May 19, 2009 — Madison Square Garden’s WaMu Theater was alive with energy, excitement and emotion at Yeshiva University’s 78th Commencement Ceremony on Thursday, May 14. President Richard M. Joel conferred honorary degrees upon Rabbi Dr. Jacob Haberman, founder of real estate ownership and management company Haberman & Haberman; Sylvia Axelrod Herskowitz, former director of the YU Museum; Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld of Young Israel of Kew Garden Hills, NY; and Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of the Broadway hit In the Heights. Dr. David Shatz, the highly popular professor of philosophy at YU’s Stern College for Women gave the commencement address and was awarded the Presidential Medallion, the highest honor bestowed on a member of the faculty or administration for excellent service.

Shatz, who graduated as Yeshiva College’s valedictorian 40 years earlier, paid tribute to the institution that had nurtured his intellectual and spiritual development. “Far more than I have done for Yeshiva University, it has done for me,” he said, recalling fondly “the schools that educated me, the teachers I loved, and the students I taught.”

Addressing the Class of 2009, YU President Richard M. Joel encouraged them to repair the world by sharing their blessings with their community, with the Jewish people and the world. “It is not always easy but it always matters. The generation you join is one that is hungry for meaning and community,” the President said. “Be prepared to join with them while recognizing difference and even profound disagreement. All this you have been taught. All this you have learned. It’s time to lovingly lead.”

Uri Westrich of Teaneck, NJ, valedictorian of Yeshiva College, picked up on the theme of teamwork in his speech. “During my time at YU, I found time and again that my efforts were more productive when working with other people,” Westrich said to his fellow graduates. “Our duty as Jewish people is to look past our differences and work together to create a better future.”

Brooklyn’s Edmond Ainehsazan, originally from Tehran, Iran, was the James Striar School of General Jewish Studies valedictorian. “YU has provided me with an exceptional education where I could pursue my college degree together with enriching my Jewish knowledge,” reflected Ainehsazan, a biology major who plans on attending medical school. “It was a once in a lifetime experience that enabled me to flourish both intellectually and spiritually.”

The other valedictorians this year included Sara Enna Twersky of Riverdale, NY, Stern College’s Judaic studies valedictorian; Grace Charles of New York City; Stern College’s general studies valedictorian; Moshe Fink of Riverdale, Sy Syms School of Business men’s valedictorian; Chava Schwartz of Highland Park, NJ, Sy Syms women’s valedictorian; Yaakov Ehrenkranz of Memphis, TN, Mazer Yeshiva Program valedictorian; Roy Hilf of Haifa, Israel and San Paolo, Brazil, Isaac Breuer College of Hebraic Studies valedictorian; and Evan Hirschhorn of Spring Valley, NY, Irving I. Stone Beit Midrash Program valedictorian.

In all, more than 2,000 graduate students in the fields of law, medicine, social work, education, Jewish studies and psychology, as well as undergraduate students from Yeshiva College, Stern College for Women and Sy Syms School of Business, will be awarded degrees this commencement season.

Jun 27, 2008 — Students, parents, alumni, faculty and administration celebrated nearly 100 years of commitment to Jewish values and education at the Yeshiva University High Schools (YUHS) annual dinner of tribute at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square on Monday, June 23. Dr. Edward Berliner of West Orange, NJ was honored as Faculty Member of the Year by YUHS, which is comprised of Yeshiva University High School for Boys / The Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy (YUHSB) and the Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls (YUHSG).

Dr. Berliner teaches calculus and AP physics at YUHSB and serves as the executive director of science management and clinical professor of physics at YU.

“It is only appropriate that as we honor our beloved friend and colleague, Dr. Ed Berliner, we highlight our beautiful new state-of-the-art science laboratories,” Rabbi Mark Gottlieb ’87YUHSB, head of the boys school, said about the recently constructed labs in both high schools. “Ed was the inspiration and project manager in seeing this project through from vision to reality.”

The gala dinner drew over 400 attendants from around the tri-state area, who were on hand to show their support for the high schools, their faculty and administration.

“Tonight we celebrate our schools, our accomplishments, and most importantly, our students,” said Rochelle Brand, YUHSG head of school. “Our young men and women are the standard bearers for excellence in all their undertakings – in the realm of Torah Umadda education, in community services, and in love and devotion to the State of Israel.”

