Rabbi Daniel Greer at Princeton’s Yavneh 50th anniversary celebration. Photo by Bina Peltz

By Jill Garbi ~

Rabbi Daniel Greer, spiritual leader of the Yeshiva of New Haven Synagogue, was among more than 100 Princeton University alumni and students who gathered on Feb. 12 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Yavneh House, the university’s Orthodox Jewish student organization.
Participants in the daylong celebration reminisced about the challenges of forming a Yavneh chapter at Princeton in the early 1960s, at a time when a “silent quota” on Jews was easing at the Ivy Leagues. They also celebrated the efforts to launch a Princeton chapter of Yavneh National Religious Students Association, to provide kosher food, Torah studies, prayer services, and social opportunities.
Greer was one of the first Orthodox Jews to enroll at Princeton as an undergraduate in 1956. In a panel titled “Yavneh: From Hippies to iPhones,” he discussed his struggle to maintain his observant lifestyle on a campus made up of only eight percent Jews, many of whom he described as “closet Jews.”
Even the Hillel rabbi who served as chaplain at the time masked his Jewishness by concealing the mezuza in his office and opting for the title of “Mr.” rather than “Rabbi” on his nameplate, Greer told the New Jersey Jewish News, echoing recollections of many of the alumni present.
“The Hillel rabbi told me that after three days on campus I would be eating t’reif,” said Greer, who graduated in 1960. “I was the second Jewish student to go through the school and keep kosher. Many students came there kosher but didn’t finish that way.”
At Princeton, Greer wore the same Ivy League “Joe College uniform” as his peers — “tan chinos with a buckle in the back, a blue Oxford shirt, and a heather-green Shetland sweater,” he told the audience in the multipurpose room of the Frist Student Center.
But unlike Greer’s peers who gathered in the social clubs, mealtimes were spent in his room, where he heated up food his mother packed when he went home to New York City for each Shabbat. He often shared meals with another observant student, Abe Kaufman, who became Yavneh’s first president.
“The main issue as an Orthodox student at Princeton was the loneliness, which was almost palpable,” Greer recalled. “I got the physical and academic sustenance, but I was sorely lacking in emotional sustenance.”
The creation of Yavneh and its kosher dining facility slowly began to change the face of Judaism on campus. Yavneh first met at a rental home on Olden Street, later moving to Wiggins Street. In 1971 a kosher dining hall was formed on campus in Stevenson Hall. In 1993 Yavneh moved to the university’s Center for Jewish Life/Hillel.
Today, Yavneh offers kosher food, daily prayer services, student-led study sessions, and Talmud classes.
Jews currently make up 13 percent of Princeton’s 5,000 undergraduates.
A version of this article appeared in the New Jersey Jewish News www.jnjewishnews.com