In the 20’s, the JTS and RIETS were both having a building campaign. Donors wanted to know why they had to support two rabbinical schools, it’s not as if there were that many budding rabbis in America at the time; why couldn’t the two just merge? So Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel got up YU’s parlor meeting and gave an impassioned speech about how we are different from them. They manufacture rabbis, we learn Torah lishma! Believe it or not, that night he raised over $750,000, a huge amount in those days, if I got my stories straight (it’s in his biography).
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