Rabbi Gottlieb and Mrs. Brand went on to note several of the achievements and events that occurred throughout the year, including outstanding SAT scores, student science awards, the successful Julius Wrubel z”l International Service Mission – a YUHSB educational expedition to various countries around the world and Project Ra’yut, which sends YUHSG juniors to Israel to perform community service.

Miriam Goldberg, YUHS Board chairman, praised the longstanding affiliation between the high schools and YU. “Our relationship with Yeshiva University is what makes our schools truly unique. YU and the high schools work hand-in-hand, cultivating the next generation of Modern Orthodox Jewish leaders. We could not be prouder of our university or its dynamic leadership.”

The educational mission of the Yeshiva University High Schools is to teach and perpetuate the values of Torah Umadda, the synthesis of Jewish law and life and Western civilization. The YU High Schools provide a platform for Jewish leadership through a challenging academic program in an atmosphere that encourages adherence to the traditional beliefs and practices of Modern Orthodoxy.
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Visit the YUHS websites at www.yuhsb.org or www.yuhsg.org.

Mar 25, 2008 — Concert to Feature World Premiere of David Glaser’s /Kinesis/ and Momenta Quartet’s Performance of Works by Renowned Jewish Composers

Yeshiva University (YU) announced today the introduction of an Ensemble-in-Residence curriculum and will commemorate the program launch with an inaugural concert by the Momenta String Quartet, Wednesday, April 2nd at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th Street at 8p.m.

Celebrated for its eclectic programming, the Momenta String Quartet, YU’s first Ensemble-in-Residence, will perform a wide range of music by Jewish composers and feature the world premiere of David Glaser’s /Kinesis/, a quintet for guitar and string quartet. Mr. Glaser, who will oversee the Ensemble-in-Residence program, and is the Assistant Professor of music at YU’s Stern College for Women, has received an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Art and Letters as well as the Fromm Foundation.

The Momenta Quartet, accompanied by guest artist Oren Fader, a highly regarded performer of classical guitar repertoire, both solo and chamber, traditional and contemporary, will also perform Ernest Bloch’s /Prelude (Recueillement)/, Ursula Mamlok’s /Two Bagatelles/, Morton Feldman’s /Structures/, John Zorn’s /Kol Nidre/ and Alfred Schnittke’s /String Quartet No.2/.

The Momenta String Quartet is comprised of four talented musicians: Miranda Cuckson, a violinist who was recently praised by the New York Times as a brilliant young performer, is acclaimed for her performances in the United States, Europe and the Far East; Joanne Lin on cello is an enthusiastic explorer of chamber music and is a member of San Francisco Bay Area’s conductorless New Century Chamber Orchestra; Stephanie Griffin on viola has performed internationally as a soloist and chamber musician and has collaborated for many years with

Indonesian composer Tony Prabowo; and Annaliesa Place, who made her solo debut at the age of twelve with the Heidelberg Orchestra, has since appeared with orchestras throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

The Ensemble-in-Residence program at YU will provide an invaluable experience for students to help them grow as performers and composers by interacting directly with professional artists. The Momenta String Quartet will be in residence at YU for a period of two years, one year on the Israel Beren Campus and one on the Wilf Campus. The musicians will perform one public concert per year and will present in a number of classes for YU’s Sense of Music students. Additionally, they will offer master classes, perform brief solo pieces, engage in Q&A sessions with students, and present readings of works done by music majors in the University’s composition classes.

Tickets to the April 2nd performance are $10 for general admission and $8 for CJH or YUM members, students, and seniors. For more information, visit www.cjh.org.

Nov 4, 2004 — “Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself: Confronting Contemporary Challenges,” the sixth in a seven-part lecture series commemorating the 50th anniversary of Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, will be held on Sunday, Nov. 14 at 7:30 pm at the home of Anita and Richard Grossman in West Hempstead, Long Island. Mrs. Grossman is a 1989 graduate of Stern College.

The lecture will be given by Jennie Rosenfeld, a 2001 Stern College graduate. Ms. Rosenfeld is pursuing her PhD in English at CUNY Graduate Center, spending this year as a visiting student at Harvard University, and teaching Talmud at Ma’ayan, a center for Jewish education for women in Boston. She completed the Yeshiva University Graduate Program in Advanced Talmudic Studies for Women and has taught Talmud at the Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls in Queens.

