YU Historiography Part 1

Yeshiva University has been around for a while and has generated some amount of history writing. Academics who work for the school have produced several books, Public Relations writers have authored short histories, students have recorded history from their own perspectives, and outsiders looking in have also penned their own understandings of the school.

The earliest published histories of Yeshiva University come from a time before the school had that name. In honor of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva College's 50th anniversary or Golden Jubilee in April 1937, the registrar Jacob Hartstein published an article in several different publications detailing the school's history until that point. A version of it called "A Half Century of Torah in America" was published in the two main student publications at the time, Hedenu and The Commentator, published by the students of RIETS and Yeshiva College respectively. Another version of this article called "The Yeshiva Looks Back Over Fifty Years" was published in the Jewish Education journal. 

The school was still too small to have a full time public relations staff, so the registrar, having access to all the institutional paperwork, is a reasonable choice for the person to write history of the school for popular consumption. Though Hartstein would rise through the ranks of Yeshiva's administration, later being appointed Dean of the graduate degree programs, he continued to publish articles about the history of the school for the 50th anniversary of RIETS in 1946. Versions of these articles appeared in the American Jewish Yearbook under the title "Yeshiva University; Growth of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary" and the Hebrew weekly ha-Doar under the title "yeshivat rabbeinu yitzhak elhanan." 

Both series of 50th anniversary articles have basically the same content. The narrative focuses mostly on the size and scope of the school as it developed. The focus is almost entirely on the vision of the school's administrators. Hartstein traces the origin of Yeshiva University to the Yeshiva Eitz Chaiem, a Jewish primary school that was formed in 1886 to offer instruction in traditional Jewish subjects as well as a basic secular curriculum that was comparable to public school education. He dates the creation of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary to 1896 and characterizes the school as being created for traditional Torah study "for its own sake" with the incidental ability to ordain Rabbis. Hartstein then briefly mentions that the students wanted RIETS to have a more structured curriculum that would benefit them as Rabbis in the field, and in 1908 the administration responded positively and began the slow process of instituting reforms. These culminated in the 1915 merger between Eitz Chaiem and RIETS with Bernard Revel as President of the new Rabbinical College of America. Under his direction the school expanded to have the Talmudical Academy High School and the Teachers Institute. Hartstein then details how the school began fundraising to build a College of Arts and Sciences in the mid 1920s, which resulted in the creation of Yeshiva College in 1928. Then he brings the reader into the present illustrating the advances since then. In 1937, its mostly the important people who have been granted honorary degrees, but in 1946 Yeshiva has just become recognized as a university by the board of regents so he includes the various new graduate schools as well. Hartstein's whole narrative of the history is designed to paint a picture of a constantly advancing school that is able to adapt successfully to the changing times without losing sight of its mission. This kind of message is very helpful for assuring potential donors that their money will be responsibly and productively spent. 

Hartstein's public relations type history is very simplified to fit in a short article and only discusses the school from the perspective of the activity of the school's leadership. Despite the narrow scope of Hartstein's narrative, its perceived effectiveness as form of good public relations has given it serious influence on how larger histories of the school have been written later on. That is Klaperman and Gurock's books on Yeshiva's history, published in 1967 and 1987 respectively. Klaperman's book was originally a dissertation that he finished in 1958. Both of these longer books are structured within Harstein's framework. They each have chapters dedicated to early Eitz Chaiem, early RIETS, the 1908 student protests, the 1915 merger, the founding of Yeshiva College, and then general institutional growth since then. Klaperman is happy to exist in this model of simplified administration focused history. He even published his own article on the school's history in the American Jewish Historical Quarterly journal to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary. 

Though Gurock's book is still written in Hartstein's framework, as a scholar he pushes back against the administration focused historiography. He spends some time interrogating the student body demographics throughout the years and how it fluctuated. He's written other articles focusing entirely on the student's experience. Such as the his article "The Beginnings of Team Torah u-Madda" in the Torah u-Madda journal from 2006. In following this pattern, other more modern historians like Zev Elef have written articles entirely focused on student activities, like Elef's article on the history of the Commentator (I need to locate the citation again). 

In another installment we will take a look at other non-academic sources of history writing.