So reports a Yale library Web page:
In [1777], [Rev. Ezra] Stiles was called to Yale to become its president; a year later, he became the school’s first Semitics professor.... A Yale student wrote in 1788, "The President insisted that the whole class should undertake the study of Hebrew ... For the Hebrew he possessed a high veneration." As it turns out, Stiles’s prescription was not popular and by 1790, he modified his edict: "From my first accession to the Presidency ... I have obliged all the Freshmen to study Hebrew. This has proved very disagreeable to a Number of the Students. This year I have determined to instruct only those who offer themselves voluntarily." While enrollment in his courses dropped, the valedictorians of the classes of 1785 and 1792 did deliver their orations in Hebrew.
I imagine that the Rev. Mr. Stiles would agree.
You'll wait until dotage? I rail against things constantly now and I'm not even middle aged yet!
Which wasn't exactly an unmixed blessing.
You say that like its a good thing.
On a bit of a tangent, my first teacher of Greek (no longer required) was Zeph Stewart, Justice Potter Stewart's brother.
No one, including Stiles, defended how the French Revolution turned out. Many notables -- for instance Jefferson, Madison, Paine -- supported the Revolution at the beginning.
My point was, if you knew of Timothy Dwight, he was the archetypal anti-Enlightenment Calvinist who preached against "infidelity," (and in particular against the "infidel" Jefferson). Stiles, on the other hand, was friends with and supported these "infidels."
It did give the French the long-missing opportunity to win a war, if only because they were on both sides.
I believe that all universities at the time at least attempted to use some form of Sephardic Hebrew under the (mistaken) impression that it's more correct than Ashkenazic Hebrew. (Mistaken insofar as if you take a prescriptivist outlook, which you necessarily do when viewing one pronounciation over another, the correct pronounciation from the point of view of those who vocalized the same biblical texts that were studied, is pretty much the consonantal pronunciation of Baghdad (Aramaic Speaking) Jews combined with the vowel pronunciation of Ashkenazic Jews, except for the schwa sound whose Yemenite pronunciation most closely approximates the value. Because the Protestant heritage of which Harvard was a part of very much respected the cantillation system of the bible (to the extent it was studied), they presumably would also have preferred the pronounciation of those who recorded not only the cantillation, but the vocalization of the Hebrew and Aramaic words.)
From Latin in Middle School and Greek in High School to remedial English in college (often no longer requires)
And yet folks act as if they are proud..that their grandchildren will work for someone form a country w/o quite as much snark
Meanwhile, the custom of giving commencement addresses in classical languages continues into the modern era. A friend of mine was Salutatorian at Princeton in the mid-80s and gave the saultatory oration in Latin, as has been the custom at Princeton lo these many decades. A quick google search seems to indicate that the custom continues to this day:
"The memorized half-hour oration, as delivered by the first salutatorian, eventually gave way to a ten-minute address, usually read from manuscript, and its tone, once in keeping with the formal proceedings of commencement, came to provide a kind of comic relief from them. In modern salutatories the humor of the text itself is heightened by the reaction of the other degree candidates, most of whom know no Latin but have at their places printed copies of the salutatory, with footnotes indicating the responses the salutatorian expects of them (hic plaudite, hic vociferate, hic deplorate, etc.); and they always do respond, though sometimes hesitatingly at first, with exuberance -- to the delight and surprise of the audience."
(As a Penn student, I was not subjected to such frivolity; Latin was confined to our degrees, and to those who chose to study it).
Reggie White did exactly this at the end of his life.
Rumors were that, at the end of his life, he was considering conversion to Judaism. As far as I know those were only rumors.
Ezra Stiles was for some years the minister of a Congregational Church in Newport, where the oldest [I think] synagogue in the U.S. was located. He struck up a friendship with the peripatetic Rabbi Carigal, who started him on his Hebrew studies. Carigal was not Ashkenzi - born in Palestine, I think - which may account for what I've been told is the Sephardic cast of Stiles's Hebrew.
Unfortunately, but to the amusement of the undergraduate mentality, Stiles described Carigal at Passover services as wearing "a high Fur Cap, exactly like a Womans Muff...."
The Yale seal bears the Hebrew letters spelling Urim and Thummim, as a result of Stiles' influence. Those words are of obscure meaning, but have something to do with a test of divine purity.
One of Yale's residential colleges bears his name. Prof. Edmund Morgan wrote a characteristically terse and penetrating biography of him.
Orthodox Christians founded the universities in the 17th and early 18th Centuries on explicitly Christian missions. But something very interesting began to occur in the mid-18th Century: Those colleges because hotbeds of "infidelity" -- the enlighteners began taking over. Dwight quelled the infidelity that was rampant at Yale when he took over for Stiles in the 19th Century. However, Harvard officially went infidel in 1806 (or 08 or 09, I have to double check) I believe when their theology school was taken over by a Unitarian. For the next over one hundred years, all of Harvard's Presidents were Unitarians.
Jewish biblical scholars were highly regarded. Their work motivated many 19th Century American missionaries to go to the Middle East and proselytize the heathens. They became advocates for the restoration of Jews to their traditional homeland.
Oren's work provides context for many of the above comments.
London, which is lively and easy. When he became more retired, he gave us his Vanity of Human Wishes, which is as hard as Greek. Had he gone on to imitate another satire, it would have been as hard as Hebrew.'"
See here for this year's Latin Oration.