The final Jubilee lecture, “Challenges and Opportunities: Orthodox Families Confront a Changing World,” will take place on Sunday, Dec. 5 at 7:30 pm at Yeshiva University’s Geraldine Schottenstein Cultural Center, 239-241 East 34th Street in Manhattan.

Co-chairs of the lecture series are Stern College alumnae Debbie Niderberg and Cali Orenbuch. Sharon Herzfeld, MD, and Susan Ungar-Mero, MD, also Stern graduates, are co-chairing the college’s yearlong jubilee celebration.

For more information on this and other Stern-at-50 events, call 212-340-7862, or e-mail rentas@yu.edu. While admission to the lectures is free, advance reservations are required. Online registration is also available at www.yu.edu/sternjubilee.

(L to R) Richard M. Joel, Yeshiva University President; Doris Travis, Stern College board member and dinner chair; Karen Bacon, dean of Stern College; and Billy Ivry, Stern College board member.

Oct 22, 2004 — Yeshiva University President Richard M. Joel and Chancellor Norman Lamm joined leaders of the university’s Board of Trustees and Stern College for Women’s Board of Directors at an October 21 gala dinner at the Yeshiva University Museum to celebrate the opening of “Five Decades. One Dream,” a museum exhibit that traces Stern College’s history through photos and artifacts.

The exhibit groups items around the ideas of study, spirituality, social responsibility, and campus life. A timeline explores the essence of a Stern education featuring events during its history and pairing them with milestones in Jewish life, the nation’s history, and international events. In addition, a video, “Portraits of Promise,” helps bring the Stern experience to life through testimonials by current students, accomplished alumnae, faculty, and college supporters.

SCW Musem Opening photo gallery

President Joel and Chancellor Lamm presented awards to dinner honorees Karen Bacon, PhD, The Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean of Stern College, and E. Billi Ivry, a Stern College board member and one of the school’s most devoted patrons. President Joel expressed gratitude to all of the philanthropists who have nurtured the growth of Stern College and to the faculty and administration, led by Dean Bacon, for making Stern “a leadership cauldron for the Jewish community.”

The dinner was chaired by Stern College board member Doris Travis. “Five Decades. One Dream” runs through January 9, 2005 at Yeshiva University Museum, 15 W. 16th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in The Center for Jewish History.

Oct 21, 2004 — Until the founding of Yeshiva College, observant Jews who planned to pursue undergraduate studies had two choices: suffer the slings and arrows of unfriendly academia—a world that openly disdained Jewish traditions and mores—or forego college altogether. Read the entire article.

Oct 13, 2004 — As Stern College for Women celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, the Yeshiva University Museum (YUM) is marking the school’s milestone with an exhibit that highlights its growth and achievements. “Five Decades. One Dream,” the history of YU’s undergraduate women’s college through photos and artifacts, opens October 21 and will run at YUM until January 9, 2005.

“The exhibit celebrates the history of Stern as an incubator for scholarship and leadership and as a living example of the synthesis of Jewish and general studies,” said Dr. Karen Bacon, PhD, The Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean at Stern. Valedictorian of the Stern 1964 graduating class, her essay of celebration, “A Brilliant Future,” is part of the exhibit.

The exhibit groups items around the ideas of study, spirituality, social responsibility, and campus life. A timeline explores the essence of a Stern education featuring events during its history and pairing them with milestones in Jewish life, the nation’s history, and international events. In addition, a video, “Portraits of Promise,” helps bring the Stern experience to life through testimonials by current students, accomplished alumnae, faculty, and college supporters.

When Stern was founded in 1954, it became the first college where Orthodox Jewish women could simultaneously pursue Jewish and liberal arts studies in a rigorous academic setting. Thirty-three students made up the first class, and the campus boasted one building, at 253 Lexington Avenue. Today, the 1,000-strong student body makes full use of an expanded campus of seven buildings in Manhattan’s Murray Hill section.

“Stern’s Jubilee theme, ‘Five Decades. One Dream,’ is both a reflection on its illustrious past and a validation of its vibrant growth,” Dean Bacon said. “In just fifty years, the school has graduated thousands of women who have achieved stellar records in fields such as medicine, law, education, and the liberal arts and have attained solid and wide-ranging command of the various disciplines within Jewish studies.”

Yeshiva University Museum is located at 15 W. 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues in the Center for Jewish History. It is open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays from 11 am to 5 pm. For further YUM information, call 212-294-8330 or visit www.yumuseum.org. To find out more about Stern Jubilee events, contact 212-340-7862 or rentas@yu.edu.

