Academic Advisement Sponsors Workshop Series
by Ariel Brandwein

The Yeshiva College Academic Advisement Center will be kicking off a series of six workshops entitled “Academic Success” over the course of the fall semester geared toward helping students plan their academic careers.  The voluntary sessions, coordinated by Dr. Gillian Steinberg of the English department, should provide students with an opportunity to make academic improvements in their college lives...

Chemistry in Brief
by Alan Goldsmith

Culminating a long, drawn-out search process, Yeshiva College has hired two new chemistry professors in both the Organic and Inorganic fields .  Dr. Bruce Hrnjez was selected to fill a tenure-track line in Organic Chemistry, while Dr. Lance Silverman, who will be teaching Inorganic Chemistry, comes to Yeshiva in the role of Visiting Professor. ..

A Lesson in Ethics
by Dr. Moses Pavak

Joseph Badaracco, a business ethics professor at Harvard, does not use the term spirituality in his new book, Leading Quietly.  Nevertheless, his view of leadership illustrates the possibility of a this-worldly kind of spiritual leadership accessible to all of us. For those interested in practical responses to the current crop of corporate ethical failures, this book is helpful...

Holly Haahr Selected for Tenure-Track Position
by Alan Goldsmith

At the end of last semester, the Yeshiva College administration created a tenure track position in French for the first time in four years. After a national search, Assistant Professor of French Dr. Holly N. Haahr was selected to fill the position...

Honors Program Reaches Milestone With First Graduating Class
by Jamie S. Hirsch

With its first five students having graduated this past May and five more expected to do so in September, the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College reached a major milestone.  These students, who come from the Program’s first entering class of 1999, include winners of numerous academic awards and several double and triple majors...

Students to Complete Shas in Memory of Israeli Victims of Arab Terrorism
by Tzvi Kahn

 Compelled by feelings of mounting helplessness in the face of unceasing Palestinian Arab terrorism against innocent Israeli civilians, several Yeshiva students are organizing a learning campaign on the Wilf Campus aimed at completing the entire Talmud by Chanukah...

OPCS Places Well Despite Economic Downturn
by Ariel Brandwein

Despite the economic decline in the wake of September 11th, Yeshiva’s Office of Placement and Career Services has succeeded in placing most of its students.  As of Monday, August 19th, OPCS had placed eighty-four percent of Sy Syms students in various business positions.  The figure proves very commendable when compared to other universities...

Orientation to Bring Mix of Old and New Events
by Alan Goldsmith

This year’s Orientation will, as usual, offer a host of activities to provide a relaxed and entertaining atmosphere for incoming students, both freshmen and Israel returnees. Orientation events will be aimed at getting these new students acclimated to college life, as well as to life in the City...

Chaim Potok Dies of Cancer at Age 73
by Alan Goldsmith and Amitai Blickstein 

Chaim Potok, author, theologian, painter, and historian, died of cancer on July 23 at his home in Merion, Pennsylvania.  He was 73 years old when the cancer overtook him.

Potok was born in the Bronx, February 1929, to Chasidic immigrants of Polish origin, who sent their young son to yeshivos for his education.  The developing Potok simultaneously exhibited interest and talent in both literature and painting.  After reading Evelyn Waigh’s Brideshead Revisited, the teenaged Potok decided he wanted to become a writer, going so far as to say that “[the book] absolutely changed my life.”  However, Potok was discouraged from pursuing this career path from all sides – parents, Talmud teachers, and peers.  As Potok told an interviewer, his mother said, “You want to write stories? That’s very nice. You be a brain surgeon, and on the side you write stories...”

“Where the Tree Falls”: For the Shloshim of R’ Walter Wurzburger
by Rabbi Shalom Carmy

 Six years ago, R’ Wurzburger suffered a massive heart attack. By then, he had served in the Rabbinate for half a century, had taught at Yeshiva University for almost thirty years, and had presided over Tradition for over two decades. He had published his Ethics of Responsibility and dozens of articles. Yet until he was hospitalized last March, he maintained a substantial teaching and speaking schedule. He produced another book, God is Proof Enough. Hundreds of students got to know him; the rest of us continued to learn from him. He did not do this alone. He needed the support of his family, and particularly his wife, who in the last year brought him to the steps of Furst Hall when it was too much of an effort for him to walk from the parking lot. For the gift of these six years, we are all in Mrs. Wurzburger’s debt.  R’ Wurzburger was one of R’ Soloveitchik’s most faithful and most authentic students. He was a halakhic man...

Abroad and At Home: Summer Research by YU Students

by Commentator Staff

As in past years, Yeshiva College students engaged this summer in a variety of prestigious research ventures. Their efforts reflect Yeshiva University’s continued excellence in producing men capable of contributing constructively to the at-large academic community...