet was held Wednesday evening, May 9, in the Max Stern Athletic Center. More than 250 athletes, administrators and guests were present to celebrate the 14 2011-2012 athletic teams that Yeshiva sponsors. Attendees were treated to a night of special awards for their teammates along with the unveiling of a championship banner for the men’s cross country team, celebrating the school’s first ever back-to-back championship in any sport. Read the rest of this entry…

YU Center for Israel Studies Partners with MET on Middle East Exhibition

On May 6, a group of students, alumni and members of the Yeshiva University community huddled around an ancient book. On its pages, in blue, red and yellow, were the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, carefully traced and shaded in by a child’s hand in the timeless tradition of children learning to read and write.

The primer, found in the Cairo Genizah, was at least 900 years old.

The artifact was one of many the group viewed in a behind-the-scenes tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition, “Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (600-900).” This is the first major exhibition to explore the religious and cultural change in the Middle East as it transitioned from being the wealthy southern provinces of the Roman/Byzantine Empire into the emerging Islamic world. For its presentation of Judaism—its history, art and literature within that context—the MET turned to an expert in Greco-Roman and Late Antiquity cultural Jewish history: Dr. Steven Fine, professor of Jewish History and director of the Center for Israel Studies (CIS) at YU.

“Understanding the roles of Jews and Judaism in this time period is integral to understanding this moment of cultural change, and vice versa,” said Fine. “Though Jews were a minority even then, they were [and are] a minority through which one can understand other cultures in interesting ways.” Read the rest of this entry…

Mayor Cory Booker: “Use Your Faith to Help and Inspire Others”

On the evening of May 8, students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the greater Yeshiva University community filled Lamport Auditorium to hear Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, discuss “The Role of Religion in Education and Public Life.” The event was the final installment of this year’s Great Conversation Series of the Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought.

Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik and Mayor Cory Booker discuss “The Role of Religion in Education and Public Life” at the final Straus Center event of the academic year.

The conversation—led by Straus Center Director Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik—bounced around from discussing how Booker’s personal faith influences his daily life, issues regarding the importance of improving education, and the nature of faith in the public square in America. Throughout the conversation, the mayor sprinkled his words with pointed anecdotes, quotes of important figures like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, and—to the crowd’s delight—passages from biblical and rabbinic literature in English and in Hebrew. Read the rest of this entry…

Center for Israel Studies Yom Iyun Explores History of Religious Zionism in America

Few things divide and provoke American Jews like the question of Zionism.  Though many wish to remember otherwise, this was also the case before the founding of Israel in 1948; and, though many wish to forget, the story of Zionism in America belongs not just to Labor Zionism, dominated by culturalists and secularists, but also to Orthodox Jews.  Recently Yeshiva University’s Center for Israel Studies held a study dayon the history of religious Zionism in America.  The questions raised by this history have profound implications for the future of Jews and of Israel. Read the rest of this entry…