L-R: Rabbi Judah Washer and Harry Steinberg, members of YC's first graduating class of 1932, honored.

Jun 16, 2004 — Some of Yeshiva College’s oldest, and youngest, alumni joined more than 300 friends and well-wishers in downtown Brooklyn last night to celebrate 75 years of quality Jewish higher education and pledge support toward future success.

The scene was the Marriott New York at the Brooklyn Bridge (just across the river from where Yeshiva College’s forbearing institution began in 1886 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side), and its main ballroom pulsated with the sounds and voices of distinguished individuals whose achievements were highlighted.

The four alumni honored were: Rabbi Dr. Jacob Adler, who graduated from Yeshiva University’s boys high school in 1942, received semikhah from YU’s affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), and attended the first YC class taught by The Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik; Rabbi Murray Grauer, who graduated from Yeshiva University’s boy’s high school in 1938, received a BA from YC in 1941, and was ordained at RIETS four years later, before launching a 50-year career as a pulpit rabbi in Miami and White Plains, NY; Dr. Jonathan Halpert, who graduated magna cum laude from Yeshiva College in 1966, received his PhD from YU’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences (today Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology) in 1978, and who has coached YU men’s basketball since 1972; and Rabbi Dr. (Col.) Victor M. Solomon, a retired and decorated US Air Force chaplain, who graduated from YC in 1950 and received semikhah from RIETS four years later.

A nine-minute video presentation and a commemorative dinner journal celebrated the achievements of the honorees, as well as the first 75 years of YC.

In his remarks, the YC dean, Norman Adler, PhD, recognized two members of the college’s first graduating class of 1932: Rabbi Judah Washer and Harry Steinberg. He also spoke of “the historical challenge” that began with YC’s founding in 1928, and which, he said, “continues today.” He called Yeshiva College the “cornerstone of centrist Orthodox Judaism.”

Richard M. Joel, president of Yeshiva University, described YU’s history as a springboard for achieving greater success, and called the four honorees role models for future YC students to “build lives of dignity, honor, and purpose.”

He urged guests to start building for “the next 75 years” and to pursue professions and other endeavors that bring Torah Umadda to life.

Also attending were members of the class of 1994 marking their 10-year reunion.

President Joel and others recognized Arthur M. Luxenberg, the dinner chair, for his leadership on behalf of the event, as well as Yeshiva College.

Joshua L. Muss, chairman of the YC board, was also applauded for his long and dedicated support for the college.

Apr 21, 2004 — A tailor from Czechoslovakia arrives in America before World War I, leaving his wife and five children behind until he finds work.

A bookbinder artist from Poland settles in New York City’s Lower East Side in 1947, just after World War II, and teaches himself English.

And a Hungarian family escapes to America via Vienna and Rome in 1980, eventually reaching Queens, where they share an apartment with 11 people.

These and other historical and literary readings of poems, short stories, and skits brought Jewish American history to life in “Bundles Hopes and Dreams: Jewish Immigrant Stories,” organized by Peninnah Schram, professor of speech and drama at Stern College for Women, and Pearl Berger, Yeshiva University dean of libraries.

The April 20 program, held at the Geraldine Schottenstein Cultural Center on the Israel Henry Beren Campus, commemorated 350 years of Jewish immigration to America, when 23 Jews from Brazil arrived in the town called New Amsterdam in 1654.

Each reading depicted the hopes and struggles of Jewish immigrants: from learning English to adapting to a foreign culture while preserving their own native traditions amid America’s melting pot.

YU President Richard M. Joel set the evening’s tone, reading “The New Colossus,” Emma Lazarus’s classic poem inscribed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. He used Lazarus’s words as a backdrop to champion American ideals of freedom, opportunity, and hope for the oppressed.

Other readings performed by faculty, alumni, and students were:

•“Out of the Strong, Sweetness” by Charles Reznikoff
•“On America” by Sholom Aleichem
•“Letters from A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward” edited by Isaac Metzker
•“My Own People” by Anzia Yezierska
•“The Promised Land” by Mary Antin
•“The Education of Hyman Kaplan” by Benjamin Bernard Zavin (based on the stories of Leo Rosten)
•“The Lie” by Mary Antin
•“Call It Sleep” by Henry Roth
•“The Greater Yeshiva” by Dr. Bernard Revel
•“The Golden Watch” by Peninnah Schram