President Joel emailed all Yeshiva University students yesterday with an open letter he wrote to Virginia Tech:

Dear President Steger,

I am overwhelmed with sorrow and shock at the unfathomable tragedy that occurred on your campus. As former President and International Director of Hillel: The Foundation of Jewish Campus Life, I visited hundreds of campuses around the country and can only imagine the shattering impact this act of carnage is having on the idyllic and harmonious campus of Virginia Tech.

I admire your courage and forthrightness in coping with this horrific loss as you strive to comfort students, faculty, and most of all, the parents whose children have been torn from them in the prime of their lives. Our prayers are with you and it is my hope that you will find the strength and fortitude to heal the wounds of your community as you mourn this terrible, terrible tragedy.

Richard M. Joel

Another email, this one from the undergraduate student councils, went out, acknowledging Yeshiva students’ desire to share condolences and sympathy with students at VT, and announced the opening of a blogspot account to post those condolences. The email read:

News of the shooting at Virginia Tech has shocked and horrified many of us. Many students expressed the desire to respond to the attack with condolences, comments of support and reflections. We have the opportunity to do so, as individuals and as a group of YU students, through a link on the YU homepage.

Please take a moment to post your thoughts by clicking on the link. Send a message of condolence (http://yustandswithyouvt.blogspot.com/) to the Virginia Tech community at www.yu.edu and encourage your friends to join you in this act of solidarity.

Your comments and notes will be sent to Virginia Tech University’s Hillel as an expression of our condolences and support.

May we only share and join as a community for good things, be’ezrat Hashem, Undergraduate Student Councils and OSA

At this moment, President Joel’s open letter has a number of comments on the blog, including messages like, “I can’t imagine what you are going through. All I can do is send my love and hope that everyone will be comforted and find peace. God Bless,” by Danny YC ‘06, and “This terrible tragedy has been on our minds the last few days. We can’t even begin to imagine what the Virginia Tech community is going through at this time. Stand strong and don’t lose hope- our thoughts and prayers are with you,” by Stern Student ‘07.
The President of the Student Organization of Yeshiva, Josh Vogel, released an open letter as well:

To the students at Virginia Tech:

My heart and prayers are with you in this difficult time. The idea that someone would be so distressed to the extent that he took 32 lives, and injured many others, is unfathomable. Words of wisdom at this time are hard to find, but it is often said that through tragedy we become stronger. It is my sincere hope that in the future we will be able to support the Virginia Tech community in times of good as well.

Blessings,
Josh Vogel
President, Student Orgranization of Yeshiva

Israel Club vice-President Dylan Kurlansky is founding an Israeli book club. For those of you afraid of entire novels in Hebrew, Kurlansky told CampusJ that participants will be reading short stories of 10-20 pages in English about Israeli identity. The book selected for discussion is Apples in the Desert, by Savyon Liebrecht. The first meeting is Sunday, February 25th on Beren Campus.
More information: Email Dylan (D_K_Tech@yahoo.com) or Deborah (anstandi@yu.edu).

The Yeshiva College Drama Society’s decision to cast an alumnus, Eli Lamm, as the lead in this year’s play was the subject of a CampusJ inquiry to YCDS President Chai Hecht. He writes:

I’m not sure why this is newsworthy. We’re talking about a university class. The performance is like the final exam. This is no different than, for example, hiring a TA or bringing in a guest lecturer: these are all things done with the specific purpose of better educating the students. The drama program, the production, YCDS: it is all designed to teach the students about acting, about being part of a play, about the technical aspects of theater; and, then, about the philosophical aspects of theater that go beyond the confines of the playhouse: the group-awareness, the discipline, the reliability. The decision to cast a non-student in the show, in a lead part, was not done haphazardly. It was done deliberately with the intention of educating the actors. It was considered the best possible decision for the sake of the students.

Yeshiva University blogger Chana Wiznitzer wrote a lengthy review of The Lonely Man of Faith, a the new documentary about R’ Joseph B. Soloveitchik that debuted at the Seforim Sale:

But finally the movie begins, and it is stunning. The constant theme is that of loneliness, the Rav’s ontological loneliness as an individual and a man. We are informed that the Rav was “revered by many, resented by some,” but his “religious mind was unsurpassed in his time.” The movie begins with his childhood, describing the way in which R’ Moshe, his father, tutored him himself, specifically utilizing the Brisker method, which features careful analysis and understanding of texts. Various photographs of the Rav pass by, the music is soft and soulful or quickening in tempo depending on the words spoken. We learn about the differences between the Soloveitchik and Feinstein background; the Soloveitchiks favored total immersion in Torah while the Feinsteins opted for secular studies as well, whether this take the form of Russian literature or other important works of a similar nature.

Teaching a new generation of business students how to be entrepreneurs, CEO Jacob Goldman of LoHo Realty is speaking at Yeshiva University on Monday, February 5th at 6:30 PM in Belfer Hall’s Room 218.
Goldman maintains a blog for Loho, and has been written up in New York media multiple times within the past year. Alex Mindlin wrote a profile of the real estate broker in the New York Times on February 12th, 2006, containing this choice passage:

Mr. Goldman himself gave a visible and slightly practiced start when he heard the name [BelDel - an alternative to LoHo]. ‘’They were a great band in the 80’s!'’ he said. ‘’They had that song, ‘Poison.’
‘’Oh,'’ he corrected himself. ‘’That’s Bell Biv Devoe.’

The most interesting of these pieces was from S. Jhoanna Robledo’s New York Magazine article, “Chasid Test; For brokers, religious Jews can be tough customers.” In it, she wrote that Goldman “said his brother and business partner was enticed to move into an apartment that had a terrace large enough for him to build his own sukkah.”