Memory Lane

Here's a letter of mine that was published in The Commentator, the campus newspaper of Yeshiva University, my alma mater:-

The JTS Library Fire

Dear Sir:

Hillel Goldberg's recounting of the mobilization of the YU student body ("The JTS Library Fire," August 31, 2005) reminded me once again what I missed out on by not dorming.

In my sophomore year in 1966, I moved in with my widowed grandmother in the Bronx. Showing up for school the next morning, it was quite apparent that everybody who was anybody was going downtown. The JTS books were all laid out and we methodically went around trying to dry the soggy pages.

But to return to the dorm scene, I missed out on all the action, drama, and tension. Indeed, many students who did not dorm, upon hearing what had happened, simply skipped classes and went downtown. It was the natural and normal thing to do. Halacha, Orthodoxy, Conservative - all that was quite secondary or less to me and many others at the time.

Yisrael Medad (Winkelman), YC '69
Shiloh
Israel