It is a pleasure for me to greet the readers and congratulate the editors of this newest addition to the literary and Torah endeavors of our student body. That this publication appears at the beginning of a new zeman and the eve of a New Year, 5745, augurs well for the sense of freshness it promises to bring to the spiritual and intellectual ambiance of our Yeshiva. The advent of Rosh Hashana offers me the occasion to share some thoughts with you that may be germane to our whole enterprise of Torah Umadda at Yeshiva University. The theme of Zikhronot in the Rosh Hashanah Musaf speaks not only of memory, but of loving remembrance. Thus, the citation of Jeremiah's זכרתי לך חסד נעוריך אהבת כלולותיך or Hosea's וארשתיך לי לעולם וכר.It highlights the theme of the Holy One as a loving spouse and Israel as His beloved. This love relationship describing the nature of the Jewish religious commitment can even be epitomized in the metaphor of a wedding. The Talmud (Eruvin 54a) tells us of the Amora Shmuel counselling his younger contemporary, Rabbi Yehudah, חטוף ואכול חטוף ואשתי דעלמא דאזלינן מיני׳ בהלולא דמי, "Hurry and eat, hurry and drink, for the world we are leaving is like a wedding." According to Rashi and some other commentators, Shmuel is offering some sage and brooding advice: Enjoy yourself with legitimate pleasures as long as you can because life is all too short. It is like a chappah which is put up and then quickly put away again. The wedding party doesn't last forever. But for our purposes I commend an interpretation by the great Hasidic teacher, R. Yaakov Yosef of Polonne, one that goes back to the metaphor of the Divine Lover and that illuminates not only an obscure passage in the Talmud, but an obscure aspect of our passage through life. All the world's a wedding. At a wedding there is much going on: food is eaten, drink is imbided, cigars are smoked, toasts are exchanged, there is dancing and music and camaraderie and posing for photo-

On behalf of the faculties and administration, I am delighted to welcome you all – old students and new ones – to our undergraduate campuses. Berukhim ha-ba'im! Your main function here is to grow – intellectually, Jewishly, academically, culturally. The program of Torah u’Madda is a most demanding one, especially because it insists upon the integrity of each of the two poles and expects that you will commit your every effort to excelling in your studies. If you are merely smart, you will figure out all kinds of ways, legal or devious, to get out as soon as you can. But if you are wise, you will take full advantage of the remarkable resources of both Torah and Madda that you will find here at Yeshiva. There is no other place where you can have available for you such an array of distinguished talmidei ḥakhamim for your Jewish studies, and outstanding academic faculty for your college studies. Exploit this golden opportunity – do not neglect it!But there is yet one other precious opportunity you have here for the next few years, and that is—the friends you will make, the networking of like-minded young Jews and Jewesses who are resolved to exploit the fantastic intellectual assets of Yeshiva and are determined to rebuild and enhance the Jewish world beyond the one they find before them now. Nourish these friendships well. In years to come you will reap the benefits of this kind of social and intellectual-ideological companionship.Immediately before sounding the shofar, we recite the words of Tehillim (Ps.47:6')—Alah Elokim bi'teruah, which loosely translated means that God, as it were, is exalted at the sound of the teruah or straight blast of the shofar. Hasidim have an interesting interpretation of that verse. They say that teruah is derived from the word reia—both words from the root of resh and ayin—which means friend or friendship. (I have seen this in the name of R. Shelomo Leib of Lenchno and, a bit earlier, R. Shneur Zalman of Liady.) The love and loyalty amon…

The enormity of the depraved atrocity that was perpetrated has not yet been fully assimilated, especially by those of us who lived here – so close to the scene of the crime. Yet a number of students felt that before the effects wear off, we ought to think about remembering – how shall we recall what happened and why. We should not underestimate the importance of remembering. The philosopher George Santayana once famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Apparently, everyone agrees that it is important to remember. The question is: what do we remember, whom do we remember, and how do we remember? Let me therefore begin by putting this event into some kind of perspective. There have been many catastrophes in history, both man-made and natural. We shall concentrate on the man-made disasters in my lifetime, and those which undoubtedly will continue in your lifetime. This list of horrors includes the gulag of Stalin, where millions of people perished; the experiment of the Communist regime in China — when millions of people perished; the Khmer Rouge, World War 11, Cambodia.... One can give a whole list of catastrophes invented by human minds — depraved human minds, but human minds nonetheless. And then, of course, there was the Shoah, the Holocaust. If you want to understand the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish people and thereafter for the world, remember that we lost one third of our population. We started World War II with a world Jewish population of eighteen million; after the Shoah, we were reduced to twelve million. Now make the following very simple mathematical calculation: what would have happened if the World Trade Center catastrophe had been expanded to one third of the American people? We would have lost over eighty-two million people! And nevertheless, despite all that, the impact of what happened exactly one year ago today — even without our calculation — was enormous. Someone put it correctly: it exposed our vul…